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After watching this latest episode, I had to remind myself what made this show good in the first place.

Season 1 was compelling for many reasons:

• It was the first live-action Star Wars show
• It showed us a much smaller-scale, simple story set in the Star Wars galaxy, which felt unique at the time
• It depicted this gritty, lawless, wild-west/frontier atmosphere that gave off similar vibes to the Original Trilogy
• The over-arching plot was simple and effective: ruthless bounty-hunter must protect small innocent child

Of course, even Season 1 had a lot of the “video game side-quest” style writing, but at the time I never minded it and the idea of a bounty hunter and a little child going on random unconnected adventures across the Outer Rim of the Star Wars Galaxy seemed charming and fascinating.

The Mandalorian episode that (inexplicably) aired as a Book of Boba Fett episode (I think it was Episode 5) somewhat recaptured a lot of the original charm of this series. Mando was alone, off on a job, looking for his target in some grimy underworld meat locker. There was unexpected extreme violence (Mando slices some criminal in half, then walks around with a bisected corpse in a bag), which recaptured the sense of danger and lawlessness prevalent in the first season. The giant “ring” space station was an incredible new location (despite being a common sci-fi element).

But the ACTUAL Season 3 Premier somehow just seemed incredibly bland, safe and directionless. The fact that Baby Yoda is suddenly back makes the show feel dramatically meaningless to me. Suddenly it’s much harder to care about anything going on. Every shot of Baby Yoda doing something cute comes off now as forced and manipulative. It feels like the “edge” of Season 1 is gone. The Wild West of the Outer Rim feels closer to a Disney theme park now. This might have something to do with Navarro now having developed into a thriving First World city - but the sense of blandness permeates beyond that. There’s a fight with a giant monster, but it comes out of nowhere and feels arbitrary and meaningless, unlike the Krayt Dragon fight in Season 2, which was integrated into the plot. We meet some “Space Pirates”, but they feel like silly cartoons. Pirates/gangsters in Star Wars used to be depicted with a certain level of grotesque darkness, while keeping everything rated PG. Jabba the Hutt may have been a giant slug with a cartoon laugh, but he also executed his dancing slave girl because she refused to “come closer”.

I don’t know. This just feels like a different show than Season 1. It just feels bland and aimless, especially since the heavy emotional payoff from last season was basically rendered completely pointless. I feel like that decision caused incalculable damage to the series as a whole. On top of that, there’s no real “hook” or open plot thread that seems particularly engaging. There’s this potentially exciting idea of “retaking Mandalore” floating around, but what does that even mean? Retake it from what? I thought it was almost entirely irradiated and uninhabitable. In fact, I’m not sure what Bo Katan expected to do even if she had the Dark Saber.

Anyway, it isn’t looking good at this point, but hopefully I’m wrong and the rest of the Season turns out to be amazing.

So this ancient thread was apparently resurrected by some AI or whatever. (Crap, too many sci-fi elements are creeping into reality.)

But anyway, it’s interesting, from an historical perspective, to read the OP of this thread, as an example of common Internet sentiment about the Prequels all the way back in 2011. Basically, the OP argues that (based on an admittedly small and non-representative sample size), very few people care about or even recognize Prequel characters. The conclusion is that the OT will be timeless, but the Prequels will fade into oblivion. (Based on a comparison of General Grievous vs. Darth Vader, but extrapolated to the Prequels at a whole).

Yeah… I mean, that was my assumption back in the day as well.

But it’s ironic to read this now. Little did the OP know, back in 2011, that as he confidently mocked the Prequels, an entire generation of 5 to 10 year olds was slowly incubating, absorbing George Lucas’ campy schlock with their developing minds, such that in only a few years time, they would be unleashed upon the Internet, declaring that Revenge of the Sith is an absolute masterpiece that rivals The Empire Strikes Back. And General Grievous and his twirling multi-colored lightsabers (plus zero character-development) is an incredibly memorable, kick-ass villain.

George Lucas apparently knew what he was doing when he aimed these movies at a much younger audience.

The Prequels needed some consistent villain (apart from Palpatine) that was present throughout (or at least in the first 2 movies), and played an active role in driving the plot.

I don’t think Maul really worked. He’s basically just like a “Generic Sith starter kit”. Yeah I know later cartoons gave him more depth, but he’s not ideal.

The Prequels needed a villain that fit thematically with the larger events/themes. Count Dooku is closer thematically to what I want, but he also sucks and is written incoherently. I like the idea that initially he seems to be taking a principled stance against a corrupt Republic, and he even outright tells Kenobi: “Look, there’s a secret Sith controlling everything, please help.” But then it turns out he’s actually just a Sith himself, so whatever.

