Channel72

Anchorhead said:

Channel72 said:

I mean, officially it’s all canon. But you know it’s not.

Officially, it’s all make-believe.
I’ve never understood the power people hand over to Lucasfilm\Disney. Watch what you like, ignore the rest.

For the record, I’m not addressing you specifically. Just a general statement on how some people really struggle to reconcile the stories Lucas, Lucasfilm, and Disney, and various authors have created over the years.

It’s a universal thing - not specific to Lucasfilm. The idea of “canonical” stories versus apocryphal “fan-fiction” goes back to the Bible. In that case, “canonical content” implied official approval of the Church, as opposed to the Disney/Lucasfilm story-group - but it’s the same idea. Whether it be religious adherents, Tolkien fans, or Star Wars fans, people care about “canon” because they care about experiencing a shared (fictional) reality that other fans/followers can agree is “valid” and actually “happened” as part of the larger on-going story. If you throw out canon, you’re left with something bordering on solipsism - isolated individual fandoms.

Of course, I actually agree with you. The concept of “canon”, especially as applied to something everyone agrees is fictional, is kind of stupid. It helps in terms of creating a shared experience that has agreed-upon boundaries for the purpose of fan enjoyment and discussion. But the downside is that really shitty content always ends up in the canon. For me, I like to consider the OT as canonical, and Andor as “deutero-canonical” (to borrow a stupid term from the Catholic Church). Everything else is pseudepigrapha and fan-fiction.

^ K-2SO is one of the best new characters introduced in Disney Star Wars. He’s a different sort of comic relief than C-3PO. Most of the humor with C3PO is other characters reacting to him, especially Han Solo getting pissed and always telling C3PO to shut up. K2SO is more about sarcastic quips, often involving his superiority to humans. Some of his best lines:

“I find that answer vague and unconvincing.”

“Not me. I can survive in space.” - after the human crew members lament the possibility of dying in space.

I am pretty confident that Tony Gilroy will properly handle K2SO in Season 2.

Yoda can’t help the Rebels because he’s old and he’s basically just a teacher, not a warrior. The Prequels messed this up by portraying Yoda as a warrior.

As for stuff in the OT I don’t like:

Well, ANH and ESB are probably my favorite movies of all time - but they’re not perfect. ANH in particular has a lot of problems, which is understandable because it was the first movie, and a lot of “Star Wars lore” hadn’t yet been established. But I have to admit, the entire ending to ANH barely makes any sense:

• Leia takes the Falcon to Yavin IV, despite knowing they’re being tracked. She spent the entire movie - even endured torture - trying to keep the location of the Rebel base a secret. But at the end, after strongly suspecting they’re being tracked, she’s just like “well whatever hopefully it all works out.”
• You can argue she did this strategically, to lure Tarkin and the Death Star to Yavin IV, so the Rebels would have a chance to take it out - but from her perspective this would have been a completely insane gamble. She didn’t know if the Death Star plans would reveal any weakness, or even if they did, whether it was something they could discover and figure out how to exploit in the few hours they would have before the Death Star arrived.
• Even if this was supposed to be some insane strategic gamble on Leia’s part, they still make no effort to evacuate the base, like they do with Echo Base in Empire Strikes Back. The moment Leia arrived at Yavin, they should have initiated an evacuation of all personnel except for the fighter pilots necessary to attack the Death Star.
• And then even after they miraculously blow up the Death Star via Luke’s one-in-a-million shot, instead of immediately evacuating, they still don’t evacuate the base. Instead, they stay around for an award ceremony. It’s unclear why a fleet of Star Destroyers doesn’t immediately show up at Yavin and obliterate the base.

That last point is likely partially a result of ANH being the first movie. With only ANH in mind, we can perhaps infer that the Rebels didn’t evacuate Yavin IV because they figured it would take weeks or months for the nearest Star Destroyer to arrive at Yavin. (Later movies made this an impossible option, as hyperspace travel seems to take only a few hours most of the time - perhaps a few days at most.)

