WATDUDEYEET

Wasn't it George Lucas himself who made the Ewok and Vietnam comparison? Which I don't think holds up because the Ewoks do get overwhelmed and blown up after the initial ambush. Dude was born in the mid 40s, I wouldn't be surprised if he included those racial caricatures just because he thought the accents sounded funny. The Clone Wars Movie did cause a bit of a controversy because the main villain sounded and looked like a derogatory gay stereotype. I am wondering how The Acolyte is going to handle this because the leaked announcement trailer showed that they were bringing back the Neimoidians, and their whole shitck is that they're literally bug-eyed greedy chinese people. Perhaps they'll ditch the accents? (I recall one of the canon SW books did a joke where Han meets a Gungan repairman and he's worried that he'll be annoying only for him to reveal that he speaks with a plain standard voice).

The first two sequels are fine imo, they're decent space blockbuster flicks in the vein of the simpler OT and that's all I ask for from the very low bar that Star Wars has set. I don't even think The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi actually contradict each other at all, plot and tone wise, whenever people say the trilogy needed to be "planned", it sometimes sounds like copium that they just didn't like exactly how those plot points turned out (like Rey's parentage or Snoke turning out to be a nobodies precisely because JJ didn't actually have any specific plans for them). TROS was actual doo-doo dogshit though, it doesn't just make the sequels worst, it actually retroactively makes the saga as a whole terrible. The prequels are just straight up unpleasant to watch, even as a kid I didn't enjoy them. They really dragged and looked ugly with all that greenscreen/CGI vomit, I thought they were antithetical to what made the first three films so fun and great in the first place (which was a simple story told with excellent pacing and effects). I really don't understand some of the specific praise this trilogy gets, what the fuck does "good worldbuilding" and "original & creative" even mean in the context of these films? The prequels were just as cynically driven to produce toys and merchandise as the sequels and the rest of the franchise in general. And it being all done by the same director and writer doesn't make the trilogy's overall plot any less cohesive when you actually lay it all down (it used to be a common criticism that all of the plot was crammed into ROTS while TPM and AOTC were just filler). I don't believe people would actually like the prequels if they were released today because that's basically what most of the new Star Wars TV shows are. The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka all have the qualities of the prequels. They overuse a new technology to the point of the whole thing looking cheap and amateurish (greenscreen and CGI for the prequels, the Volume Stagecraft for these new shows), the acting and delivery is stilted, the dialogue is basic and wooden, and the direction is very flat. Imagine if people praised the Obi-Wan Kenobi show because "it had a cool looking Singapore planet which is good worldbuilding", that's what it feels like.

This came out of nowhere, kind of like The Mandalorian suddenly becoming a film series now. Who knows, maybe Gollum will actually be decent, Warner Bros has been on a roll recently with their IP blockbusters (barring the DCEU though we'll see what James Gunn does) and I'm one of those guys who think The Lord of the Rings films have formed their own identity more as epic fantasy action films than thematically faithful adaptations of Tolkien's work so as long as WB doesn't somehow overbloat and meddle with it as they did with The Hobbit trilogy then it could at least be Wonka-tier (a movie we didn't need nor ask for but it was a fun time). https://youtu.be/f3AZYQh2e0k?si=SkWvTpa6zBOjLZ2v

I like the idea of Dooku's backstory and both the prequels/TCW should have leaned in more to the "fallen Jedi but honorable and genuinely wants to improve the galaxy" angle instead of just making him a boring cartoon villain, but the TOTJ episodes were just too short and straightforwardly basic. Felt like they needed more meat to them, more story.

I don't think it worked well for Dooku either, like his story should be compelling but it instead felt barebones and shallow. The first two eps felt too basic although I enjoyed his third episode a bit more. Maybe it was the dialogue or the voice acting delivery? The recent Star Wars cartoons sound way more stilted but The Clone Wars and Rebels didn't have this issue.

