Channel72

Mocata said:

Rushed isn’t the word I would choose considering how it drags in the middle. They should have just done something better there; both in terms of Yoda and Endor scenes.

Yeah, ironically the movie drags so badly once they get captured by the Ewoks. That’s when it’s time to change the channel.

Actually, I think a big problem is that the entire Endor ground team sequence is really just bland and visually uninspiring. It takes place in a boring forest in California that looks like a location where Star Wars fan-films are shot. Yeah, redwoods can be majestic and beautiful, but the cinematography never captures this. The whole sequence of meeting the Ewoks, going back to their village, etc. takes forever and barely anything interesting happens. And even after the battle begins, the small Imperial base with the shield generator is visually boring (something larger like that communications tower in Rogue One would be nicer). And throughout the entire battle, it always seems like Han, Leia and Chewie are the only Rebel Alliance fighters involved, because the camera almost never shows anyone else doing anything. It would help add some tension if we saw some of those other Rebel extras get killed, or at least participate. (Also, what were all those guys doing while the main trio was hanging out with Ewoks overnight?)

But the other two ending sequences (Luke vs. Vader and space battle above Endor) are so incredibly awesome that they compensate for the mediocrity of the ground battle. Also, the speeder bike chase is still pretty cool, as are the AT-STs (when they’re not tripping over logs).

Emre1601 said:

Channel72 said:

Or… why even do the trench run at all? Just align an X-wing at a 90 degree angle to the Death Star surface and fly directly towards the exhaust port. Then fire torpedoes in a straight line into the port. Fire multiple proton torpedoes in case some are intercepted by laser turret fire, or first target the laser turrets themselves. You could fire the torpedoes from a great distance away. A computer-guided torpedo could hit the small exhaust port without a human pilot having to fly anywhere near the Death Star.

There is a line of dialogue about it being “heavily shielded” or “ray-shielded” in the rebel briefing? I took that as the reason why they couldn’t fire at it from distance or closer distances with “line of sight”, though I could be wrong on that, or misinterpreting it? I’ll have to watch go watch it, the whole film, again! 😃

I think they say that the ray shields are the reason they need to use proton torpedoes (as opposed to, I guess, just regular laser fire?). Maybe the idea is that ray shields only protect against energy weapons, but wouldn’t protect against a physical object like a torpedo.

The nuked refrigerator scene in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is the best scene in that entire movie. Despite being ridiculous, it’s the only scene with a distinct 1950s personality befitting the premise of the film. The majority of the rest of the movie is just a bland rehash of chase sequences from earlier films set in a non-descript boring jungle, and could easily be transplanted into the 1930s if you swapped out the Soviets for Nazis and the glass skull for whatever. Instead, the movie should have taken Indy to East Berlin, and eventually culminated in an action sequence at a secret Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

(Alternatively, Indy should probably not exist in the 1950s, because Cold War Indiana Jones starts to closely approximate James Bond if you stray too far from the ancient civilization archeology angle, yet the “adventurous archeologist” trope is anachronistic after British colonial rule in the Mid-East begins to collapse.)

Superweapon VII said:

The Exorcist III is the best entry in the series.

Correct.

Finally saw this. I still think nothing beats “The Duel” from Season 1, which is just awesome. In Season 2, my favorites were “Journey to the Dark Head” (which incidentally had some very cool unique starship designs I appreciated) and “The Spy Dancer”, which had a very cool premise: a cabaret/nightclub where the clientele is mostly Imperial officers, and the performers are in the Rebellion - very World War 2.

“The Bandits of Golak” was also interesting - the planet/environment was clearly inspired by various locations across India, with colorful Hindu temple style architecture. Plus, the Inquisitor character was awesome - he had more personality than any of the canonical Inquisitors (and I hate the concept of Inquisitors to begin with). But the 3D animation looked very similar to something like the later seasons of Clone Wars, rather than some more unique style, and they reuse the same old stock Star Wars background aliens that they use as background characters in every 3D animated series.

