That’s been my traditional approach as well, but lately I’ve been assessing the potential for better solutions, hence keeping her on D’Qar 'til TLJ.
I don’t agree. The crawl does not explain the situation well. It was never clear to me whether the Trade Federation was for or against the trade route taxes, and the movie never specifies. It tells us the taxation is in dispute. That’s all.
They’re a large corporation literally named the Trade Federation. It feels implicit to me they’re against taxation.
And in the same video he says TPM should be judged in the context of having seen the OT first, but then also later admits that Lucas wanted this to be the first movie. It should be judged as the latter, which is where the movie becomes even worse, because it’s a bad introduction to Star Wars.
I genuinely don’t believe Lucas intended TPM to be viewed first and personally think that’s an incorrect viewing order for first time viewers (I prefer doing chronological rewatches).
Concerning the crawl discussions, I was wondering if you could mention the Trade Federation targetting Naboo for its valuable plasma. As is, it’d be a bit of a clumsy inclusion, but the plasma is there in the movie’s visual subtext, and I can’t help but feel more could be done with it. Granted, the crawl’s maybe not the place for that.
I watched Q2’s Episode 1 edit for the first time yesterday and it got me thinking: Could you make Maul the Sith that the Trade Federation is in league with? You’d have to darken his face in his hood, cut out frames in the Tatooine lightsaber duel that show his face off, maybe even shoot new footage of Maul alone on Tatooine to sell the idea, but it would be fun to redub his lines and make him more of an active villain in the movie. Plus that “but which was destroyed, the master or the apprentice” line hits harder because there’s another Sith still out there, especially if you’re not teasing that Palpatine’s behind it all too early.
I’ve actually always wanted to replace Sidious with Dooku. You can still keep him introducing Maul that way and it serves to give the Prequels a more unifying villain.
Agreed. Tipping Palpatine too early is one of the biggest issues I have with the prequels. Yes, it’s obvious for old-school fans, but it’d be cool if he was a mystery to new viewers, just as he is to the characters.
If you ask me, the Prequels are way better when you know Palpatine is Sidious. Otherwise he’s just this random politician we’re spending an awfully long time on. Seeing him build himself up as Emperor is far more entertaining.
For example, there was this idea floating around on this site about changing the motivation of the Naimodians to aquiring the energy technology of the Naboo in order to power a larger droid army.
Ah-ha! See this is what I was talking about when I said there’s potential in exploring the plasma subtext. If plasma powers the droids, that gives a clear motive for the Trade Federation to invade while also posing the ominous question of what they need this droid army for if it’s not just for invading Naboo.
It just occurred to me that Anakin’s scene in the World Between Worlds from Ahsoka could be spliced in when Rey is knocked out by Palpatine. I’ve said before that this would be a good place for a King’s Cross type scene like DotF had and this is certainly the material for it. Ideally, I’d have Rey speak with Luke and Ben speak with Anakin, but given the limited material it’d probably have be only Rey speaking with Anakin.
Do you have some examples of the bad arguments? I can see how a lot of it can be less-than-convincing for some.
I saw them once ages ago, I just remember thinking their arguments were a whole lotta nothing so of course none of them stuck in my head.
Nah, the Plinkett reviews had excellent presentation and idiotic arguments.
That’s bait. 😁
No, I can assure you I am dead serious.
They’ve been that way for a long time and it really pissed me off. They really just do not pay attention, and I think they do it because they think it’s funny and relatable to act confused. They would also do that a lot with information they’re not directly familiar with. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of certain dumb and obscure things, but the idea that Taskmaster was a popular Marvel villain, for example, gets played up into this crazy wild nerd concept for them to act baffled about. I don’t even care most of the time, it’s just annoying when they pretend like having some information or context is somehow beneath them.
Mr. Sunday Movies does it well where they have James as the one who knows everything (be it from researching it or existing knowledge) and explains it to Mason, and you get a funny back and forth out of that. Superhero Stuff You Should Know does a similar thing but they’re not particularly funny, just informative. If no one on the show knows what they’re talking about to fill in the others, it becomes a problem.
My original point with the RLM tangent was that the criticisms of the prequels were mostly correct. No one has really disagreed with that, just disliked the presentation.
Nah, the Plinkett reviews had excellent presentation and idiotic arguments.
That’s literally explicitly about Jedi and Sith.
Which ones never move?
Also, I’m pretty sure it means the High Republic stuff is on the way out in favor of more Skywalker-era stuff.
Honestly, I don’t think so. At least not permanently. Lucasfilm has been playing the long game with the High Republic, introducing it in books, then setting their preschool cartoon in it, and finally doing a live-action series in it. They’ll return to this period sooner or later.
If you’re remaking a character from the ground up anyway, wouldn’t you pick the spooky scary demon with a double-bladed saber over Christopher Lee in a cape?
Considering Christopher Lee is among my favourite actors … nope.
Okay, here’s a compromise: Christopher Lee in full Darth Maul makeup. 😆
And General Grievous… I mean… I realize that Star Wars was always basically a glorified Saturday morning cartoon for general audiences, but Grievous is just too much of a moustache-twirling Saturday morning cartoon villain.
That’s exactly why he works for me. He’s absurdly mustache-twirling and it makes him a joy to watch.
I remember the Rogue One review fondly for the only thing about it I actually remember which is the gag where they spliced Rebels Tarkin into the trailer.
If you’re remaking a character from the ground up anyway, wouldn’t you pick the spooky scary demon with a double-bladed saber over Christopher Lee in a cape?
The high point of prequel hate was the Red Letter Media reviews but those got dissected to death, and modern RLM can’t muster very much edge or anger anymore.
