Star Wars: The Saga Continues

[DaveSumm]

I’m enjoying Rebels, it’s a nice change of pace from the Clone Wars darting around the galaxy telling so many different stories. Plus it’s good to spend some time in the OT era. One thing that’s really bugging me though, and I know this is one of those things that people say “ah, Star Wars has always been like that, it’s fine” but that bugs me as it’s just basically saying “it’s an aspect that’s shit so it’s OK to keep being shit” ... fucking Stormtrooper aim. Pretty much every episode the crew survive a barrage of blaster fire at extremely close range. I could understand if they got lucky once in while, but they actually seem to factor it in to plans. They’ll plan to send Sabine in against a dozen bucket heads and know she’ll be fine. We’ve seen plenty of times that a single blaster hit can be lethal, even through armour. But they’ll have a corridor chase scene where they seem to be about 5 metres away, three of four Stormtroopers firing straight at them and they’ll actually turn to each other and converse while under fire. 

In the Clone Wars I didn’t mind it so much as there was typically a Jedi up front deflecting everything. That seems to be the primary advantage of a lightsaber, deflecting fire. But Kanan rarely does it to protect everyone else, if he’s there at all. 

Anyway. Not quite sure what Inquisitors are either. They seem to break the rule of two, and have been trained in the Force but don’t count as Sith? Cool lightsabers though.

[TheLastWolf]

On 10/21/2020 at 1:20 AM, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Better than the OT? Rogue One is OK, it’s got some excellent moments, but it doesn’t have much character. For me it was a missed opportunity.

The OT was ok IMO. But there were several flaws which were excusable in that time, not now. 

23 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I love the direction Rogue One went, I like that it was grittier and dirtier and felt more lived in than the glossy JJ garbage and Lucas prequels. It was the kind of SW movie I wanted to watch more of. Having said that, I have never wanted to especially rewatch it, it doesn't have that engaging a story, its main characters aren't all that memorable. 

But if it was a proving ground for something like the Mandalorian then I have to appreciate that.

 

[karaddin]

14 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Anyway. Not quite sure what Inquisitors are either. They seem to break the rule of two, and have been trained in the Force but don’t count as Sith? Cool lightsabers though.

Think of them as sort of neutered Sith. They're only taught the basics and never given the tools that would let them train their own apprentices or rebel.

[DaveSumm]

Well, it’s involved watching literally 5-6 hours of Star Wars a day (ah, unemployment) but I’ve finished everything up to Episode IV (I, II, Clone Wars, III, Solo, Rebels, Rogue One) in time for Mandolorian Season 2. Some Rebels reflections:

Spoiler

It’s an interesting ending for Ezra, I guess we knew all along that there couldn’t be any Jedi around when Luke finally showed up to steal his thunder. It doesn’t reeeeeally fit that Luke wouldn’t be extremely keen to learn this fact, that the Rebels had two Jedi on their team the whole time and him showing up is nothing new. I was really hoping to get a better answer as to where Ahsoka has been this whole time, there’s a gap between her fight with Vader and her post-Endor arrival to go find Ezra with Sabine. I quite enjoyed how Ezra left them with the phrase “may the Force be with you”, which sort of explains...

It’s really odd going back to A New Hope when you have what must be close to 100 hours of prequel build up to it. It never occurred to me before but none of the Rebels seem phased that a Jedi is now on their team (albeit an untrained one) and yet they all use the phrase “may the Force be with you”. What does it mean to them? Is it like “god bless you”, a reflexive good-luck sentiment that they’ve forgotten the meaning behind? 

I always found it odd that Obi-Wan decided to help the Rebellion based on what Leia tells him in the R2 message: Bail asks her to bring him to Alderaan, but is he unaware of the status of the rebels? Why isn’t he already helping? OK, post Empire reveal of Luke’s parentage, the official reason would be that he’s looking after Luke. But he quite flippantly turns to Luke and just says “you’ll need to learn the ways of the Force if you’re to accompany me to Alderaan”. What makes him suddenly decide to change the plan, why is Luke suddenly ready? It’d make more sense if she mentioned the threat the Death Star represents, if he suddenly learnt just how brutal the Empire was OR that they had a workable plan. 

