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Manchu wrote:Murdog, it sounds like you're pretty ambivalent about Star Wars and think that what I would call it's 12-year slump is "good enough." I gotta say man, I seriously envy you. I think you have the right attitude.

Yeah, it is just a story after all. One of my favorites, though! I guess ambivalent is the right word for all the stuff that has made me wince, because it doesn't outweigh the good stuff, and so in general I'm pretty enthusiastic about Star Wars. Dude, I don't even know what slump you're talking about exactly! Like, the 21st century, or basically since the enhanced originals were released? The prequels and the clone wars have been more 'good' than 'good enough' for me, and people been eating up books, 'mics and vids at the same time! C'mon now Manchu, has it really been that bad?

I know the prequels are hard to swallow at times, but the problem is obviously george's monumental ego bumping the camera all over the place. Those movies had so much goodness in them that george just couldn't resist helming it, and as a result there was alot of wasted potential - most glaring in some the acting, even from some otherwise fairly solid cast members. Alot of that and other stuff that took away from the seriousness of the plot should have been caught in editing at least. He's just not a great director, and there was no reason why he couldn't have got one. But still, he did what he set out to do, which was tell the backstory, and managed to get some pretty epic stuff up there. It's just too bad he's terrible at comedy and can't seem to put a credible action scene with blasters together.

Manchu wrote:Maybe it's because I love Dark Empire but I feel like there had to have been a lot of emotional fallout from RotJ. Could the Emperor really have conquered the whole galaxy just to be defeated by teddy bears? More importantly, it always concerned me that Luke wore black throughout RotJ. Yes, it showed that he was serious -- a Jedi Knight, although Bib Fortuna might scoff. But it also showed a kind of darkness that he had not dealt with and that Vader's last, rather ambiguous words could not resolve. Vader had sacrificed himself to save his son. Luke was right but the world had only become more complicated as a result. Gone was the relatively simplistic worldview of Obi-Wan and Yoda. The future would be murkier and more difficult to navigate. The rigid code of the Jedi would not be up to the task.

The emperor was defeated by the skywalkers - taking out the sheild generator so that the fleet could take out the death star just meant luke didn't have to do it himself.

I also have a different take on the black. He appears in RotJ as a Jedi Master, and I believe he truly has turned his back on the dark side. The black sigified that he was serious about the fact he was going to be an agent of death, destroy his enemies and win the war.

And don't tell me you're hatin ewoks! That's hatin just to hate, man. Remember the TV movies? Good stuff for my goat-ass at the time fo sho.

As for the fallout from RotJ, you've got some interesting thoughts there. I still think he'll eventually make Episodes 7-9, and detail that a little. He won't be able to resist. We can only hope that he hires a great director. Continuity with any literature be damned!

On that note, not having read a pile of star wars books but a few, I have to recommend 'Tales From Jabbas Palace'. Hilarious take on a bunch of the characters from the Tattoine scenes in Jedi. There are a half dozen plots against Jabba going on when Luke and Co. get the job done!

I prefer to focus on the KoToR era since that's way cooler...
Though oddly enough it's almost exactly the same despite being several thousand years apart apparently...

I really like most of it. I like the new movies too and a lot of EU also. Just recently I began reading the comics on my tablett which is rather entertaining espaccally the Old Republic comics.

To bad they didnt make KotoR 3.

murdog wrote:

I also have a different take on the black. He appears in RotJ as a Jedi Master, and I believe he truly has turned his back on the dark side. The black sigified that he was serious about the fact he was going to be an agent of death, destroy his enemies and win the war.

And don't tell me you're hatin ewoks! That's hatin just to hate, man. Remember the TV movies? Good stuff for my goat-ass at the time fo sho.

Luke turns to the Dark Side briefly in Dark Empire.
Ewoks are dumb.
And if Lucas ever makes episodes 7-9... Well, I'll just have to go on a rampage.

Personally I didn't mind ep 1-3 because I have an amazing ability to ignore all the plot holes and just go with it.


As for the non-movie stuff I have read the Bane trilogy and loved it in addition to one book post RTJ and an Order 66 which was a good story but had several things in it there were umm

There is one good side to the prequels. Finding people who defend them, sitting them down, and forcing them to watch the Red Letter Media reviews, which spell out in exacting detail how bad the movies are. Then asking them to repeat their arguments.