After mulling it over in my head over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that a character similar to something like Darth Revan would have worked best as a primary Prequel villain. The idea is that there was a formerly well-respected Jedi Master (like Dooku and/or Revan - I’ll refer to him as “Jedi X”) who was ex-communicated from the Jedi order due to a controversial but principled stance he took during a former war (e.g. how Revan went to fight the Mandalorians against the will of the Jedi.) The disgraced Jedi X goes into exile, where he by chance discovers that a powerful Sith Lord (Palpatine) is manipulating the Republic at the highest levels of government. Jedi X attempts to confront this Sith Lord and fails, and realizes the Jedi have no chance against this guy because they have no understanding of the Dark Side and nobody has even seen a Sith for thousands of years. So, with good intentions, Jedi X decides he has no choice but to become the Sith Lord’s apprentice, so that he can learn the Dark Side and eventually use it to kill his own master and save the Republic. (All this can just be backstory, it doesn’t need to be actually depicted in any hypothetical Prequel rewrite.)

But of course, the cost of becoming a Dark Side expert is that you actually become pretty evil. So Jedi X becomes a true villain, and his original intention of killing his master in order to save the Republic slowly morphs into killing his master simply to gain power for himself. But Palpatine is pretty powerful, and Jedi X (now officially a Sith) eventually concludes he can’t kill his master without help. So he starts looking for an apprentice of his own to help him take down Palpatine. During the course of the events of the Prequels, he meets Obi-Wan and Anakin. Jedi X opens up to Obi-Wan (in the same way Dooku does), essentially spilling the entire plot: “Look, there’s an evil Sith Lord secretly manipulating the Government. He’s way ahead of you and way more powerful, but I know how to take him out. Join me, etc.” Of course, since Jedi X himself has already done some pretty evil stuff, Kenobi doesn’t believe him.

Some time later, Jedi X makes the same pitch to Anakin. Anakin also doesn’t buy it. But Jedi X is able to manipulate Anakin enough, significantly pissing him off, so that Anakin eventually flips out and starts giving into his anger. Jedi X is hoping he can turn Anakin to the Dark Side by forcing him to act out of anger (in the same way that Palpatine tried to goad Luke into killing Vader.)

But… (plot twist), the plan backfires. Jedi X successfully goads Anakin into embracing anger and using the Dark Side, except Anakin is just slightly too powerful/unpredictable for Jedi X to fully control. Anakin gives into anger and murders Jedi X in a moment of rage. When Palpatine finds out, Palpatine realizes Anakin would make an even better apprentice than Jedi X. So Palpatine takes over where Jedi X left off in the effort to fully convert Anakin to a Sith.

Then, at the end of Episode 3, after everything goes to hell, Kenobi realizes Jedi X was right all along. Kenobi has a sort of “Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes” moment where he breaks down, realizing what idiots the Jedi (including himself) had been. He sees now that Jedi X tried to warn them, but they were too judgmental to listen, and now it’s too late because the President of the Galaxy is an evil sorcerer and Anakin turned into a fascist cyborg.

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.

In the Prequels, we learn that Darth Vader created C3PO.

This doesn’t contradict anything.

It is NOT a continuity error at all.

Nothing in the OT is contradicted by this.

But…

But…

But…

But… like, we learn that Darth Vader created C3PO!!

Surely that disqualifies the Prequels from counting as actual movies, right?

I think what happened is that originally, Luke wasn’t going to face the Emperor until Episode 9. Or at least, that format was floated around as a possibility in the very-early 1980s during the very-early stages of conceptualizing Episode 6. Apparently, at a very early stage, the idea was to make Episode 6 an entire movie about the rescue of Han Solo, with Boba Fett as an antagonist. With this format, Episodes 7, 8 and 9 probably never materialized into anything resembling a concrete plot, except that in Episode 9 Luke would finally confront the Emperor at the Imperial Capital. Obviously, none of this happened, and the rescue of Han plus Luke vs. the Emperor were compressed into a single climactic movie, and (later in the production) the Imperial Capital was changed to Death Star 2.

However, I never really thought that ROTJ was too rushed, because I took it for granted that there would have to be many additional battles after Episode 6, before the Empire was completely defeated. The death of the Emperor brought an end to Luke’s arc and Vader’s arc, but the Empire itself would certainly continue to exist in some form for quite some time.

