This movie is totally 100% definitely happening with absolutely ZERO chance of ever being cancelled. Seriously and definitely totally 100% happening, definitely.
Oh shit, I just noticed I actually care about a Star Wars product coming out soon. That doesn’t happen too often these days.
It’s interesting how Ben Kenobi’s (brief) mentorship with Luke centered mostly around the lightsaber and how it could be used in conjunction with the Force. But then in the next movie, Yoda never even talks about lightsabers, except to tell Luke he doesn’t need his saber in the cave. I would conjecture that this was a creative decision resulting from a variety of factors that break down as follows: 90% practical limitations restricting how the Yoda puppet could move convincingly, 10% a thematic decision consistent with Yoda’s philosophy of self defense.
Once the practical limitation was removed, Yoda immediately started doing flips and shit while bouncing off walls with a mini glow stick.
I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.
Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.
Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.
There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.
I mean, I think most people would interpret the word “Messiah” simply to refer generically to the idea of a “Chosen One” who is prophesied to appear at some designated time and play a pivotal role in overthrowing an oppressor. The Jewish concept in the OT (Old Testament, not Original Trilogy 😉) is the origin of the idea, yes, and is also a straightforward implementation of the concept, even though mainstream Judaism teaches the Messiah’s coming is a future event. The concept obviously morphed over the years, going from a prophesied savior from the Romans in the first century modeled after the O.G. King David (with various historical claimants appearing in the first century and failing badly) to various Rabbinical reinterpretations over the years.
The Christian Messiah is a Rian Johnson style “twist” on the original Jewish Messiah concept. Paul of Tarsus was like: “Oh, you thought your Messiah would come and overthrow the Romans with his laser sword? Try again, idiots. Instead, your Messiah will appear briefly and provide free healthcare to a few random people, deliver some cool parables and magic tricks, then get arrested and killed, but then rise from the grave, thus recontextualizing all Old Testament Messianic prophecy as part of an eschatological continuum beginning with Original Sin and culminating in a “second coming” event, where the Messiah will return upgraded with new super-powers and kick lots of ass, rather than a boring Maccabee-style Jewish Warrior King who implausibly defeats Tiberius Caesar. Expectations subverted.”
If you are a Christian, it isn’t a twist on the concept. It’s the original concept that the Jews didn’t understand because they weren’t really paying attention to the prophecies.
Yeah, I understand that. Stuff like Isaiah 53 and all that. I wouldn’t say the Jews weren’t paying attention - I mean, the Rabbis analyzed all this stuff for a living for thousands of years. They just interpreted most of the Messianic prophecies as referring to the nation of Israel collectively, or to an unknown future descendant of David, rather than the specific Messiah from Nazareth named Jesus/Yeshua. The Jewish interpretation is at least more straightforward in the sense that it assumes a straightforward political coup/revolution and doesn’t require the Messiah to first die, rise from the dead, then come back to finish the job after an indeterminate number of centuries (and also doesn’t associate the Messiah with an entirely new covenant doing away with the old Laws or at least “spiritualizing” their interpretation - although some Biblical prophecies hint at this). On the other hand, the Jewish interpretation arguably doesn’t handle certain Biblical prophecies as well, mostly the ones presumably describing a Messianic figure as somebody who is meek and must suffer for the sins of Israel.
Anyway, in popular culture, a Messiah is a way more flexible concept and usually reduces to a generic “Chosen One” like in the Matrix or Harry Potter.
The professional rabbis didn’t exist until after the return from Babylon around 500 BC. Before that there were actual prophets, and Jesus refers to them murdering a prophet named Zacharias some time in the interim before the New Testament.
Yeah but those professional rabbis had already been around for centuries by the time Jesus lived, so presumably they already had fairly well-developed ideas about how to identify the Messiah when he finally arrives. Although, obviously, there were different schools of thought (Pharisee vs. Sadducee vs. Essene, etc.) about all this. According to the Book of Acts, a high-ranking Sanhedrin member even entertained the possibility that Jesus was actually legitimately the Messiah.