But I feel like nothing in Season 2 reached the level of quality as stuff like “The Duel” and “The Village Bride” in Season 1, which not only had great animation and storyline, but very memorable original music as well.

Seeing TPM when it came out is just an impossible-to-replicate experience, due to the unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated levels of anticipation for this movie. Forming any sort of sustainable opinion about that movie on first viewing was virtually impossible. Just the fact that there was now an actual new opening crawl in existence, with a title that didn’t say Episode IV, V or VI, was to me, like seeing some kind of physically impossible phenomenon. It was insane that it was even real, after having seen the OT so many, many times on VHS. Also, the movie ended with this fast-paced, intricately choreographed lightsaber battle, complete with an operatic score, and that’s generally the last thing you’d remember when walking out of the theater on first viewing, leaving you somewhat mesmerized and elated.

I have difficulty remembering exactly when it dawned on me that actually this movie sucks. I think there was a period of time, maybe around a month after it came out, where I was basically in denial about this, and would try to downplay how unexpectedly childish/juvenile the tone was in comparison with the OT. I think I finally gave up on it when, on a 3rd or 4th repeat viewing, during that scene in Watto’s workshop with non-stop Jar Jar antics occurring in the background, my younger sister blurted out something like “Is this movie even serious?” She was very familiar with the OT, and she obviously picked up on the more childish tone, and basically said what I was thinking but wasn’t ready to acknowledge. The difference in tone from the OT was undeniably jarring. After that, I started to notice a million other problems with it, and ultimately, all my friends and I sort of reached a consensus that it sucks around two months or so after it came out. (But we still paid to see it like 5 or 6 times like idiots.)

Probably because Alec Guinness isn’t alive, so they couldn’t record any new dialogue with him (at least not without using AI, which wasn’t as mature in 2015/2019).

EDIT: daveybjones999 beat me to it

Mocata said:

Has it ever been explained why they don’t need droid control ships any more? In the old EU this was the whole reason nobody used droid armies - they relied on transmissions from a control point that could be easily jammed. But now in the other prequels and all the media that followed it’s never mentioned.

I always thought the droid control ship was just contrived specifically for Phantom Menace, so there would be a single point of attack the good guys could target to win. There’s so many cases in fiction where they setup an overwhelmingly powerful enemy force that can be taken out by some single point of attack (e.g. Death Star exhaust port, Sauron’s ring, etc.) for the sake of neatly wrapping up the story.

Arguably, ROTJ sidestepped this problem by leaving it vague what happened to the Imperial forces after the Emperor died.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

Channel72 said:

NeverarGreat said:

I agree that this keeps the film from being a perfect stand-alone, but there is a mitigating factor in that we do see a lightsaber fight so the lightsaber as an object is paid-off. The fact that it belongs to Obi-wan isn’t to troubling to me. Star Wars is a universe of unbounded promise, so giving Luke a weapon that he doesn’t use in a fight only fires the mind to imagine him using it in a future battle against Vader.

I would argue that the setup for Kenobi’s lightsaber happens in the Mos Eisley cantina, when Kenobi slices off that guy’s arm. This sets up that Kenobi is some kind of skilled warrior with an exotic weapon from a romantic age in the past. The payoff happens when Kenobi takes out his lightsaber again to fight Vader.

But Luke’s lightsaber is setup separately, and the setup connects the lightsaber to the idea that Luke’s father was a Jedi Knight who specifically wanted Luke to inherit it. (Thus, the lightsaber serves as a physical manifestation of the “hero’s call” - calling Luke away from his mundane life to adventure.) But there’s never any pay off for this setup in A New Hope. It’s kind of like setting up Excalibur in the King Arthur legends, but then just forgetting about it.

A case could also be made the Kenobi himself is the physical manifestation of the “Heroes’ call”? Which would relegate the lightsaber to being a tool of that?