In retrospect, the biggest issue with ROTJ is that the first part of the movie is entirely disconnected from the rest of the movie, and the premise for the latter is mostly disconnected from all events that happened earlier. Nothing that happens in Jabba’s palace has any kind of causal relationship with the events after Han’s rescue. And the entire setup for infiltrating Endor (stealing shuttle Tyderium and all that) is just arbitrarily presented as a given that happened off-screen, with no connection to anything that happened earlier. Consider how in Episode 4, the assault on the Death Star 1 happens as a direct result of the actions of the main characters, whereas in Episode 6, the assault on Death Star 2 is simply presented arbitrarily as a starting premise, not as a logical consequence of prior events.

On the other hand, it’s nice that our 3 main characters aren’t responsible for literally every important thing the Rebel Alliance does. It’s a big galaxy, and there are other heroes going on other off-screen adventures, like those Bothan spies. But from a narrative/writing perspective, the circumstances enabling the assault on Death Star 2 are totally arbitrary. There’s also no well-defined ticking clock. Why should the assault take place now? (Well because it happens that now we have access to a stolen shuttle that was stolen off-screen, and an off-screen spy network that you never heard about before discovered that the Emperor is personally overseeing the Death Star’s construction. That’s why this is happening now, conveniently right after we wrapped up that side quest to save Han.) It comes off as arbitrary, because the premise doesn’t follow causally from anything that happened in the first half of the movie, nor anything that happened in the previous movie.

It’s often said that A New Hope (originally just “Star Wars”) was written as a stand-alone movie, because the good guys win at the end and the main conflict is resolved. George Lucas didn’t really know at the time if he’d ever get to make any sequels, so he wrote A New Hope to stand on its own, with all plot threads resolved by the end. The earliest known drafts of Star Wars, which are significantly different from the 1977 film, still follow the same basic story structure and end with all major plot threads resolved.

Of course, the fact that Lucas commissioned Splinter of the Mind’s Eye as a template for a low-budget sequel, just in case the 1977 Star Wars film failed, indicates he was at least thinking about a sequel even before 1977. Regardless, it’s pretty obvious that A New Hope is structured as a stand-alone film. The film’s major conflict is overcome by the protagonists (the Death Star plans are secured and used to destroy the Death Star), and the protagonist learns to use the Force (a metaphor for believing in yourself) and saves the day with help from his friend.

Of course, there’s a brief shot at the end that shows us that Vader survives. But this just comes off like Lucas hedging his bets about the possibility of a sequel. It doesn’t detract from the film’s ability to stand on its own.

However, it always struck me that if A New Hope actually WAS a stand-alone film (i.e. if no other Star Wars movies existed), there would be at least one issue that would stand out as a significant writing flaw:

The issue is that Luke’s lightsaber would become a major violation of the “Chekhov’s gun” principle. Luke is given this incredible weapon: his father’s lightsaber. Ben Kenobi even explains the significance of the lightsaber, what it meant in past times, and how Luke’s father wanted Luke to have it one day. Luke is mesmerized by it (who wouldn’t be?) Later on, Ben trains Luke a bit on how to use it. But after that… Luke never uses it again. Throughout the entire film, he never once uses it to overcome any obstacles. Sure, we see Ben Kenobi use a different lightsaber to fight Vader. But Luke’s lightsaber is setup as this really important thing - and then pretty much completely forgotten about. Luke never uses it even once to advance the plot in any way. As a standalone movie, it would seem like a good idea to simply delete all references to Luke’s lightsaber, because there is never any pay-off.

Now obviously, the pay-off eventually came around in The Empire Strikes Back. But that sort of just proves the point that A New Hope doesn’t quite work 100% as a stand-alone movie. Even if Lucas had no concrete plans for any sequels, he seemed to at least have some notion that there was more to this story.

for the story they have to tell, the Prequels are intrinsically not good for a movie format, because there are a lot of things to explore, and there’s not enough screan-time to do it. So, it would have been better if they had been part of the EU. However, even with their limited amount of screan-time, I’m still capable of getting everything necessary to appreciate them.

I look at it this way: if it’s 1993 or whatever and you’re trying to write the Prequels from scratch, what would you focus on? Suppose your goal is to generate the maximum amount of drama and audience emotional investment possible. What is the most effective way to achieve that? The obvious answer is to focus on the tragic friendship of Anakin and Obi-Wan, from the beginning to the heart-wrenching betrayal. The limited backstory we get in the OT practically screams that this should be the focus. Sure, there are other details… clones, a Republic becoming an Empire, etc., but those things really are just window dressing.

I mean how many times does Vader bring up Obi-Wan in the OT? He brings him up to Luke all the time. It’s clear their relationship was incredibly significant for both of them, for better or worse.