But arguably, the very idea of a Messiah would be mostly meaningless until at least the 6th century BC when the inhabitants of Judea were conquered and exiled to Babylon and thereafter forced to live under foreign rule. Until that point, the nation of Israel (or at least the Southernmost two tribes) had been independent for centuries, so there would be nothing to be “saved from” that would cause the idea of a Messiah to emerge.
That’s why they call it a Chosen One and not a Messiah. Messiah is a very particular cultural concept and really the only other big place you would find it is in Dune. Dune also plays fast and loose with various other religious concepts, mainly from Islam, but it’s done well and it makes sense given that it’s a mishmash of cultural elements they inherited from 10,000 years of human history.
IIRC, the actual original meaning of Messiah was just any King, any “anointed one” literally, and was used in the Old Testament to refer to “ordinary” historical kings like David’s friend-turned-enemy Saul, and even to refer to some pagan rulers like Cyrus the Great. Come to think of it, I don’t remember off hand if any of the Old Testament prophecies actually even use the word “Messiah” - but I haven’t studied this stuff for a while, so I might be wrong. I remember at least that some of the more obviously Messianic prophecies (in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, etc.) used more obscure terminology like “Son of Man” (also a later epithet for Jesus which likely just meant something like “a normal human” in Hebrew) to refer to the Messiah - but the gist of all these prophecies was basically “your life sucks now because a foreign power rules over you, and it’s your fault because you worshiped Baal and other pagan gods, but don’t worry because some day you’ll return home and your country and way of life will be restored”.
Fast forward to the 1st century AD when Jesus lived, and it seems the Pharisees (and also Jesus’ own disciples) had some pretty well-developed ideas about what a Jewish Messiah should bring to the table, and presumably it involved (at the very least) overthrowing the Roman occupation in Judea. They even already had a historical model to base this on: the model of Judas and Simon Maccabee who successfully overthrew a previous occupying foreign imperial power and gained independence for Israel about 200 years before Jesus was born.
Yeah but that kind of thing doesn’t exist before TPM. And the idea of the saber was heavy or hard to control unless they concentrated was a behind the scenes idea from the first movie, right?
I’m inclined to agree with you that the idea of precognition in lightsaber combat did not necessarily exist explicitly in Star Wars prior to TPM. But even in A New Hope, you have Luke using the Force to deflect laser bolts with a lightsaber. I don’t know if that implies that ALL lightsaber combat generally entails Force usage for precognition - but for whatever reason that’s the idea I always had in my head, even before the Prequels.
Frustratingly, there are no scenes on Dagobah involving lightsaber training, although there are remnants of this in a deleted scene. It’s unclear what lesson was taught in that scene and there doesn’t seem to be any trace in early drafts of the script either. It would have been interesting to hear Yoda’s ideas about lightsaber combat circa 1980.
What’s so ironic is that there is a lot of evidence that the primary reason Luke Skywalker had such limited percentage of screen-time in the Sequels, compared to say, the legacy characters in Cobra Kai, is because the screenwriters initially feared that the legacy characters would absolutely overshadow all the new characters (at least in the case of Luke). The screenwriters (presumably including Lawrence Kasdan himself?) seemed to just outright throw up their hands and admit they simply weren’t skilled enough as screen-writers to write a story that included both legacy and new characters side-by-side without the legacy characters completely overshadowing the new ones.
When I first saw TFA in the theater, I enjoyed very much the chemistry between Finn and Poe and also between Finn and Rey. The new characters and actors in the Sequels weren’t bad at all. Finn especially was a novel and interesting character concept. The problem was ENTIRELY 100% in the screen-writing.
Anyway, as another counter-factual to the Sequel Trilogy (but a VERY controversial one), I’d offer Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Now hear me out on this for a second. I know the movie mostly sucks. But the way the movie introduced a new character (Indy’s son Mutt) to inherit the legacy of Indiana Jones was arguably handled correctly. They put Indy in an absentee father role - similar to Sean Connery in The Last Crusade - and showed how Indy and Mutt had a lot to learn from each other. The movie did a good job depicting Mutt’s unfolding relationship with Indy, who had just as much screen-time (or more) as Mutt. Of course, the movie turned out to suck anyway, mostly for plot-related reasons, but the handling of a new character introduced to inherit the legacy of a beloved aging character was arguably done correctly and skillfully, or at least was on the right track conceptually.