These issues with the Death Star assault likely occurred because originally, the ending to ANH was written without any “ticking clock” countdown as the Death Star comes into firing range of Yavin IV. Originally, the Death Star didn’t come to Yavin at all. Rather, the Rebels just someone know where the Death Star is (I guess it was still parked at Alderaan), and after discovering the weakness they fly X-wing squadrons to the Death Star. I think Marcia Lucas suggested that the Death Star should actually show up at Yavin, which introduces a much-needed “ticking clock”, so the Rebels have limited time and a dramatic count-down before the Death Star blows up Yavin. But unfortunately, this introduces the side problem that it makes Leia look incredibly reckless. I thought of a solution to this once that probably makes everything work, providing both the ticking clock and not making Leia look crazy - but I wouldn’t bother trying to implement a fan-edit because most people don’t have any problems with the ending to ANH.

Strict adherence to canon is probably difficult to maintain over long time periods. Star Wars has been around for almost 50 years, and is now split between two “official” continuities (Legends and Canon) - both of which are internally inconsistent. In another 50 years, there will probably be a more complicated set of different continuities, especially as technology eventually enables movie-quality fan-film productions or different studios get their hands on Star Wars IP rights.

Before Lucas sold to Disney, he was working on a more adult-themed live action Star Wars show called Underworld, which was set on lower Coruscant and would focus on various criminal elements. That premise sounded cool - but we’ll never know how it would have actually been implemented (the test footage looks raw but kind of awesome in my opinion).

Disney canceled that project, obviously. But it’s at least something to consider when weighing what we ultimately got with Disney against what an independent Lucasfilm may have done.

I mostly hate what Disney has done with Star Wars, especially with the Sequel Trilogy. But the thing is, Lucas also mostly sucks. The Prequels are as bad as the Disney crap, just in very different ways. So my feeling about whether or not Star Wars would be better off without Disney is sort of just “shrug?”. I mean yeah, Disney mostly sucks, but it’s not like Lucas was that great either.

The tragic reality is that the “good Star Wars movies” (basically Episode 4 and 5) were primarily flukes. They were not really representative of the kind of movies Lucas actually wanted to make. They were lightning in a bottle, benefitting from serendipitous casting and people like Ralph McQuarrie and John Williams, along with many other talented people who weren’t afraid to ignore Lucas’ more questionable inclinations. Even the way they made blockbuster movies back in 1981 is entirely different from the ultra-stream-lined digital production process of today, where directors have much less creative control over expensive special effects shots and lots of decisions are made by committee.

Superweapon VII said:

Part of me wants to object, but I never even finished TLJ, so who am I to claim otherwise?

I certainly agree ROTJ’s weak. I don’t even enjoy watching it anymore. Everything between the sail barge showdown and the lightsaber duel cures me of insomnia.

ROTJ starts to drag badly as soon as they get to Endor. The ending space battle is cool though. The Endor forest sequences are just really slow, long, and visually uninspiring, apart from the speeder bike chase. It’s mostly just Han and Leia walking through the woods in California (a very fan-filmy looking setting), they run into some useless Stormtroopers, they get separated, they spend like 10 years screwing around with Ewoks, they bumble around some more in the woods, etc. etc. And there’s no concurrent B-story line that breaks up all this Endor monotony, except for when we occasionally check in with Vader and the Emperor, both of whom are basically just waiting around.

NFBisms said:

Andor excluded of course, it’s so 70s right down to formally being the grimy thrillers Star Wars '77 would be analyzed as cultural antidote to. The writing is timeless, the mullets and moustaches, even the Niamos beachwear feel so in line with ANH’s time period. And don’t forget the junky analog tech! Machines are big and unwieldy; Dedra has to do what’s basically an archive search by asking an attendant to collect those files from giant tube computers. There are illegible glass interfaces of lines ala Yavin and Hoth, tons of tactile knobs and switches and buttons, etc. Modified AK-47s as the symbolic weapon of revolution circa the 70s is loaded imagery, just like the modified StGs and Mausers in the OT evoke WWII. I was hyped as hell when Cassian was sentenced to prison by a 70s credit card machine.

And it makes it thematic. Nemik has a whole right-to-repair bit about technology being lost or forgotten; one of the many ways Empire imposes its will is through centralized uniform technology, moving populace away from the different lines of communication and information they maybe once had access to. Seperatist projects like tactical droids with databases in their head, Techno Union touch screens, or Umbaran bubble fighters fall by the wayside in distinctly important ways. It’s great!