I've never lost "faith".

If the prequels being "bad" were enough to make you doubt, then your "faith" wasn't as strong as you thought it was.

I'm still a fan. The Stormtrooper costume (in the closet), the Fett helmet (autographed by Jeremy Bulloch), the Vader and Royal Guard helmets all sitting in the closet with it, testify to that.
I don't regard it all as "canon".
I guess you could say the stuff I don't agree with can be seen as the "apocrypha" for the series.

Bromsy wrote:There is one good side to the prequels. Finding people who defend them, sitting them down, and forcing them to watch the Red Letter Media reviews, which spell out in exacting detail how bad the movies are. Then asking them to repeat their arguments.

"badness" is objective. Sure you can force someone to watch those videos, but that doesn't mean that they stop liking the films, it just means that you're being a dick and trying to ruin their fun.

Bromsy wrote:There is one good side to the prequels. Finding people who defend them, sitting them down, and forcing them to watch the Red Letter Media reviews, which spell out in exacting detail how bad the movies are. Then asking them to repeat their arguments.

See, I am a pretty big fan of the original trilogy, then when the prequels came out, I knew that I didn't like them, I just couldnt put my finger on exactly why... I knew that there were things wrong, like the plot, and certain elements made me say "What?" while watching, but it wasn't until the RLM reviews that it sort of clicked just why the prequels were so bad.

That said, I don't force people to sit down and watch them, I just point out that the guy has a pretty good handle on why they are so terrible and that they should view them.

murdog wrote:
TL/DR: Star Wars is so huge some of it is bound to be cheesy/crappy/dumb, depending on who is telling what story, and who is watching it. Still doesn't take away from the epic awesomeness of much of it.

That sums it up nicely!

SW is whatever you want it to be and how you yourself would define your fandom ...

I know people that deny the existence of anything apart from the original trilogy. If thats how theyd like to handle it - okay, its not my place to judge. However I do have an issue with people trying to tell me that I ought to agree that the sequels suck. Sure, theyre not what they couldve been. Theyre certainly not what I wanted them to be. But then its not my story thats being told. Neither is it that of any of the die-hard fans. Its Georges.

And even JarJar is not going to take away the moment I first saw ESB, the greatest movie ever made.

I always thought changing Fett's very few lines of dialogue to Jango's voice was unnecessary. I mean, it's quite possible that he gets horrifically burned or is infact a different man beneath the armour.

Seeing the child versions of Boba and Vader kinda killed it a bit for me too.

The whole idea of the Clone Wars, while pretty nice looking doesn't really fit into the original triology. I think having storm troopers be clones and order 66 were some of the biggest cop outs. I understand the military turning against the Jedi due to brainwashing/mental programming, but why the entire galactic council?

I think the prequels have some great ideas and characters, but they kind of loose their way.

I like StarWars, its a cool universe to get lost in for sure. KOTOR games are badass to the extreme, as is the Battlefront games. So part of me really likes it, but I also see where the newer trilogies make people want to vomit. I only like Episode1 because I think Darth Maul was a fething serious badass, that needed more light shown on him. And even Liam Neeson made me chuckle a few times with how he used the force. But that was it. Episode 2 was truly a steamer. I only liked Jango Fett from that whole movie....1 guy. (Ieven named a pet after him) and Rise of the Sith.....well.....it was bad. Its kindda watchable at times, but also not.

So yea, Lucas really fethed the pooch on the whole thing. Ive noticed that I like StarWars when he has no creative control over it.

1. The clone wars are mentioned by Luke in ANH. When he first meets Obi-Wan Kenobi he even says "You fought with my father in the Clone Wars."

2. Stormtroopers are not clones, they're human soldiers. Story goes the emperor was a bit worried with exactly how well the clones could take down Jedi so he did away with the clone program.

3. I agree that while the time frame between the fall of the Jedi in RotS and the start of ANH is short (18ish years?) remember that most of the galactic senate is bought and paid for by Palpatine. They're corrupt, greedy and don't really have any reason to care. Also many senators do remain loyal to the Jedi (Mon Mothma, for instance) but have no real power. When the aenate is dissolved in ANH we dont even see them.

4. I agree that the prequels sort of lose their way. I think the attempts by Lucas to shoehorn some connecrions in there (like C3-P0) hurt the films.

