So if like me, you’re a colossal fan of Star Wars, I’m hoping you might share my realisation.
See, much as I enjoy all the movies. Without reserve. Yes, all three trilogies and the Ewok Movies?
I genuinely find the small screen efforts (Clone Wars, Ewoks, Droids, Rebels, Clone Wars* The Mandalorian) efforts far more enjoyable.
It’s hard to explain sufficiently and concisely. So I’ll spare you an awful lot of waffle, and just say - the galaxy set up in all 9 films really, really suits TV type shows.
They can take their time, and suss it out as show makers. If 20/30 minutes of a film drags like a Seal’s ring piece? That’s bad. On a TV show? Fix it next season (assuming you get one, but we’re talking Star Wars, so of course!).
To avoid mindless beer induced waffling? What the fans (not all, I’ll accept that) want is to explore different corners of the established galaxy. Few if any of those corners really need or deserve a movie.
But give them 10 45 minute episodes? Or variations upon? The story gets to the point far sooner. Even in some of Clone Wars less enjoyable arcs (R2 Commandos was fun, but outstayed it’s welcome for my money) went on an episode too long? With TV, you can quickly and easily correct and adapt.
So whatever Disney does with it going forward? I’m hoping they appreciate its Serial root, and run with it.
The thing with star wars is it was new. When it came out it was totally new. There's never been anything like it on screen before. You had the old flash gordon and buck rogers serials of the 30's but star wars was just totally new. The action with the effects were beyond anything ever seen before.
That's why it was a huge hit.
Now star wars is old hat, that's wht people just don't get. You can make better effects but they aren't what made star wars special, they aren't new.
It does suit a serial format better. And the movies do mostly suck (imo). I think the issue is the movies need to keep escalating. And we have escalated to a fleet of ships all of which can destroy planets.
A show, by its nature is smaller scale and i think thats much better. Both for exploring more corners of the galaxy but also because we dont have to constantly ramp up to insane levels.
Movies are fantastic in many ways, but they are abysmal for telling big stories and huge sweeping story arcs. Especially in fantasy/sci-fi settings where a lot of the story and world has to be built for the viewer.
A TV series* has a lot more time than a movie. A single film might at the very best have 3 hours to work with. A simple 10 episode TV series with 30min episodes already has 5 hours to play with. With many episodes now being closer to 40mins or longer and with many series being more than 10 episodes long for a season that's even more potential story telling time.
So a TV series has way more scope to play and present things for the viewer. Especially in today's TV market where we've got far more support for story driven series which are not bound to an episodic formula.
I'd also agree that there's less pressure on TV writers to produce big effects, if any thing budget limits promote the opposite approach. Movies do indeed tend to bring outa bit of a "throw money at big moments" aspect. Big explosions and battles and suchlike. The big sock and awe approach, which I'd also argue is a bit of a culture established very firmly in the Hollywood film engine. I don't think its inherent in every film studio nor is it essential for every film or film series to keep out-doing with more effects. It's very strongly, in my view, a Hollywood thing (which explains why they've so fallen in love with Comic heroes right now).
When Starwars came out we were in the old days when many series were fully episodic. Star Trek actually shows the evolution of TV attitudes through time really neatly.
Original Series - fully episodic with very limited character development and change between episodes. For the most part you can drop in at any point you want and understand what is going on and who is who.
TNG - we start getting some casual long running story elements and shifts. We see some character deaths such as Tasha and we also see characters changing and evolving through the series (Wesley and Data). Although there's still a strong episodic element going on, its now enabling some changes at the same time.
DS9 - in this series we now start to see not just a broader character roster but several other big bold changes. We see the series internally shift from nearly fully episodic into story driven as it evolves and builds into the Dominion War.
We see "mini episodes" that shift the view character to character. This allows far greater development and evolution of multiple characters. It also allows for a structure where there's no clear "lead" character, instead you've closer to a lead group. Although DS9 tends to keep reserved in terms of character deaths, it is at least setting ground work for the idea of establishing a format which could allow for characters to leave and enter without disrupting the series flow.
Beyond DS9 things jump around a bit. Voyager mixed up TNG with DS9 with a stronger Episodic component and we saw this maintained with many of the series that followed. Picard however picks up and goes for a fully story driven narrative that has no real episodic elements, although it does opt for a tighter core character group and a very clear lead character.
*and books have almost infinite time so long as the writer can keep writing and keep the audience engaged.
I feel the same way,
The world of star wars has always been more interesting the the story they where following.
But then again i love the world/idea of harry potter and hate the books.
I tend to find personal and low stakes stories are far more interesting.
'Epic' has reached the end of its usefulness as a concept, as Hollywood (and book & game publishers) always look for the next tier of Epicness to throw at the audience, believing they'll be bored otherwise.
But at this point, epic is boring. 20-30 minute stints of CGI action replacing plot and character development is boring.
For Star Wars specifically, give me a young couple trying to escape their gang life on Nar Shadda, or an explorer outfit surveying the Unknown Reaches, or politicking with Alderrean diplomats over who has the proper Nerf Herding rights in the mountains rather than an even more bigger galaxy spanning super weapon.
I don't think this has much to do with Star Wars personally. We're in the era of "fantastic TV" and by that I mean serious, huge-budget, quality acted TV series. Assuming you have competent writers, you're always going to have a stronger chance at a good story with even just six or eight episodes vs. a 90-120 minute movie.
I'd take a season of Stranger Things over any film I've seen in the past 10-15 years. I'd rather watch a season of Game of Thrones (up to Season 4 at least) over most other things. Even The Witcher which I didn't rate was still probably better than most big budget movies now days. HBO has built a legacy on astounding 10-episode TV shows.
Also, TV shows tend to have better casts. Either due to budget, or the fact that they don't need to sell a 90-120 minute film on ultra-star power, you end up with smaller and often much better actors. They may not be household names or stunningly beautiful (the kind of draw you need for a film in the theater), but they often are far better or enjoyable actors.
PS: Ignoring the likely awful Amazon effort....I think things like The Lord of the Rings, if released in 2020, etc. (skipping the Covid nonsense) would likely be considered an HBO 10-part miniseries over actual film release, etc.).
I'm in two minds, thing is it started as a fairy tale and as such you just have accept the world as it is, the more you poke at it the less it makes sense, the starting hook for the prequel trilogy is so silly, Space Tax and Space road blocks of a planet that doesn't seem of much consequence, and bod knows what happened to the sequels started ok, then swerved in a hamfisted Kotot 2 direction, then JJ flailed the course correct and really didnt stick the landing (hint Mr A, don't use your worst actor as the central character)
but liked Clone Wars and Rebels, yes they are Saturday morning cartoons but that's about the right level of good/bad/naughty conflict that fits the setting
I’m optimistic about it. Not only because it’s new to the the fandom (rather than doing Old Republic), but because it’s an interesting endeavour.
oh the click-klaxon have already pretended to get upset about the 'agenda', although these days putting a white blonde lady front and centre is stunning and brave (j/k), personally I wanted a grumpy octopus-person jedi but we'll see
Thanks to its "Buster Crabbe" weekly-serial influence, Star Wars was perfect for a television show. Quite frankly, Clone Wars and Rebels are bloody brilliant. Dave Filoni has George's sense of child like wonder when it comes to the creative part but also understands the audience need as a director. He also appreciates elements from the EU which worked well, which was respectful of the talent that had come before and the fans who appreciated it.
One self evident fact about SW is that the best way to enjoy it is to ignore the sequel movies we just had and read Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the empire" series instead. See Thrawn the way the guy who created him wanted you too.
Matt Swain wrote: One self evident fact about SW is that the best way to enjoy it is to ignore the sequel movies we just had and read Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the empire" series instead. See Thrawn the way the guy who created him wanted you too.
Thrawn has a new trilogy, again by Timothy Zahn. Whilst I read Heir to The Empire over a decade ago and thus don’t remember them at all? This trilogy is pretty good.
If someone is familiar with both trilogies, any chance of chiming in with whether you feel they’re mutually exclusive, or could be read as a sequel/prequel tale in their own right?
Anyways. I’ve just watched Rise of Skywalker for the second time in as many days. And it’s left me with the question of ‘where now?’
I mean, it’s a pretty definitive end to that particular arc. But it does beg the question of what does the Galaxy do next? Do they refound the New Republic, or go a smaller, more local government route? Would this change over time, from the immediate aftermath to mid and long term?
I mean, it’s 30 years after Endor, give or take. So any die-hard Imperial types won’t just be hopelessly out of fashion, but seriously knocking on a bit.
Is this something people would like to be explored sooner, later, or even not at all? (No judgement here, because in a positive way, I don’t care all that much about your preference, as it doesn’t impact on mine, and vice versa).
Me? I think I’d like a Mando type series, where we see some remnant of the First Order, and follow their tale once the majority of their forces are scattered? Could be live action, could be animated. Could even be prose. I’m not overly fussy.
Heck, given what, 50 years of relative anarchy following the fall of the Republic, the Rebellion, the New Republic’s rise and fall, I dare say there may be some systems still interested in a more regimented, ‘lawful’ way of life. I think following a system or small collective of systems fending off those determined that their version of Freedom is wrong could be flipping interesting?
I really enjoy Star Wars as a setting more than anything, I honestly think most of the movies are terrible. Empire is the only film I genuinely enjoy from start to finish, the rest run the gamut from meh to total garbage. Stuff like the Heir to the Empire trilogy, the Rogue Squadron games, Shadow of the Empire on the N64, Jedi Knight II, and Knights of the Old Republic did a lot more for me than the films themselves. I'm sick to death of the Skywalker clan and desperately want more of Dash Rendar, Kyle Katarn, Darth Revan, and all that other juicy EU magic. Just get away from Palpatine and the Skywalkers!
It just so happens that I’ve started watching The Clone Wars properly for the first time recently, after watching episodes 1 & 2 as a reminder. And the Mandalorian too...yes I’ve got Disney plus.
And I totally agree...Star Wars works far far far better as a tv series than it does as movies. I mean come on, only about a 1/4 of the movies are actually any good (ANH, ESB, Rogue One and maybe Solo), the rest are mediocre to absolute crap. And even the vaulted original trilogy starts to fall apart story wise near the end (they were twins? Nah nah nah...).
But the tv series work much better for the reasons already outlined. As a setting Star Wars is among the best, but it’s struggled to realise its potential a lot of the time, and honestly I think it’s because it was stuck in the wrong format.
And I totally agree...Star Wars works far far far better as a tv series than it does as movies. I mean come on, only about a 1/4 of the movies are actually any good (ANH, ESB, Rogue One and maybe Solo), the rest are mediocre to absolute crap. And even the vaulted original trilogy starts to fall apart story wise near the end (they were twins? Nah nah nah...).
George was pretty much trying to do Flash Gordon and Dune, amongst other things. He just wanted his own version of Leto and Ghanima from Children of Dune. One could easily write a small book on what influenced Star Wars.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thrawn has a new trilogy, again by Timothy Zahn. Whilst I read Heir to The Empire over a decade ago and thus don’t remember them at all? This trilogy is pretty good.
If someone is familiar with both trilogies, any chance of chiming in with whether you feel they’re mutually exclusive, or could be read as a sequel/prequel tale in their own right?
They could indeed be taken as sequels/prequel takes (other than possibly the new book but it hasn't been released yet, so who knows at this point?). I would say that the original Heir to the Empire series is better than the new series but the new one is still fantastic.
On the overall thread, I am in whole hearted support for the idea but the fact that no one has bought up Resistance yet is shocking, much like that complete turd of a series. 2 Series and 3 (maybe) okayish episodes between them which goes to show that something's are best left well alone. Got mixed feelings on the new CW series, the initial bad batch episodes were great but have not been feeling the Ashoka ones at all.
I only didn’t mention Resistance as I’ve not seen it. Was hoping it’d be on D+ in the U.K., but not as yet.
Will weigh in when I’m informed
Automatically Appended Next Post: One series I’m adamant we need is one centred on Crimson Dawn.
Solo set it up really nicely, and I enjoyed the rug pull when we found out just who is the head man there. And now, in the Final Season of the Clone Wars we find the earliest mention on screen.
Now that introduces three acts.
1. Founding of Crimson Dawn (can potentially tie in to The Madalorian, after a fashion, given Maul was Mandalore based)
2. Their rise to power. No small thing when you’re up against Hutts, Black Sun Syndicate etc. They’re established players, so muscling in is quite the achievement
3. Their fall. Just how did Maul go from heading up a seemingly vast and feared crime syndicate to being broken and alone on Malachor? Does that mean Crimson Dawn crumbled, or that Maul was merely ousted? If the latter, what did they get up to post Empire?
In short, Crimson Dawn are a great lens to examine the wider galaxy pre, during and post Empire.
SamusDrake wrote: George was pretty much trying to do Flash Gordon and Dune, amongst other things. He just wanted his own version of Leto and Ghanima from Children of Dune. One could easily write a small book on what influenced Star Wars.
That’s a book I’d love to read. Hell, I read somewhere that he originally wanted to make Flash Gordon, and when he couldn’t, he made Star Wars. Ironically, the success of which probably helped the actual Flash Gordon movie get made.
What was the other inspiration? Valérian and Laureline?
I’m currently happily making my way through The Clone Wars. OK, bits of it are silly, but overall it’s working out far better than the films did. TV really does suit it better.
Voss wrote: I tend to find personal and low stakes stories are far more interesting.
Maybe not a low-stakes example, but this kind of thing is why I really enjoy the movie Battle: Los Angeles. It's the classic alien invasion trope, but we're experiencing it from the perspective of the regular grunts on the ground. We (the audience) know only what they know, rather than having the bigger picture like in Independence Day. The closest thing to this in Star Wars has to be Rogue One, but again it's not really low stakes considering the theft of the Death Star plans was key to the Rebellion's eventual victory.
I'd be very interested in seeing more of this kind of thing in Star Wars for sure. The Mandalorian is kind of scratching that itch, so we'll see where that goes next season.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I only didn’t mention Resistance as I’ve not seen it. Was hoping it’d be on D+ in the U.K., but not as yet.
Will weigh in when I’m informed
I would recommend drinking heavily before starting! There are some great new fighters in the series (FO Interceptor, T-85 X-Wing and misc. others) but that's about as good as it gets.
Automatically Appended Next Post: One series I’m adamant we need is one centred on Crimson Dawn.
Solo set it up really nicely, and I enjoyed the rug pull when we found out just who is the head man there. And now, in the Final Season of the Clone Wars we find the earliest mention on screen.
Now that introduces three acts.