Andor is really something else. Yeah, it really captured that Star Wars 1977 vibe. That Imperial double-agent that Luthen meets in some grimy basement on Coruscant is like the quintessential 1970s Imperial bureaucrat. I imagine he says things like “data tapes” a lot. Also, the ISB headquarters reminded me of the sterile, all-white computer terminal room on the Nostromo in Alien, where Ripley discovers she’s getting screwed over by a soulless mega-corporation.

As for The Acolyte: I don’t know much about the High Republic, but from what little I’ve read, it’s supposed to depict an age of prosperity and exploration, where the status-quo institutions are praised as bastions of democracy and peaceful space exploration. It sounds like something spiritually more akin to classic Star Trek than Star Wars. I would think this should entail a completely unique aesthetic: something more grandiose, ceremonial and ornate, but also incorporating some sleek, sci-fi Star Trek-inspired visuals. I’m thinking diverse crews of humans/aliens wearing colorful robes/uniforms while commanding sleek, curvy and shiny Mon Calamari-esque star ships.

But… unfortunately the trailer looks like the same-old Filoni-vomit similar to Kenobi or Mandalorian Season 3. I’ll give this show a chance because at least it’s superficially trying to be something different. I mean, I never expected Andor to be so incredible, so you never know.

fmalover said:

Despite its detractors, the Canto Bight casino felt much more like a part of the SW universe than any other attempt Disney has made at replicating the OT look.

There, I said it.

I agree, and I hate The Last Jedi. I also like how all the aliens at Canto Bight were original designs - instead of the usual four or so Star Wars alien species from Mos Eisley that we see copy-pasted all over the galaxy.

Sirius said:

MORC said:

Cool, but are we going to ever see an animated series like this for OT characters?

Yeah, an animated series post-ROTJ would be great.

I mean, I’d love that. But (A) I’m not confident Disney would execute it well and (B) I get the sense that like 75% of Star Wars fans these days are mostly Prequel fans. The passionate OT fans are dwindling, because we’re all getting older. But it would be interesting to poll a randomly selected sample of Star Wars fans about this.

It’s weird to think about, but the OT is now such a small part of Star Wars. I get the sense the average Star Wars fan today is more enthusiastic about Prequel stuff like Anakin/Ahsoka/General Grievous, etc. Just this morning, right after taking my heart medication and preparing for my annual colonoscopy, I yelled at a bunch of Prequel fans who were hanging around on my lawn, polluting it with lots of lame CGI crap.

Disney+ show-runners obviously feel free to ignore the post-2014 “canon” books. After abolishing the EU, Disney initially claimed that all new Star Wars media (books, movies, shows, video games, etc.) would fit into one unified, consistent canon. But in practice, Disney behaves as if the old Lucasfilm tiered canon levels (G-canon, C-canon, etc.) still exist. Essentially this means all the books/comics/games are a lower-level canon that is only valid when it doesn’t contradict the higher-level canon of the TV shows and movies.

I mean, officially it’s all canon. But you know it’s not.

Pete Byrdie said:

(Even though destroying a planet completely is utter overkill anyway. But I view the Death Stars more as mobile governing centres than just superweapons.)

Yeah, I mean presumably all life on a planet could be destroyed with just a few Star Destroyers and an extended orbital bombardment. But various rationalizations for the Death Star have been proposed over the years, including (1) some planets had planetary defense shields that could withstand an extended bombardment from conventional Star Destroyers (e.g. Hoth), but could not withstand the Death Star superlaser; (2) the whole point of the Death Star was massive overkill for the purpose of psychological warfare; or (3) the Death Star can also serve as a “mobile capitol” and administrative/military center as you said. I think a combination of all 3 rationalizations works pretty well to justify the existence of the Death Star story-wise.

Interestingly, regarding point 3, in A New Hope Palpatine doesn’t seem to be interested in relocating to the Death Star, and is instead content to entrust command to Tarkin. (But that’s really because at the time ANH was written, Palpatine was an ambiguous political puppet and an insignificant background detail, rather than a powerful evil sorcerer/mastermind.)

If the original 1977 human Jabba was included in the film, I think he’d be the only human in the OT to speak with an accent that is not either American or British. (He had an Irish accent).

It’s interesting that the OT featured little variation in English-speaking human accents, but a lot of actual alien languages. Beginning with the Prequels and continuing throughout modern Disney Star Wars, we see a much wider variation in human accents (New Zealand, Scottish, etc.), but much less actual alien languages with sub-titles.