Crystal Skull could have served as the archetypal example of “new character replacing beloved aging legacy character” done more or less competently - and also serve as a much closer analogy than any Netflix series for an illustrative comparison with the Star Wars Sequels - if only the rest of the movie wasn’t ruined by such a lackluster and poorly conceived plot.
Anyway, say what will you will about George Lucas - and certainly, I doubt his weird “Midichlorian Micro-adventure” Sequel Trilogy would have been particularly good - but I’m convinced that Lucas at the very least would have handled the interplay between legacy characters and new characters a lot better than Disney did. Disney arguably also had ulterior motivation to promote the new characters at the expense of legacy ones, because Disney had already invested billions into theme parks, toys and promotional materials based around Sequel Trilogy locations and characters, gambling that a new Sequel Trilogy fan-base would soon grow to eclipse the aging Gen-X/Millennial fan-base of the Original Trilogy. This business decision still seems clinically insane to me, but then again I’m not a CEO so what do I know? But after paying 4 billion USD for Star Wars, why the hell would you risk alienating the demographic in your fan base with the most disposable income to buy Star Wars shit? I guess they assumed TFA’s “retro” aesthetic would be sufficient to keep the older fans - and it was, for a time. To be fair, George Lucas took a similar risk when marketing the Prequels to a new generation, but his gamble actually paid off financially, and the Prequel characters arguably weren’t really “inheriting” the legacy of any OT characters in the same way. George Lucas also probably has much better business instincts than Bob Iger or Kathleen Kennedy, and probably could have easily explained to them that a character like “Jake Skywalker” is not likely to sell too many action figures, and that Star Wars’ historical profitability had just as much to do with new iconic starship designs and nerdy world-building materials driving merchandise sales for decades after the release of the films as it did with box-office revenue and VHS/DVD purchases.
Just thought I would share this: I stumbled upon this old episode of David Letterman from 1980, where he interviews Isaac Asimov. At one point (timestamp 2:56) Letterman asks Asimov if he saw Empire Strikes Back (which had just come out that year), and Asimov says “I enjoyed Empire Strikes Back so much that when they finished it I jumped up in my seat and yelled ‘start the third part!’”
Some random observations I find interesting:
I hate Messianic prophecies in general, or the very idea of a Messiah, because it encourages the idea that all hope for the future is dependent on one dude, instead of like, the group effort that is required in real life.
Granted, Star Wars doesn’t incorporate a true Messiah into the mythology. Vader is more like a very round-about Messiah who only saves the Universe after he fucks over the entire Universe. So it’s at least a twist on the idea of a Messiah, kind of like Dune. But I still don’t like it, because it shrinks the Universe by elevating one guy to cosmic significance. At one point, Luke was just a random farmboy and Vader was just a cyborg SS officer carrying out the will of his government. There was a backstory intertwining the two of them, but it was personal, not a matter of cosmic importance.
Nothing is really a “true Messiah” because the Messiah is from Judaism, and (except for Messianic Jews) believe that the Messiah hasn’t come yet. The actual Messiah according to Christianity was of course Jesus Christ, who was a perfect being and the only possible person who could save humanity from sin and death. Jesus specifically rejected the people who wanted him to be like the conquering hero Messiah we have in fiction. He repeatedly told everyone to repent and get their own lives in order, and didn’t fulfill their fantasies of overthrowing the Romans or making himself king in a mortal sense.
There aren’t any messiahs, chosen ones, etc. in fiction who are anything close to that. It’s just a phrase people throw around like destiny or prophecy. The concept has a very specific real world context that often gets tossed out the window.
I mean, I think most people would interpret the word “Messiah” simply to refer generically to the idea of a “Chosen One” who is prophesied to appear at some designated time and play a pivotal role in overthrowing an oppressor. The Jewish concept in the OT (Old Testament, not Original Trilogy 😉) is the origin of the idea, yes, and is also a straightforward implementation of the concept, even though mainstream Judaism teaches the Messiah’s coming is a future event. The concept obviously morphed over the years, going from a prophesied savior from the Romans in the first century modeled after the O.G. King David (with various historical claimants appearing in the first century and failing badly) to various Rabbinical reinterpretations over the years.