1. Founding of Crimson Dawn (can potentially tie in to The Madalorian, after a fashion, given Maul was Mandalore based)
2. Their rise to power. No small thing when you’re up against Hutts, Black Sun Syndicate etc. They’re established players, so muscling in is quite the achievement
3. Their fall. Just how did Maul go from heading up a seemingly vast and feared crime syndicate to being broken and alone on Malachor? Does that mean Crimson Dawn crumbled, or that Maul was merely ousted? If the latter, what did they get up to post Empire?
In short, Crimson Dawn are a great lens to examine the wider galaxy pre, during and post Empire.
With you here, would love to see a dark and gritty crime syndicate series. Though the rise of CD against the other gangster groups was all done in CW already but there are other avenues to explore, would like to see a rise of the Black Sun, Xisor/Guri, series.
What I would really like though is for an Empire focused series, there is plenty of material to work with (like Inferno Squadron) and I reckon that well handled it could add a lot of depth to the franchise without just making the Empire out to be cartoon villain types.
I think the issue with an Empire focussed series is making the protagonists sympathetic without them defecting to the Rebellion or what have you. Because the die hards we’ve seen are pretty awful people, loyal to a regime they know to be bullying and oppressive.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think the issue with an Empire focussed series is making the protagonists sympathetic without them defecting to the Rebellion or what have you. Because the die hards we’ve seen are pretty awful people, loyal to a regime they know to be bullying and oppressive.
LucasArts Tie Fighter covered this magnificently where the Imperial Navy still had the job of protecting civilian traffic, not just from rebel attacks but from Imperial traitors and mutineers, pirates and bandits.
They introduced Admiral Zaarin who basically turns on the Emperor with a renegade fleet, and becomes a greater threat than the rebel alliance - even more ruthless than the Emperor himself.
The master stroke was to tie in with Timothy Zahn's trilogy by having the player join Admiral Thrawn in hunting down the swine. Thrawn suddenly becomes that Sherlock Holmes "hero" of the piece - along with yourself as "Alpha One", the pilot who has thwarted many merciless attacks on civilian traffic and survived many times against overwhelming odds and treachery. Its Thrawn's resourcefullness and supreme power of deduction against the technological and military superority of Zaarin.
It even took time out to tie-in with Shadows of The Empire.
Fair enough I know I’ve played it, but was too young to appreciate the plot!
Currently rewatching some Mando, ready for tomorrow’s U.K. release of the next Chapter (6, I think).
And it’s really helped me put my finger on what the lifeblood of Star Wars is to me.
In short? It’s the Cantina scene. Never mind it blew my mind with the variety of gribblies when I first saw it, which it did. But it’s the clear statement that this is a lived-in galaxy. Despite the grand happenings, there are far, far more people just going about their lives as best they can.
Species that wouldn’t be formally identified for years. On screen for mere seconds. Yet it flashes everything out to a ridiculous degree.
Those are the bits I like the most. Cantina, Jabba’s Palace, Maz’s Castle. Teeny tiny windows into a wider world.
If Disney were feeling particularly ballsy, they could even do an anthology series in the vein of the entertaining ‘Tales from’ books. Not straight up filming the existing series, but not outright discarding some of the better ones (said tales were not of uniform quality!)
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: For those discovering Clone Wars for the first time, let me know if it changes your appreciation for the general prequel era!
Let me say that I still think that a lot of the prequels general ideas are flawed. For example, the idea of an army of droids fighting an army of clones...this is because of George's obsession with CGI. He wanted two CGI created factions to fight it out, but he couldn't devote the time into making all of the individual combatants actual individuals...so he made them all clones/droids. And I guess there’s nothing wrong with that pre say...but I’ve always felt more invested in the ‘real’ fighters of the original era.
But having said that...TCW is definitely improving my perception of the whole clone war era. For starters, the characterisation is a million times better. Annakin’s in particular. And it’s handling the world building far better than the movies ever did too. Part of what made the originals work imo is that it kept the world building concise. The prequels spread themselves too thin in the movies, but on TV, a couple of episodes devoted to one planet or faction or whatever, works way better.
Yeah, The Clone Wars is a massive improvement over the prequel movies. A massive improvement!
Favourite one was Jabba's palace, and was definitely the most enjoyable "hideout" in the movies. The Cantina was alright, while Maz's place was just the Cantina repeated, but Jabba's palace was a whole adventure in itself with so much character.
It would be nice if they could tie in Rebels to the Obi Wan series. Not sure how that would happen though.
A very long shot, but I suppose they could revisit the Obi Wan episode and just have it as a live action episode. Bring back Ray park and I'm sure Sam Witwer would jump at the chance to do the voice once again.
There could be a chance of Liam Neeson popping up once in a while as a force ghost, and would make the ending of Revenge of the Sith more meaningful when Yoda has training for Obi Wan on Tatooine.
I mean, it was ace in its own right, but also included a near complete, two player version of Rogue Leader?
Man....now I want to buy a GameCube!
Rebel strike was not as good as Rogue Leader, I feel. They added the ground combat stuff and then overused it. I play Rogue Squadron for the flying stuff; the ground combat should be a different game. That being said, it wasn't terrible or anything, and the co-op version of Rogue Leader gave my brother and I hours of enjoyment.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Nope. Gone back to scripting. If memory serves, the concern is it was turning out a bit too similar to The Mando, as in Space Western.
Like that’s a bad thing
One of the things I love about the Mandolorian is the real old school, 70’s TV vibe (the plots, the cinematography and especially the music); gives me serious nostalgia for stuff I watched as a young kid, like the old Incredible Hulk TV series.
I think that’s why it feels “so Star Wars”; as I recall, the old Kurosawa films were a key influence on George Lucas, as they were for the spaghetti westerns, so this series is coming from those same roots.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, I would buy the hell out of a graphic /illustrated novel of the series that uses all the artwork from the end credits. Come on Disney, you’re not shy about merchandising everything else!
I guess they just want multiple irons in the fire? I wouldn’t object to another Spaceghettti Western type thing overall, but I do understand why they want each show to have more of a unique feel.
The Cassian Andor one I’m particularly looking forward to, as it’s likely to be quite different to existing Star Wars stuff. He was a bit ruthless when we first saw him in Rogue One.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I guess they just want multiple irons in the fire? I wouldn’t object to another Spaceghettti Western type thing overall, but I do understand why they want each show to have more of a unique feel.
The Cassian Andor one I’m particularly looking forward to, as it’s likely to be quite different to existing Star Wars stuff. He was a bit ruthless when we first saw him in Rogue One.
This one should use the Spy Genre as the baseline tropes, you know a show like Alias or The Black List.
Haven’t seen those. But what I know of Cassian from Rogue Ome? Yes. A proper spy thriller.
I know that in earlier drafts, he was a double agent looking to kill Saw Gerrera in vengence for his wife and kid(s).
There’s definitely room to work something similar in. Just keep him, or ideally his world, morally ambiguous. Given the hints in Imperial Oppression glimpsed in Rogue One? That presents a lot of narrative leeway for bold story writers.
I think that’s why it feels “so Star Wars”; as I recall, the old Kurosawa films were a key influence on George Lucas, as they were for the spaghetti westerns, so this series is coming from those same roots.
Lucas was inspired by Kurosawa, Kurosawa was also inspired by spaghetti westerns. Mando is inspired by george being inspired by Akira being inspired by Sergio. It's all circular.
Star Wars has gotten so bad that even an average paint by numbers show like the Mandalorian was considered amazing by the fanbase, to use an Eddie Murphy joke as an analogy.
A person is in the middle of the desert, starving to death, a person comes over to him and offers him a cracker, the starving person takes it and thinks its the greatest cracker they have ever tasted... but its just a normal cracker.
The Star Wars fans were the starving person (Disney Star Wars) and they were given a normal run of the mill cracker (The Mandalorian) and think its the greatest thing ever, but as soon as they start eating real food again (The Expanse, Sense 8 for example) they realise the cracker was just a cracker.
Star Wars died when Lucas gave it up, Disney wars is all we have left.
Formosa wrote: Star Wars has gotten so bad that even an average paint by numbers show like the Mandalorian was considered amazing by the fanbase, to use an Eddie Murphy joke as an analogy.
A person is in the middle of the desert, starving to death, a person comes over to him and offers him a cracker, the starving person takes it and thinks its the greatest cracker they have ever tasted... but its just a normal cracker.
The Star Wars fans were the starving person (Disney Star Wars) and they were given a normal run of the mill cracker (The Mandalorian) and think its the greatest thing ever, but as soon as they start eating real food again (The Expanse, Sense 8 for example) they realise the cracker was just a cracker.
Star Wars died when Lucas gave it up, Disney wars is all we have left.
It's insanity to think starwars died when lucas gave it up.
Starwars died when lucas made the special editions. And then the prequels. Or the holiday special. Lucas has done more bad for starwars then he ever did good. And there has always been more bad in Starwars then there ever was good.
Formosa wrote: Star Wars has gotten so bad that even an average paint by numbers show like the Mandalorian was considered amazing by the fanbase, to use an Eddie Murphy joke as an analogy.
A person is in the middle of the desert, starving to death, a person comes over to him and offers him a cracker, the starving person takes it and thinks its the greatest cracker they have ever tasted... but its just a normal cracker.
The Star Wars fans were the starving person (Disney Star Wars) and they were given a normal run of the mill cracker (The Mandalorian) and think its the greatest thing ever, but as soon as they start eating real food again (The Expanse, Sense 8 for example) they realise the cracker was just a cracker.
Star Wars died when Lucas gave it up, Disney wars is all we have left.
1 million percent this. I got through the first half an hour of the Mandalorian's first episode, couldn't stomach any more. When he lands on the planet, gets attacked by whatever predator finds him, and gets saved by the indigenous stranger, that's where I had to stop. 'Bounty hunter?' 'Yes' 'i will help you.' Just............ UGGHHHHHHHHHH. So much groan. If it were anything but Star Wars, that show wouldn't have gotten half the praise that it did.
Formosa wrote: Star Wars has gotten so bad that even an average paint by numbers show like the Mandalorian was considered amazing by the fanbase, to use an Eddie Murphy joke as an analogy.
A person is in the middle of the desert, starving to death, a person comes over to him and offers him a cracker, the starving person takes it and thinks its the greatest cracker they have ever tasted... but its just a normal cracker.
The Star Wars fans were the starving person (Disney Star Wars) and they were given a normal run of the mill cracker (The Mandalorian) and think its the greatest thing ever, but as soon as they start eating real food again (The Expanse, Sense 8 for example) they realise the cracker was just a cracker.
Star Wars died when Lucas gave it up, Disney wars is all we have left.
It's insanity to think starwars died when lucas gave it up.
Starwars died when lucas made the special editions. And then the prequels. Or the holiday special. Lucas has done more bad for starwars then he ever did good. And there has always been more bad in Starwars then there ever was good.
Yeah you are right and I did not explain myself properly, it did not die because he gave it up, it died when he gave it up due to the horrible mismanagement from Disney, Kennedy and everyone at Lucas Film, Lucas does have his share of the blame true.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I think the issue with an Empire focussed series is making the protagonists sympathetic without them defecting to the Rebellion or what have you. Because the die hards we’ve seen are pretty awful people, loyal to a regime they know to be bullying and oppressive.
The problem is you have what are pretty disparate shows, movies, comic books and such all taking place in the same universe with varying tones
Sure you can have a show focused on the empire and how they are just people too, caught up in a machine and trying to make it through life either keeping their heads down or keeping quiet.
Then you have a show like Rebels which has them cartoonishly evil, bombing civilians and such.
Having just watched “The Phantom Apprentice”, episode 10 Season 7 of Clone Wars?
I stand by my original statement all the more! That folks is how you do it! No plot discussion. But it’s not often I’m held rapt by a show, being one to multitask. This was an exception. So much going on, and the animation was superb.
I recently acquired a copy of FFG’s reprint of the WEG SWRPG. The nostalgia hit me like a freight train; not so much nostalgia for the D6 system as for late 80s/early 90s SW fandom. In those days, the SW setting was gritty through-and-through. It was hard NOT to imagine all kinds of pulpy adventures.
The slick, lightsaber-obsessed prequels really cut against that grain. And the Disney sequels are aesthetically nonsensical. Both trilogies make the SW setting feel smaller and less inspiring. To me, Solo and The Mandalorian do the opposite.
Manchu wrote: I recently acquired a copy of FFG’s reprint of the WEG SWRPG. The nostalgia hit me like a freight train; not so much nostalgia for the D6 system as for late 80s/early 90s SW fandom. In those days, the SW setting was gritty through-and-through. It was hard NOT to imagine all kinds of pulpy adventures.
The slick, lightsaber-obsessed prequels really cut against that grain. And the Disney sequels are aesthetically nonsensical. Both trilogies make the SW setting feel smaller and less inspiring. To me, Solo and The Mandalorian do the opposite.
Oh yeah, this a thousand times. See, as much as I’m enjoying TCW, it can’t fix what I think is a major error that they did with the Jedi. They ruined their mystic by turning them from what was said to be an order of secretive and magic warrior monks into what I can only describe as ‘the space FBI’. Nowhere is this better demonstrated by Annakin’s line in Attack Of The Clones; “Jedi business, go back to your drinks”. That right there to me utterly ruined their legendary status and made them so mundane. Like they’re just another branch of the government. I can now picture a Jedi going ‘you want my Jedi number?! Here’s my freaking Jedi number!” like they’re some old film noir gumshoe. Totally wrong direction to go in. And when I’m out of work today I’ll elaborate further.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Additional, fascinating perspective on that very irk is provided in Rebels.
Quite early on, if memory serves. Certainly the first season.
Won’t say what, as I don’t want to paraphrase, just let you see it for yourself. But yeah.
The TV stuff does seem to have a certain, I’d call it ‘fan level awareness’ of the movie plots.
I’m looking forward to seeing Rebels. It’ll be a while, cuz TCW, RotS and Solo are first but I hope to get there by the end of the weekend. Plus my brother is filling me in on what happens in Fallen Order.
Another issue, which is probably explained and I just don’t know it yet, is how tied up to the republic and it’s senate the Jedi actually are. I always felt like the Jedi should have seen themselves as above politics and governments. They defend all life and answer to The Force, not any government. And because of this, and the whole secretive order thing, they hide among places rather than having a big headquarters out in the open.
I never got the impression from the OT that the Jedi were secretive or not involved with political issues. Obi-Wan describes them as knights, guardians of peace, participants in the Clone Wars. IMO the mistake was making them some sort of Buddhist monks.
TCW series has its ups and downs but it does yeomen’s work rehabilitating, where possible, the SW setting as diminished by the PT.
Another think that always kinda irked me what just the idea in star wars that, inherantly, the light side is good dark side is bad.
When Rebels brought in both Ahsoka and Maul as charaters that abandoned their respective orders and move more to the center, i was hoping they would go with this idea that neither is truly good. but not, maul wwas bad, ahsoka good.
its frusterating. there can be interesting stories told, but it always seemed abandoned for the same good vs evil narrative
My takeaway of the Maul and Ahsoka dynamic is twofold.