I remember reading somewhere (I forgot where I read this - could be in Rinzler or could be Secret History of Star Wars) that the scene where Ben gives Luke the lightsaber was included mostly as setup for later when Ben uses his own lightsaber in the Mos Eisley Cantina. The Cantina scene where Ben dismembers someone goes back to one of the earliest drafts of Star Wars. However, Lucas realized that if the Cantina scene was the first time the audience saw a lightsaber, nobody would understand what even happened. So the scene with Luke playing around with his father’s lightsaber was added to introduce the audience to the concept of lightsabers.

So you’re probably correct. But I can just imagine an alternate reality where Star Wars 1977 is the only Star Wars movie to exist, where an audience member might easily think (especially upon rewatching it) “Hey… wait, what’s the point of Luke getting a lightsaber? He never uses it.” Usually in most of these fantasy movies, if the hero is given a magical weapon, the hero will use that weapon at some point (usually in the film’s climax) to overcome some obstacle or defeat the bad guy. (The weird 80s fantasy movie Krull comes to mind as a typical example of this happening, and of course in Tolkien there are multiple occasions where some magical object/weapon is setup for a later payoff.)

My ranking is pretty simple:

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Andor
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Bleh… everything else

Sometimes I try to figure out which I find worse: the Prequels or Sequels. They’re both inexplicably bad in completely unique and interesting ways.

I think the Prequels are probably more damaging overall, because they’re more directly connected to the OT as backstory, whereas the Sequels can mostly just be ignored as supplemental material. The Sequels show more obvious signs of “short-term corporate decision-making” in their production, whereas with the Prequels (at least with Phantom Menace) I get the sense that Lucas was genuinely excited about the weird story he wanted to tell.

After I saw AOTC in the theater, I came to accept that ROTS would probably not be very good - but I was still very interested in seeing it when it came out. But after I saw TLJ in the theater, I basically lost interest entirely, and so Rise of Skywalker was the first Star Wars movie that came out in my lifetime that I didn’t go see in the theater.

philraid said:

Definitely. It was supposed to be a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, which it definitely felt more like that in the original film. You turn around any corner you could get shot or captured by a criminal or the Empire. Adding in more buildings, CGI rats and dinosaurs makes it feel more like a zoo or a theme park.
I also just never understood why they kept going back to this planet in the movies, especially since it was never as interesting as it was the first time around for a lot of reasons listed above. Why did Anakin have to be from the same planet as Luke?

I never liked the idea that Anakin was from the same planet as Luke. But unfortunately it’s implied in A New Hope that Luke’s father lived on Tatooine, when Ben says “[Uncle Owen] thought [Anakin] should have stayed here [i.e. here on Tatooine] and not gotten involved.”

But I think Anakin being originally from Tatooine really only made sense before his character was merged with Darth Vader. Plus, the Prequels ended up ignoring or twisting so much of the backstory mentioned in ANH anyway, so it’s not like George Lucas felt particularly bound by earlier stuff he wrote in the 70s.

The dialogue in some of the Yoda scenes on Dagobah is just really next level. There’s probably no higher quality dialogue in all Star Wars. I mean like 90% of Star Wars dialogue is either just serviceable or corny, relying mostly on the performances to elevate it. But then Yoda drops lines like:

Ready, are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained! Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. … This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless!

That dialogue quality is not just among the best in Star Wars, but it can really compete with the best of Hollywood in general. Obviously, we all know George Lucas didn’t write this.

I have mixed opinions about Part 1. Does anyone else get the sense that this film just feels strangely “empty”? Like, I don’t recall ever seeing like a typical city street on Arrakis, or even any average citizens (except those religious people standing around trying to get a glimpse of their Messiah).

I know in the novel there’s a scene where the Atreides family hosts a dinner party, and all sorts of colorful characters from around Arrakis show up. I think scenes like this were needed to give the movie some personality. As it is, I get the sense that the city on Arrakis is just a couple of rooms in the palace, most of which look like some ultra-modern 5-star boutique hotel in Tokyo. I mean it’s all very visually stunning, it just often feels a bit sterile because the world isn’t fleshed out enough.