Yet the Prequels don’t really make this the main focus until Episode 3, at which point it’s way too late to generate any serious emotional impact. Even worse, Anakin spends most of Episode 2 complaining that Obi-Wan sucks. To this day I’m surprised Lucas just didn’t seem that interested in their friendship, opting instead to tell a more cluttered story, with Palpatine’s antics really being the main through line, and only 2 out of 3 films actually featuring Anakin.

But when people say TCW Anakin is a completely different character or that Filoni fixed him, it isn’t really correct. He’s the same as ROTS Anakin, we just got to see more of him.

Meh… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way Lucas directed Hayden Christensen, or perhaps Christensen’s own creative choices, but his portrayal of Anakin often bordered on eerily unstable or psychotic, like he’s channeling Malcolm McDowell in a Clockwork Orange. Even during the opening sequence of ROTS, where Anakin is arguably the most level-headed and closest to what I would have imagined him to be, Christensen still occasionally injects this underlying element of borderline personality disorder that comes out sometimes in a facial expression or line delivery.

In contrast, Clone Wars Anakin is a lot closer to something like a Han Solo/Luke Skywalker hybrid. Basically a typical “hot shot” hero character who sometimes also functions as an anti-hero when he wants to be expedient. This portrayal is definitely closer to how I imagined Anakin to be prior to the Prequels, but I also think it loses a lot of the vulnerability that Christensen’s portrayal offered.

Regardless, it’s hard to reconcile the two portrayals as representing the same character. I think a perfect Anakin portrayal would combine elements of the Filoni incarnation with some elements of Christensen’s portrayal, like the occasional vulnerability. I also think Anakin should be a bit less brash/Han Solo-esque, and more of a “by the book” guy that values courage, loyalty and stability. (These are the kind of traits that need to be exploited for him to become Vader.)

In general, a story like the Prequels is very hard to write. A “good guy turns evil” script is not easy to pull off in a believable way, especially in only 3 movies. Yeah, the Godfather pulled it off, but that’s why its revered as a classic. Also, Michael Corleone went from a normal every-man to a very unforgiving mafia boss. Anakin has to go from an honorable, likable hero, to a genocidal fascist cyborg in only 3 films. This kind of story is hard to pull off, and I almost wonder if The Phantom Menace was Lucas’ way of unconsciously procrastinating on all that difficult dramatic writing.

Anyway, I think the best way to implement Anakin’s fall is to tie it in with his experiences in the Clone Wars. Anakin constantly sees his fellow soldiers die as the Republic takes losses, but the Republic and the Jedi insist on maintaining high moral standards during warfare. Meanwhile, the other side regularly commits war crimes. At some point, in desperation, Anakin begins indulging the Dark Side by doing something like force choking a prisoner during an interrogation. Things just escalate from there. A turning point could be when Anakin defeats a major antagonist in a lightsaber battle by fully embracing the Dark Side in a moment of rage/desperation (like when Luke flips out at Vader), except Anakin just kills his opponent in cold blood after they surrender. Anakin begins to rely on the Dark Side more and more, realizing how powerful a thing anger can be. Obviously, Palpatine takes notice and begins to encourage this. By Episode 3, Anakin is regularly running clandestine missions for Palpatine where he often assassinates people. But at this point we can still consider Anakin more of an “anti-hero” than an actual villain, since he’s mostly only killing bad guys… for now.

I think it would be cool if Episode 3 opened up with a sequence that sort of contrasts with the beginning of Episode 6. In Episode 6, Luke does everything he can to try and peacefully resolve the situation with Jabba, turning to violence only when Jabba leaves him absolutely no other choice. In Episode 3 we could have a contrast, where Anakin has to resolve a problem with some third-tier villain. But instead of attempting to bargain and resolve things peacefully like Luke, Anakin just shows up and murders everyone.

Episode 3 needs some climactic event that really pushes Anakin over the edge. I think it would need to be something like Padme dying - perhaps in a way that causes Anakin to blame the Jedi for her death. (Maybe she dies during an attack on Coruscant, and Anakin resents that the Jedi were too devoted to their peaceful philosophy to effectively protect the populace.) Anakin starts to believe the Jedi don’t really understand the Force, and sees their fear of the Dark Side as foolish and narrow-minded. Eventually, the Jedi realize Palpatine is a secret Sith, and they attempt a coup, which Anakin thwarts. We can then have Anakin lead the assault on the Jedi temple, and eventually, confront Obi Wan (who really needs to be setup as Anakin’s closest friend/mentor early on in Episode 1).