The Christian Messiah is a Rian Johnson style “twist” on the original Jewish Messiah concept. Paul of Tarsus was like: “Oh, you thought your Messiah would come and overthrow the Romans with his laser sword? Try again, idiots. Instead, your Messiah will appear briefly and provide free healthcare to a few random people, deliver some cool parables and magic tricks, then get arrested and killed, but then rise from the grave, thus recontextualizing all Old Testament Messianic prophecy as part of an eschatological continuum beginning with Original Sin and culminating in a “second coming” event, where the Messiah will return upgraded with new super-powers and kick lots of ass, rather than a boring Maccabee-style Jewish Warrior King who implausibly defeats Tiberius Caesar. Expectations subverted.”
If you are a Christian, it isn’t a twist on the concept. It’s the original concept that the Jews didn’t understand because they weren’t really paying attention to the prophecies.
Yeah, I understand that. Stuff like Isaiah 53 and all that. I wouldn’t say the Jews weren’t paying attention - I mean, the Rabbis analyzed all this stuff for a living for thousands of years. They just interpreted most of the Messianic prophecies as referring to the nation of Israel collectively, or to an unknown future descendant of David, rather than the specific Messiah from Nazareth named Jesus/Yeshua. The Jewish interpretation is at least more straightforward in the sense that it assumes a straightforward political coup/revolution and doesn’t require the Messiah to first die, rise from the dead, then come back to finish the job after an indeterminate number of centuries (and also doesn’t associate the Messiah with an entirely new covenant doing away with the old Laws or at least “spiritualizing” their interpretation - although some Biblical prophecies hint at this). On the other hand, the Jewish interpretation arguably doesn’t handle certain Biblical prophecies as well, mostly the ones presumably describing a Messianic figure as somebody who is meek and must suffer for the sins of Israel.
Anyway, in popular culture, a Messiah is a way more flexible concept and usually reduces to a generic “Chosen One” like in the Matrix or Harry Potter.
- Canto Bight
Bare with me. This is by far the most memorable world introduced in the ST. Everybody remembers it, and its name, from TLJ. Mostly because everyone was complaining about it.
I agree. I hate TLJ, but the idea of a sci-fi Casino is pretty cool. It could have worked in a different context. I think one of the Thrawn books or at least something in the EU had a similar concept, except it was more like a sci-fi luxury cruiseliner in space, with gambling (unless I’m totally remembering this incorrectly).
Well I mean Yoda only said it was the Force that should never be used to attack. You could argue that the unruly bar flies being chopped just with a weapon was fine.
I guess. I always imagined that using a lightsaber required constant usage of the Force, using precognition to know where to position the blade, resulting in those famous Jedi reflexes.
I agree the Jedi should use lightsabers more sparingly. Although, the “defense only” thing is hard to salvage even with the OT alone, given that Kenobi was supposed to be a war-time General. Even in A New Hope, Kenobi violently murders those two alien thugs in the Cantina. It was self-defense, obviously, but Kenobi could have handled them in some non-lethal manner, presumably. I mean, he could have tried to “mind trick” them into leaving Luke alone, for example.
This reveals that the Jedi underwent some conceptual evolution even between 1977 and 1980, because in Empire Strikes Back the Jedi as described by Yoda are much closer to a “defense-only” Zen Buddhist school of thought, whereas Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode 4 had at least some traces of the stereotypical haughty Samurai who doesn’t hesitate to whip out a katana sword and put some unruly peasants in their place.
In practice, George Lucas sort of side-stepped the whole issue in the Prequels by making all the “bad guy minions” to be droids whom the Jedi can freely stab and slice to pieces while bypassing ethical dilemmas and undesirable MPAA ratings.
But it’s just so fun to whine about.
It sounds absolutely miserable for the people who don’t like the movies. What’s wrong with just ignoring media you dislike, just pretending it never happened? Hell, Legends is right there as a different canon to follow.