Superweapon VII said:

The biggest elephant in the room for me is the presence of AI. If the peoples of the SW Universe can build thinking machines, then battle droids and droid starfighters should be the norm, not an outlier. If they’re concerned about a possible Skynet situation, then remote-controlled drones are a reasonable alternative. There’s no reason the Republic/Empire should default to clone/stormtroopers, and absolutely no reason they or the Rebels should use organic pilots. And just saying droids are inferior to organics doesn’t cut it, not when we’ve seen they’re capable enough in a warzone to get the job done.

As sci-fi, this bothers me. As fantasy, it doesn’t.

Yeah… that’s really difficult to explain. It’s one of those things that is hard to realistically address without killing the whole franchise. The only possible excuse available to explain non-droid armies is cost. You could claim that battle droids are just more expensive to manufacture and require more energy to operate. But Star Wars actually seems to do the opposite, making it seem like battledroids are cheap, mass-produced crap that are inferior to clones. (Although Andor claims human prison labor is somehow cheaper than droid labor.)

As for biological star-fighter pilots, yeah, there’s pretty much no way to explain that realistically. It’s one of those things that just has to be accepted in order for the franchise to work, along with sound in space and hyperspace travel. (It doesn’t help that Star Wars calls attention to this problem by actually showing computer-piloted fighter craft in the Prequels.)

But I think adding in sci-fi elements as much as possible helps to establish boundaries and limitations that can help make stories more interesting. Like for example, there should never be large Napoleonic-style ground armies - it’s so ridiculous and creatively bankrupt. (I always wondered why in Phantom Menace, when the Gungan army assembles out in the open, the ships in orbit don’t just immediately nuke them.) At least in the OT, with the Battle of Hoth, they really put effort into explaining why the Empire has to deploy ground forces. (Although admittedly the design of AT-ATs is hard to explain realistically).

The best thing about the EU is that it at least demonstrated the bare-minimum level of expected competence by advancing the story after ROTJ. The OT characters changed and grew, faced new challenges, and the political landscape of the Galaxy fundamentally changed as a consequence of what happened in the OT.

Of course, that’s really the absolute minimum I would expect for any post-ROTJ continuation of Star Wars. In any sane Universe, I probably wouldn’t actually praise the EU for basic, minimum story-telling competence. But unfortunately, sanity in Star Wars is long gone. We now have a canonical post-ROTJ narrative that basically amounts to a Galactic Control+Z, undoing all narrative progress, resetting the Galaxy back to Empire vs. Rebels, and repeating the OT story-line (poorly) with different characters. There’s no New Republic or new Jedi Order or any of the stuff Star Wars fans had anticipated since 1983… no, none of that stuff. There’s no continuation of the story.

So as silly as the EU can get, we’ve arrived at a point where it actually makes sense to praise the EU for understanding basic storytelling concepts like “cause and effect” and “continuing where we left off”.

The EU is really the only post-1983 incarnation of Star Wars that got the basics more or less correct. The Prequels went off in a stupid direction, and the Sequels were not actually proper sequels but rather a soft-reboot followed by an incoherent mess. Nobody got the bare-minimum basics right except the EU.

Superweapon VII said:

of_Kaiburr_and_Whills said:

The EU leaning too far into pure science fiction is one of my biggest criticisms with it. It’s interesting because the issue usually doesn’t come up in conversations.

As someone who’s come to prefer hard(er) sci-fi to soft sci-fi, the physics of space travel/battle in SW began to rankle me. Then I came upon this thread, which allowed me to view the series from a whole different perspective.

I have the same preference, but arrived at the opposite conclusion. I would prefer if the sci-fi aspect of Star Wars was emphasized a bit more. I don’t want it to be hard sci-fi, of course, but just maybe like 20% more sci-fi. I think the original Star Wars (Episode IV) was like 15-20% more sci-fi than ESB and ROTJ. And I think Zahn’s original Thrawn Trilogy is probably like 15% more sci-fi than Episode IV - which I appreciated.