Anyway, I think that’s the best way to write this. No need for weird prophecies or fun with Darth Plagueis or whatever. Just a slowly escalating addiction to power and control, that begins with desperation and fear brought out through war, and culminates in total megalomania.

Finally binge-watched this.

This felt like some old EU story written in 1993, with concepts like the “Imperial Security Bureau”, etc. It was awesome. I hate saying cliché crap like “It’s the best thing since Empire Strikes Back!™”, but it actually might literally be the case this time around.

The sci-fi prison scenario was probably the centerpiece, and the best sequence. Although, I originally thought that Andor would be freed from the prison by the ISB in order to interrogate him, and he would escape during the transfer or something. I didn’t expect a full prison-break scenario. That whole sequence was awesome, and Andy Sirkis was incredible, but I felt it was a bit unrealistic after two episodes setting up this impossibly hopeless dystopian sci-fi nightmare prison. In real life, prisoner uprisings in concentration camps almost never succeeded.

I felt this show was particularly political as well, in the modern sense of the word. The season finale was NOT your typical Rebel assault on Imperial Base #55423 featuring Gold Leader Standing By™, occurring concurrently with a ground battle to Disable the Shield Generator™. Instead, it was like a street battle in Portland with the cops. I’m actually surprised the Imperials were initially just beating people with space-batons instead of immediately shooting everyone. (Side note: did everyone in the Galaxy collectively forget that blasters have a stun setting? Seems like stun beams would be the Star Wars equivalent of tear gas or other forms of crowd control.)

Anyway, this show was really well done. This is the kind of material I was hoping for in a live-action Star Wars series. It finally provided a horrifying depiction of the Empire as the truly oppressive dystopia we imagined. My only complaint was that the series was probably a bit too long, with some sequences dragging on a bit (like the heist sequence to steal the payroll), but that’s the case nowadays with almost every streaming series.

Unless I’m misremembering, A New Hope kind of glosses over how exactly Luke, Han and the others manage to get from inside the Falcon in the Deathstar hangar bay over to the adjoining hallway in order to enter that small console room. Luke and Han were disguised as Stormtroopers, but how did they get Obi-Wan, the two droids, and a giant Wookie, out of the Falcon and through the open hangar bay in full view of any number of cameras or nearby guards?

Oh crap, did I just nitpick the Original Trilogy? That’s at least seven lashes.

Great video. This show was really one of the most baffling series I’ve ever seen. Having two out of seven episodes be Mandalorian episodes (one of which essentially negates the entire previous season) is so weird I can only imagine something very chaotic was going on behind the scenes at Disney. The whole show feels very first-drafty, with many plot points that seem arbitrary or half-baked. I mean, Boba Fett is all alone in Jabba’s enormous palace with a crew of like 3 people (Fennec and two useless Gamorreans). We never see how he manages to run Jabba’s criminal Empire with so little manpower. As far as I can tell his only source of income is that one nightclub. Yet he tries to take on a Galaxy-spanning crime syndicate. Why didn’t the Pykes just get one starship and blow up Jabba’s palace from orbit?

I think Disney’s basic original plan was fine. They just botched the execution. If I was in charge in 2012, I’d probably try to pull off the same plan, i.e. Episodes 7, 8, and 9, with stand-alone stories in-between. (An episodic streaming series wasn’t really an option back in 2012.)

I’d definitely try to execute the Sequel Trilogy a lot better and with significantly more planning, along with longer periods between movie releases.

I’d also tweak the overall plot of the Sequels significantly. I think the actual Sequel Trilogy had precisely 3 interesting concepts, all of which were mostly squandered. These are: (1) a Storm Trooper main character, (2) a female Jedi main character from a junkyard planet, and (3) the Knights of Ren as some kind of cool new order of non-Sith Dark Side users led by Han/Leia’s son.

My ideal Sequel Trilogy would incorporate these concepts, and scrap mostly everything else. I’d replace Rey with her earlier incarnation named “Kira”, who had a much rougher, street-smart personality, which I think better fits someone who grew up on a junkyard planet. I’d also start off the first movie showing a “day in the life” of both Kira AND Finn, unlike the actual Episode 7 which only showed us Rey’s daily routine. I would want to see Finn going through a day in his life as a Stormtrooper, eating in the mess hall of a Star Destroyer, going to his quarters, etc.