There were actually multiple reasons why George switched out the Wookies for the Ewoks -Chewie being a space smuggler implied that that his race couldn't be primitive (I don't really buy this explanation). -Wookie costumes were too complicated to produce en-masse and the production crew was worried that one of the actors or extras would end up getting shot by a hunter mistakening them for bigfoot during filming. -Toys and money

I maintain ROTJ would have been a significantly better film if they instead paired up Han with Lando on the Millenium Falcon and they're storyline was about them reconciling after the events of ESB while blowing up the Death Star II, then replace the Ewoks with the Wookies as was the original intention to finally give Chewbacca an arc in helping his kind revolt against the Empire with the help of Leia.

The whole hook of The Acolyte is that it's a Star Wars show about the Sith, specifically how they finally gained enough power and influence to infiltrate the Galactic Senate under the Jedi's noses, though the first season will be framed as a mystery where a group of Jedi discover the existence and survival of the Sith before presumably all dying at the end (though some of that info will leak anyway, considering Yoda was aware of Darth Bane and the Rule of Two in TCW). The show is a bit of a dark horse because it isn't made by either Dave Filoni or Jon Favreau. Instead created by Leslye Headland, who previously showrunned Russian Doll S1, which was actually pretty good (and the closest thing we have to a Groundhog Day reboot). She already confirmed there won't be any cameos or guest appearances besides one character from the High Republic bookd so I'm not expecting Yoda, Yaddle, or the guy from Robot Chicken to pop up. So "helped create Russian Doll and no cameos" should already be positives in my book. But one thing I'm really worried about is the dialogue, pretty much every line we've heard from the show sounds like lame trailer bait ("The Jedi justify their galactic dominance with peace... but that peace is a lie"). It's the kind of clunky delivery you'd hear from the Prequels and for some reason George Lucas' brand of stilted dialogue and "dead air" conversation pacing has been infecting a lot of modern shows recently, not just all the D+ Star Wars series barring Andor, but also Netflix's Avatar and Percy Jackson. I'm not expecting Andor's prestige level writing but even the OT, The Clone Wars, and ST had more natural sounding dialogue where you can sense the chemistry between the actors.

Lucifer Means Lightbringer had a whole theory series about this. The gist goes that Asshai was originally the grand capital of a pre-Valyrian Dragonlord Empire civilization spanning the known world, the Great Empire of the Dawn. They were the ones who built the Five Forts and the fortress on Battle Island (made of black stone but distinct from the evil oily black stone and more similar to Valyria's fused black stone created from dragonfire but primitive). It would also explain why the city is considered to have existed since before recorded history and apparent source of origin for dragons (which Bran's vision from the first book seems to corroborate), and where the Hightowers & Daynes came from (who have Valyrian features but are not from Valyria and are also associated with the Dawn) But then the Bloodstone Emperor ursurped his older sister as ruler of the Empire, ushering in the Long Night (and there may be some parallels to myths like the Azor Ahai legend and the Qartheen belief that dragons were hatched from the cracking of a second moon). Presumably the Bloodstone Emperor sacrificed his sister and ended up summoning the meteor that was made up of the oily black stone (likely in Stygai as another user here pointed out) and this specifically was what caused the Long Night. It ended up corrupting the capital Asshai, maybe it infected the existing structures or maybe the Emperor simply had the entire city rebuilt with the material. The Long Night was said to last a generation (over 20-30 years) so it's possible that the empire declined over time instead of collapsing immediately. During that period, said oily blackstone was deposited around the world, either fragments from the crash or due to the Emperor's decree. It's possible that Yeen was originally a GEOTD colony that obviously went wrong due to the materials they used. If you want to get even more speculative, perhaps the COTF used the oily black stone to create the Others, corrupting men with very dark magic to create the perfect weapons. As for how the Long Night ended? It seems more like the work of multiple heroes who had seperate adventures to save their respective lands according to the legends. The Shadowlands never recovered though, it still seems to be suffering from the symptoms of the Long Night (always dark even during the brightest day, monster attacks). Stygai is still in a state similar to Valyria. This is all just speculation though but it's pretty fun to think about.