Pete Byrdie said:

Greedo talks as though Jabba has already given up on Han and has already put a significant price on his head.

Shortly after, Jabba and Han talk as though Greedo is just Jabba’s lackey and Jabba is looking for Han to pay up, threatening only then to put a bounty on his head.

I agree with all this. Of course, there are ways to rationalize it. Perhaps Greedo is exaggerating Jabba’s anger level in order to trick Han into handing over all the money he owes Jabba - so that Greedo can pocket it, perhaps after killing Han. Greedo tells Han “If you give [the money] to me, I might forget I found you.”

But I agree the whole thing is still very weird - the two scenes are redundant, and suggest entirely different threat levels from Jabba. But early drafts of Star Wars indicate these two scenes were NOT supposed to be mutually exclusive. Both the Greedo scene and the Jabba scene appear together in early drafts, indicating Lucas really did originally want to have both scenes. The best explanation is that Greedo was trying to pocket the money owed to Jabba from Han. His name is “Greedo” after all.

You know, a weird byproduct of the way Disney depicts the New Republic is some very interesting (and likely inadvertent) political messaging. The Prequels depicted (poorly) the failure of a democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, driven by a populace who chose to “elect” an Emperor because they favored security over personal freedom. The Republic failed to resolve the Separatist conflict, embraced a massive war, resulting in an unprecedented military build-up as prelude to a police state. The messaging here is pretty obvious: don’t give your leaders too much power for the sake of security, and be skeptical about the military-industrial complex. It was a pretty typical message for the Bush-era, post 9-11 environment the Prequels were released in.

A decade later, the Disney Sequels come out, followed by all these New Republic based Disney+ shows. And bizarrely, Disney seems to have inadvertently imbued their content with the opposite message. In the Sequels, the New Republic government defunds its military and stubbornly refuses to believe the First Order is a serious threat. Only Leia takes measures to fight the First Order, and she is proven to be right.

Then in the various New Republic Disney+ shows, we see a similar dynamic: New Republic politicians and bureaucrats are constantly skeptical about any military threats to the Republic for some reason. Only our heroes (and an offscreen Princess Leia) take reports of any national security threats seriously. And of course, our heroes (and offscreen Leia) are always proven correct.

So bizarrely, Disney+ Star Wars is giving off something like a neo-conservative pro-war, pro-national security message: “Make sure you maintain a strong military and stay alert for national security threats - enemies of the Republic are everywhere! Don’t be a peace-loving idiot like that Senator in the Ahsoka show - build up your military and increase your defense budget!” The messaging tells us we need a strong military-industrial complex, otherwise our old enemies will regroup and take us out.

Of course, I don’t think this messaging is intentional. It’s just a fluke stemming from poor planning beginning with Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams wanted to do a soft reboot of the OT, which meant resetting the Galaxy back to Empire vs. Rebels. So the New Republic had to go. (J.J. didn’t care how. Just blow it up!) But in order to justify how it was destroyed so easily, the writers concocted this whole backstory where the New Republic government dismantles its military and inexplicably doesn’t take any national security threats seriously. So Leia has to go off on her own and fund a “resistance”. This weird skepticism of national security threats is then carried over into the Disney+ shows.

Anyway, I just think this inadvertent pro-military messaging is really hilarious.

fmalover said:

Channel72 said:

Gandalf the Cyan said:

I can give Lucas a bit of slack for the lucklusterness of the PT and ROTJ, since he was ultimately just trying to make pulpy Flash Gordon-esque adventures, not high-art movies. ANH and ESB, however, were so good that they’re generally considered to have entered into the realm of high art. He then fell into a trap where his subsequent films were expected to be masterpieces as well, and I agree that he could have definitely done better on them. But since he really knocked it out of the park on his first 2 SW films, fans’ expectations were higher than his.

I don’t think this opinion is too unpopular, especially around this forum. ESB especially came out amazingly good, but went over budget and probably gave Lucas ulcers from the stress. He probably never intended to make Star Wars that good - but it ended up being that good anyway due to “lightning in a bottle” factors like Kasdan’s script, Kershner’s direction, and the natural chemistry between Hamill, Fisher and Ford.

Why does everyone ignore the fact that TESB was co-written by Leigh Brackett? They always make it seem like Lawrence Kasdan was the sole screenwriter.