1. Religious Indoctrination.
Neither can properly conceive of Not Being Just, because the dogma is all they know.
2. The Force Is Binary
As in, the potential of The Force is near unlimited. The Force is ineffable. Any kind of competence requires some form of discipline.
Either ways, it all adds to the tragedy as I see it. Mere mortals determined that some ineffable, erm. Force, has an opinion. That it *must* be controlled and channeled only One Way.
That’s me, right now, holding my tongue on Rebels related Spoilers.
The bit in mind isn’t massively long, but it’s such a beacon of ‘whoa.....I see!’ it left a serious impression.
You're going to make me re-watch Rebels now, aren't you?
Not that I'm complaining (although I would like to put some effort into The Expanse...), I really enjoyed it first time around and I have a feeling that I'll like it even more now that I don't have to get past the stylistic differences between Rebels and TCW.
Seems like the Force itself does not have a dark or light side (I think TCW makes some mistakes here); those are just approaches to it. And the dark side approach is inherently bad.
That’s me, right now, holding my tongue on Rebels related Spoilers.
The bit in mind isn’t massively long, but it’s such a beacon of ‘whoa.....I see!’ it left a serious impression.
You're going to make me re-watch Rebels now, aren't you?
Not that I'm complaining (although I would like to put some effort into The Expanse...), I really enjoyed it first time around and I have a feeling that I'll like it even more now that I don't have to get past the stylistic differences between Rebels and TCW.
Dude, as much as i love Star Wars watch the expanse, seriously, its SOOOO good
Manchu wrote: I never got the impression from the OT that the Jedi were secretive or not involved with political issues. Obi-Wan describes them as knights, guardians of peace, participants in the Clone Wars. IMO the mistake was making them some sort of Buddhist monks.
TCW series has its ups and downs but it does yeomen’s work rehabilitating, where possible, the SW setting as diminished by the PT.
Maybe I didn’t explain it so well. I was wondering how could it be that somebody like Solo could dismiss the force as make believe if the Jedi were once so prominent, even in his own lifetime. And the only explanation I can think of would be for the Jedi to have been semi-mythical even during the time of the republic. And sure, they can be guardians of the peace and take part in wars, but in a less official way. More underground.
I’m finding it hard to explain...it makes sense in my head but I’m having trouble typing it out.
Ah! No wait, I got it...Chewie! Chewie meet Jedi before. Christ he helped Yoda himself escape! Why wouldn’t he pipe up about that when Han starts talking gak? Even back before the prequels were made it was established that he’s 100s of years old, so he’s bound to have encountered them at some point?
Also do you have any friends that are hindu or bhuddist or any other religion thats not yours? How often do they talk about it? How much do you believe their religion as fact?
Just because in SW the force is fact doesn't mean it is taken as such by people who haven't witnessed it first hand.
Ah! No wait, I got it...Chewie! Chewie meet Jedi before. Christ he helped Yoda himself escape! Why wouldn’t he pipe up about that when Han starts talking gak? Even back before the prequels were made it was established that he’s 100s of years old, so he’s bound to have encountered them at some point?
Great, now I’ve got this image in my mind of every time Han starts dismissing force stuff Chewie’s there in the back ground rolling his eyes and
growling to himself “idiot”.
Lance845 wrote: Also do you have any friends that are hindu or bhuddist or any other religion thats not yours? How often do they talk about it? How much do you believe their religion as fact?
Just because in SW the force is fact doesn't mean it is taken as such by people who haven't witnessed it first hand.
I figure that this is a message we often miss in SW because whilst its presented in the first few films, we quickly see the Force doing things as an audience and those who disbelieve are often shown to be a "out of the norm." or from a backwater world with little education. It's something where you need series focusing on non-force users to really drive home how rare Jedi were even at the height of their power.
Manchu wrote: The slick, lightsaber-obsessed prequels really cut against that grain.
Which is kind of the point, y'know? It was showing SW in a different time, with a different aesthetic and a different culture (overall). A time of peace (so to speak) rather than a galactic civil war between an overbearing military dictatorship and disparate groups of desperate partisan fighters.
The sequels... well they could never figure out what they wanted to be. Too much like the OT at first (obsessively so, as to be as safe as possible), then the next one was all "kill the past!" and that failed horrifically, and then the third one tried to somehow mush the two together and cut out parts of the second. "Aesthetically nonsensical" was a good way of putting it.
The prequels tried to do something different. They weren't successful the whole way through (especially in acting, character direction and directing), but it was showing off a vastly different part of SW history. The sequels never knew what they wanted to do as there was no plan to start with, and no one ever followed-up on what came before, leaving it a mish-mash of poor attempts at nostalgia and equally misguided attempts to "subvert" expectations.
You note that Rogue One did none of that, making a movie set firmly in the OT, and as a result comes across as the most "pure" SW. Mandalorian does the same thing, even if it is after ROTJ, it's still within that timeframe (only 5 years after the Battle of Endor). This is why these feel better to us than any Supreme Leader Snokes, Rose Tikos or magical daggers that just happen to line up with 30-year old wreckage.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:It’s plausible it wouldn’t come up.
I mean, Chewie knows the Jedi were real. Han doesn’t. Post Order 66 and Palpatine’s media manipulation?
Would you genuinely believe the Wookiee. Or consider it his own folklore?
It's possible it might never have came up, but I like to think that Chewie and Han actually talked about this sort of thing. What else would you talk about on long space journeys or down the space pub?
Now wither or not Han believes him though is a different matter, but I like to think that he'd give his friend the benefit of the doubt.
Also, isn't Corellia a core world or something? Like, galatically next door to Corescant or something?
Lance845 wrote:Also do you have any friends that are hindu or bhuddist or any other religion thats not yours? How often do they talk about it? How much do you believe their religion as fact?
Just because in SW the force is fact doesn't mean it is taken as such by people who haven't witnessed it first hand.
I know what you mean, but the Jedi were once a branch of the Galactic government, from not that long ago. And not a secret branch either. So unless that Imperial indoctrenation is really good, I just find it hard for anyone to dismiss the Jedi within living memory when they were so open.
Jadenim wrote:Great, now I’ve got this image in my mind of every time Han starts dismissing force stuff Chewie’s there in the back ground rolling his eyes and growling to himself “idiot”.
See that's exactly what I was thinking too!
But, I think I'm derailing the thread here. What we have seen is what we have. No changing it, so I'll leave it.
Ah! No wait, I got it...Chewie! Chewie meet Jedi before. Christ he helped Yoda himself escape! Why wouldn’t he pipe up about that when Han starts talking gak? Even back before the prequels were made it was established that he’s 100s of years old, so he’s bound to have encountered them at some point?
Great, now I’ve got this image in my mind of every time Han starts dismissing force stuff Chewie’s there in the back ground rolling his eyes and
growling to himself “idiot”.
And now consider what Artoo is doing every time 3PO says 'Thank the Maker!'
I’m glad you brought up Han’s skepticism. The general “attitude” about the Force is a very important theme in ANH. There’s not only Han’s conversation with Ob-Wan, but also Admiral Motti’s conversation with Vader, and later on another conversation that Vader has with Tarkin. Note also that Rebels tell each other, May the Force be with you! What’s important is, the characters are generally talking about this as a belief system (like a religion) rather than a kind of discrete phenomenon (like gravity). The point I think the film wants to make is, the belief system of the Jedi is an older, more authentic way of understanding reality than the “modern” (Imperial) point of view, which emphasizes technology (for Han, a good blaster; for Motti, the Death Star). This is also what makes Vader so fascinating; he clearly doesn’t fit in with the rest of his team.
It can be difficult but when you think about the essence of SW you have to “throw out” the junk that was appended onto the OT, most notably the prequels, with their mindnumbing notions of midichlorians and Buddhist Jedi and Chewbacca being friends with Yoda, etc, etc.
@HBMC
Yep, I’m fully aware of the conscious decision on the TPM production to contrast the “used future”/utilitarian feel of the OT with a rounder, more organic Art Nouveau-inspired sense of luxury and artisanship. It’s definitely “an idea” (which as you say, is more than Disney could manage) and I think it’s even an interesting idea that contributes, as you point out, to a sense of this setting having its own history. The trouble I have with it, is it’s at the service of/packaged with a change in focus away from pulp adventure (the setting as “seen from below”) to high politics (“seen from above”). And that made what once felt like an enormous world full of adventure feel much smaller.
The only issue I find with A New Hope is that when you consider that hardly a generation ago there was the Republic it feels like not enough time was left really for the Republic to die and new ways to move in.
I'd have preferred if perhaps the Jedi had already fallen by then and Anakin rose within their withered ranks (its sort of hinted that they are getting weaker, but not really that they are falling so far from grace as to be lost; they are still well known come the stat). A sort of prolonged "dark age" at the end of the Republic out of which the Imperium was birthed and through which the idea of Vader hunting down the last really rises up; rather than the idea that Jedi are all slaughtered pretty much on one night/day by their own troops (incidentally who just puts into use a whole army comissioned by someone in secret that no one realised was being made)
Lance845 wrote:Also do you have any friends that are hindu or bhuddist or any other religion thats not yours? How often do they talk about it? How much do you believe their religion as fact?
Just because in SW the force is fact doesn't mean it is taken as such by people who haven't witnessed it first hand.
I know what you mean, but the Jedi were once a branch of the Galactic government, from not that long ago. And not a secret branch either. So unless that Imperial indoctrenation is really good, I just find it hard for anyone to dismiss the Jedi within living memory when they were so open.
The pope is on tv all the time if you go looking for it. So are cardinals and all the other catholic power structure. Part of a government that runs the city state Rome. Do you think they have god powers because they are part of a government and you can see them on tv?
Again, what actual impact does a few thousand people on the captiol have on entire solar systems across the galaxy? We know they have a religion. We know they act as a peace keeping force. That in no way means their religion is real.
Overread wrote: The only issue I find with A New Hope is that when you consider that hardly a generation ago there was the Republic it feels like not enough time was left really for the Republic to die and new ways to move in.
I'd have preferred if perhaps the Jedi had already fallen by then and Anakin rose within their withered ranks (its sort of hinted that they are getting weaker, but not really that they are falling so far from grace as to be lost; they are still well known come the stat). A sort of prolonged "dark age" at the end of the Republic out of which the Imperium was birthed and through which the idea of Vader hunting down the last really rises up; rather than the idea that Jedi are all slaughtered pretty much on one night/day by their own troops (incidentally who just puts into use a whole army comissioned by someone in secret that no one realised was being made)
It honestly requires a bit of suspension of disbelief more than usual. But as is the way of prequels.
Its not impossible for that to happen. Especially if you don't have to wait for a new government to form, but instead have a fully functioning one just step in and take over.
Yeah but people never forgot Nazis existed, or that they where ever real. and people certainly dont believe the holocaust wasnt real........
Nevermind, you are right.....
Its not impossible for that to happen. Especially if you don't have to wait for a new government to form, but instead have a fully functioning one just step in and take over.
True big changes happened, but no one (sane) denies the power of the Nazi party or the secret services etc... Whereas in stead when we first meet Han and the general ethos around Jedi we see in Original Trilogy the idea of a Jedi is basically a myth. It's closer to if Merlin were to walk into modern times and say he can do real magic.
Remember Han is very well travelled, he's not from a backwater world.
In contrast we see through the Prequels that the Republic only fell very recently and that the Jedi were evidently in great enough numbers and influence that most of those times wouldn't deny the powers they had. Even Watto - a backwater not even part of the republic - knew about "Jedi Mind Tricks" to the point where he made a point that they don't work on his species.
Its not a question of people never hearing about jedi. Han heard of the jedi and the force. He just doesnt believe in it. People still know the jedi existed. In the same way that we know the samurai existed. And we can sit around and chat about the philosphy of bushido. But knowing the samurai existed and followed bushido is different from believing a man with a katana could cut through solid stone with a single slash of his sword.
Its not like people in sw turn on their tv and watch a documentry with evidence of jedi leaping 3 story buildings. Nobody in sw has a tv. They barely have 2 way radios.
Yeah but I'd figure they'd need more than one generation to forget the powers of a Jedi. Like I said it doesn't have to be hundreds of years; even just shifting things back one generation further helps a lot. It's more that it just seems so sudden that in only 20ish years the entire Galaxy sort of just forgot the Jedi.
I can appreciate the power change over that time from a war torn and failing and corrupt Republic into the Imperial State. That makes good sense, esp since the Imperial forces were never fully an army of pure-evil. Indeed I suspect in many areas people liked them (at least initially) as they brought stability and order. It beign only later when people lost their freedoms (which I think is sort of hinted at but never fully presented to us save in subtle ways such as the heavy policing presences of Stormtroopers on planets). And then using a planet cannon to blow up a world that was a rebel sympathiser.
Yep, Lance hits the nail on the head; we’re not talking about a fact, we’re talking about a religion. There’s no room for that religion in the culture of the New Order.
The crunched timeline was always in place. It's just that when you're a kid and don't have a good sense of time, the idea that an old man who knew your dad when he was young means it happened FOREVER ago. It doesn't matter that even in ANH Obiwan makes it pretty clear that he was good friends with Anakin before the empire existed. From Luke's perspective (and therefore ours) the Empire has always been, but that's the understanding of someone who can't really understand how the world changes in 20 years.
Part of the problem is just that the Force in ANH is very different from everything that came after. In that film, its WAY more of a guiding hand of destiny. The only undeniable proof it exists is the one time Vader chokes Motti in that film. Likewise, Han doesn't deny that the Jedi exist; he just saw their powers as the same kind of sleight of hand and mentalist tricks that he'd learned to see through dealing with and in scams his whole life.
LunarSol wrote: The crunched timeline was always in place. It's just that when you're a kid and don't have a good sense of time, the idea that an old man who knew your dad when he was young means it happened FOREVER ago. It doesn't matter that even in ANH Obiwan makes it pretty clear that he was good friends with Anakin before the empire existed. From Luke's perspective (and therefore ours) the Empire has always been, but that's the understanding of someone who can't really understand how the world changes in 20 years.
Aint this the truth. . . I just watched Rise yesterday and there are some blindingly obvious plot points where timelines get icky.
