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 Chillreaper wrote:
can't we just have the best writer for the job, writing the best story with the best cast that they can manage? Why do we have someone that wants to tick diversity boxes? Disney...

I'm not an expert in the matter, but from what I know, when you are writting down the scenario, you are almost obliged to decide certain core characteristics of your character like, most often their gender and their age, but also often their race as there are many tropes associated with ethnicity. In casting choices you usually narrow down those characteristics and then select your actors and actress in function of their availability, interest in the project and skills. You don't always pass through months of trial casting unless it's for a vital role in a big production interested in fostering or placing new talents on the board. It's rare to build the character around the actor unless the movie has been produced with a specific actor in mind. If you want a diverse cast of character for your story, it might be because ou think it better serves the story. Star Wars, following a New Hope, has tried to have a diverse cast as to look more science-fiction and since it often focus on a mottley group of rebels and adventurers, it feels better and more realistic. Plus, if you have people in makeup to play aliens, it's useful to use people of the same ethnic group to play them as to aid in the illusion and if you have several aliens, to use different ethnic groups for each of them. Star Wars apparently also gave them special accent too with the native Twi-Lek officially speaking english as if they were living in the suburbs of Paris.

Finished Russian Doll yesterday. Thought it was a fantastic bit of storytelling with some genre swerves that caught me totally off guard.

I'm very, very interested to see what the same person might want to do in Star Wars. Could be a Taika Waititi/Ragnarok kind of deal.

 Chillreaper wrote:
... can't we just have the best writer for the job, writing the best story with the best cast that they can manage? Why do we have someone that wants to tick diversity boxes?

Not if you work for Lucasfilm, a company that considers "diversity" and "representation" so paramount that it gets mentioned 3 times on the goals of the new SW project, above literally every other concern. Never mind that there are hundreds of non-human species. Nah. Gotta make sure we unrealistically overrepresent various genders/races as they apply to 21st century humanity and then harp on about it like we're paragons of virtue.

They should have the next main character be a fething Talz who doesn't even speak basic. How's that for "diversity"? Then again I suppose they'd complain 'cause he has white fur...

What would be the "realistic" representation of various (or on this case, two) genders and races as it pertains to Star Wars' huge number of distinct spacefaring human societies distributed over its huge variety of cinematically extreme biomes and environments, do you think?

 Manchu wrote:
You nailed it Voss. Explaining things that don’t require explanation (including by writing plots that focus on things that shouldn’t be scrutinized too closely) while forgetting the fundamentals. It’s hard to believe it could have gone so wrong TWICE.

Future War Cultist wrote:And I just remembered why else I hate Midichlorians...it's an artificial power level, and I hate those kinds of things. I preferred it when The Force was a state of mind improved through introspection and mental thought, not how many germs you've been blessed with.

But thats just it, the midichlorians don't really explain anything. They are as mysterious as the force itself, (if not moreso). They are an additional layer of mythos and depth, and thats really it. The backlash to midichlorians was driven by a misunderstanding about what they were, which was a result of how they were referenced and explained in TPM. If TPM (or either of the subsequent films) had the time to explore them the way Lucas ultimately dug into them in The Clone Wars, I think the fanbase would have reacted much more positively to them.

The whole midichlorian count = power level thing is another misunderstanding - they were, at best, a measure of potential and thats it. The takeaway of midichlorians wasn't that Anakin was super-powerful because he had such a high midichlorian count, it was that he was unusual and potentially a force-spawned anomaly in connection with a prophecy:

"I need a midi-chlorian count."
"The readings are off the chart. Over 20,000. Even Master Yoda doesn't have a midi-chlorian count that high."
"No Jedi has."
"What does it mean?"
"I'm not sure.

"His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I've ever seen in a life form. It's possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians.

ANAKIN : Master, sir...I've been wondering...what are midi-chlorians?
QUI-GON : Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that reside within all
living cells and communicates with the Force.
ANAKIN : They live inside of me?
QUI-GON : In your cells. We are symbionts with the midi-chlorians.
ANAKIN : Symbionts?
QUI-GON : Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the
midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the
Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force.
ANAKIN : They do??
QUI-GON : When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to
you.
ANAKIN : I don't understand.
QUI-GON : With time and training, Annie...you will.