In terms of the larger story, there would be no attempt to “soft reboot” Episode IV, i.e. no political reset back to the Rebels vs. Empire status quo of A New Hope. The story would take place approx. 30 years after ROTJ, like in the real Sequel Trilogy, but the Galaxy would be divided between a dominant New Republic and various Imperial factions, like in the old EU. I’d use the original Thrawn trilogy as a general plot template, but change many details to incorporate the new characters. The basic outline would be Thrawn going from an underdog fighting the New Republic in Episode 7, then shifting the balance of power by the end of Episode 8 (maybe by acquiring something like the Katana fleet), and finally have Episode 9 revolve around the New Republic’s attempt to retake Coruscant. Kira would train with Luke to become a Jedi, Kylo and the Knights of Ren would replace the role of Joorus C’boath, and Finn would have a much more prominent arc, culminating in some incarnation of the Stormtrooper rebellion idea from the Duel of the Fates script. Han would die in Episode 8, but I’d keep Luke alive and end Episode 9 with Leia becoming Chancellor of the New Republic.*

* Since it’s all hypothetical, I’ll just assume Carrie Fisher is still with us in this alternate reality. And now I’m sad…

NeverarGreat said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5S9Vx3-QM0

New clip.

This series looks surprisingly good.

But wait, is this scene supposed to justify why Imperial security is always so crappy? Cassian Andor tells Baron Harkonnen that he just walked onto an Imperial naval base and stole some equipment, and was able to get away with it because he just “acts like he belongs there”. Now, while I’ve personally never tried, I would be pretty surprised if it was actually fairly easy to just put on a naval uniform, stroll on to a docked US aircraft carrier, and walk off with equipment. Maybe you could get away with like, stealing a sandwich from the cafeteria though.

It’s exceedingly rare for remakes to ever be worthwhile. Just iterating over some recent-ish remakes in my head (Robocop, Total Recall) I struggle to find anything of quality. Every now and then something like Dune 2021 comes along, but (A) this is very rare, and (B) it wasn’t a remake of something known primarily as an earlier movie, but rather a new adaptation of literary source material, which is arguably something entirely different. Granted, this is a fuzzy distinction, because something like Total Recall also has literary origins, but very few people are aware of that, so the 80s Schwarzenegger flick is considered the “original” material. At some point in the future, we may start to consider classic movies the equivalent of literary source material like Shakespeare, Tolkien, Frank Herbert, whatever. But as of now, most people don’t view classic movies like that because a lot of our emotional investment in these movies is attached to the specific implementation of the original, i.e. the original cast, performances, etc. I mean it’s really hard to just “remake” Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. (Or maybe it’s not… ?)

Anyway, they already remade A New Hope back in 2015. It was called Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

I really never liked the idea of Palpatine manipulating both sides like a puppet master. I would have preferred a more straightforward plot to the Prequels, rather than the “mystery” plot framework we got. The fundamental problem is that so many of the plot details and on-screen actions revolve around Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes machinations, but we never explicitly see how Palpatine does any of this, so everything is presented in very broad strokes and the outcomes often seem arbitrary.

I think The Phantom Menace is probably the worst in this regard. The entire plot is about an evil mega-corporation (the Trade Federation) invading a defenseless planet. This is a pretty straightforward sci-fi plot setup, but we never really know how individual plot developments map to goals/motivations of the Trade Federation beyond extremely fuzzy, broad strokes. They want lower taxes, so they blockade a planet, then invade the planet, then deny they invaded the planet, then try to force the local monarch to sign a treaty to legalize their invasion. At no point does any of this cleanly map to some clear goal like getting lower taxes. And it’s not clear to me if any of these actions make sense from the perspective of the Trade Federation as logical steps towards achieving their goals, or if they have no clue why they’re doing any of this and just blindly trust the mysterious shadowy hologram that tells them to do crazy things like invade planets.

I think the plot would have worked better if it was framed as a simple land-grab: evil mega-corporation invades peaceful planet to strip it of valuable resources, while Senate fails to do anything due to corruption, so Palpatine rides in as the hero standing up for Naboo. We don’t even need the Darth Sidious persona - let the Trade Federation have their own clear motives instead of obeying the whims of some shadowy hologram all the time.

Servii said:

I remember a story I heard about how Richard Marquand wanted the duel in RotJ to be bigger and more elaborate than the one in Empire, but George told him that wasn’t necessary. Ultimately, the actual sword swinging should be secondary to the character interaction.

I finally found that Richard Marquand quote I was thinking of.

"There was a feeling I had that I would like the (Jedi lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader) to be bigger than the fight in Empire. And then George said that it doesn’t have to be bigger, because basically it can’t be. George is very blunt. He said, ‘It’s just a couple of guys banging sticks against each other. Don’t worry about that. It is bigger because of what is going on in their heads. That is what makes it bigger.’