Opposite to the general consensus in this thread, I didn't like The Bad Batch, it felt like it could have told its entire story in just 24-30 episodes instead of 47. Most of the episodes were formulaic and basic, padded out with repetitive and monotonous shootout action scenes. The best episodes were the ones focusing on Crosshair, his season two storyline was the most compelling because we actually get to see what being a clone was like under the Empire and how that depressingly contrasts with their time in the Republic in The Clone Wars. It's great stuff, especially compared to how one-note and bland the main Bad Batch characters are and most of their episodes boiling down to a monster hunt or a fetch quest (played straightforwardly 90% of the time). But what really grates me is the lack of stakes. It feels like no Star Wars character is allowed to die or even just get a definitive conclusion anymore. Ventress got resurrected, for not much purpose beyond what I suspect is so that she can just appear in the upcoming Mando-verse crossover movie. The ending was like a more lowkey version of Rebels' , where pretty much all the characters save one survive so they can continue on and the actual storyline isn't even fully wrapped up so they can continue to make more sequel spinoffs. It's reminding me of The Walking Dead and MCU, I don't think the interconnected universe approach where the story is spread out across all the shows works for the Star Wars franchise. Personally, I would have preferred if each entry stayed in its own corner of the setting with their own casts, instead of just having them constantly crossover with each other.

Joseph Anderson got it right that Skyrim and Fallout 4 aren't really RPGs but rather offline looter shooters with their open worlds designed more around a core gameplay loop that boils down to "explore, shoot, loot, repeat" that makes them way more addicting and popular compared to New Vegas despite that game being more critically praised. I suspect a major reason why Starfield felt like a bummer compared to previous Bethesda games was that its open world design distrupted the core gameplay loop, with exploration and navigating being a major hassle in a space enviroment where you have to load through your ship and various planets just to get to other locations.

If you watch the end credits visuals,

I don't think future games are going to build much on it. I got the impression that the Fallout show was set on the West Coast because the East Coast was Bethesda's territory, it's a similar arrangement the company made with Obisidian in regards to New Vegas and how it related to Fallout 3. Although I do find the reactions to

Also worth nothing that Fallout 3 was originally set to only take place just 30 years after the bombs dropped which is why everything is still in ruins and dilapidated but then they apparently changed it to 200 years after late in development for some reason. What's interesting is that Obsidian wanted New Vegas to take place before Fallout 3 around like 2261 (as the original Interplay Fallout 3 was set during) and that was one of the few creative decisions Bethesda (who were otherwise mostly lenient and gave Obsidian full creative freedom) vetoed. Maybe Bethesda is just allergic to interquels.

To be fair that question is fairly subjective, personally I'm invested in the factions if I find them interesting and if they have enough verisimilitude in them to have depth. Not necessarily because I want to see them survive out into future entries, I actually think a dilemma of the Fallout games as open world RPGs that leave the fate of the setting completely up to the player is that it feels like your choices will ultimately be pointless because the next entry will either have to pick a lane on one of the faction endings you chose or play it safe by vaguely acknowledging that "stuff happened".

Preferrably we get introduced to new major factions. It is a recurring complaint that the Brotherhood of Steel has lasted like 150+ years at this point and remained mostly the same or how the games in general keeps reusing the same factions just because they're iconic or associated with the franchise. Also maybe introduce new threats that affect the landscape and change the dynamics of the Wasteland. The lore implications will cause a shitton of discussion but I think the show is great at adapting the general premise and structure of the games in a semi-episodic format where the characters run into some weird or quirky side adventure each episode or two that escalates into something fucked up.

I think people are going about this the wrong way, while Bethesda may have given input during the show's production, I don't believe they actually wrote the show themselves nor dictated what should happen in it, they just left the state of the West Coast setting mostly up to the writers of the show to decide what to do with. This might be why I will note that a bunch of controversial elements such as the were all stuff present in Chris Avellone's cut writings like the original plans for New Vegas (which he kind of reused in Lonesome Road with The Divide) and Fallout movie screenplay he wrote decades ago. I think Avellone has stated before that he personally believes that the franchise should remain apocalyptic otherwise it wouldn't be Fallout anymore.