I can accept that certain physics-violating elements of Star Wars space combat are likely too cemented into our aesthetic expectations about what Star Wars should be at this point, so I don’t expect to see an X-wing rotating about its vertical axis to blow up a TIE fighter approaching from behind any time soon - although that would be cool if it happened.

But I think that “Star Wars is Surrealism” essay is very misguided. Maybe one day I’ll have the time to write up a proper response to it.

Regardless, I definitely think the actual fantasy elements of Star Wars should be kept strictly fantasy/supernatural. So stuff like midichlorians, or really any exploration of “how the Force works” beyond the vague mysticism conveyed by Yoda in ESB, is a really bad move. I also dislike the idea of any technology or physical mechanism that somehow affects, counteracts or manipulates the Force (e.g. ysalamiri, Jedi clones, etc.), because it implies the Force can be controlled and manipulated using predictable physical laws.

Filoni: What Tony [Gilroy] has done [in Andor] and what we did in Rebels,

It takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, or possibly alcohol, to believe these two shows exist in the same Universe.

The “no attachments” thing isn’t explicit in Phantom Menace, but I guess it’s implied during that scene when Yoda lays out the “Sith pipeline”: Fear --> Anger --> Hate --> Suffering

The “fear” phase is definitely related to Anakin being afraid of losing his mom, because Yoda points out he’s afraid of losing her right before saying this.

I’ve seen lots of people say Yoda’s quote about fear is very profound. Personally, I never really understood it very well, because the connection between fear and anger doesn’t seem obvious to me. There’s certain specific types of fear and anger that could definitely be linked (the usual obvious example is xenophobia), but that’s obviously not what Yoda means here. He’s clearly talking about fear of loss.

But even fear of loss doesn’t exactly fit the context. Anakin misses his mom. Missing someone isn’t exactly the same as fear of losing them, which muddles this a bit.

Also… Anakin is 10. Of course he misses his mom.

RicOlie_2 said:

The problem isn’t what Gilroy is doing, it’s that Disney is moving production forward, not pausing it until he comes back.

Sorry maybe I’m just missing something or don’t understand enough about the situation, but where is it being reported that production is moving forward? If Gilroy cannot function as a producer without also performing writing duties, why would this restriction not apply to any potential replacement? Isn’t Lucasfilm (or Disney) required to be a “Guild Signatory” in order to hire WGA members? If so, wouldn’t that mean that if they replaced Gilroy with a different producer, that producer (1) could not be a WGA member and therefore could not write, and (2) would only be able to perform producing duties. Therefore, either (A) the scripts are completed and production can only proceed without modifying the scripts or (B) the scripts are not completed and therefore it would be impossible to move forward with production (or at least the parts of production that weren’t written yet).

Again, I don’t know too much about all this so maybe I’m missing something here. Is the fear that Disney will just replace Gilroy and then just ignore Guild Signatory obligations by lying about any additional writing work performed?

Omni said:

Showrunner Tony Gilroy Ceases Producing Services on ‘Andor’

Tony Gilroy had previously stepped down from all writing duties, but is stepping away from the production entirely now too. The bad news? Production is not shutting down with him. Scripts have already been written but we all know they’re almost living, malleable things that get changed all the time. Greedy bastards, this is probably one of the few legitimate “fuck Disney” angles since the sell. Just shut the fucking production down. Goddammit they’ll ruin this. Hoping for the best, but I’m very, very skeptical now.

This might not be as bad as it seems. My understanding of the article is that Gilroy stopped writing because of the writer’s strike. He then stopped producing as well because another writer tried to shame him for scabbing (not participating in the strike), explaining that “there’s no way a writer/producer can ‘finish’ writing and begin solely producing”.