Well, I definitely don’t ignore that. In fact, I posted a whole thread about Brackett’s screenplay a while back. But the reality is that close to 0% of Brackett’s draft made it into the final shooting script, so her role is often glossed over for the sake of brevity when discussing the development process of ESB.

In fact, I wouldn’t even necessarily say Brackett “co-wrote” ESB. That implies a collaboration between Brackett and Kasdan. In reality, Brackett independently wrote a completely different take on ESB based on Lucas’ plot outline. Lucas then rewrote the script from scratch apparently. It’s hard to say how many ideas in Lucas’ rewrite originated with Brackett. At face value, the later Kasdan scripts (which were based on Lucas’ rewrite) appear to be completely independent from Brackett.

Personally, I believe that elements of Brackett’s draft influenced the way Kasdan/Lucas thought about the story as they developed it. But that’s just my own speculation. The broad story elements - the plot, the locations, even some specific things like Luke being attacked by a snow monster - originated from Lucas’ plot outline, not Brackett’s draft. So it’s tough to identify specific ideas in the final script that unambiguously originated with Brackett. But going by Kasdan’s fourth draft and the final shooting script, pretty much 0% of Brackett’s original writing or dialogue carried over into later iterations.

NFBisms said:

Anakin / Darth Vader is purposefully re-contextualized as a kid, and I think there is some value in foregoing the fabled ‘Jedi Hunts’ (that were sure to have happened between canonical III and IV anyway) to examine what made the monster at earlier psychological and political points. He’s a failure of institution, radicalized by war, exploited by an abuser, abandoned by pedagogy. It’s a different flavor of tragedy than personal failure.

Anakin’s downfall should probably contain elements of both systemic failure and personal failure. But I think it should be more heavily weighted towards personal failure. Perhaps something like 40% systemic failure (failures of the Jedi as an institution, experiencing the horrors and injustices of war, etc.), and 60% personal failure (Anakin just being turned on by the allure of power, and his need for control in a chaotic Universe). The greater emphasis on personal failure is really required for Vader’s redemption in ROTJ to have real dramatic weight. It really needs to be Vader’s choice to embrace the Dark Side, and also his choice to save his son in ROTJ.

Gandalf the Cyan said:

I can give Lucas a bit of slack for the lucklusterness of the PT and ROTJ, since he was ultimately just trying to make pulpy Flash Gordon-esque adventures, not high-art movies. ANH and ESB, however, were so good that they’re generally considered to have entered into the realm of high art. He then fell into a trap where his subsequent films were expected to be masterpieces as well, and I agree that he could have definitely done better on them. But since he really knocked it out of the park on his first 2 SW films, fans’ expectations were higher than his.

I don’t think this opinion is too unpopular, especially around this forum. ESB especially came out amazingly good, but went over budget and probably gave Lucas ulcers from the stress. He probably never intended to make Star Wars that good - but it ended up being that good anyway due to “lightning in a bottle” factors like Kasdan’s script, Kershner’s direction, and the natural chemistry between Hamill, Fisher and Ford.

I was just randomly rewatching Return of the Jedi the other day on Disney+. I noticed that Disney added a content warning that said: “Tobacco use”. What the hell? Is there some scene I forgot where Palpatine is smoking a cigarette while relaxing on the DS2 or something? I’m not sure why this content warning is there, but I can only guess it must be because of that brief scene where Jabba is smoking some kind of space hookah pipe (which may not technically even be tobacco).

Because I’m a ridiculous nerd, I looked this up on Wookiepedia, and found this article: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hookah_pipe

Hilariously, the Canon version of the article doesn’t specify what exactly is being smoked in these Star Wars “hookah pipes”. But the Legends version of the article says it’s some kind of intoxicant called “Marcan herbs”, which is described as a “mild euphoric drug”. So the content warning should probably be more like “drug use” rather than “tobacco use”, if Marcan herbs are still canonical. Also, obviously I have no life.

EDIT: Just realized there’s also a shot of some Ewoks smoking pipes. I guess this movie does have lots of smoking in it.

timdiggerm said:

Channel72 said:

And I agree about Alderaan. I’ll never understand why Lucas created Naboo instead of just using Alderaan as one of the principal settings.