Shrug. It’s just an aspect of certain human personalities. Some people, myself included, just enjoy exploring and discussing the various reasons that explain why some piece of media sucks. The Prequels used to be one of the primary targets for discussions like these, but that honor has now been passed along to the Sequels.
Of course, like 95% of everything sucks. Most things that suck are not worth discussing. But some things that suck are more interesting to talk about, because they’re connected to things that don’t suck - which evokes a sense of lost opportunity. This is why the suckiness of the Prequels and Sequels is fascinating to me.
I find it hilarious and highly fallacious how people think the message of this film is “let the past die,” as if that was some deep revelatory insight, when Kylo was LITERALLY referring to murdering his own father. Because that was his response to Rey when she asked why he killed his father. So for people to think this kill the past nonsense is great are literally advocating for murdering your parents. Very disturbing.
I think “let the past die” actually IS a message or theme of the film. Yes, Kylo - the villain of the film - says this line, and yes, in context, Kylo is making a point building upon the fact that he recently killed his own father. But a similar message is also expressed by the “good guy” character of Yoda. Yoda capriciously burns down the Jedi library - a repository of past knowledge - and tells Luke that Rey must move beyond the past Jedi masters by learning from their mistakes. Moving on from the past is certainly a theme of the movie, and the meta-commentary woven into the script suggests the message is something like “we need to move beyond the tropes of old Star Wars movies and embrace something new”. This message is also consistent with the actual events of the film, wherein Rey learns almost nothing from Luke (who represents “the past”) except what NOT to do - i.e. learning from past mistakes or failures.
The fact that Kylo Ren (a bad guy) and Yoda (a good guy) preach equivalent or thematically congruent messages is simply another result of the thematic dissonance in TLJ. (At best, and giving TONS of benefit of the doubt to this stupid film, perhaps Rian was trying to juxtapose “healthy” ways of moving on from the past with “unhealthy” ways of doing so.) Also, Kylo’s line “let the past die” is not necessarily ONLY referring to the murder of Han Solo, but in context, it refers also to Rey’s need to let go of past expectations built on false beliefs about her parents. So there is clearly at least SOME wisdom in what Kylo tells her. But the whole thing is a thematic mess that needed several additional rewrites.
The trailer looks kind of meh… but who cares? Tony Gilroy has already proven he knows what he’s doing. If anyone deserves some benefit of the doubt, it’s Gilroy, for producing probably the single best piece of Star Wars content since 1981.
Can he pull off another miracle with Season 2? Probably.
Han dies alone on a bridge
The same thing happened to Captain Kirk. Why do these legendary characters keep falling off bridges?
Whining about The Last Jedi is still a big red flag for me. So what, a bad movie came out that didn’t do what you wanted with a character? Move on with your life and just never acknowledge it.
But it’s just so fun to whine about.
Anyway, after watching that cool victory party on Endor back in the 80s, I was totally looking forward to seeing my favorite trio of characters again 40 years later. It’s so awesome how the new Republic they fought so hard to establish was summarily blown up as an afterthought, and all three OT characters basically accomplished nothing and died in increasingly pointless and depressing ways.
The only problem is that Luke’s death in TLJ was probably slightly too meaningful. Instead of dying from over-exertion after an astral projection, it would have been WAY cooler if Luke just collapsed randomly one day from coronary artery disease while he was out fishing.
^ I was introduced to the Klingons mostly through their TNG/DS9 depiction as well. But I always found the “space viking” thing a bit too reductive. I mean sometimes it gets really ridiculous, like there’s an episode of DS9 where Klingon soldiers use Bat’leths instead of disruptors during an actual military battle.
But on the other hand, the TOS/TOS-movie Klingons didn’t exactly have a well-defined culture beyond “generic vaguely Eastern stand-in for the USSR/China”, valuing collectivism over individuality. The TOS writers (I think it was Gene Coon) said that the Klingons were based on the USSR and China, but also a little bit on Imperial Japan during WW2, and the original script for the TOS episode “Errand of Mercy” explicitly refers to the Klingons as looking like “Orientals”. I think it was this strain of their thematic DNA - based on Imperial Japan - that evolved into the “Space Viking”/Samurai-esque honor-based warrior culture of the TNG era. The USSR metaphor was kind of obsolete after 1991 (I still blame Gorbachev for the Praxis disaster), but Samurai/Space Vikings can be cool in any era.