I don’t really know how to reconcile this with George’s “bigger is better” attitude by the time of RotS.

I would say the duel in ROTJ is “bigger” than the one in ESB - for some definition of “bigger” I guess. It’s “bigger” in the sense that it’s a bit more sophisticated, choreography-wise, since Luke is a more advanced lightsaber user than he was in ESB. There’s more going on - he’s now fighting his father while at the same time trying to save his father, while the Emperor manipulates them both. Whereas, in ESB Luke was basically just fighting a bad guy that murdered his father. There’s a lot more going on psychologically AND physically in the ROTJ battle.

The ROTS battle had the potential to be incredible. Two former-friends and brothers in arms fighting each other to the death. The drama practically writes itself. But somehow it STILL didn’t work, mainly because (A) Anakin and Obi-Wan never actually seemed like good friends, apart from the opening sequence in ROTS, and (B) the action was so over the top; suspension of disbelief is broken long before they start hopping on floating platforms above a pit of lava like Mario and Luigi. However, the ending sequence where Anakin is dismembered is very good, in isolation.

George’s “bigger is better” attitude is apparent throughout the Prequels, where we see these huge CGI land/space battles with countless spaceships and vehicles. I think he adopted this attitude when he realized that CGI enabled him to basically do whatever he wanted. Somehow he didn’t see any problem with this, nor did he seem to notice that CGI often looks worse than physical models if not used correctly. I think Lucas always prioritized his reputation and the reputation of Industrial Light & Magic as a visual F/X pioneer. He certainly earned that reputation with the Original trilogy in the 70s and 80s. And Phantom Menace was ground-breaking in terms of VFX in many ways as well. But I think by the time of ROTS, the VFX efforts were producing diminishing returns at the expense of the story and quality of the movies.

4throck said:

Lots of unrealistic expectations here.

It’s a modern TV series. That means generic entertainment/storyline and production values limited by time and cost-cutting. It’s not art, it’s a (more or less rushed) product for binge/consumption.

My expectations for production value were set by Mandalorian. This series didn’t live up to that at all.

To be honest, the various canon problems introduced by this show are the LEAST problematic aspect of the show for me. I’ve had to continuously “readjust” my understanding of Star Wars since 1999.

So now we learn Obi-Wan had this whole adventure with little 10-year-old Leia, which CLEARLY is not what you would infer from Leia’s holographic message in A New Hope. But then, in 1999 I also learned that Darth Vader created C3PO - which… doesn’t exactly contradict anything, but… like, really?

Now we know that when Obi-Wan says “Obi-Wan Kenobi? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time”, he means like 9 years. 9 years ago was 2013. That’s barely even yesterday, especially as you get older and time subjectively seems to move faster.

But on the other hand, after watching the Prequels, I learned that “a long time… a long time” actually just means around 19 years. Kenobi also says he hasn’t heard the name “Obi Wan” since before Luke was born, which is outright contradicted by Revenge of the Sith. Furthermore, 19 years ago was 2003. That’s certainly a “while” ago, I guess. For someone under 30 that might seem like a really long time. But it’s not “a long time… a long time” from the perspective of an old man. I mean I’m not THAT old, but 2003 doesn’t feel so long ago to me. Anyone watching Alec Guinness deliver that line in A New Hope would likely come away thinking he meant “like 40 or more years ago, maybe even centuries ago? (who knows how long these magical Jedi space Wizards can live anyway?)”

The point is, I’m so used to my natural understanding of the OT being forced to adjust or contort to fit later installments, to the extent that trying to maintain a consistent “canon” seems absurd. The only way is to be selective and maintain a personal head canon.

That said, I’m not trying to defend the Kenobi show. I think it’s tragically mediocre. But the ways it screws up canon is really the LEAST of its problems.

My recollection is that the “intentionally flawed Jedi” idea evolved from fan discussion/debate on the Internet in the early 2000s, stemming from early criticisms of the Prequels. I remember SO many conversations on various old-school web forums that went something like this:

Person A: OMG the Prequels suck so bad, why didn’t the Jedi ever send anyone to rescue Anakin’s mother? It literally would have taken them a few hours to pick her up from Tatooine. I mean Qui-Gon wanted to do it anyway but couldn’t at the time, so why didn’t anyone just come back for her later?

Person B: OMG you’re so stupid you don’t understand George Lucas is a genius. Did you even WATCH the movie? The Jedi are SUPPOSED to be shown as flawed - they didn’t want Anakin to have any attachments so that’s why they never went back to pick up his mom. Idiot.