Also, re: Grievous. If you want to see more badass Grievous then you should watch Clone Wars. He is routinely one of the show's top villains, consistently out shining Dookoo, and even the Emperor.

I said this before in another thread re: Clone Wars and I feel it fits well here:

The series takes place during the Genndy Tartakovsky series timeline. It is also a little more mature? adult? than it would seem at first glance. There's a good amount of brutal violence and on-screen death in the series, and not just in the "big explosion and people don't get back up" variety. For example, Count Dooku at one point forces one man to shoot another, breaks the first's neck with the Force, then tosses his corpse aside like a rag doll. Many of the episodes are very dark, and there is a bit of self-referential humor to the series. The characters themselves are also a bit more fleshed out during the series, and the interactions between Kenobi and Asajj Ventress are almost perfectly voiced.

Now, what I'm going to say next is going to seem like a blatant lie. You're going to look at the line, shake your head and say "You're lying. There's no way." but here it is anyway:

This series made me not hate Jar-Jar Binks.

I'm going to repeat that, as I'm sure you're looking at my post like I just admitted to eating puppies and kittens while sitting on a throne of dead babies.

This series made me not hate Jar-Jar Binks.

First off: the voice actor is different. His voice is deeper, far less grating on the ears, and he screams a LOT less.

Secondly: He is actually portrayed as a serious character often times. Somewhere along the line, he grew a backbone, sacked up and decided to actually be a real character.

Now, for all the praise I've given it, there are a bunch of really, really bad episodes. The 4th season has been pretty lackluster so far, especially the C3-PO/R2-D2 episodes.

I saved this bit for last, as I really think it bears mentioning:

Perhaps the most amazing part of this series is the Clones. They're all over the place, in just about every episode, and are the show's main chaff. They look nigh-identical and are all voiced by one person: Dee Bradley Baker. I feel this needed to be a separate point, because of how amazingly unique the series manages to make them. Sure, you do get the legions of faceless troopers whose sole purpose is to get shot, stabbed, eaten, melted, blown up, thrown off cliffs, impaled and otherwise die their gribbly deaths. Despite that, there is an amazing amount of unique development in episodes like "Rookies"(S1 E05), "Clone Cadets" (S3 E01) and "ARC Troopers" (S3 E02).

Also a great fan of Star Wars. Sadly, between the prequels and the generally increasing crappiness of the EU, I've kind of lost faith.

I loved the films as a kid, but my housemate is one of the biggest star wars fan girls in existence and that is enough to put me off it for life. That and anything to do with Joss Whedon.

I also happen to work with the girlfriend of the guy who draws the engineering diagrams for the books.


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God I love the Clone Wars cartoon...it's awesome. The clones are awesome. It's a shame all the other Jedi stuff gets in the way of their story

I was out of Star Wars the moment the Ewoks appeared on the silver screen. I made the switch to GI Joe after that. Way cooler toys at the time. Unfortunately, GI Joe jumped the shark with all that day-glo camouflage a few years later.

and now you know, and knowing is half the battle

I agree with most of you all here, but I want to say that some of the best novels didn't stop with, The Thrawn Trilogy, The Truce of Bakara and I, Jedi. I have not seen any mention of the Legacy of the Force or The Fate of the Jedi series. My faith in Star Wars died with the CG clone war series, but was renewed 10 fold with The Legacy of the Force series. It is by far one of the best series of Star Wars novels ever and the follow up series The Fate of the Jedi is not bad itself.

Seriously, just check these books out!

Wait... you dont like the Clone Wars series but you do like a series of novels widely regarded as the worst EU crap available?

I'm a lot like you Manchu. I was a hard as Carbonite fan. I use to be able to tell you specs and schematics of Twin-Ion Engine fighters, and Corellian YT-1300's. I could compare and contrast the strenghts and weaknesses of an Imperial Star Destroyer and a Mon Calamari Cruiser. I could literally quote the movies line for line from beginning to end exactly wiht no prompts.

Up until that fateful midnight showing of The Phantom Menace. I don't know exactly what happened, but my fandom simply broke that night.

Since then, I haven't even bothered with a single Star Wars thing; book, tv show, toys, games, nothing. The magic was simply gone. I don't even watch the original ones anymore.