I generally accept DS9 as canon, though not many of the elements I dislike about TNG that carried over, such as the depiction of Klingons. I’m not sure if I accept Jadzia’s death and Ezri Dax’s existence as canon.
The TNG depiction of Klingons is just a slight variation on the depiction of Klingons in The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country. (Except they no longer have pink blood in the 24th century I guess, and the honor culture thing gets cranked up to 11.)
I’d say the TNG Klingons are flanderized versions of the TOS film Klingons. Also TUC had the most well-rounded depiction of the Klingons.
Yeah, in the 1980s the Klingons still had some USSR in their DNA, but the honor-based warrior culture was suggested by things like, for example, the impulsive glory-seeking behavior of that idiot Klingon captain in Star Trek 5. One of the ironies of Klingon thematic evolution over the years is that we ended up with a warrior race that values honor and dying in battle but also is particularly well known for their (cowardly) cloaking technology. That thematic incongruity probably dates back to TOS, when Klingons were depicted as using Romulan technology due to budgetary limits at the time probably.
On an unrelated note, I was recently watching a DS9 episode where they’re in the Mirror Universe aboard Terok Nor, the Cardassian name for DS9. In the Mirror Universe the station is still a Cardassian station, because the Federation doesn’t exist. But there’s this one point where Evil Kira talks to the computer, and the computer voice still sounds like Lwaxana Troi, instead of like, some Cardassian voice. That irritated me so much I actually wrote this post about it.
It’s just so hard to take Star Wars seriously if Rise of Skywalker is actually a thing that happened. Where do you even go after “secret fleet of 10,000 Star Destroyer Death Stars” and “Palpatine magically returns and electrocutes the sky”?? I can’t take it seriously after that because we are now firmly in the Spaceballs Universe and only Mel Brooks should be allowed to direct from now on.
I generally accept DS9 as canon, though not many of the elements I dislike about TNG that carried over, such as the depiction of Klingons. I’m not sure if I accept Jadzia’s death and Ezri Dax’s existence as canon.
The TNG depiction of Klingons is just a slight variation on the depiction of Klingons in The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country. (Except they no longer have pink blood in the 24th century I guess, and the honor culture thing gets cranked up to 11.)
As for my personal canon: TOS, TNG, DS9, the original movies (1 thru 6), and that’s it. Maybe some of the Peter David TNG novels. But none of the TNG films, no Voyager, no Enterprise, certainly no J.J. Abrams nonsense, and none of the newer post-Abrams Star Trek series either.
I’d probably want to make some edits also. It’s a little hard to accept stories like Star Trek 4 where time travel is something anyone with a starship can do at any time whenever they feel like it. I mean, that really creates a very sloppy Universe. In fact, I’d like to remove most time travel episodes, because most of them are written as comedies anyway. But things like “Cause and Effect” and “All Good Things” are fine.
I’d also like a better resolution for Gul Dukat’s story arc than just ending up as a clinically insane Satan worshiper. I get that this was thematically consistent as an antithesis to Sisko’s role as the Emissary, but whatever. How awesome would it be if instead they had a multi-episode arc depicting Gul Dukat on trial on Bajor for war crimes, like the Nuremberg trials? (And then like one of the regular cast-members could end up somehow having to be his defense lawyer.) Instead, the writers had him fuck around with some wormhole demons and then fall into a volcano or something.
To be honest, even in the original theatrical release, where Han does the obviously correct thing by shooting first, the scene is still a little wonky.
It’s not entirely clear if Greedo approached Han initially with the intention of killing him. Presumably, Greedo didn’t necessarily plan to kill Han at first, but just wanted to turn him over to Jabba and collect the reward money. The dialogue confirms this explicitly. After Han says “Even I get boarded sometimes. Do you think I had a choice?”, Greedo responds by saying “You can tell that to Jabba. He may only take your ship.”