Spoiler:
if Rey Truly is Palp's grand-daughter . . . we have on a timeline, that in Ep. 1, he's a sitting senator. For a moment lets assume that senatorial level politicians' lives run similar to what we humans here in the real world understand. This would mean that Senator Palpatine is likely to be between 50 and 65 "standard years" old. . . Anakin is 6 in that movie, and by Ep. 3 has aged to young adulthood, in his 20s. Which would make palp what. . . . late 60s to mid 70s in age? Then, we enter ANH, where luke is an ambiguously aged young adult. He was born at the tail end of Ep. 3, so now Palp is in his 80s or 90s. . . . by TFA/TLJ and RoS. . . . dis dude in his 100s!!!! With the age of Rey, his child that bore Rey would've been born when he was in his 60s??? I mean, I know some stranger things have happened, but its kind of gross to think about
It’s blatantly, even hilariously, obvious that the whole
Spoiler:
Palpatine thing
was a hasty patch job to fix
Spoiler:
Snoke being unceremoniously killed.
I said before, that Rise Of Skywalker is pretty much two hours of JJ Abrams running around with a fire extinguisher trying to put out Rian Johnson’s burning garbage.
Burning garbage is way more interesting than burnt garbage.
Snoke was just Palpatine with no thought or purpose than to put Palpatine back in. He was killed off and replaced with a FAR more interesting villain, who was than squandered by forcing Palpatine back in when at no point did we need anything resembling Palpatine.
Whatever JJ had planned for Snoke, it wasn't going to be any more interesting than what we got. Snoke ends up being the secret master of the Sith from Exegol who has secretly been building the Final Order fleet of Star Destroyers. That's ultimately the issue with JJ's mystery boxes. They're compelling so long as you don't realize that there was never anything in them to begin with.
That was my problem with the movies
They where designed to be a trilogy telling one story, rather than a trilogy of 3 stories with threads of story between them
The best trilogies can be watched/playedin nearly any order, with no real detriment to them, a couple come to mind
1: Indiana Jones
2:Jurassic park( yeah the movies kinda decline in quality, but they are none the less or and enjoyable, and you can watch them in really any order)
3: The Original and Prequel trilogy
4: Uncharted series(You need to know gak for every single series)
5: Spiderman Trilogy.
6: Alot of Trilogy for MCU can be watched with no prior knowledge of the others....kinda
Ah! No wait, I got it...Chewie! Chewie meet Jedi before. Christ he helped Yoda himself escape! Why wouldn’t he pipe up about that when Han starts talking gak? Even back before the prequels were made it was established that he’s 100s of years old, so he’s bound to have encountered them at some point?
Because nobody actually understands chewie or the beepy droids, they just respond to them like people respond to cats when they meow and chewbacca gets increasingly pissed about that and jaded throughout the various series.
He actually tries to shoot han at the end of TFA, he ends up shooting kylo because his reflexes are really really really really bad.
Overread wrote: Yeah but I'd figure they'd need more than one generation to forget the powers of a Jedi. Like I said it doesn't have to be hundreds of years; even just shifting things back one generation further helps a lot. It's more that it just seems so sudden that in only 20ish years the entire Galaxy sort of just forgot the Jedi.
I can appreciate the power change over that time from a war torn and failing and corrupt Republic into the Imperial State. That makes good sense, esp since the Imperial forces were never fully an army of pure-evil. Indeed I suspect in many areas people liked them (at least initially) as they brought stability and order. It beign only later when people lost their freedoms (which I think is sort of hinted at but never fully presented to us save in subtle ways such as the heavy policing presences of Stormtroopers on planets). And then using a planet cannon to blow up a world that was a rebel sympathiser.
You have to consider the rarity of Jedi and users of the force. This is a galaxy of trillions you would assume and there were according to most canon sources, 10,000 Jedi. It's easy to stop believing within such a short time frame as there were probably planets the had never had a Jedi on them within a lifetime, let alone everyone seeing them.
Also, you must consider that before the clone wars, Jedi were relative peace keepers. Battles involving them were very very very rare, and if so would probably be on a very small scale. They were effectively diplomats. The idea that scepticism wouldn't grow without the presence is surely a bit misguided, what Jedi were seen, they would almost certainly not demonstrate their power in a tangible way (offensive/big force powers, or using lightsabers), many people might consider the whole thing a myth that "didn't really happen".
I can totally get that people in universe would already forget or be sceptical of the power of the force within such a short space of time unless they actually witnessed it.
I'll say one reason the series works better as a show is the movies pretty much exclusively deal with Jedi stuff, which the franchise as a whole hasn't found a great way to deal with outside of Luke's original story of "gets powers, is tempted by evil, overcomes evil and becomes hero". I think a big part of that is just an issue with how the series doesn't really know what to do with the Dark Side.
Part of it is just the reduction of the Force to a set of superpowers while still trying to keep it ethereal gibberish. You end up with it being a skill tree you slot karma points into rather than something to emotionally connect with. The way its written the Force is the Force and the Light and Dark are just labels applied to how people use it. I think that really tarnishes its original appeal as a corrupting influence. I think if we're going to get a truly great movie from the franchise again; it has to be one in which we get to see a character truly explore the Dark Side rather than "something something" it.
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hotsauceman1 wrote: That was my problem with the movies
They where designed to be a trilogy telling one story, rather than a trilogy of 3 stories with threads of story between them
My biggest criticism of TLJ is that it starts 5 seconds after the end of TFA. A skip like the one we saw in ESB would have given the story quite a bit more room to breathe. If, for example, the resistance was literally just on the run in space looking for a new base, you change nothing but give some wiggle room for things in the background to fall into place.
Overread wrote: Yeah but I'd figure they'd need more than one generation to forget the powers of a Jedi. Like I said it doesn't have to be hundreds of years; even just shifting things back one generation further helps a lot. It's more that it just seems so sudden that in only 20ish years the entire Galaxy sort of just forgot the Jedi.
I can appreciate the power change over that time from a war torn and failing and corrupt Republic into the Imperial State. That makes good sense, esp since the Imperial forces were never fully an army of pure-evil. Indeed I suspect in many areas people liked them (at least initially) as they brought stability and order. It beign only later when people lost their freedoms (which I think is sort of hinted at but never fully presented to us save in subtle ways such as the heavy policing presences of Stormtroopers on planets). And then using a planet cannon to blow up a world that was a rebel sympathiser.
You have to consider the rarity of Jedi and users of the force. This is a galaxy of trillions you would assume and there were according to most canon sources, 10,000 Jedi. It's easy to stop believing within such a short time frame as there were probably planets the had never had a Jedi on them within a lifetime, let alone everyone seeing them.
Also, you must consider that before the clone wars, Jedi were relative peace keepers. Battles involving them were very very very rare, and if so would probably be on a very small scale. They were effectively diplomats. The idea that scepticism wouldn't grow without the presence is surely a bit misguided, what Jedi were seen, they would almost certainly not demonstrate their power in a tangible way (offensive/big force powers, or using lightsabers), many people might consider the whole thing a myth that "didn't really happen".
I can totally get that people in universe would already forget or be sceptical of the power of the force within such a short space of time unless they actually witnessed it.
I find it hard to believe to be honest. We see in the films, including the original, that the jedi are culturally embedded. Luke is on a planet that he deems the furthest from the 'bright center of the universe,' and he knows who the Jedi Knights are. A generation earlier, a slave boy outside the Republic can identify them solely by the glimpse of an unused lightsaber attached to a belt, and a lot of SW characters have a variety of random gear and utility pouches on belts. A generation-and-a-bit after Luke, slave kids are telling his story and faking force powers in their playtime. (And then having force powers and knowing about his death maybe a day later, which...). Heck, Rey is an abandoned child who grew up as a scavenger- yet she knows what Jedi are, who Luke is and so on.
Its hard to accept that the galaxy at large would stop believing when we keep seeing people who do believe.
You might get rare people like Han and Captain Gets-Force-Choked who dismiss the Force, but the 'no idea what it is' makes zero sense even if you only consider what we've seen on screen. (And even less if you add cartoons, comics, novels and games). But Jedi are common knowledge, as are their 'sorcerer's ways,' even for non-believers.
There are lots of rare people and roles in the world that most people will never in person meet, but could recognise some signs of office/position or equipment if seen.
If anything given a few more generations people like Han would make more sense because he'd be heavily travelled and wouldn't have seen any evidence of Jedi at all, compared to homely stories told around the fireside of the "ancient warrior monks with the power of the Force".
When he left for his adventures he was already aiming to head to be a pilot. He already had an adventuring streak in him. Plus he wasn't totally thrown in with the whole Jedi thing until his family was killed. That one act pushed him on the path more than anything at that stage.
If they'd not been killed he might well have pulled out and backed away. Remember the message R2D2 sent wasn't for him, it was Obiwan.
Jadenim wrote: Great, now I’ve got this image in my mind of every time Han starts dismissing force stuff Chewie’s there in the back ground rolling his eyes and
growling to himself “idiot”.
Well, there's the whole "Laugh it up, fuzzball" in ESB, and in TFA "Same thing I always do, talk my way out of it" "Woo wuf" "Yes I do! Every time!"
Chewie, I suspect, takes the mickey out of Han more or less constantly. We just don't generally understand what he's saying.
Luke also knew of Ben in advance. Obi Wan definitely has a role to play in the continued myth of the Jedi on Tatooine, so it's totally plausible Luke would be aware of them.
For planets that do not have such a presence, it's easy to understand that people would be skeptical. Remember in Rogue one, there was skepticism of the force in that film also, especially on Jeda.
It's an agnostic outlook, personally I'm willing to keep a very partial open mind about the possibility of their being a 'higher power' for us, but if you think someone dressed up and telling stories about it are enough then you are mistaken, I need to see that with my own eyes, the evidence needs to be tangible.
I think Han not knowing much of the Jedi can just be chalked up to first movie weirdness. Just like how for some reason the lightsaber doesnt cauterizes the wound. Its just because it was the first movie made with the idea it was only 1 movie.
It's a shame KOTOR 2 got messed up by the studio running out of money, they were shaping up to be very powerful stories and great games in the setting that weren't afraid to use morally grey and also out of the box thinking for the series.
Also lets be honest for all the talk of the power of the Force most Force users don't use that much - now a dark lord flying a basically "undead" Stardestroyer that's crippled beyond use through space with only the power of the Force - now that's something to be impressed by. Far more so than distance strangulation.
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hotsauceman1 wrote: I think Han not knowing much of the Jedi can just be chalked up to first movie weirdness. Just like how for some reason the lightsaber doesnt cauterizes the wound. Its just because it was the first movie made with the idea it was only 1 movie.
In fairness even if its an energybeam that doesn't mean it will ever perfectly cauterise a wound. Swung fast through a limb it might well cauterise some of it, but much will be very thin burning so a good bump from the last beat of the heart or arteries hitting hte ground in the arm could easily breach thin burned flesh and bleed out. I think its more that blood in itself wasn't what they wanted after that one scene for the films target audience and ratings. So they show it once to give an idea, then never really again.
LunarSol wrote: Burning garbage is way more interesting than burnt garbage.
Snoke was just Palpatine with no thought or purpose than to put Palpatine back in. He was killed off and replaced with a FAR more interesting villain, who was than squandered by forcing Palpatine back in when at no point did we need anything resembling Palpatine.
Whatever JJ had planned for Snoke, it wasn't going to be any more interesting than what we got. Snoke ends up being the secret master of the Sith from Exegol who has secretly been building the Final Order fleet of Star Destroyers. That's ultimately the issue with JJ's mystery boxes. They're compelling so long as you don't realize that there was never anything in them to begin with.
Yeah, and then he dumped those empty boxes on other directors, then got pissed when said directors couldn't figure out anything good to do with them. Even if you hates TLJ, how can you absolve Abrams for going back to *Palpatine* after being handled a far more interesting Kylo Ren as the big bad? They say the plan was to redeem Ben, but redemption comes in a lot of forms that don't involve a square-on-the-nose "turning gud again and fighting the bad guys". Just write a story that serves the characters instead of a laundry list of required beats and kewl stuff.
LunarSol wrote: My biggest criticism of TLJ is that it starts 5 seconds after the end of TFA. A skip like the one we saw in ESB would have given the story quite a bit more room to breathe. If, for example, the resistance was literally just on the run in space looking for a new base, you change nothing but give some wiggle room for things in the background to fall into place.
I see both sides of it. You're right, but I can see Johnson feeling that the cliffhanger had to be addressed and responded to. And what happened to a nice, ANH-style ending to give the next guy and movie more room to breathe?
Honestly, the whole trilogy never had any room to breathe. Which I suppose gets us more back on topic. But I don't know that the failing was the format, per se. I just don't think Lucasfilm ever had a story for the trilogy. They had a list of 'stuff' that they tried to weave into a story. A TV show with a strong showrunner is more likely to have a vision in place, which leads to a better story. But you can do that in cinema too...they just didn't.
LunarSol wrote: My biggest criticism of TLJ is that it starts 5 seconds after the end of TFA. A skip like the one we saw in ESB would have given the story quite a bit more room to breathe. If, for example, the resistance was literally just on the run in space looking for a new base, you change nothing but give some wiggle room for things in the background to fall into place.
I see both sides of it. You're right, but I can see Johnson feeling that the cliffhanger had to be addressed and responded to. And what happened to a nice, ANH-style ending to give the next guy and movie more room to breathe?
Honestly, the whole trilogy never had any room to breathe. Which I suppose gets us more back on topic. But I don't know that the failing was the format, per se. I just don't think Lucasfilm ever had a story for the trilogy. They had a list of 'stuff' that they tried to weave into a story. A TV show with a strong showrunner is more likely to have a vision in place, which leads to a better story. But you can do that in cinema too...they just didn't.
It wasn't really a cliffhanger though. It's the kind of thing that the opening crawl is fantastic at dealing with:
"After a desperate victory over STARKILLER BASE, the RESISTANCE FLEET flees to the stars as the might of the FIRST ORDER pursues them across the galaxy.
From there you change essentially nothing. The First Order finds the fleet fueling up or something. Poe stalls for time but chooses to take out the fleet killer at the cost of too many lives rather than run when given the order. FO tethers the fleet and is able to track them through hyperspace. The only thing that changes is that there's no clear time between the end of 7 and the beginning of 8 so there's room for a sense of "stuff" to have happened since the destruction of Starkiller base.
I do think they had more of a plan than we realize, but I think it hinged on Carrie to tie it all together. Reading the Colin Trevorrow script definitely feels like a story that knew where it was supposed to go. I'm not 100% sure it would have landed, but having seen the new trilogy a few times now, I can definitely see where she was supposed to fit and where her absence limits the finale. Most obvious is Han ghosting in to try and give us the third and definitive phantom Kylo must face. There's small ones too, like how there's probably a 50/50 chance that Rey is back to using Anakin's old saber either because JJ is a hack or because that's what they had footage of Leia holding.
Regardless, when the whole thing started, I though the decision to use JJ for ONLY the first movie was the best decision they made. It's just a shame they brought him back to handle the thing he's just not ever been good at pulling off.