No mention of him being stronger than all other Jedi because he has so many midichlorians, no mention of a correlation to power level, or anything else of that nature. Lets be clear here - it was the fans who turned midichlorian counts into DBZ power scanners, for the same reason that people post dumb threads like "Who is the most powerful Jedi", "Who is the strongest Psyker in the 40k galaxy", "Which Primarch was the strongest", etc. People like to discuss things in absolute terms, and it helps when they can quantify those things to prove their point.

Nobody wants to hear that there is no "most powerful" Jedi, because they are all differently able and capable, and that Mace Windu might be a great lightsaber duelist but Yoda has exceptional foresight, Obi-Wan great wisdom, and Anakin excellent reflexes, etc. They want to say Anakin is the most powerful jedi because his midichlorian count is higher than everyone elses, even if that correlation is unsupported by the narrative.

Nobody wants to hear that there is no most powerful Psyker in the 40k galaxy because psychic powers manifest themselves differently for different people depending on a whole host of factors, and any psyker can suddenly become significantly more powerful (often with disastrous consequences for themselves) by over-exposing themselves to warp energy and channeling too much power through them, instead they want to say so-and-so is because they did xyz, or so-and-so is because they are a quadruple-alpha-grade psyker, or its Magnus because xyz reason, or its Tigurius because hes the only psyker to telepathically communicate with the Tyranid hive mind and not lose his gak.

Nobody wants to hear that there is no strongest Primarch because while Angron might have thrown a really good left hook, Russ could bench-press more, Alpharius could do more pull-ups, and Rogal Dorn was the push-up champion 3 decades running. They want to hear that so-and-so was just flat out "stronger" without nuance or condition.

Just like the politics of TPM. We don't need to see the parliamentary procedure! It's not Prime Ministers Questions! Just briefly mention that there's been a change of Government, if you have to. Actually, this is exactly the kind of thing the opening crawl should cover.

And yet the Clone Wars was so damned great because it did go deep into politics.

I’d argue we need to see some of Palpatine’s political wrangling. After all, the Prequels are charting his rise to absolute Power.

Watch The Clone Wars, its like 90% of the series.

Never mind that there are hundreds of non-human species. Nah. Gotta make sure we unrealistically overrepresent various genders/races as they apply to 21st century humanity and then harp on about it like we're paragons of virtue.

This comment has me kind of speechless, only because less than half of the newly revealed characters for the High Republic storylines (the new SW project you're referring to) are actually human, and quite a few of the diverse group of alien Jedi we're being shown are ones we either never or only very rarely see associated with the Jedi before. Hell, they're giving us a friggin' Trandosahn Jedi, do you have any idea how friggin cool that is?

But yes, go on about how its only about human women and minorities, when it very clearly isn't.

My dude, you have a way of not seeing the forest for the trees.

It’s like you totally forgot that there is this lazy, ambiguous, doesn’t-really-go-anywhere concept of the Chosen One. And that Qui-Gonn’s sole evidence for his belief that Anakin is the Chosen One is Anakin’s off the charts midichlorian count.

That’s all it is; a band aid barely holding together a couple of lazy concepts in a terrible script.

The Chosen One prophecy not going anywhere is a problem of Disney more than it is of Lucasfilm. For all intents and purposes his 6 episode film saga (+The Clone Wars which expands the concept greatly) sees the prophecy fulfilled.

Also, nowhere in the prophecy does it say that the prophecied jedi born of the force would be the most powerful jedi/force user to ever live, only that they would restore balance

... Disney wasn't involved in any way, as it was years before the sale. That was 100% Lucas.

A crap prophecy and 'chosen one' nonsense were entirely unnecessary. Return of the Jedi ended not with any of that, but with a man making a choice that no, actually he wouldn't let his son be brutalized and enslaved. Its a very human moment that needed absolutely none of the junk Lucas foisted on it in the prequels.