Okay, so it’s pretty clear that Greedo isn’t interested in killing Han at first, but rather seems to want to force him at gunpoint to walk over to see Jabba, I guess. But then Han says “Over my dead body”. Apparently this makes Greedo change his mind for some reason and decide to kill Han instead. So now even in the original, non-special edition version, Han essentially kills Greedo in self-defense, because Greedo directly told Han that “I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time.”
This isn’t necessarily the clearest of death threats (maybe Greedo meant something more like “I can hardly wait to kill you after Jabba is done with you”.) But it would certainly be reasonable for Han to interpret this line as an imminent death threat.
Assuming Greedo did intend to kill Han imminently, it’s kind of weird that Greedo suddenly switched from “You can tell that to Jabba” to “I’ve been looking forward to killing you” simply because Han objected to the idea of Jabba taking his ship (which has nothing to do with Greedo). I guess Greedo maybe just lost patience and was like “fuck it this guy isn’t cooperating I’ll just kill him”.
My preference for this scene would be to write it so that Han clearly and unambiguously murders Greedo in cold blood just to get away from him. After Han says “Over my dead body”, Greedo should just say “that’s the idea” (meaning Jabba will probably kill Han), and then Han should just shoot Greedo under the table. But having Greedo say the additional line “I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time” opens up the possibility that Han acted in self defense, even without the Special Edition weirdness.
So having all the main characters be men instead of women is “stepping out of gender politics”?
To be fair, Disney can’t write a single good female character to save their life. The only characters that have had any staying power are all male characters: Cassian, Din, and Grogu.
Mon Mothma and Dedra Meero are both incredibly written female characters. They’re more interesting than any of the male characters in Andor, except probably for Luthen. But I agree these are exceptions or outliers among mostly crappy Disney Star Wars productions.
We’ll never see another Mulholland Drive. And now there’s nobody alive who knows what it’s actually really about
It will never cross the uncanny valley
If by never you mean by 2027 or something, then yeah, probably.
On a forum like this where everyone else is also a Star Wars nerd, I say A New Hope, because that is the clearest possible way to refer to this movie. When talking to normal people, I just say “the original Star Wars” or “Star Wars 1977” or something like that.
Every director has their style and eccentricities. I just don’t get how people don’t notice the same issues in his earlier films maybe because they are better movies?
Or maybe he had help with the screenplays.
The whole digital cinema and we’ll fake it in cgi and fix it in post, is almost every major comic book or fantasy or science fiction film now.
Lucas had some help writing the Prequels also - people exaggerate when they claim that Lucas wrote the Prequels entirely by himself. However, it is true that Lucas had way more help writing the Original Trilogy, obviously, where for ESB and ROTJ he mostly wrote plot outlines or very early drafts and then had other people flesh out the actual script.
Also, the Original Trilogy truly had ground-breaking special effects for the time. Nobody had seen anything remotely like the Death Star trench run, for example, with moving star fields and dog fights in space. And while the Prequels certainly had a similar effect in terms of revolutionizing the VFX industry (Jar Jar was the first completely CGI character I think) and pushing digital film-making into the mainstream, the overall impact and “wow factor” was much less pronounced from the perspective of the average audience member.
I mean, I’m fairly old, so I remember experiencing various ground-breaking movies as they were released over the past 30 years. I remember being blown-away by new special-effects technology precisely three times in my life, and the Star Wars Prequels were not one of those three times. Those three times were Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and the portrayal of Gollum in Lord of the Rings. I haven’t seen anything else that truly seemed revolutionary or game-changing to me, except possibly AI Luke Skywalker in the Boba Fett show a few years ago. But the Prequels never stood out to me as particularly revolutionary in terms of visual effects, even though, factually speaking, I realize they had a dramatic impact in terms of pushing Hollywood in general towards digital film-making, paving the way for all the Marvel stuff we have now. Yet even in 1999 when the effects in Phantom Menace truly were state-of-the-art, some people were already complaining about the overuse of CGI, with some early reviews complaining that some scenes looked less like Star Wars and more like “A Bugs Life” or something.
^ yeah but Andor