Maybe Han is so disbelieving of The Force precisely because he's travelled from one end of the galaxy to another, and there aren't any Jedi doing mind tricks, lightsaber battles or all powerful force in charge of everything. All the stories from his youth were just stories. As far as he can tell, it was all made up.
Graphite wrote: Maybe Han is so disbelieving of The Force precisely because he's travelled from one end of the galaxy to another, and there aren't any Jedi doing mind tricks, lightsaber battles or all powerful force in charge of everything. All the stories from his youth were just stories. As far as he can tell, it was all made up.
Exactly, except that for his age chances are he should have, in theory, seen the Galaxy at the end of the Republic when he was young.
Think of it (sorry for a bad example but its the only thing that comes to mind) like the holocaust. For Han Jedi are gone, just like for us the Holocaust is gone; but there is ample evidence to support it happening still around and many first account survivors and the like.
This is the generation problem created by the Phantom Menace. In A New Hope you get the idea that the Republic fell a LOT longer ago. That Vader was betraying the Jedi at a time when they were already ultra rare and dwindling and under a hunt by the Imperium, when in actuality of the story we get he betrays them when they are still at the height of power. If anything based on Palpatine using the Jedi as a blame target, instead of no information about Jedi, the larger places of the Galaxy should be hating Jedi any any hint of them. In theory Han shouldn't deny Jedi, but should instead be anti-jedi since if Palpatine's propaganda worked (and Imperial rule reinforced it); Jedi would be hunted even during Luke's lifetime.
Instead A New Hope presents a world perhaps two or three generations further along; where Jedi are basically gone, all evidence of them lost and where Vader would be closer to his grandfather or great grandfather in age; or was turned much later in the storyline. Which would make Obi Wan much older, but also likely having trained Vader in secret along with other hidden Jedi trying to survive in hiding long after they fell from power and when the Sith rose.
You’re mistaken about Jedha. The principal location shown in the film is a holy city. The only “skeptic” we saw there was Baze Malbus (yes, I had to look it up) who himself was a former Guardian of the Whills. The entire moon is a pilgrimage site for Force worshippers. Sorry but you couldn’t have picked a worse example!
In fairness even if its an energybeam that doesn't mean it will ever perfectly cauterise a wound. Swung fast through a limb it might well cauterise some of it, but much will be very thin burning so a good bump from the last beat of the heart or arteries hitting hte ground in the arm could easily breach thin burned flesh and bleed out. I think its more that blood in itself wasn't what they wanted after that one scene for the films target audience and ratings. So they show it once to give an idea, then never really again.
My take on that is unique anatomy. The arm looked a lot like a thin, hollow tube. I figured that species was just a lot more liquid inside and the cauterized bits couldn't seal the wound.
I’ve just watched Solo for the first time. It’s no Rogue one but I must admit I prefer it as a film to any film in the new trilogy except maybe the force awakens... The pacing was back to what I know and liked about Star Wars, and whilst there was some travel and movement, it wasn’t super rushed and felt like it was bouncing around the new places for the sake of it.
It’s not nearly as bad as people give it stick for. I also think the actor did Han quite well, and nailed the interactions with Chewie, he just doesn’t look anything like Ford really which is the main issue but otherwise yeah, it’s an alright film.
Solo is fantastic, especially for the war scenes. I just recently watched it again before starting Rebels, and it’s a perfectly serviceable heist movie. It absolutely did not deserve to flop like that.
Overread wrote: Honestly I think that it got some blowback from the "anti SW" crowed and the general bad feeling that the main Disney films had created.
I wasn’t going to mention it but yes, it paid the price for TLJ. Plus a troubled production and a bad release date too.
It was the revolt of the fans against Kathleen Kennedy, a lot of it justified if you ask me to be honest, but Solo did not deserve to take the brunt of it.
I really wasn't charmed by Solo. I didn't hate it either. If anything, it reminds me the most of the MCU Hulk film where the pacing keeps wildly switching from rushing through the plot, to screeching to a halt to check off something on a reference list. It felt like it existed to answer a bunch of trivia questions rather than tell a story, which is really too bad, as I think there's probably a great movie or two or maybe even 3 in there. It just didn't need Chewie and Lando and the Falcon AND the Kessel Run and the gun and the dice and the nav computer and the escape pod and Teras Kasi and Maul and... and... and...
I really doubt solo got any blowback from the SW fans hating TLJ.
1) Solo was profitable. I was made for 275 M and grossed just under 4 world wide. Now, normally you would double the production budget to factor in marketing, except solo wasn't really marketed. In part because of all the reshoots and delays and probably because the budget balooned so high that disney decided to write it off.
Disney has done this to other projects they didn't believe in. Treasure Planet had no marketing. Neither did Atlantis. Neither really bombed but neither were major smash hits either because Disney just let them quietly do what they do.
2) General Audiences didn't know it came out. Remember, massive fans of some crap only make up a incredibly small percent of the movie going audience. You need to capture the general audience to bring in the big bucks. Not promoting a movie whos release date kept changing is what hurt solo.
3) It had a lot of negative PR for over a year building to its release about the solo actor needing acting lessons, the director getting fired, recasts, reshoots, and so forth.
Now... taking all that into account. You think SW fans being upset about TLJ hurt the sales of solo more than any of those other factors? Even equal to? Even close to?
Allows people to be wounded and killed by Lightsaber, without any gory bits.
Likewise why the Jedi were leading a War against Droids. Droids don’t count for violence it would seem!
Like i said, dont think too much on it, a new hope was made with no other movies in mind and should be viewed as such, even with all the canon there is.
Its the same with shows that have weird early seasons that dont gell with the older ones. DS9, TNG, Steven Universe and all that gak.
Lance845 wrote: I really doubt solo got any blowback from the SW fans hating TLJ.
1) Solo was profitable. I was made for 275 M and grossed just under 4 world wide. Now, normally you would double the production budget to factor in marketing, except solo wasn't really marketed. In part because of all the reshoots and delays and probably because the budget balooned so high that disney decided to write it off.
Disney has done this to other projects they didn't believe in. Treasure Planet had no marketing. Neither did Atlantis. Neither really bombed but neither were major smash hits either because Disney just let them quietly do what they do.
2) General Audiences didn't know it came out. Remember, massive fans of some crap only make up a incredibly small percent of the movie going audience. You need to capture the general audience to bring in the big bucks. Not promoting a movie whos release date kept changing is what hurt solo.
3) It had a lot of negative PR for over a year building to its release about the solo actor needing acting lessons, the director getting fired, recasts, reshoots, and so forth.
Now... taking all that into account. You think SW fans being upset about TLJ hurt the sales of solo more than any of those other factors? Even equal to? Even close to?
Got to disagree with Solo, not touching the last jedi blowback comment but specifically talking about Solo as one of my hobbies is the movie industry and I love talking about it , the budget was indeed $275 million, marketing was everywhere at the time so I am not sure where you are getting the "not marketed" thing from to be honest, but lets compromise on that and say half rounding up $132 million, combined we are looking at $402 million in budget alone, now we apply the thing that no one ever seems to apply in these equations, box office take, lets just take the US one for arguments sake, that is 45% or $177 million rounded off, take that away from the total takings of $393.2 million and you are left with $216.2 million in tickets and then we compare this number to the budget of $402 million and you have a movie that lost an estimated $186 million, this is just a short hand example and not hard numbers as I would need to go to each nations box office take and apply it, China for example takes much much more.
UK side I do recall Solo getting a fair bit of advertising - esp for me to notice it as I'm not going looking for advertising in general. That means TV spots, likely billboards and the like - perhaps not as much as a major blockbuster, but certainly enough that most people knew about it being around - heck even my parents who are not really SW people at all had heard of it.
Now it might be that the USA didn't get the same advertising treatment - sometimes differences we see do end up being because something is handled differently in one country/region compared to another
TLJ blowback was a big factor but not the only one. TLJ sucked all the air out of the room not just in terms of its blowback but also in terms of marketing, long before there was any TLJ blowback. The idea was clearly that TLJ’s success would carry Solo’s marketing but TLJ proved to be a greater liability than advantage for Solo.
Yeah they where hoping for the hype train to continue, but if anything it failed badly.
No matter what is your Opinion of TLJ is, it is undeniable that it rubbed a lot of star wars fans the wrong way and really killed enthusiasm for it. You can say what you want about those can as I have see people do. But it is a devisive movie that did more harm to Star Wars than bad.
I know a lot of people that never saw solo simply because they weren't big fans of TLJ and solo released so soon after TLJ that they simply weren't ready to go see another Star Wars film yet and decided to just wait til it hit streaming services.
I think if it had released in December instead of May then it likely would have performed a lot better.
Regardless of why Solo did/didn't/couldn't do as well as it might have done, and bringing the conversation into a screeching K-turn back to the subject:
I think a TV series, set after Rise of Skywalker, with Billy Dee Williams taking former-stormtrooper-who's-backstory-doesn't-make-much-sense looking for her family and telling her stories of "Back in the old days", with flashbacks to Lando played by Donald Glover, would be awesome.
Allows you to have both "ongoing plot" (BDW) and monster of the week (DG) in the same episode!
People forgst that flj wasnt pure negativity. It was divisive. Many vehemently hated it. But many also loved it. I, for one, loved the change in direction and over all message of the film. I was looking forward to o being something new. Then it wasnt. 9 was the worst of the new trilogy for me for being a nothing film.
Solos marketing budget should be half itz original budget. Not the neadly doubled reshoot bidget.
Solo also suffered from a single online article that people somehow took to heart.
Making all sorts of allegations, stuff like ‘it’s garbage*’ and ‘dialogue coach in hand’
To the best of my knowledge, that was just one article. And claimed to be from ‘an inside source’.
Yet, when you watch the film? It’s not garbage at all. Like, at all at all. Imperfect? Sure. But not [i]garbage[\i].
*I do not know why, but every time I read this word in such an article, I start reading the rest in Cousin Kyle’s voice from South Park. I do not know why!
I genuinely think that the overall story of the third trilogy wasn't that bad, yeah it was basically a rehash of the original but it was okay still. It suffered from what GoT suffered from in the final season... Trying to tell too big a story too quickly and that damaged how well you could relate or believe the main characters.
I mean, some of the 'conflict' Rey was going through was absolutely not as believable as Luke and even Anakin. The character was so wooden in its writing. Finn is even worse, however he isn't a great actor to be honest either...
Too big too quickly with too many characters. They almost sort of tried to do the Avengers, but forgetting that the reason the fast paced action story dynamics work in avengers because the characters are pre-built from the other films, which sort of make it a series, just with each episode being a film....
Also, and without touching the agenda based political plot lines of the new series, christ alive did they mess up when they decided to make hyperspace a weapon... In the final film all they had to do was take the biggest ship they had, fill it with as much mass as possible, aim it at the planet palpatine was on and enter hyperspace, as simple as that all because of that stupid decision to allow it to happen TLJ.
Anyway, on a more positive note, I really really really hope they do the old republic correctly. They could bring in so many cool and mentioned elements that was within KOTOR such as Exar Kun
Avengers and a lot of those "dozens of super hero" films do fail though when people who are not big fans watch them. Especially when you move past the very big names into the middle and smaller names (like that dude with the arrows). Or when the actors and costumes and colour pallet all start to get a bit "samey" so that they don't stand out as distinctively as each other.
Sometimes those showy bright costumes and nuts hair work really well when you've a big cast and need t obe able to tell dozens of characters apart really quickly and easily, often when you don't have time to devote an hour to each one's backstory (or if you have you can't guarantee that your whole audience has seen the 50 other films).
balmong7 wrote: I know a lot of people that never saw solo simply because they weren't big fans of TLJ and solo released so soon after TLJ that they simply weren't ready to go see another Star Wars film yet and decided to just wait til it hit streaming services.
I think if it had released in December instead of May then it likely would have performed a lot better.
I think you're right. It came out way too soon after the last...divisive...movie in the franchise. If they had held back until Christmas things might have settled a bit and people would be ready for Star Wars again. Wasn't Rogue One brought out near to Christmas too?
In hindsight (which is of course always a wonderful thing), maybe Disney should have focused on their 'Story' movies before committing to a new trilogy. Get a feel for the franchise, learn what works and what doesn't.
What doesn’t work: NOT outlining the entire trilogy.
While nowhere even close to as divisive as TLJ, R1 also contributed to Solo’s problems. As leaks about Solo’s troubled production came to light, similar stories were finally bubbling up about R1 as well. Confidence in Disney SW was poised to crumble and for a huge number of people TLJ was the eye opener.
Manchu wrote: What doesn’t work: NOT outlining the entire trilogy.
While nowhere even close to as divisive as TLJ, R1 also contributed to Solo’s problems. As leaks about Solo’s troubled production came to light, similar stories were finally bubbling up about R1 as well. Confidence in Disney SW was poised to crumble and for a huge number of people TLJ was the eye opener.
You would think that outlining the trilogy from start to finish would be the first thing a company like Disney would do. Like, that's writing 101 right?
And I heard about the production problems with R1. There's so much unused footage that can be glimpsed in the trailers. That suggests that they were not sure where they were going. Now they got there in the end. Holy gak they got there in the end imo, but as you say the warning signs were there.
Manchu wrote: Yes, if you plan to spend a billion dollars you’d think you’d have a plan ... Just amazing!
I don’t agree about R1, I think it is a major failure as a story. It’s a lovely set of visuals but narratively empty.
I disagree, it's a simple and straight forward movie story wise and that's why it worked. It also had a good villain, a proper imperial schemer, not like the childs in the new trilogy. To be fair though, I may be biased, I am a MAJOR Vader fan boy, and any film that actually displayed him in full flow is always going to have a blurry glaze infront of it for me.
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Overread wrote: Avengers and a lot of those "dozens of super hero" films do fail though when people who are not big fans watch them. Especially when you move past the very big names into the middle and smaller names (like that dude with the arrows). Or when the actors and costumes and colour pallet all start to get a bit "samey" so that they don't stand out as distinctively as each other.
Sometimes those showy bright costumes and nuts hair work really well when you've a big cast and need t obe able to tell dozens of characters apart really quickly and easily, often when you don't have time to devote an hour to each one's backstory (or if you have you can't guarantee that your whole audience has seen the 50 other films).
Whilst I agree that a lot of people did not watch some of the less well known characters these were also firstly bought in, in other movies (black widow did the rounds, civil war was basically an avengers film etc etc), I also think a lot of people clicked on after a bit to the infinity stones storyline... It almost became a must watch checklist before infinity war, which funnily enough brings us back in circle with the comments above.... They had a plan. Star wars did not.
Manchu wrote: Agree about Krennic. But he was the only multi dimensional character.
That Vader thing by the way was only added because of how weak almost everything else was. And it worked on you, and many, many other people.