Edit: the only thing I would be interested in now would be an updated Tie Fighter vs. X-wing video game.

azazel the cat wrote:As much as I dislike that Gotye song, this pretty much sums things up for me:

"Did you have to sell your soul? Do we really have to watch them again in 3D?" made me chuckle.

streamdragon wrote:Wait... you dont like the Clone Wars series but you do like a series of novels widely regarded as the worst EU crap available?

I don't see it. Sorry your opinion sucks. A quick google search showed me that it isn't widely regarded as the worst EU books and that you are full of gak. Obviously you have different tastes. For instance you imply that the clone wars is better, therefore your opinion is invalid.

Goliath wrote:

Amaya wrote:A New Hope was very good, TESB is one of the greatest movies ever made, but you could tell with RTJ that Lucas was more interested in marketing ploys (fething Ewoks) than making a high quality film. His ego led to TPM being a terrible film on nearly all counts and AotC being another example of terrible dialogue and wooden acting despite the fact the story was decent and the setting was excellent. RoTS was much better than the rest of the prequels, but still inferior to all of the original trilogy. The cast, acting, dialogue, and story just wasn't there.

Can you just explain how his ego made it a bad film? I can understand people thinking it was a bad film, despite liking it myself, but I fail to see how Lucas' ego affected the quality of the film.

Answering the original question:
I like Star Wars. I enjoyed all of the films, but cannot really decide which was my overall favourite (ESB for tone and plot, ROTS for sheer spectacle, both of which have a place within the stories in my opinion) I enjoy The Clone Wars when I can, but don't watch it religiously, and I often do not understand the criticism levelled at it, sure it's aimed at kids, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't fit in with the rest of the universe, and doesn't deserve to be on the air. It's cheap, no nonsense fun, and you can watch it for a half hour or so without thinking too much about the intricacies of the plot, or who is going to do what, and what happened in that one episode last season with this character to explain why he's doing what he is now. The plots are simple, but it doesn't mean that they're bad, just that they're simple. And you can enjoy them simply for the universe that they're set in.

I'd place the movies in this order.
1. Star Wars (A new Hope my ass it was an wil always be FREAKING STAR WARS)
2. Empire Strikes Back: better movie and I like it more, but the first was utterly ground breaking. Best scenes and tone of the series I think.
3. ROTJ if you fast forward all scenes with Ewoks, but thats mostly just because of the end scene else switch 4 for this
4. Revenge of the Sith. Leave out the Grievous nonsense and mute the dialog in the last battle and its pretty good actual. "Evil is a point of view."
5. AoftClones: good action. Again fast forward everything on Naboo and its not too bad. COme to think of it if you could edit it and Revenge of the Sith it would be one good (albeit long) movie.
6. Phantom. No just no. The only decent part is the jedi fight scene. thats it.

murdog wrote:Dude, I don't even know what slump you're talking about exactly! [...] C'mon now Manchu, has it really been that bad?

Yeah, it's been pretty bad from my perspective.

murdog wrote:And don't tell me you're hatin ewoks! That's hatin just to hate, man.

I like Ewoks for what they are ... but how are they going to put the pain on storm troopers? As if storm troopers didn't have enough of a bad rep!

murdog wrote:On that note, not having read a pile of star wars books but a few, I have to recommend 'Tales From Jabbas Palace'.

I actually did read that one! Along with the earlier 'Tales from the Cantina' anthology, which I'd also recommend.


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purplefood wrote:I prefer to focus on the KoToR era since that's way cooler...

I quite agree -- except the newer comics set in that period seem super lame. Has anyone read them? I've just paged through the TPBs at the bookstore.


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Dark Scipio wrote:Just recently I began reading the comics on my tablett which is rather entertaining espaccally the Old Republic comics.

Ah there we go. Can you do a mini review?


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chromedog wrote:I've never lost "faith".

Saw this and thought of you:

http://starwars.com/shop/lifestyle/cvi_calendar/index.html


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Easy E wrote:The magic was simply gone. I don't even watch the original ones anymore.

That actually is what I've experienced, too! I think it's the saddest part. It's also the hardest part to explain. That's why I envy the people who can just compartmentalize the prequels away from the OT.

Edit: the only thing I would be interested in now would be an updated Tie Fighter vs. X-wing video game.