It’d also never occurred to me, but I guess when there was no Episode V yet, the idea is that Obi-Wan just lived on Tatooine before he became a Jedi? He’s doesn’t need to look after Luke if he’s not Vader’s son, and he says (of Uncle Owen):

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“He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did." 

...which kinda sounds like Obi-Wan and Luke’s unnamed father were friends on Tatooine, Obi convinced him to come be a Jedi with him and Owen disagreed. Why would he live on Tatooine otherwise?

Anyway, it’s all rendered moot by changing Anakin to be Vader. Just weird trying to interpret ANH as it’s own entity and what it implies.

[RumHam]

18 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

 

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I was really hoping to get a better answer as to where Ahsoka has been this whole time, there’s a gap between her fight with Vader and her post-Endor arrival to go find Ezra with Sabine. 

 

It's a good question. When she went back to her own time she probably figured she had to hide to avoid messing up the timeline. But she probably didn't know exactly when Ezra entered the World Between Worlds and saved her. So to be safe she had to wait until Palpatine was dead/Ezra was gone before revealing herself. Just my headcanon until we get another explanation. 

[DaveSumm]

25 minutes ago, RumHam said:

 

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It's a good question. When she went back to her own time she probably figured she had to hide to avoid messing up the timeline. But she probably didn't know exactly when Ezra entered the World Between Worlds and saved her. So to be safe she had to wait until Palpatine was dead/Ezra was gone before revealing herself. Just my headcanon until we get another explanation. 

 

Spoiler

I did read about some Topps cards that Filoni drew, but I firmly draw the line at going that deep into canon that I’m studying bloody Topps cards. Films and TV for me only.

Yea, time travel ... that’s quite something isn’t it. Yours is as good an explanation as any, but I’d love a better reason she sat out the OT. Maybe a kind of Captain Marvel scenario: there’s a lot of planets out there, and they don’t all have a Luke. Maybe she figured she couldn’t beat Vader and there was a risk he’d try to turn her, so she felt best to stay away. So sitting out the Skywalker part of things, sure. But the Rebels? Why wouldn’t she still be part of the alliance? She needs a really good excuse to not help out there.

 

[Poobah]

Speaking of the Holiday Special:

[Vaughn]

I'd totally forgotten that there was a new SW series in the works from the creator of 'Russian Doll' - https://www.indiewire.com/2020/11/leslye-headland-teases-star-wars-series-1234597730/

The mention of the series being set in a 'different time' reminds of how Star Wars technology never seems to improve much, which is both comforting as a viewer and creatively bankrupt. It's clever how Star Trek avoids this problem but just telling stories set in the same narrow time band over and over again.

[TheLastWolf]

Darth Maul nearly became the main villain of the prequels. And many more fascinating reveals... 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Darth Maul nearly became the main villain of the prequels. And many more fascinating reveals... 

Not the prequels - the sequel trilogy. 

[TheLastWolf]

1 minute ago, Killjoybear said:

Not the prequels - the sequel trilogy. 

Thanks for the correction 

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Darth Maul nearly became the main villain of the prequels. And many more fascinating reveals... 

 

2 hours ago, Killjoybear said:

Not the prequels - the sequel trilogy. 

Would have been better than what we got... even if how he survived being chopped in half and thrown down a reactor core would have needed some explaining to most of the fans out there, but even that is more plausible than what we got with the Sidious swerve.   

[Corvinus85]

3 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Darth Maul nearly became the main villain of the prequels. And many more fascinating reveals... 

 

3 hours ago, Killjoybear said:

Not the prequels - the sequel trilogy. 

When was this revealed?

[unJon]

12 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

 

When was this revealed?

Google George Lucas scrapped Star Wars sequel trilogy

[Rhom]

32 minutes ago, unJon said:

Google George Lucas scrapped Star Wars sequel trilogy

Oh my.  From People magazine no less...

[RumHam]

One thing I found interesting was that apparently in Lucas's vision there were quite a few surviving Jedi in the time of the OT

Quote

Lucas said. “He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two-and-three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi.”

Weird! not "maybe it would be cool if Indy had raped a twelve year old girl" weird, but still. 

[DaveSumm]

I swear this is like the fourth time I’ve heard about Lucas’s sequel plans and they’re never the same? Wasn’t there the ‘it’d be all microscopic and midichlorians’ a few months back?