As for the Clone Wars cartoon, it fell on its face trying to reconcile things. It had Force Demigods show up out of nowhere to inform people of the future movies(and hamfisted enforce them), and getting from Movie 2 to Movie 3 required everyone to carry Idiot Balls around so the plot could happen. It got really bad as it went from loosely linked war stories back to the main line of the prequel movies

except that the prophecy worked with the prequals + original trilogy. it now simply makes no sense when you throw the sequal trilogy into the mix

chaos0xomega wrote:
The Chosen One prophecy not going anywhere is a problem of Disney more than it is of Lucasfilm.

I'm sorry, how exactly is this Disney's problem? The Chosen One prophecy exists entirely in the prequel films and nowhere else. It was 100% Lucas' baby.

BrianDavion wrote:
except that the prophecy worked with the prequals + original trilogy. it now simply makes no sense when you throw the sequal trilogy into the mix

Not really. Anakin brought balance to the Force. Nobody said that would actually last for any specific length of time.

 insaniak wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
except that the prophecy worked with the prequals + original trilogy. it now simply makes no sense when you throw the sequal trilogy into the mix

Not really. Anakin brought balance to the Force. Nobody said that would actually last for any specific length of time.

maybe but when he couldn't even manage to destroy Palpatine... yeah that's pretty bad no matter how you slice it. what they should have done with the sequal trilogy is focus on Luke restroing the Jedi order, the Jedi facing their first big test (and perhaps having Luke die in the process) and eventually coming through. in short the sequal trilogy should have been about CEMENTING the OT's achomplishments, not ignoring them

BrianDavion wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
except that the prophecy worked with the prequals + original trilogy. it now simply makes no sense when you throw the sequal trilogy into the mix

Not really. Anakin brought balance to the Force. Nobody said that would actually last for any specific length of time.

maybe but when he couldn't even manage to destroy Palpatine... yeah that's pretty bad no matter how you slice it. what they should have done with the sequal trilogy is focus on Luke restroing the Jedi order, the Jedi facing their first big test (and perhaps having Luke die in the process) and eventually coming through. in short the sequal trilogy should have been about CEMENTING the OT's achomplishments, not ignoring them

You’re absolutely right. I’ve come to absolutely hate the sequels for how much they’ve completely undone all of the originals, especially regarding Luke’s character. Now at the very end of it all, my only response is, what the hell was the point in all of that?

I’m sure that there was a treasure trove of things from the 40 odd years of EU they could have used instead of the heartless, meandering rehash they farted out.

BrianDavion wrote:

maybe but when he couldn't even manage to destroy Palpatine... yeah that's pretty bad no matter how you slice it. what they should have done with the sequal trilogy is focus on Luke restroing the Jedi order, the Jedi facing their first big test (and perhaps having Luke die in the process) and eventually coming through. in short the sequal trilogy should have been about CEMENTING the OT's achomplishments, not ignoring them

He did destroy Palpatine. Not his fault that Palps grew another body.

Although it's also worth pointing out that the prophecy wasn't necessarily true.

Also, what did it means by bringing balance to The Force?

It’s a very nebulous prophecy.

If I can be honest, I thought that it was a crock that came from nowhere and didn’t serve any real purpose.

 insaniak wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

maybe but when he couldn't even manage to destroy Palpatine... yeah that's pretty bad no matter how you slice it. what they should have done with the sequal trilogy is focus on Luke restroing the Jedi order, the Jedi facing their first big test (and perhaps having Luke die in the process) and eventually coming through. in short the sequal trilogy should have been about CEMENTING the OT's achomplishments, not ignoring them

He did destroy Palpatine. Not his fault that Palps grew another body.

Although it's also worth pointing out that the prophecy wasn't necessarily true.

It totally was his fault that he didn't do anything to stop Kylo from turning to the dark side though.

It totally was his fault that he didn't do anything to help Luke find his wayfinder.

It totally was his fault that he didn't warn anybody about the secret fleet of death star destroyers on Exegol.

The sequal trilogy establishes that force ghosts can interact with the physical world, summon lightning, talk to people, but Anakin... doesn't.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
If I can be honest, I thought that it was a crock that came from nowhere and didn’t serve any real purpose.

It was. A prophecy and a 'chosen one' arc weren't required in any way and didn't serve any useful purpose beyond hack cliche storytelling mistakes.