As much as I agree, I can’t help but feel that if he had done this, we’d be calling it the prime example of “universe shrinkage”

Well, we do say that overuse of Tatooine causes “universe shrinkage”, so I see your point. But I suspect that using Alderaan in the Prequels would be received mostly positively, mostly because we never actually saw Alderaan in the OT, and Ben Kenobi’s association with Alderaan as recounted in A New Hope sort of primed the audience to expect that Alderaan would have some key role in the Prequels.

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Sideburns of BoShek said:

I really liked FOTR at the time, and still prefer it to what we actually got. Though imagination and our projections in filling in the blanks often triumphs reality. I’d love to see an animation or comic book form of it, even fan made, but then is so much of that early “what if?” stuff I’d like to see, along the lines of “The Star Wars” comics from 2013/14.

A common element across most fan speculation about the Prequels is that our imaginations concocted stories almost entirely based on elements from the OT. Things like Alderaan, Captain Antilles, spice mines of Kessel, etc. But Lucas obviously wanted to make the Prequels unique, with new settings, new characters, and completely unexpected plot developments. And since it was Lucas’ creativity and imagination that created Star Wars in the first place, it seemed likely that he would come up with amazing new things that far surpassed the mediocre imagination of the average fan.

And indeed he did come up with lots of new, unexpected stuff. Things like Gungans, mysterious clone conspiracies, a “chosen one” prophecy, Qui-Gon Jinn, General Grievous, Dexter Jettster, pod racing, etc. I mean, who could have expected that Episode I would go in an entirely bizarre direction - telling a Kurosawa-influenced side story about two Jedi Knights protecting a young Queen from evil invaders - a story almost completely unrelated to anything that happens in the OT. Lucas obviously wanted to flex his creative muscles, defying fan expectations to such a degree that the whole thing came off as wacky instead of cool. In retrospect, the pre-Prequel fan expectations - derivative and straightforward as they often were - sound like a much better “rough sketch” for the Prequels than what we ultimately got.

Out of that list of unexpected stuff, the only thing that was universally liked and well handled (maybe) was podracing. “At least it did something different” is always a bad excuse for this kind of thing.

That’s not a bizarre direction for episode 1 at all. You’re not winning any points by namedropping “Kurosawa-influenced” by alluding to The Hidden Fortress when the original Star Wars in 1977 was already drawing on that setup so heavily. If anything the prequels ruined those elements by making the Jedi the FBI instead of samurai.

The developments weren’t that unexpected given that they are prequels and some of the material was already written. Everyone knew going in that Anakin would become Darth Vader, Obi Wan would be a main character and train Anakin, the Emperor would be a main character and corrupt Anakin, the Emperor and Vader would kill the Jedi minus Yoda and Obi Wan, Luke and Leia’s mother would be a main character and some kind of royalty, and Luke and Leia would be born and get hidden from Vader. It’s not really fair to any fans or writers to say that they had a failure of imagination for sticking to what was already well established, especially given that writers were explicitly prevented from detailing very much about the prequel era.

For Alderaan specifically, it makes much more sense for Alderaan to be a part of the story than for Anakin to be from Tatooine, which was something Lucas chose to do over. He did re-use a lot of ideas and imagery, it’s just that people nowadays credit that to Ring Theory or something rather than a lack of imagination or to fanservice.

I probably wasn’t clear enough, but that list of “unexpected stuff” was supposed to be a list of stupid things, not well-handled things. I mean, I included Dexter Jettser in there, which I thought made it obvious I was listing stupid stuff in the Prequels. The main point I wanted to make was that fan theories about the Prequels were way more derivative of the OT than Lucas’ actual Prequels, but that this was probably a good thing because, in practice, Lucas’ original ideas turned out to be so ridiculous/wacky that OT-derivative fan ideas probably would have been way better.

And I agree about Alderaan. I’ll never understand why Lucas created Naboo instead of just using Alderaan as one of the principal settings.

The “Darth Vader hunts down and terminates Jedi” movie sounds cool in concept, but would probably be hard to write in a compelling way. You’d need to establish the characters of Vader’s victims - and you can’t even use Obi-Wan as one of them. And as the third movie in a Trilogy, there’s just not really enough material that ties back into the pre-Vader story lines (stuff from Episode 1 and 2, like the Clone Wars, etc.) that also overlaps with a post-Vader Episode 3 murder-fest story-line. I think a story about Vader hunting down Jedi survivors would potentially be easier to implement as a series instead of a single movie, as it would necessarily require establishing new characters who are Vader’s victims before killing them off.