I don’t know enough about the Hollywood writing process, the industry dynamics of the production process, or the rules or social expectations for WGA strikes, to comment intelligently about any of this, but my understanding is that Gilroy is simply participating in the writer’s strike, not officially stepping down from producing Andor to move on to some other project. It seems the line between writing and producing is fuzzy, creating difficult boundary cases for the strike. But if it’s true the scripts are already completed, it seems there’s a reasonable chance the production process will carry on without straying too far from Gilroy’s intentions or vision.

Marooned Biker Scout said:
Continuing on from that (and because I’m a slow thinker): that serendipity and good fortune ran out for the Prequels.

Having Ben be present at the birth of both the Skywalker children in the later ROTS film just makes him look inept, kind of sexist, or forgetful in the extreme.

Having so many other similar discrepancies, contradictions or jarring issues between the two trilogies really did damage the Prequels for so many fans back then, and in the years since.

I think Ben being present for Leia’s birth (or at least being aware of when it happened) is implied in ROTJ, and explicitly confirmed in dialogue from ROTJ that was cut from the film. In the actual film, Ben says “To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born.” And in dialogue cut from the film, he says “So I took you to live with my brother Owen on Tatooine… and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan.” He then goes on to deliver an extended speech describing Leia’s life on Alderaan (all of which is cut from the movie.)

Strangely, it seems Ben never really had much faith in Leia, because in ROTJ, Ben actually says “Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope” after Luke says he can’t kill his father. So Ben actually repeats his belief that Luke was their only hope, even AFTER the Leia retcon is in effect. (Although Ben also says the Force is strong with Leia in additional dialogue that was cut.) It seems like Ben’s dialogue is written in a manner that is aware of the contradiction, but makes no attempt to smooth it over.

Of course, the Prequels actually show Ben present at Leia’s birth, which only highlights the issue even further (not to mention the Kenobi series).

Marooned Biker Scout said:

MinchD36 said:

Servii said:

Yoda knows that Leia is in danger and tells Luke to complete his training and sacrifice her if necessary

Here’s the thing, though. Yoda doesn’t actually know if Leia’s in danger. The future is always in motion, and Luke’s vision of her and Han in danger could have easily been nothing more than a hypothetical vision of a possible future.

But yes, they definitely didn’t plan in any concrete way for Leia to be the other. Maybe it was an option they were considering at that point, but George hadn’t decided yet. I heard a rumor once that they were considering having Wedge turn out to be the other, but that always seemed like a stretch.

Leia being Luke sister was definitely a Retcon
it wasnt planned as Vader being Luke real father Luke Real Sister was going to play an important role in the Lucas first version of the Sequels Lucas envisioned Star Wars as a series of 9 or 12 movies.

Absolutely. Poor Nellith. We never got to know her.

You are correct in the OP, it is another retcon that causes issues in Leia becoming “the other” after the fact.

Luke says “they were in pain”, when Yoda explains he is seeing the future and Luke then asks “Will they die?”, Yoda answers with “Difficult to see” and so they were in a very real sense of immediate danger.

The retcon also clumsily fails to account for Yoda saying “there is another” privately to Ben, or Ben saying “that boy is our last hope”, since Ben is supposed to know about Leia.

It’s still pretty amazing how lucky George Lucas got with all these retcons, since there was always existing footage that serendipitously supported the retcon. Like with the Leia as sister retcon, they had the scene at the end of ESB where Luke is hanging underneath Cloud City, and calls out to her with the Force. And with the Vader as father retcon, they had the scene in ANH where Owen says “That’s what I’m afraid of” after Beru says Luke is too much like his father.

This stuff doubtlessly helped Lucas get away with claiming he had it all planned out since 1977. And plain old confirmation bias encourages the audience to ignore instances where the retcon fails, but remember instances where the retcon serendipitously seems to have been the plan all along.

It’s really funny how this idea that the Prequel Jedi were intentionally depicted as flawed, has become a “mainstream” interpretation. I’ve heard this so many times. Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, along with Vader’s sacrifice in ROTJ, are often used as “proof” that the Prequels repudiate the Jedi and their anti-attachment dogma.