I enjoyed the film way before Vader showed up, that was just the icing I wanted on my cake. Honestly, I liked the movie, I liked that Galen whilst capable of building the weapon was unwilling, I loved that Cassian came super close to assassinating him and was willing to keep his hands dirty - the dark elements of the rebellion are of particular interest to me, the rebellion hurts a lot of innocent people, and often - K-2 is just another great droid. Saw showing a human side rather than the sociopath he is mainly portrayed as, Jyn is a determined and brooding character.
TBH, the only characters I was a bit meh about is Chirrut, Baze and Bodhi, they were really just a but meh.
I think something that often gets overlooked when talking about Solo is Marvel. It came out 14 days after Infinity War and the snap was all anyone was talking about... or going to theaters for.
endlesswaltz123 wrote: .. It almost became a must watch checklist before infinity war, which funnily enough brings us back in circle with the comments above.... They had a plan. Star wars did not.
One thing the Marvel films did, in terms of having a plan, was one dude. . . . Its been in a few special features now, but really, so much of the MCU is down to Kevin Feige. He has had a hand in every single MCU film basically since the beginning. Yeah, marvel brought in Taika for Thor Ragnarok, but Feige was still there in a production capacity. Because he was trusted, and all the directors, even with their unique visions, still followed the ideas laid out in planning.
You simply don't have that with the new SW lineup.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: One thing the Marvel films did, in terms of having a plan, was one dude. . . . Its been in a few special features now, but really, so much of the MCU is down to Kevin Feige. He has had a hand in every single MCU film basically since the beginning. Yeah, marvel brought in Taika for Thor Ragnarok, but Feige was still there in a production capacity. Because he was trusted, and all the directors, even with their unique visions, still followed the ideas laid out in planning.
You simply don't have that with the new SW lineup.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. This is probably the sole reason why the MCU held up so well whilst Star Wars has struggled in comparison. Well, maybe not the sole reason, but I don't want to get into the politics of the other reasons.
As to Rogue One, how might the squad (particularly Chirrut, Baze and Bodhi) been fleshed out more?
EDIT: I'm sorry the name Starkiller went by the wayside. It's cool in a cheesy way, and apt for Luke. He blew up the Death Star...he killed the Death Star. He's a Starkiller.
DOUBLE EDIT: Though that only really works if it's a nickname earned from the deed.
If you take a look at how the supporting characters were handled in Solo, you’ll start to get a sense of what went wrong or (probably more accurate) never got established in the first place as to the so-called characters in R1.
I disagree, it's a simple and straight forward movie story wise and that's why it worked. It also had a good villain, a proper imperial schemer, not like the childs in the new trilogy. To be fair though, I may be biased, I am a MAJOR Vader fan boy, and any film that actually displayed him in full flow is always going to have a blurry glaze infront of it for me.
This is ultimately my issue with R1. Everything I LOVE about the movie.... doesn't really have anything to do with R1. It's like there's this huge deleted scene from A New Hope that's absolutely fantastic, but doesn't really connect with the other 2/3rds of the movie.
The actual bulk of the movie is kind of meandering with a few too many characters that don't get enough time to really come together. It's pretty clear a lot changed in production, though most of the trailer scenes people point out are pretty normal things to cut as pacing doesn't work out. There's still good chunk of things that feel notably in flight even in the final production. Like they're not sure how bad of a guy they want Cassian to be or whether Jyn should have a love interest. The pilot (I have absolutely no clue what his name is) loses his mind, then has it back, then doesn't really matter, then randomly dies. Krennic is a really cool villain who deserves a little better end. It's all just kind of messy, with a big save coming in the form of the best space battle in the franchise since RotJ.
Personally, I feel like they should be crafting these stories to make sure the skeleton still works if you take the Star Wars out of them. Then you add the SW to taste. The Mandalorian is thin in certain ways, BUT I think the story still functions if you place it in the Old West.
Then again, MAYBE Edwards had exactly that in mind for R1 before Lucasfilm stepped in to make it more 'Star Wars-y' with the Vader fan service, etc. And there are certainly fans who are fine with two hours of fan service, story be darned. So was Lucasfilm right or wrong? Box office for R1 says right, but box office for SW since maybe says "not so fast, my friend"...?
Manchu wrote: If you take a look at how the supporting characters were handled in Solo, you’ll start to get a sense of what went wrong or (probably more accurate) never got established in the first place as to the so-called characters in R1.
I think I see it now, yes. Now I'm going to obsess over how it might have been improved.
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gorgon wrote: Personally, I feel like they should be crafting these stories to make sure the skeleton still works if you take the Star Wars out of them. Then you add the SW to taste. The Mandalorian is thin in certain ways, BUT I think the story still functions if you place it in the Old West.
Then again, MAYBE Edwards had exactly that in mind for R1 before Lucasfilm stepped in to make it more 'Star Wars-y' with the Vader fan service, etc. And there are certainly fans who are fine with two hours of fan service, story be darned. So was Lucasfilm right or wrong? Box office for R1 says right, but box office for SW since maybe says "not so fast, my friend"...?
I dunno. This stuff can twist you into a pretzel.
Very well said!
But I feel like Vader was used just the right amount. And his inclusion in that movie explains why he was so 'snappy' in ANH and helps to cement him as a really dangerous opponent for everyone going forward into the original trilogy.
Studio interference gets a bad rep largely because we only hear about it when a movie is bad and the director wants to point fingers. R1 is kind of interesting in that regard, because there's not a lot of hostility around the meddling. By all accounts, Edwards seems to have been surprised how much he was free to experiment with the franchise. I suspect its a case where the changes largely tempered a somewhat unfocused film. On some level, I feel like its not really anyone's fault. R1 feels like a tinkering movie by all involved. They still cobbled together one of the better films in the franchise.
Easy E wrote: Another Self-Evident fact about Star Wars is that we never got a good video game about Fleet Battles.
This is a sad and true thing. There are some massive mods out there for games like Homeworld and Homeworld 2; but the only real RTS in space was get was Empire at War; which did a good job, but honestly because they split it between space and ground games I never felt like it really did the space are enough justice.
I'd love a modern 3D RTS game with some of the powerful engines we've got today. Seeing Star Destroyers unleashing torrents of laserfire in huge epic battles and the like!
Easy E wrote: Another Self-Evident fact about Star Wars is that we never got a good video game about Fleet Battles.
There isn't much room for Fleet battles, to be honest. The rag-tag rebel fleet gave their all at the second death star, but otherwise... didn't do that. They were overmatched in direct battle and the series was really unapologetic about that, it was kind of the point.
I guess you could do clone vs robot fleet battles, but I dunno how much enthusiasm there is for prequel-only games.
Eh since when do games have to copy the films? Most of the SW games take some liberties and even though the Rebels couldn't take on the Imperium toe to toe there's still ample evidence that they conducted a lot of strikes and attacks and full on battles with their forces. Just aiming to even the odds between them (which is what games do anyway) rather tahn flying into take on 10 Star Destroyers at once.
If anything a game would be faithful to that in so much as you'd have balanced armies between the two (or at least the potential for balance once you've built up resources and suchlike)
The games also show why snub fighters were a threat.
Not only pin-point accuracy, and enough speed to make trouble for a capital ship....but they went against the Tarkin Doctrine entirely.
So when those tactics worked, it meant The Empire had to retool to properly counter.
That drew off further resources, and meant the resources they had couldn’t be spread so thinly, as single ships became small battle groups for mutual support.
There's another tool commonly misused in film and games in regards to space battles that a very good game could take advantage of to make the rebels a worthy opponent even if the fleet was outnumbered.
A truly 3D combat arena for fleet battles. Hyperspacing in your fighterss direct underneath and towards to back of capital ships to allow the shield generators to be sniped, at which point your Y and B wings could come out of hyperspace above the star destroyer to unleash their payload.
On the flip side, you could do the same with the imperial fleet and tie fighters, splitting your huge Tie forces to attack at multiple angles.
It could totally be done. And it would be awesome.
I think one of the big passes that R1 gets (maybe from a certain older dynamic) is that it plays around in what, for a very long time , was the Star Wars galaxy. The galaxy I grew up with, and set my own childhood adventures (and later RPG campaigns) in, featured the dominating heel of the Empire crushing Rebels, scoundrels and the innocent alike.
R1's characters and plot were possibly of secondary importance to seeing that galaxy again, realised anew. The extremely ropey first 45 minutes can be forgiven (although can't stand them shoving Saw Guerrera down our throats here, in Fallen Order, Clone Wars, Rebels etc) because we're seeing the familiar environment that is the Star Wars we grew up with.
Solo probably didn't get the same reaction because of some combination of:
a) TLJ reaction/SW fatigue
b) Coming out at the same time as Infinity War AND Deadpool 2
c) There's only so much nostalgia glow people want before film quality has to improve
d) Rather than being about faceless nobodies striking against the Empire (allowing the setting to shine) they made it about an existing character people generally liked
I really like Rogue One, and it’s definitely one of my all time favourite films.
As well as being a Fan Service film? It’s also got lots to offer people who aren’t Star Wars fans. That’s a pretty decent balance, no?
Crucially? Whilst you don’t need to see it, it definitely adds to the mythos.
Compare to Solo. That’s an odd duck. Again, I genuinely like the film, as there’s lots to like about it. But....it’s kinda disposable. If you’re not that interested in Han? You’re not really missing out. In terms of the wider Galaxy, it only really explains how Han was able to brag about a unit of distance.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I really like Rogue One, and it’s definitely one of my all time favourite films.
As well as being a Fan Service film? It’s also got lots to offer people who aren’t Star Wars fans. That’s a pretty decent balance, no?
Crucially? Whilst you don’t need to see it, it definitely adds to the mythos.
Compare to Solo. That’s an odd duck. Again, I genuinely like the film, as there’s lots to like about it. But....it’s kinda disposable. If you’re not that interested in Han? You’re not really missing out. In terms of the wider Galaxy, it only really explains how Han was able to brag about a unit of distance.
You and me both. It's reminiscent of those old epic war movies; The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare, The Great Escape...rapped up in a space opera cloak. Just as Star Wars itself is a spaghetti samurai western space opera. And it fits into the mythos fantastically, filling a few gaps and explaining away one of the series biggest in-jokes. As Riquende says, the first half hour or so of the movie is a bit all over the place but then it starts getting good...and then very good. Some might say that this didn't need to be made but I say 'why not'? It fits in well, expands the story and was fantastic, so what's the harm?
Same for Solo...even though it is more disposable than R1. And what's main purpose, to explain the parsec thing? Well, OK, if you have to. But it's still enjoyable.
I will say one thing though. Solo suffers from the same issue that the Prequel trilogy...indeed nearly all prequel movies...suffer from...the loss of drama from knowing that the main characters will make it. Han, Chewie and Lando will be OK, so I can't get too excited when they're in danger.
This is were R1 got clever imo. It's a prequel, but we've never met these people before, ergo we don't know what's going to happen to them. We know that they'll succeed, but at what cost?
Graphite wrote: Regardless of why Solo did/didn't/couldn't do as well as it might have done, and bringing the conversation into a screeching K-turn back to the subject:
I think a TV series, set after Rise of Skywalker, with Billy Dee Williams taking former-stormtrooper-who's-backstory-doesn't-make-much-sense looking for her family and telling her stories of "Back in the old days", with flashbacks to Lando played by Donald Glover, would be awesome.
Allows you to have both "ongoing plot" (BDW) and monster of the week (DG) in the same episode!
Wait. Are you proposing Star Wars: Kung Fu: The Legend Continues?
I've just watched the last episode of the Mandalorian, and I thought it would be interesting to return to the conversation about whether Jedi are well known in the galaxy or not.
This is set roughly 30 years after the jedi purge by Vader/Palpatine. He evidently has a force user with him (The Child) and he was obviously unsure what the child was doing when it saved him numerous times.
Now, the Jedi are mentioned directly and Mando has never, ever heard of them, in fact it has to be described to him that they are witches. This is also roughly 5 years after Luke started rebuilding the Jedi order which you would assume is fairly big news that would be spread via word of mouth from the rebels and further outwards... But no, he's never heard of them... Which is super interesting in itself as he would have been a foundling during the purge/end of it and he was being trained by Mandolorians, who have a chequered history with Jedi at best... Not one person training him mentioned them?
I just think it stands to reason why I'd argue it is fine for Han to not believe in the force when there are people within warrior clans that have never ever heard of Jedi at all.
Honestly that would follow through with it being longer since the purge. That's the real crux of things. Luke rebuilding the Jedi Order being almost unknown makes sense because during the 3 original films most of the Force use actually happens in private.
Luke uses it to aid in destroying the Deathstar; to escape the icecave; to duel with Vader - all those events of Force use are basically undocumented uses where only one or two people ever saw anything happen.
Vader himself in that series isn't jumping or using much force outside of strangulation and he's so much machine one might, from the outside, suppose that the Imperials have choke collars on them.
If the purge was 100 years ago or greater than it all neatly fits into place that the galaxy would have forgotten the Force at large, especially with Imperials having a long span of time to re-educate and drive out their own propaganda. Esp in a technologically advanced civilisation where they can hand wave many things as "illegal technology" and mechanical body enhancements. General Grevous duels with Jedi and he was mostly machine so clearly duelling of that calibre can be emulated by machines (though again it somewhat hits the wall that the newer films display far more competent and mobile robots than the original films)
Graphite wrote: Regardless of why Solo did/didn't/couldn't do as well as it might have done, and bringing the conversation into a screeching K-turn back to the subject:
I think a TV series, set after Rise of Skywalker, with Billy Dee Williams taking former-stormtrooper-who's-backstory-doesn't-make-much-sense looking for her family and telling her stories of "Back in the old days", with flashbacks to Lando played by Donald Glover, would be awesome.
Allows you to have both "ongoing plot" (BDW) and monster of the week (DG) in the same episode!
Wait. Are you proposing Star Wars: Kung Fu: The Legend Continues?
I've never heard of it, but from a brief google it appears that yes, I probably am. Possibly with bits of The Gambler.
So it’s Star Wars day and Rise of Skywalker has landed. Just finished, and I enjoyed it. Did Abrams go safe with it? Oh yes. Was the kiss at the end needed? No. Was I completely satisfied? Absolutely.
This one made the new trilogy actually FEEL like a new trilogy while wrapping it all up in a neat bow. Finn got the story that was started in the first one and he and Poe stepped up to be the heroes they stumbled at trying to be in the second. Obviously this was the strongest of the three, and as SW trilogy finales go, I think this one was the best closer. I think it’s actually my third favorite after ANH and ESB. The re-enactment with Han just felt right.
Honestly, this movie closed the Skywalker chapter better than I expected after the fan reviews I saw on here. In the whole movie, the only thing I would have changed was Ben and Rey kissing. A hug, given their time as enemies, would have been a better symbol, I think. He could have faded away in the hug as he died.