In my opinion, despite how cool it sounds on paper, watching Vader kill lots of Jedi actually wouldn’t be as interesting as it sounds. The real gold that could have been mined from the Prequels was the relationship/friendship between Anakin and Obi-Wan and Anakin’s heart-wrenching betrayal of his mentor and best friend. But bizarrely, that was barely explored in Lucas’ Prequels.

DZ-330 said:

Please define filler for me?

I mean, these streaming serialized shows usually have some overarching “season-level” plot or through-line that begins in the first episode and wraps up (or significantly advances) in the season finale. Individual episodes may advance the season-level plot to varying degrees. “Filler episodes” are episodes that barely advance the season-level plot, or don’t advance it at all. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even if an episode doesn’t advance the season-level plot, it can still be used for valuable character development.

But in practice, at least with Disney+ Star Wars, the non-plot-advancing episodes can be a bit frustrating, because of Disney’s weekly release schedule and the relatively few episodes per season. The show grabs your attention with dangling plot threads, but then filler episodes force you to wait yet another week for any additional plot advancement. Of course, this is subjective and context-dependent: filler episodes can be enjoyable, especially if the show isn’t structured around some urgent season-level plot. Arguably, before serialized story-telling become fashionable, most TV shows were just all “filler episodes” - and nobody complained. I didn’t really mind the “side quest” episodes back in Mandalorian Season 1 either, because the whole show had this laid back episodic vibe. But as a show progresses and the “season-level” plot becomes more well-defined and urgent, and starts merging with larger Star Wars narratives, the non-plot advancing episodes can really be a strain.

Also, with Bad Batch in particular, I think the season-level plot-advancing episodes are just orders of magnitude more compelling than the non-plot advancing ones. Season 3 so far arguably had one “filler” episode. It was okay, I guess. It was mostly the protagonists running away from giant tentacle monsters, for the sake of a very minor plot-advancing clue at the end. (Although they did introduce those young clones, so maybe that will be significant later.) Regardless, the plot-advancing episodes are just in an entirely different league in terms of quality.

So I just watched the first 3 Bad Batch season 3 episodes.

Despite being a cartoon aimed at kids, and despite having Dave Filoni’s name attached to it, there’s something about this show that sets it apart from the usual recent non-Andor live action Star Wars crap. Like… this show is actually written pretty competently, more often than not.

I’m so used to watching crap like the Mandalorian or whatever, where very little thought is put into plot mechanics or the logistics of how characters get from A to B. Characters often just appear wherever the plot needs them to be. Characters often conveniently forget previously established abilities. Characters often take actions that seem incoherent or questionable. Limitations are vague or undefined - characters often just “wing it” and everything works out, because the bad guys are impossibly stupid and the good guys are impossibly lucky.

But the Bad Batch is often written like an actual story with actual thought put into plot mechanics. There’s often proper set ups and pay-offs, characters know their limitations, and thought is often put into the logistics of the action scenes.

I won’t really spoil anything, but there’s an episode where a character has to escape from an Imperial facility. Sounds really cliché, right? We’ve seen this 1,000 times. I’m sure they just easily bonk some Stormtroopers on the head and walk out the front door, right? Well, no. In fact, a lot of time is spent setting up how well guarded and secure this facility is. They spend an entire episode just showing daily life in the facility. It really does seem pretty impossible to escape - it’s portrayed as a realistically secure facility with sentries, bio-scans and force fields limiting access to different areas of the facility. When the escape finally happens, the protagonists exploit a feature of the facility that was set up well beforehand and actually makes sense, and they also have help from someone with higher security clearance. It’s like the writers actually thought hard about this, and tried to come up with a way for the protagonists to escape without necessarily making Imperial security look completely ridiculous. (They should have just put on a trench-coat and a fake mustache and waltzed out the front door, like in the Kenobi show.)

I mean, the show isn’t even that good. It’s like a 6.5 out of 10, mostly. It’s certainly no Andor. It still suffers a bit from pointless filler episodes. But I’m just pleasantly surprised to see actual competent writing in Star Wars these days.

The Order 66 scenes in ROTS came off as emotionally sterile to me. A “montage” scene like that was also very much NOT compatible with typical Star Wars film language, which generally stays anchored to a POV character.