But like… all you need to do is just read literally any interview with Lucas about this subject, and you’ll find he just straight up says (paraphrasing) “Actually the Prequel Jedi were awesome and correct about everything, and Anakin fell to the Dark Side because he didn’t listen to them.”

Like for example, this TIME magazine interview where Lucas says:

“[Anakin] turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things,” says Lucas. “He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.”

Or this interview where he says:

Anakin wants to be a Jedi, but he cannot let go of the people he loves in order to move forward in his life. The Jedi believe that you don’t hold on to things, that you let things pass through you, and that if you can control your greed, you can resolve conflict not only in yourself but in the world around you because you accept the natural course of things. Anakin’s inability to follow this basic guideline is at the core of his turn to the dark side.

Bizarrely, Lucas equates attachment/love to greed, or at least believes these things are heavily connected. I can understand Lucas’ logic behind this sentiment, but this is certainly a very esoteric interpretation of attachment and love.

It’s commonly observed that Lucas’ Prequel-Jedi philosophy is very similar to certain core Buddhist teachings. It’s true that Buddhism teaches that attachment is a major cause of suffering. But when it comes to attachment through romantic love specifically, this is usually interpreted more along the lines of the need to accept a romantic partner as they are and love them selflessly (as opposed to viewing relationships as a means to satisfy your own desires), and the need to avoid codependency (becoming too “needy” such that relationships serve mostly to pacify fears of abandonment).

While superficially similar, the Buddhist concept here is fundamentally different from the Prequel-Jedi philosophy which forbids romantic relationships entirely in order to avoid fear of loss. In particular, Yoda tells Anakin (regarding loved ones who have died), “Mourn them do not. Miss them do not”. Yet Buddhist tradition has pretty elaborate mourning and grievance rituals that last over a month in some cases. So the Prequel-Jedi philosophy about attachment and love is a lot more extreme than what’s found in mainstream forms of Buddhism.

Rey probably won’t get married or have a family. Disney shows very little interest in adding any romance to Star Wars. The Force Awakens came the closest, implying a potential Finn/Rey romance, but that was promptly deleted. TLJ suggested Finn/Rose as an item, but put very little effort into developing that, and Disney clearly was much too scared to actually commit officially to some kind of fucked up Rey/Kylo romance. And Rise of Skywalker was directed by Mel Brooks, as the long-awaited sequel to Spaceballs.

JadedSkywalker said:

I hope Rey does away with the attachment thing and all the prequel Jedi dogma and has a family.

Following that nonsense didn’t work for Luke Skywalker in the Disney timeline. His rejection of it in Legends and starting a New Jedi Order was better.

Did he really explicitly reject it in the EU? I think Luke explicitly rejecting the anti-attachment dogma is more like a retcon, since all those stories about Mara Jade were written before the Prequels, and writers like Timothy Zahn never imagined the Jedi would forbid romantic attachments.

I think the OT pretty strongly implied the Jedi were allowed to marry and have children. I mean, clearly, Anakin had children, and nothing in the OT indicates this was somehow bad or out of the ordinary. Anakin’s fall to the dark side is never connected with romantic relationships or attachments in any way.

It’s really amazing how badly the Prequels mesh with the OT sometimes.

Another notable thing I should have mentioned in the original post, is that this draft includes a scene on “Coruscant”, except it’s called “Ton Muund” instead of Coruscant or even Had Abbadon. It’s described as an enormous city that covers the entire planet. It’s the Imperial capital, and the scene takes place in Darth Vader’s quarters. Instead of the Mordor-esque lava castle, Vader’s quarters are described as efficient, technological and dystopian, like something from 1984.

But then later, there’s a different scene, where Darth Vader is in a castle “of black iron in the midst of a crimson sea” which is closer to the famous castle known from Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art and Rogue One. There are even “gargoyles” (some kind of creatures) that hang around the castle. Presumably this castle is on some other planet, but the location is not mentioned.