It’s tempting to wonder what might have been seeing as the actual sequel trilogy was fairly bad overall, but let’s not forget Lucas can’t write to save his life. I wonder if the option to make Lucas’s idea came up in the negotiations selling to Disney, but they said no?

EDIT: never mind, read the article which describes the process.

[Lord Varys]

Lucas actually seems to be rather thoughtful and competent in that book. I'm working on the German edition right now. I never heard that before, but midi-chlorians are actually supposed to be based on mitochondrians, hence the entire symbiosis concept there. That is not bad at all. Clumsily introduced and never properly followed up, yes, but not stupid as a concept.

And when you read him talking about Anakin's entire journey then this is conceptually a rather interesting story ... it is just that the movies never had the time to properly depict that journey because there was way too much stuff going on. They would have needed more movies for both the political and the personal stuff.

Then this could have been great. But what we got is in my opinion still much better than the ST. Ingenuity and new things beat things that are effectively reboots or even remakes.

As for George's ideas for the ST - those sound much better than what we got. Especially in relation to Leia. Her as the main character/hero is what would have been really great, especially since that's something even the old EU never properly gave us. Also, the entire concept of the plot being about rebuilding galactic government and dealing with Sith-controlled crime syndicates is a much better setting than the Disney nonsense we got. Which was just the OT conflict all over again, right down to the Evil Emperor himself.

Add to that Lucas' ability to actually come up with new designs and creatures which broaden the whole Star Wars experience thing this could have really been something.

The ST we got was not just a poor rehash of the OT insofar as basic plot was concerned, but also did effectively nothing to create a new overall look for a different era of the Star Wars universe.

On 11/12/2020 at 7:56 PM, Rhom said:

Would have been better than what we got... even if how he survived being chopped in half and thrown down a reactor core would have needed some explaining to most of the fans out there, but even that is more plausible than what we got with the Sidious swerve.   

Oh, they explained all that in 'The Clone Wars' - which one really should watch. It is pretty great, especially the later seasons and the grand finale.

I don't particularly like that idea ... if Lucas or Disney wanted to go with Sith they should have used/revived the mysterious Darth Plagueis who could have faked his death (or Palpatine could have falsely believed he was dead when in fact he was just in coma or in suspended animation or something along those lines).

As for general talk about 'Rogue One' - there are aspects of that movie that are fine, but it is boring as hell in my opinion since it is just the 'steal something' plot ... and the Rebel Alliance looks stupid and incompetent as hell considering they need weirdo outsiders to actually push for and plan serious attacks on the Empire. And the Empire also looks weak as hell considering that one guy in a cape is the only operative they have to look after their interests in this. We are talking about a monstrously large space station there. They should have more staff to deal with problems.

Would have been much better if the movie had actually been about the Rebel Alliance ... and depicted colorful and interesting people with different backgrounds and motivations for joining the Rebellion. Instead we get a movie where the robot is 'the most human character' ... and it is not '2001'.

[Heartofice]

On 11/16/2020 at 1:10 AM, Lord Varys said:

Lucas actually seems to be rather thoughtful and competent in that book. I'm working on the German edition right now. I never heard that before, but midi-chlorians are actually supposed to be based on mitochondrians, hence the entire symbiosis concept there. That is not bad at all. Clumsily introduced and never properly followed up, yes, but not stupid as a concept.

Well except for it single handedly destroying any level of supernatural mystery and mysticism within the SW universe. There was something incredibly powerful about the Force as a concept, something quite ancient and mythical, which tied into eastern mysticism and for me also Greek mythology and just made everyone's actions seem like they were part of a bigger plan and were chosen (by the gods themselves!).

But nah, its a bunch of bugs living inside you. It's all biology innit 

It was something that never needed explaining, and was all the worse for trying to explain or add any level of detail onto. SW for me works better in broad strokes and it works because it ties into some fundamental narratives and concepts that resonate with people. For me the mid chlorians was the biggest kick in the gut in TPM, even outside of Jar Jar.

[Rhom]

I always thought the midichlorian = mitochondrion was self evident.

Heck, I used to use it as an example when teaching the cell biology chapter in my anatomy class at the community college.