Honestly, I found the Mr. Plinkett reviews to be the same vapid, nitpicky nonsense as the modern 3 hour rants it spawned, with little of substance to say stretched over reviews longer than the movies themselves. Ironically, I really enjoy Half in the Bag.
Modern RLM is much more palatable to me
Well there we go. I’m not alone.
I agree with this but it won’t happen. The pre-1999 people like me are a vanishingly small minority. Maybe until some zoomers put out some 3 hour video essays about it, but that seems unlikely.
Wouldn’t it include the entire Prequel-hating side of the fandom?
I’m more bothered by how he kneecapped every other Prequel villain. Darth Maul could’ve been the next Darth Vader but he gets killed in the first movie. Asajj Ventress could’ve been a decent replacement but she herself got replaced by regular old Christopher Lee in a cape, who himself gets killed off immediately at the start of the next movie. General Grievous is actually great but showing up only in the last movie it’s too little too late. Compare all that to how Darth Vader and Kylo Ren get entire trilogies to develop and the difference is night and day.
Back in the day, all of this would be optioned out / syndicated to different networks!
Mandalorian-verse to primetime (ABC/Fox/etc)
Bad Batch + animateds (maybe even Ahsoka) to Cartoon Network
Andor to whichever premium cable channel
The Acolyte to Freeform, The CW or MTV
Skeleton Crew to ABC Family
Obi-Wan as Direct-to-Video miniseries/movie
etc, etc.
Suddenly it all makes sense.
They were handed a golden opportunity and a great IP on a silver platter for 4 billion with Star Wars. It’s all LucasFilm, the direction of Star Wars is run by Lucasfilm.
Correction: the insane deadlines on movies were Disney’s doing (Iger specifically), and they were arguably the biggest factor in sinking the Sequels and unambiguously the biggest factor in Solo bombing.
But also - Jon Favreau could just be a hack. (affectionate)
He did do the Lion King remake. That’s the absolute definition of selling out.
Is…that a good thing?
It’s hard to fault them for this when they’re at least trying something new. It’s definitely not routine Star Wars.
The Preservation section is where you should be posting this. This section is for general Star Wars discussion.
If I had to be earnest, I think Andor is the best Star Wars media probably ever produced? It’s perfect. So I will always be grateful for that.
But I think weirdly enough, Andor more than anything is what has allowed me to feel at peace with Star Wars? Like, I can put it to bed now. When I joke about ending it all, it’s coming from a real place of love and satisfaction. Not trying to be cynical.
The middling/bad nature of the prequels - and to a lesser extent, the sequels - has always left Star Wars an unresolved question in my mind. There’s potential here, I’d always imagined it, and I’ve always been looking for it - in books, in comics, in cartoons, the shows. I developed so much understanding of the universe along the way, to speculate about it like it was real, find interesting conceits to explore. I’ve never been fully satisfied with any one thing, and it only got harder as I got older, as I branched out and became a fan of other things.
But I always saved a place in my heart for Star Wars. So when the perfect cross section of where I am now as a film fan, and all this “language” I’ve honed over the years as a nerd came out - it was, idk, meaningful to me. I could “grow up” now, move on. Gilroy took every nerdy way I’ve thought about the Star Wars galaxy and put it into something I could genuinely enjoy as an adult. So removed from the canon being built on the other side of the franchise, so singular in its refraction of the OT story I already loved. And it was a Gilroy project through and through! As a big Michael Clayton-head, I couldn’t be more pleased.
I only came to this realization after not really feeling the subsequent releases (Mando, Ahsoka, Acolyte), but also not really feeling any kind of desire to “fix” them like I would. I wasn’t even disappointed. They just weren’t for me.
So Andor really changed the franchise for me, from an investment in its world and timeline, to a complete series of films I adore, a TV show that I love. I’ve gotten what I’ve always wanted from this whole thing and those movies aren’t going anywhere. And I think ultimately, even if it’s not Andor for you, that’s the end of the line for everyone at some point.
I am curious if there will ever come a point where the entire franchise gets a reboot. I couldn’t imagine such a thing a decade ago, but now…?
Is Star Wars still considered “too big” to do this? Too successful? Or is it a case of waiting for Lucas to die before such an idea could be entertained, morbid as that thought is?
It’s pretty much a matter of how much would be gained. The universe is huge so the only benefit would be redoing stories that have already been done with the same characters. They wouldn’t bother remaking bad stuff and remaking good stuff dooms them to impossible expectations. They already essentially remade the OT and we saw how that went. It also proves they don’t even need a reboot to remake something. There was a time where a PT remake would’ve been celebrated, but that ship has sailed. Also they already did a reboot when they ditched Legends.
I’m also, of the opinion that most of the recent stuff isn’t even salvageable through “editing”. Most of the content is so empty to begin with that there is not much to enjoy after all the tight cutting anyway.
I agree with this. Fanediting can only bring out the good stuff by cutting the bad. It can’t bring out something that isn’t there, and modern Star Wars is just hollow. And for the record I count Solo as part of that.
Oh yeah, the Dracula thing for Dooku is definitely obvious. Forgot about that. The Vader Frankenstein thing makes sense too.
Anakin: “I killed them. I killed them all. They’re dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I HATE THEM!”
Padme: “To be angry is to be human”.
That’s actually peak comedic timing.
It’s on the nose exposition like Captain Ric Obvious Olie explaining Coruscant to Anakin but with the added sin of being arguably fan service. It’s like “That one’s garbage.” but without any of the dramatic timing.
We all make mistakes. Sometimes the most obvious solution is a clumsy one.
I’ve never picked up on any Universal Monsters references in Star Wars or Indiana Jones for that matter.