Bridger12 said:

What exactly constitutes something looking like a fan-film?

Good question… it’s very subjective, I guess. For Star Wars generally I would say:

• Outdoor locations that are way too familiar/Earth-like (like a typical Northeastern forest or Southwestern desert - a very US-centric sentiment for sure) especially with bright lighting

• Live action footage that doesn’t have the same texture as Hollywood 35 mm film (or modern digital filters that emulate this appearance), but instead looks more like digital video, especially with overly bright lighting.

• Amateurish cinematography (repetitive or clumsy framing, shot angles, etc.)

• Bad CGI

• Fantastical looking characters in mundane locations (i.e. Vader in an outdoor quarry at night)

A lot of this is subjective. I mean you could argue Endor looks like a fan-film location. But it’s usually multiple elements that combine to make it look really fan-filmy.

Fan_edit_fan said:

Bridger12 said:

Channel72 said:

There’s so much logistical hand-waving about how characters get from Point A to Point B in this show. How did Reva get to Tatooine?

Easy. She flew there.

But how? With what transport? And how so lightening fast while Vader JUST left her to pursue Kenobi and gang? You could have argued that opening scene of her asking for Owen could have happened weeks or months after her being nearly stabbed to death and needing to recuperate.

I initially thought it WAS like months or weeks later. But then we cut back to Vader pursuing Kenobi, which implies that only a few minutes/hours have passed since the ending of Episode 5. I was so confused - at one point I thought we were seeing two different time periods, e.g. the Kenobi scenes were like a flashback, while the Reva scenes were the present day. But no, they were clearly supposed to be concurrent, which means after Reva got stabbed in the stomach with a lightsaber, she somehow got up, found a ship (wasn’t it a plot point that there were no other ships?), exited the atmosphere without being detected by the nearby Stardestroyer, and then arrived on Tatooine and asked that guy about Owen, all in what must have been less than an hour.

Unless the transport carrying Kenobi and the others was being pursued for days/weeks? They didn’t have hyperdrive working, and they do arrive at a different planet or moon, so I guess it’s possible. The chronology is just so confusing.

MalaStrana#2 said:

How come is she still alive btw ? I haven’t watched yet the finale but I truly wonder how it is possible to shoot a scene of Vader calmly stabbing her and leaving the scene quietly to just leave his prey alive. Is there something explaining that or just fans assuming stuff? (Because it appears SW fans are less lazy than SW writers and try to make sense of everything)

No explanation is provided. She’s just somehow on Tatooine the next time we see her, after being impaled.

I mean, if I were impaled, and miraculously survived, I’d probably first try to get to a hospital with a bacta tank, and save my child-killing revenge plans for later… but that’s just me.

There’s so much logistical hand-waving about how characters get from Point A to Point B in this show. How did Reva get to Tatooine? And then how did she get to the Lars homestead? Did she WALK there? We never see her with a vehicle. How does Obi Wan evade the Star Destroyer in orbit after he defeats Vader? etc. etc.

I guess some of this is nitpicking, but it adds up. I never felt like there was such constant logistical hand-waving in the OT or PT.

Well, it was better than I expected. Plus finally some John Williams classics.

There’s just SO many problems that make this difficult to enjoy. For the first ten minutes I’m trying to just enjoy the show, but I can’t stop thinking “wait how did Reva get to Tatooine? I thought there were no other ships at that base. How did she even survive? How did she get there so fast when it seems like we picked up minutes after the last episode ended, with Vader’s Star Destroyer chasing Obi-Wan?” So many questions I have to put a lot of effort into ignoring.

I also don’t think they make it clear why exactly Reva wants to kill Luke. I guess it’s supposed to satisfy her need to get revenge on Vader… but at this point Vader doesn’t even know Luke exists. Was Reva going to call up Vader afterwards and be like “hey I’m still alive, also you had a son, but I killed him”? Or did she just want to kill Luke because she was afraid he would grow up to become another Vader? The latter would be a more interesting motivation, but it’s never made clear.

Also isn’t Obi Wan a bit concerned that Reva knows about Luke? I feel like Reva’s whole plot-line is just left hanging with no closure.

Whatever. This wasn’t that bad, just a lot of wasted potential. The only time I really felt something was when Obi Wan apologized to Anakin. But, unfortunately their interaction wasn’t as interesting as I hoped it would be. Since we know they both survive, an extended action-packed lightsaber duel isn’t really the best use of screen time. (They already went overboard with the duel in Revenge of the Sith.) I would have preferred a more dialogue-centered, psychological encounter.

Overall, I still feel like this series hasn’t justified its existence.