Overread wrote: Eh since when do games have to copy the films? Most of the SW games take some liberties and even though the Rebels couldn't take on the Imperium toe to toe there's still ample evidence that they conducted a lot of strikes and attacks and full on battles with their forces.
Copy? They don't, I'm not really sure why that's your take away, to be honest. Being vaguely true to the source material isn't about making some derogatory 'copy'
But I'm curious about your 'evidence.' Most of what I've seen suggests they don't actually do that- they do what most of the Rebels wanted to do in Rogue One and avoid space engagements at all costs. They'll take small risks, but bug out rather than fight. That doesn't make for an interesting game.
I watched Rise of Skywalker again last night, first time re-watching and I must say, I don't think it was as bad as I thought it was when I first viewed it. It's still a bit wonky, and suffers from the major cock ups made in this trilogy in general, but yeah, it's okay.
I actually thought the redemption of Kylo wasn't as ridiculous as I believed it to be when I first watched it. The conflict was always there with Kylo, it's why I sort of like the character but the change felt too sudden on my first viewing, it felt like less of a steep slope on the re-watch.
The kiss was ridiculous, totally unneeded.
However the one thing that has bugged me all of the trilogy and I still don't sort of get it, is Finn. I don't understand that character, the need for it, the intentions of the characters actions etc etc. He's just too much of a teenager and impulsive... I really think they would have been better off with just Poe, or if Finn is there he needs to be a bit more ruthless and direct.
timetowaste85 wrote: So it’s Star Wars day and Rise of Skywalker has landed. Just finished, and I enjoyed it. Did Abrams go safe with it? Oh yes. Was the kiss at the end needed? No. Was I completely satisfied? Absolutely.
This one made the new trilogy actually FEEL like a new trilogy while wrapping it all up in a neat bow. Finn got the story that was started in the first one and he and Poe stepped up to be the heroes they stumbled at trying to be in the second. Obviously this was the strongest of the three, and as SW trilogy finales go, I think this one was the best closer. I think it’s actually my third favorite after ANH and ESB. The re-enactment with Han just felt right.
Honestly, this movie closed the Skywalker chapter better than I expected after the fan reviews I saw on here. In the whole movie, the only thing I would have changed was Ben and Rey kissing. A hug, given their time as enemies, would have been a better symbol, I think. He could have faded away in the hug as he died.
Kiss did feel a bit odd. Not quite a chaste kiss of thanks, but thankfully not a tongue sandwich.
However, I did watch Cinema Wins’ video on YouTube last night. They suggested that being a Force Diad, there’s more to Rey and Ben’s link than us mortals can quite understand. I can accept that as head canon.
Only thing I’d have liked more of is the Free People’s Fleet. Seeing it assemble was amazing in the cinema. Not exactly ‘Thanos’ face dropping’ amazing from End Game, but stirring all the same. Knowing from that point on there’s gonna be a decent scrap.
And...we do get a pretty decent scrap. Particularly pleasing to see Wedge back (almost typed Biggs, now that would’ve been a good trick!). But I’d just like to have seen more.
My favourite bit though? Palpatine is still a liability when using Force Lightning. I mean, he was trying to get Rey to kill him, seemingly so his spirit could possess her body. Being a Dark Side ritual, and from his words, that seemed to depend on the killing coming from anger.
When he does fall? She’s just reflecting back his own energy, which consumes him, neatly echoing what Mace Windu started all those years ago.
There are also lots of little callbacks pointed out which I feel like I clocked, but didn’t process. Kylo Ren has a distinctly Han Solo side to him, such as turning to his troops and raising a finger to silence them, just as Han did to Threepio in ESB. Another is when Ben is about to take down the Knights of Ren, and just does this little shrug. That’s coming from his Dad if anywhere.
Anyways, back to the topic!
Automatically Appended Next Post: The finale of Clone Wars.
Nothing but applause from me. There’s so much to enjoy there, despite the fact we know who survives.
Spoiler:
Ahoska and Rex’s escape was properly tense. Not just because of the whole ‘plummeting to our doom’, but because the newly Bad Guy Clones don’t act like idiots overall, barring some done for dramatic flair.
With Rex having been cured, Ahoska’s reticence to kill her erstwhile comrades makes sense on two levels. First, she knows they’re not really responsible for their actions, perhaps holding out hope they can be saved. Second? She’s the ‘purist’ Jedi we’ve really seen. Raised on the myth, trained by The Order, and aware enough to see, even before Order 66, just how far they’d drifted from the role of Peace Keepers.
And those last few minutes? Just wonderful stuff.
Finally, it weaves in to both the initial run of Clone Wars and Rebels seamlessly. Nothing feels trite. No event felt like it had to happen just because Rebels set certain events in stone. I’d say anyone not up on the release order would be hard pressed to say this was made After The Fact.
Props to Disney for allowing Dave Filoni to finish what he started. And massive, massive props to Dave Filoni for having such a clear vision of the tale he wanted to tell.
What could’ve been a lazy cash grab to get folk signed up to Disney+ instead turns out to be one of the best thing to happen to Star Wars in a long time (even if the middle bit did drag some. It’s very Clone Wars, but didn’t quite sit right for this season)
Overread wrote: Eh since when do games have to copy the films? Most of the SW games take some liberties and even though the Rebels couldn't take on the Imperium toe to toe there's still ample evidence that they conducted a lot of strikes and attacks and full on battles with their forces.
Copy? They don't, I'm not really sure why that's your take away, to be honest. Being vaguely true to the source material isn't about making some derogatory 'copy'
But I'm curious about your 'evidence.' Most of what I've seen suggests they don't actually do that- they do what most of the Rebels wanted to do in Rogue One and avoid space engagements at all costs. They'll take small risks, but bug out rather than fight. That doesn't make for an interesting game.
I'm thinking of strategy games like Empire at War and Battlegrouns. Both basically have the armies fighting toe to toe. Heck Battlegrounds with its expansion has every army in the entire original and prequel series fighting it out, even the Gungans get a full army you can fight against the forces of the Imperium.
12 episodes, right? Then I’m on the last one. Haven’t spoiled anything for myself. But I don’t mind the “filler” episodes for Ahsoka. She needed to relearn what it meant to be a proper Jedi. It was afresh journey of discovery, and she needed to reevaluate and see things from a fresh perspective. She came a long way from “Sky-guy”. I know obviously she survives, she’s in Rebels. Same with Maul. Her partner at the start of this episode though...I don’t think will be so lucky.
Nearing the end of the first season of Resistance.
Whilst I can see why others aren’t especially keen, it’s not as bad as I’d feared.
There are definitely moments (Neku is deeply irritating, and Katz is oddly incompetent for a member of the New Republic Navy - like zero disicipline), and they’re definitely distracting.
How distracting? Think Jar Jar’s incessant pratting about for the sake of pratting about.
But pushing past that, it does have some decent offerings.
I’ve got a better appreciation of the dynamic between The First Order and Resistance. And the ships of “The Aces” are a decent hark back to “Uglies” of the old EU.
That a lot of the ships and tech we see are recycled and salvaged from the detritus of both the Clone War and Galactic Civil War helps tie the eras together. I mean, that’s a lot of hardware lying around, no?
And overall, I’m always up for seeing how the little people live.
Imperfect, with some frustratingly simple to fix flaws (seriously, ditch Neku, he serves absolutely no purpose than to irritate) but quite far from awful.
Season 2 isn’t on D+ in the U.K. yet, but I understand it was an improvement?
This video is pretty cool. And the narrator doesn’t have a whiny condescending voice, which is pretty good going for YouTube!
Various things I knew already, some corrections to my knowledge, and some I didn’t previously know at all.
This is I think a solid explanation of why the TV offerings feel much tighter than most of the movies (all the movies). Little references and callbacks and explanations here and there all help the setting feel cohesive.
They also serve as encouragement for us to watch or rewatch the other stuff, for little throwaway lines we might’ve missed which now foreshadow future events.
Best of all? It demonstrates Dave Filoni’s skill at bringing stuff out of Legends and back to Canon, without anything feeling forced or contrived.
This is Star Wars at its best. Think back to the OT, and there were lots of at the time of throwaway references which helped paint the Galaxy as a larger place.
Sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who knows what!
Those Bounty Hunters we ran into on Ord Mantell
Years ago you served my Father during the Clone Wars
That little manoeuvre at the battle of Tanab.
Simple plot devices at the time, some of which have really grown into their own thing.
That’s what we need. More and more and more of that. Hooks and breadcrumbs. With the odd Lovely Plot Burger as a reward. Because that’s what makes the setting live and breathe. Mention it, explain it later if it proves of interest.
This video is pretty cool. And the narrator doesn’t have a whiny condescending voice, which is pretty good going for YouTube!
Various things I knew already, some corrections to my knowledge, and some I didn’t previously know at all.
This is I think a solid explanation of why the TV offerings feel much tighter than most of the movies (all the movies). Little references and callbacks and explanations here and there all help the setting feel cohesive.
They also serve as encouragement for us to watch or rewatch the other stuff, for little throwaway lines we might’ve missed which now foreshadow future events.
Best of all? It demonstrates Dave Filoni’s skill at bringing stuff out of Legends and back to Canon, without anything feeling forced or contrived.
This is Star Wars at its best. Think back to the OT, and there were lots of at the time of throwaway references which helped paint the Galaxy as a larger place.
Sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who knows what!
Those Bounty Hunters we ran into on Ord Mantell
Years ago you served my Father during the Clone Wars
That little manoeuvre at the battle of Tanab.
Simple plot devices at the time, some of which have really grown into their own thing.
That’s what we need. More and more and more of that. Hooks and breadcrumbs. With the odd Lovely Plot Burger as a reward. Because that’s what makes the setting live and breathe. Mention it, explain it later if it proves of interest.
Cool, thanks for the link!
And absolutely, Dave Filoni should have been in charge from the very beginning. Imagine how different things might have been...
I mean, he managed to make
Spoiler:
Separatist Battle Droids
look dangerous and menacing. This is a small but significant detail to me.
I’m not even meaning a movie based on specific, historical events.
Just little call backs here and there in the background. We don’t necessarily need ‘Rishi Maze, a Star Wars Story’. Just the odd reference here and there. Get those mentions in, link it altogether.
As stated, I like the sequels, but on reflection they really only referred to the other movies. Sure, Rise of Skywalker features more ships than we can shake a stick at - but needed just a bit more. Get those narrative stitches nice and seamless.
Solo actually does this pretty well, especially now we have S7 of Clone Wars, and more on Crimson Dawn. Gimme a follow up on that, and I’ll be a happy chappy.
That could be a cool way to explore the Underworld more.
With Maul running things, he’s not of the most interest overall. But perhaps a Charlie’s Angels type affair, where Qi’ra issues the orders, and we get to follow the criminals themselves?
Now you’re talking! Yes that sounds good to me. I actually imagined Maul issuing the orders and Qi’ra, although a boss, is still closer to the action. But plenty of opportunity to explore the criminal underworld in the age of the empire.
Remind me, whatever happened to Cad Bane in the end? Could he be in it?
Future War Cultist wrote: Now you’re talking! Yes that sounds good to me. I actually imagined Maul issuing the orders and Qi’ra, although a boss, is still closer to the action. But plenty of opportunity to explore the criminal underworld in the age of the empire.
Remind me, whatever happened to Cad Bane in the end? Could he be in it?
Unfortunately, given the shorter episode count of Clone Wars S7, they weren't able to include the incomplete episode that followed Boba and Cad Bane's final duel where Bane dies and Boba's helmet get it's trademark scorch mark courtesy of Bane's blaster. So I'm not sure if it's canon given that it was never officially released, so it's possible they could re-introduce him in a limited capacity or have him die in this follow-up instead.
Something like that would be great. He deserves a good send off on account of being (imo) a really cool character; Star Wars’s answer to Lee Van Cleef.
Also, had a discussion today; think Disney will make anything set in the Old Republic era or even earlier? And if so, could this be a chance to play around with the concepts of the franchise? Or is that sacrilege?
Solar sails...no shields...bullet weapons?! Too much?
Well, there was mention they were exploring it, but that was before they announced the Republic cross-media thing. So who knows.
Also, I’d be surprised if they were simply ignoring it wholesale. Whilst not something I’m familiar with, it’s certainly a popular era, no doubt about that.
Future War Cultist wrote: Something like that would be great. He deserves a good send off on account of being (imo) a really cool character; Star Wars’s answer to Lee Van Cleef.
Also, had a discussion today; think Disney will make anything set in the Old Republic era or even earlier? And if so, could this be a chance to play around with the concepts of the franchise? Or is that sacrilege?
Solar sails...no shields...bullet weapons?! Too much?
I honestly dont know what they have not.
Alot of recent Star Wars is built around fan pandering. That is why the Mandolorian exists and why Maul and Ahsoka are going to be in it. Why Gideon has you know what at the end.
Disney Star Wars is built around fan pandering.
And fans love TOR more than they love Leia in a Metal Bikini.
Wait, isn’t Mandalorian AFTER RotJ? Maul dies in canon during season 3 of Rebels, on Tatooine. Before Obi Wan meets up w/Luke in SW (ANH).
Edit: I just finished Rebels, and i was happy/surprised to find out Ahsoka could easily show up in Mandalorian. Also very happy to see that Rex, of all the clones, survived and helped at Endor. I knew the Ghost had been digitally added into newest printings of the movie (read that somewhere, hadn’t noticed for myself), but glad to see Rex survived intact from Order 66 and everything that came after. Show started off childish (like Clone Wars movie), but really grew into itself. Enjoyed it thoroughly.
I might have jumped the gun thereor something.
I remember hearing about maul in the Mandalorian or something.
Looking it up, its just the actor posting a tweet saying "This is the way" and posting the sith icon and speculation ran wild.
I’m watching rogue one right now. I think I see what you mean; it’s nearly an hour in and it’s only just starting to get ‘to the point’. But I can forgive this, because once it picks up it really picks up.
However the one thing that has bugged me all of the trilogy and I still don't sort of get it, is Finn. I don't understand that character, the need for it, the intentions of the characters actions etc etc. He's just too much of a teenager and impulsive... I really think they would have been better off with just Poe, or if Finn is there he needs to be a bit more ruthless and direct.
Poe wasn't supposed to survive the TIE crash at the beginning of Ep7, but when they realized how good Oscar Isaac was, they wrote him back in.
I think Colin Trevorrow's script has potential to use the character significantly better than what we got. Finn was basically going to lead a populist uprising on Coruscant which would have given a lot of room to take his "afraid to fight" arc to a place where he finds the need to stand against tyranny.
Finns character would have been better in a TV show.
Him being a former child soldier/brain washed trying to break free would have suited more in The Mandolorian.