What if it was in miniatures? (see link on page 1)

I recall when, as a very young Fitzz, I had just come into the house from being outside playing ( kids used to do that a long time ago...crazy ehh) and seeing, for the first time, the commericial advertising the first Star Wars film.
I knew right at that moment that I was witnessing something that would be huge, though as a child I wasn't aware of just how huge it would become.
A month or so later when the film hit the theatres I was one of the first in line to see it, and watching...I was just blown away, my seven year old brain could barely process the absolute awsomeness I was experiancing...was really one of those " life changing" moments...you know, like the first time you kiss a girl or get hit so hard you see stars...one of those events that you just know will be etched into your mind forever.
Despite my dislike of most of the prequels ( Sith is ok)...the Star Wars universe will always be very special to me.

I love the Star wars universe but don't really care much for what has grown around the original three films. I have a book called The Illustrated Star Wars Universe which has some nice artwork from various settings, plus some fluff which I think is written by Kevin J Anderson. I've read the first part of the Thrawn trilogy, which I found to be readable enough but nothing special; I mostly stay away from such novels but may be tempted if there were anything decent on the graphic novel front.

Lord Scythican wrote:

streamdragon wrote:Wait... you dont like the Clone Wars series but you do like a series of novels widely regarded as the worst EU crap available?

I don't see it. Sorry your opinion sucks. A quick google search showed me that it isn't widely regarded as the worst EU books and that you are full of gak. Obviously you have different tastes. For instance you imply that the clone wars is better, therefore your opinion is invalid.

Spoiler:

Did you actually watch any of The Clone Wars? I mean, it's all well and good saying that it's awful and ruined your opinion of star wars and raped a kitten, but can you actually say what you actually found wrong with it? Was it the characters? The storylines? The tone?
I mean, if you've seen it and don't like it then fine, but the vast majority of people who've told me that they don't like The Clone Wars have formed the opinion entirely from either the trailer or from hearsay, and very rarely actually watched the program.

Was it the characters? The storylines? The tone?

All three. Some of the episodes mind you, are actually pretty good, but it's probably about 1 in 10. The rest are just trash.

That is unless we're actually talking about Star Wars: Clone Wars, which was awesome.

Anything Zhan or Stackpole write for the EU is worthwhile. I was a lot like Manchu. I read everything in the EU and watched the movies constantly. I ditched school the day APM came out in theatres with 2 of my friends, took a bus to the movies, and sat down for my Star Wars in theatre movie experience......

And then my love for starwars took an arrow to the chest. I was bleeding out slowly and didn't know it. I still read the books and followed the EU but it didn't seem the same. Then when AotC came out I went to a midnight showing. God help me that's when I realized I'd completely bled out. I was done with the star wars EU. Partly because my love of starwars was truly dead but also partly because if the EU didn't matter to the man who created star wars then what was the point.

I saw the third movie once in theatres just for the fight scenes and special effects but for me it was an action movie. I didn't even bother critiquing it. Just watched pretty flashing lights and tried to forget it was a star wars movie so I could get a little more enjoyment out of it.

Overall if it had been a different director something might have been salvagable. And if someone was there to smack Lucas in the head when he got out of line again, maybe salvagable. My questions is how bad of a director do you have to be to make a movie with Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, and Ewan McGregor suck? How hard to you have to work to get them to present characters that wooden?

Anyway, Corran Horn is the coolest Jedi friggin ever and I can still read I, Jedi from time to time due to it's awesomeness. Timothy Zhan is a solid writer even if Lucas burned the best written trilogy in the EU.

tl:dr - Mostly similar feelings as Manchu for slightly different reasons.

Lord Scythican wrote:

streamdragon wrote:Wait... you dont like the Clone Wars series but you do like a series of novels widely regarded as the worst EU crap available?

I don't see it. Sorry your opinion sucks. A quick google search showed me that it isn't widely regarded as the worst EU books and that you are full of gak. Obviously you have different tastes. For instance you imply that the clone wars is better, therefore your opinion is invalid.

Whoa now. Unbunch and take a deep breath

First off, let me make sure I'm thinking of the right books:


Do I have the right books?

Secondly: If you havent been keeping up with Clone Wars you should consider giving it another shot. The Battle for Dac episodes, for instance, were very well done, dark and a bit grisly. The fight between Grievous and the Gungans was awesome, as was most of the Zyggerean slave arc.