I always thought a better way to depict the purge would be to stay within the POV of one character. They did this reasonably well in Clone Wars Season 7, where we saw the purge from the narrow POV of one Jedi (Ahsoka) trapped on a starship, being pursued by Republic soldiers trying to kill her. I think ROTS should have done something like this, perhaps with Obi-Wan as the POV character. The full extent of the purge should have been implied, happening mostly off screen over a longer time period.

I have a theory about all this. Basically, the Star Wars content we see streaming now is not how Disney originally planned to use the IP back in the early 2010s after they acquired Lucasfilm. Disney was operating originally under a completely different “general direction” for Star Wars, which has been completely turned upside down in the subsequent years due to multiple unforeseen events.

Originally, the plan was to move on completely from the OT era and characters. The original actors were very old, and it was time to reboot and move on. The Sequels were to be a “swan song” for the OT heroes and the OT era in general, much like Star Trek: Generations was a final goodbye to Captain Kirk. The future was to be focused mostly on the Sequel era. (Evidence for this is heavy early investment in Sequel-era themed parks, merchandise and promotional materials). The idea was that the Sequel Trilogy would pave the way for decades of future Star Wars content set in the Sequel era and possibly starring Sequel Trilogy characters. Yes, there were also those “Star Wars story” movies set in the OT-era, like Rogue One, Solo, the aborted Boba Fett film, etc. but those were limited in scope, and the main thrust going forward would be to move on to the Sequel era. This would effectively skip the New Republic period entirely, because that period simply wasn’t relevant in light of the Sequels, where the New Republic was unceremoniously destroyed as an after-thought, along with Luke’s aborted Jedi order.

But then a few unexpected things happened:

1. Unlike TFA, which was resoundingly successful by any metric, TLJ was financially successful but caused widespread division among the vocal fan-base.
2. The Solo movie bombed financially, causing uncertainty about the franchise’s future.
3. A quaint little side-project called “The Mandalorian” was released on streaming, and became an unexpectedly enormous success and merchandise-sale driver.
4. Some idiot somewhere ate a bat or something, or possibly left the door open at some lab in China, causing a world-wide pandemic that killed millions and forced the survivors to stay at home and watch Disney+.

Given these unexpected developments, Disney began to heavily redirect resources into their fledgling streaming service, with the Mandalorian as the centerpiece. This brought Favreau/Filoni into the spotlight at Disney, as their low key side-story about a Boba Fett rip-off was now largely driving merchandising sales (thanks to a cute 50 year old Mogwai rip-off). Favreau/Filoni then used their newly acquired clout to steer the enormous ship that is Disney in the direction of a new era of interconnected streaming content with Din Djarin and Grogu as the centerpiece. By pure happenstance, this also placed the New Republic (earlier shrugged off with a giant red reboot beam) into the forefront of all new Star Wars content.

This led to the awkward situation where Disney inadvertently became hyper-focused on the time period directly following ROTJ - the one era where we’d expect to see Luke, Lando, Leia and Han living out our childhood EU dream story-lines (including of course the creation of Luke’s new Jedi Order). But unfortunately, Disney (A) has no real plan (or perhaps even ability) to bring these characters back as the focus of their own stories, and (B) has already resigned these characters to the dustbin of history by having them all die in increasingly depressing ways throughout the Sequel Trilogy, to pave the way for newly rebooted Sequel-era counterpart characters. So now we’re left with this bizarre situation where we increasingly delve into the politics of the New Republic right after ROTJ, but Luke and Leia are almost entirely off-screen and barely involved in the ongoing struggles of the government they fought so hard to establish. On top of this, there’s almost no point in seeing what they’re up to anyway, because as interesting as Luke’s new Jedi Order might have once seemed, we already know it goes up in flames and has no lasting impact. It’s a narrative dead-end, so the writers have to just clumsily tip-toe around the OT heroes when writing stories set in the New Republic.

Basically, the New Republic, and all the OT characters associated with it, have already been thoroughly rebooted. We were never meant to go back and revisit them. But now that unforeseen economic/cultural circumstances have pushed Disney to revisit this era, we’ve ended up with some very weird story-telling parameters indeed. We’re back in the New Republic, but all the OT characters seem to be ghosts.

— double post