Not the more child friendly sequel trilogy where they cant get into that idea
My biggest thing is the Kylo Ren/Rey getting together, I hate toxic relationships getting together like that
Kylo is a toxic man child who didnt deserve to get redeemed.
Actually, there is something else that bugs me in the new trilogy, and it bugs me a lot, just as much as weaponising hyperspace jumps.
The apparition abilities, Luke being able to fight at a great distance away, teleporting lightsabers to each other etc etc. It’s too out there and powerful, and unless it was used in the EU somewhere before, it was made up for the new movies. If it was such a viable technique, Jedi and Sith would not need to spend time travelling to planets... It was just a ‘duh, this would be cool’ thinking that’s just ruins the established law. Really annoying.
Except Force Users are of varying power and ability, depending upon their connection to The Force.
Luke was super powerful. This much is known. He also spent longer learning from the Jedi Texts, and not a Master. So it’s entirely possible he was able to develop powers previously forgotten or become mythical to the Jedi Order.
What's super powerful about Luke's projection? He wasn't able to physically interact with anything and doing it killed him. Seems very limited in use.
The shared space power was hinted in TLJ but 9 takes it pretty far pretty fast. Theoretically it ties to the World Between Worlds that connects all moments of space and time through the force. Theoretically, the Dyad could mean they're connected at the same point, which would connect their locations through one another or something to that effect.
Also notice how the process basically kills him. Even though he was near invulnerable the effort and will needed to project himself pretty much destroys him. So it would work for the Jedi - once.
It might well have been known, but the toll and potential death was likely a huge barrier. It's a total last-ditch effort that, once finished (and he was not projecting for all that long either) can't be repeated.
He pays a cost for that power. Luke of the new Trilogy was sadly done poorly. His actual character of a failed hero, broken into extreme depression reinforced by years of isolation to the point where when he makes his return its a last-ditch suicidal attempt. All that I love and adds volumes to his character. However his presentation in the film is heavily flawed because we don't see that journey. We only see the end result.
That's bad because it makes it much harder to identify with him. WE don't see his struggle to rebuild a new Jedi Order. Of the hours and effort he puts in, alone, to train a new generation and then the sudden crushing blow when the new Order is swept out from under his feet by the child of his sister and one of his best friends. Such an awesome display of defeat at the hands of a dark power that isn't supposed to even be around any more and yet it managed to achieve all that. We should have seen that as a big part of a film - a stand-in between the two - something that set the stage. Instead we launch right into the new film without the stage being set; which means we play catch-up the whole time and means that big changes in characters feel like they are different characters rather than evolution of ones we once loved.
We also saw very, very few Force abilities in the original trilogy.
Mind Trick and Choke in A New Hope, Force Push, Pull, Jump and Ghost in ESB, and Force Lightning in ROTJ. I’m counting Yoda’s levitation as the same thing as Pull, just more refined.
There might be a couple more, but none were particularly spectacular.
Even in the Prequels, there’s relatively limited demonstration of Force abilities. Indeed, we didn’t really see a proper proper Force Fight until the first animated Clone Wars, when Anakin and Ventriss scrap it out.
Indeed, Force Ghost was a new discipline it would seem, first learned or at least rediscovered by Qui Gonn (how, we don’t really know!).
Is Luke’s projection really that different to a Force Ghost? The only difference I can see in terms of the manifestation is that he wasn’t ded, so had a physical anchor.
Crucially, I can’t think of anything expressly saying such a feat wasn’t possible.
Thinking a wee bit further back, Obi-Wan’s discorporation of his physical form, leaving only his cloak and Saber behind seemed to take Vader by surprise, hence his cautious ‘erm......huh?’ Toeing of the robe. So even a Jedi/Sith as naturally powerful as Vader still hadn’t seen everything. Not even a man eat his own face.
He's completely invulnerable because he's not really there. He's just an image that can't physically interact with anything and couldn't hurt Kylo if he wanted to.
In addition, Jedi were set in their ways. Sigh wanted power and were afraid to lose it. Killing yourself for a projection counts as “losing power”, if you can’t come back as a Force-Ghost. Plus, Rey and Ren are supposed to be a point of letting go of Sith/Jedi and be something more. I remember sabers flying, I don’t remember them teleporting. And sabers flew in all trilogies. Mace’s from E2, Luke’s in E5...yeah.
I get if you don’t like the characters. I get if you don’t like the story. But saying “they can’t do that” just because it hasn’t happened before...if that was true in real life, we’d still all be huddled around fire, gasping in awe at its majesty.
LunarSol wrote: What's super powerful about Luke's projection? He wasn't able to physically interact with anything and doing it killed him. Seems very limited in use.
Here's the way I look at it:
You're driving on an American highway near, say Los Angeles. You're listening to an FM radio station in the car, while you're driving to say, Las Vegas. . . . If you're familiar with how radio and FM works, then you'll understand why, as you drive from LA toward Vegas, that radio station you're jammin' to is starting to crackle and fade.
This is because that radio station is using a certain amount of power to broadcast its signal. . . . Luke broadcasting his Force Ghost across the pond is easy. Broadcasting it to the moon, quite a bit harder and requires more power. Projecting it literally lightyears away was proppa taxing on him, which is why he basically died
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Yet Yoda’s X-Wing lesson? Literally mind over matter. Size and distance don’t matter.
That one size fits all won't work for some powers though surely. Projecting a lightsaber 1m in front of you will take less time than projecting it 5 light years away. And force power has been proven time and again to be a finite resource that is not endless, you tap into it and your reserves start draining, the long you use it for or the more powerful the ability, the quicker the reserves drain.
Otherwise Palpatine could just walk around constantly using force lightening if it was just mind over matter.
I still don't like teleporting lightsabers, I see your arguments but every force power shown in film has had some basis in the established lore, that is not. I mean, you wouldn't need to use hyperspace, you could just teleport ships and the death star with the force etc if you so chose. It's canon breaking for me.
There's so many established powerful force powers that have never been shown on screen as well that could have been used, battle meditation could have been used by Luke in the TLJ to help the rebels escape for example.
The Force connects all things. Where there are beings, so is there The Force.
Luke knew where Rey was going, so he had a target destination to reach to out. He has a bloodline tie to both Leia and Ren, possibly making locating them easier.
From there? Inexplicable, unquantifiable spehsssss magics. Biggedy biggedy bong, Force Projection to troll his nephew.
We also see this when Leia reaches out to Ben during his final duel with Rey. She distracts Kylo Ren enough for Rey to stab him up a bit. Same discipline, different mastery level.
Automatically Appended Next Post: If we’re going to piss on a movie for showing a new expression of Force Ability? Why not pick on Palpatine’s Electric Boogaloo Jazz Hands?
Or Luke just sort of figuring out he could use The Force to grab his lightsaber on Hoth (remember, Ben hadn’t manifested to him beyond a voice at that point, so seems unlike he had a trainer).
How about when Vader choked Admiral Motti? That’s clearly ridiculous as Vader had to physically grab the Rebel Captain. Lore breaking, 0/10, nerd rage!
You are very much correct about Vader force choking through a video/holo feed, I had completely forgotten about that.
I still think there is a difference between connecting through the force at a distance to a living being connected to the force, and teleporting an inanimate object.
I stand down from this argument tangent for the moment.
Palpating super lightening into the sky was ridiculous by the way, completely stupid levels of power.
Palps was seemingly unaware of Rey & Ben being a Dyad, hence his rapid change of plan when he figured out he could fix up his clone body.
He also acknowledges serious power in such a thing. And being able to teleport objects was shown earlier, when Ren grabs the necklace thing from round Rey’s neck. And he seemed a bit surprised when he does it.
I say just go with it. We’ll never know the totality off potential for Force Users, so to say it can’t be done seems a bit daft.
Perhaps whilst the Force connects all things, one's connection to it twists its around the limitations of the living mind. Ergo the Force manifests as lightning not just because its a "spell cast lightning" but because its a manifestation of power that is interpreted through the Emperors own mind. Which might explain why he can use lightning whilst Vader can mind choke. Both could be a very similar expression of will and power, but they are filtered through the mind, interpreted, given form by the imagination and will of the user.
When Yoda moves the X Wing he's clearly weakened at the end of the action. His lesson is that, in theory, the use of the Force should have no taxation to the mind and body. However in reality such a connection is hard to achieve. I believe his view is that highly force sensitive people, like Luke, can achieve a much greater connection. They are thus able to utilise a greater portion of the power whilst having a less taxing effect on their body.
However, like all things, practice and experience and understanding help. It might well be that had Luke remained in training and using his powers, he might have been able to Force Project without such heavy taxation on his body. That part of it was that he was akin to using an old muscle in a heavy way without prior building up to it.
I must admit, I like that idea of The Force uniquely tailoring itself to the individual, rather than being a set of pre existing 'powers' you level up to unlock too. That idea makes The Force seem more harmonious, symbiotic and even mysterious, which is exactly what it should be imo.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Palps was seemingly unaware of Rey & Ben being a Dyad, hence his rapid change of plan when he figured out he could fix up his clone body.
He also acknowledges serious power in such a thing. And being able to teleport objects was shown earlier, when Ren grabs the necklace thing from round Rey’s neck. And he seemed a bit surprised when he does it.
I say just go with it. We’ll never know the totality off potential for Force Users, so to say it can’t be done seems a bit daft.
I respect your opinion and that we are disagreeing on the matter, but personally I think this philosophy on the force is not one I want future film makers to have personally... Why bother building a death star if you can just achieve the same action with the force, which your argument would allow because we actually don't know the full extent of the force powers?
It must be capped personally... If you don't agree cool, we can draw a line under it.
I also like the personal aspect of the force, its what makes a rather average Jedi in Bastilla (KOTOR for those who don't know her) so amazing with her battle meditation ability, quite literally improving the combat ability, communication, strategic thinking and morale of a whole army on her own. It was said to be an extremely rare technique, if not unique because of her ability to utilise it across so many individuals. Extremely powerful technique but subtle, not quite 'LOL, let's destroy a whole fleet with super lightening because I've absorbed some power from some kids who have a bond'
Like I said, I respect that people can think differently but I don't like the powers in the new trilogy, there must be some tethering of power potential, otherwise it just because dragon ball z with the infinite power ups.
I think the whole "Powers like spells" is something that games pick up on because you can code it into a game easily. Meanwhile it also tends to resonate easily with the public because its a simple easy to convey concept in films. More individual powers and connections I think is something better conveyed in writing where you can more easily go into the mind of the character and see the internal will and struggle and shaping going on. Things that in a film might be a few moments of the character closing their eyes and the viewer having to make it up themselves as to what is happening.
I respect your opinion and that we are disagreeing on the matter, but personally I think this philosophy on the force is not one I want future film makers to have personally... Why bother building a death star if you can just achieve the same action with the force, which your argument would allow because we actually don't know the full extent of the force powers?
It must be capped personally... If you don't agree cool, we can draw a line under it.
I also like the personal aspect of the force, its what makes a rather average Jedi in Bastilla (KOTOR for those who don't know her) so amazing with her battle meditation ability, quite literally improving the combat ability, communication, strategic thinking and morale of a whole army on her own. It was said to be an extremely rare technique, if not unique because of her ability to utilise it across so many individuals. Extremely powerful technique but subtle, not quite 'LOL, let's destroy a whole fleet with super lightening because I've absorbed some power from some kids who have a bond'
Like I said, I respect that people can think differently but I don't like the powers in the new trilogy, there must be some tethering of power potential, otherwise it just because dragon ball z with the infinite power ups.
I think the idea of there being a cap on the power of the Force is alien to it. I think that it again introduces this idea of the Force being a sliding scale of experience in a computer game. Get enough experience and put points into Use Force and you can do more etc.. I don't think that's how the Force really is in the setting itself. I think even the concept of it having a cap would be hard to explain because its likely not a linear or even exponential power curve. There likely is no such concept as raw "power" within it.
The Force as I see it, is limited only by the limitations of the Galaxy. It's a power of vast potential and yet to tap into it is exceptionally rare. It's like looking beyond the veil of existence and bringing something back from it. With it you can affect that which is around you in the Galaxy. However the more you adjust an affect the more toll it typically takes on the person. However this is not fully linear, some very powerful skills don't appear to have any toll whilst others can.
Can the Force destroy a planet. I don't think Vader was trying to say that alone. Destroying a world is power, its extreme power. The Force could destroy a planet - that a person could wield the Force to destroy a planet is quite another matter. Furthermore just as the Force could destroy a world it could likely make a world. Indeed if its the fabric which binds the Galaxy - nay the Universe together then its likely that the Universe is a product of the Force in itself. (likely some kind of unity - one affects the other and one requires the other to function and exist etc... rather than the Force as a pure "God" like creator). The Force could create life (alluded too with Anakin, but not really in the right context or given enough weight); create whole races; whole systems; whole networks; a whole Galaxy. That kind of brings into context who insignificant the Deathstar is.
I do think the gamification of the Force is one of the big issues with the franchise currently. It's less an issue with the games themselves, but how they've caused fans to view things. I LOVED the games, particularly Jedi Outcast, but I also generally understood that they were applying good game design to the Force, not simulating it.
It's so common to hear people talk about things like "earning Dark Side points" and such that it feels very hard to appreciate the way the Force is presented in the films itself. I get the impression that some people think Palp sent Vader to kill the younglings to level up his Sith rating more than anything. The idea that if you don't keep doing your Puppy Kick Daily Quests you might inadvertently lose access to Force Choke has really plagued the series. I mean, the idea you need enough DSP to Force Choke itself is hugely problematic within the story of the original trilogy on its own.
I really don’t like how Jedi were revealed to be a politicised space police staffed by incompetent morons. Only Qui-Gon and Ashoka (eventually) showed any semblance of how I thought they would be.
As we've been discussing how force powers work, I used an FM radio analogy to illustrate Luke's strain in force trolling across the galaxy.. . .
I think further to that, there's an element at work where we can sort of combine Nightcrawler and Rand al Thor. . . . As we know, in most comics, Nightcrawler's teleport generally only works so far as he can see where he's bampfing to. . . . Rand can Travel, and accurately arrive based on his remembering/mental image of where he's going.
What I'm on about here is this: while Luke is a physical form, he can lift an X-wing with relative ease, provided he can see where it's at. He likely could force ghost across a courtyard with ease because he can see/imagine that spot quite easily. . . . However, reaching across half a galaxy with a ghosty form, with nought but his imagination to visualize the surroundings is likely very difficult.
Also, we know his imagination sucks, based on his "talk" with ghost yoda in which Yoda makes fun of him for the "sacred texts" (ie, he has no imagination, and requires the 'sacred texts' to really try and accomplish anything worthwhile)
I know I’ve played it, but was too young to appreciate the plot!