The elevator conversation at the beginning of Attack of the Clones (where Annie and Obi talk about their adventures to 'tell, not show' what good friends they are) should have been 'episode 1', episode 2 should have been the war and the beginning of their rift (training mistakes become major issues), and 3 the climax of that and the 'creation' of Vader. A personal story of a broken friendship in the midst of war would have segued into Alec Obi's setup in Episode IV the way the actual prequels... didn't.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, what did it means by bringing balance to The Force?

Everyone from Jedi School or Sith School is dead. Balance!

 Future War Cultist wrote:
If I can be honest, I thought that it was a crock that came from nowhere and didn’t serve any real purpose.

That is exactly correct.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The sequal trilogy establishes that force ghosts can interact with the physical world, summon lightning, talk to people, but Anakin... doesn't.

The sequels establish that Yoda and Luke's force ghosts can interact with the physical world. The Prequels and the Clone Wars cartoon established that this was due to specific training on the part of the Jedi. Training that Anakin never had.

Voss wrote:
It was. A prophecy and a 'chosen one' arc weren't required in any way and didn't serve any useful purpose beyond hack cliche storytelling mistakes.

The elevator conversation at the beginning of Attack of the Clones (where Annie and Obi talk about their adventures to 'tell, not show' what good friends they are) should have been 'episode 1', episode 2 should have been the war and the beginning of their rift (training mistakes become major issues), and 3 the climax of that and the 'creation' of Vader. A personal story of a broken friendship in the midst of war would have segued into Alec Obi's setup in Episode IV the way the actual prequels... didn't.

Oh boy, I have spent a lot of time, way too much time, trying to figure out in my head how to fix the story of the prequels. The short version is not too far off yours...the long version is a significant rewrite.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
If I can be honest, I thought that it was a crock that came from nowhere and didn’t serve any real purpose.

That is exactly correct.

I know right? What exactly did it do in the end, other than having an excuse to have yet more scenes of Jedi 'Masters' (snark) talking bollocks around a room?

 insaniak wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The sequal trilogy establishes that force ghosts can interact with the physical world, summon lightning, talk to people, but Anakin... doesn't.

The sequels establish that Yoda and Luke's force ghosts can interact with the physical world. The Prequels and the Clone Wars cartoon established that this was due to specific training on the part of the Jedi. Training that Anakin never had.

Yet Anakin's Force ghost does interract with Luke in the closing scene of Return of the Jedi... Star Wars is full of stuff like that.

Not sure that nodding at someone is necessarily interaction?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Not sure that nodding at someone is necessarily interaction?

Silent consent exists in buying interaction and contracts , i'd assume. Nodding would also qualify as interaction.

epronovost wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

The sequal trilogy establishes that force ghosts can interact with the physical world, summon lightning, talk to people, but Anakin... doesn't.

The sequels establish that Yoda and Luke's force ghosts can interact with the physical world. The Prequels and the Clone Wars cartoon established that this was due to specific training on the part of the Jedi. Training that Anakin never had.

Yet Anakin's Force ghost does interract with Luke in the closing scene of Return of the Jedi... Star Wars is full of stuff like that.

It doesn't 'interact' ... it just stands there and nods. But yes, chalk that up as another one of those things that George didn't think about when he was writing the prequels.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
except that the prophecy worked with the prequals + original trilogy. it now simply makes no sense when you throw the sequal trilogy into the mix

Not really. Anakin brought balance to the Force. Nobody said that would actually last for any specific length of time.

maybe but when he couldn't even manage to destroy Palpatine... yeah that's pretty bad no matter how you slice it. what they should have done with the sequal trilogy is focus on Luke restroing the Jedi order, the Jedi facing their first big test (and perhaps having Luke die in the process) and eventually coming through. in short the sequal trilogy should have been about CEMENTING the OT's achomplishments, not ignoring them

You’re absolutely right. I’ve come to absolutely hate the sequels for how much they’ve completely undone all of the originals, especially regarding Luke’s character. Now at the very end of it all, my only response is, what the hell was the point in all of that?

I’m sure that there was a treasure trove of things from the 40 odd years of EU they could have used instead of the heartless, meandering rehash they farted out.

yeah I mean Rise of skywalker WAS sort of borrowing elements of two early EU sources but over all they def coulda done better