Channel72

The thing is, a lot of the stuff we’ve seen from Disney+ Star Wars seems unusually and atypically bad - suggesting problems that go beyond the typical writing and development mishaps you’d expect from most mediocre productions. The biggest example of this is probably undoing the entire Mandalorian Season 2 arc - by shoehorning in a subplot in an entirely different show no less - presumably because Disney execs were terrified about the prospect of losing baby Yoda.

Also, while Mandalorian Season 1 and 2 are overrated, they didn’t quite fall off into the abyss of bad writing like later shows. Apart from Andor, it seems there was a steep drop in quality beginning with Book of Boba Fett and Mandalorian Season 3. Because this drop in quality occurred at the same time as the bizarre decision to back track the entire season-level arc in Mandalorian, it’s difficult not to assume there was massive studio interference leading to things like demoralization or apathy among writers. At least, it feels like some people like Jon Favreau may have just checked out creatively after that.

I finally watched the last two episodes of this show.

I get the strong feeling that this show was written by a team of writers comprised of individuals who had very differing ideas about what the show was supposed to be about. It seems that a lot of the events that happen in this show were the result of some kind of compromise between different writers, or maybe between writers and executives.

For example, it seems that the show wanted to explore the hypocrisies and sins of the Jedi as an institution, by showing how they committed an atrocity (massacred a coven of witches) and then covered this up. I don’t necessarily like this idea, but it at least represents a vision for the show. But then some writer was like “no… we can’t do that, the Jedi wouldn’t just murder people”. So eventually the writers reached a compromise where the Jedi kind of, sort of, kind of accidentally killed all the witches in self-defense. But this compromise waters down the entire show and makes the whole thing incoherent. Why exactly did Torbin commit suicide again?

ZkinandBonez said:

Well, I more-or-less much agree with everything you just said, minus the conclusion–and even that is fairly hair-splitting.

First off, my title is admittedly a tad click-bait-y, and had I written the essay now I might have phrased a few things a bit differently. But overall, the reason I label SW as surrealism is because of how its themes are incorporated into the ‘world-building.’

Yes, all fiction adheres, or should adhere, to our instinctual understanding of the physical world around us, and yes, even “hard SF” can get this wrong simply because space travel isn’t currently a natural part of our lives. But, there is a difference between getting it wrong due to laziness and doing it on purpose. SW often breaks these rules the same way fantasy or myth do in order to tell a symbolic, larger-than-life story where the ideas and impressions matter more than realism or plausibility.

Even hard SF can have themes and symbolic meaning, but there is generally a surface narrative where the depicted world hss its own set of strict rules that goes beyond simple continuity or our baseline understanding of physics. The themes are for all intents and purposes “tacked on”, even when they are the main reason for the story being told. In Fantasy, this line is often more blurred. F.ex. in Homer’s the Odyssey, Ulysses travels to several islands with strange creatures on them, but there’s no inherent logic to them beyond baseline physics. They can’t be placed on any maps, there’s no inherent logic in a lone giant inhibiting an island, nor do we need to know how Circe got to her island. They are simply there because Ulysses needs to face his trials before being allowed to get home to his family. These places and theie inhabitants don’t exist outide the narrative.

This is trickier with SW because of the EU and our modern tendency to turn everything in not only a franchise, but everything tends to evolve into a LOTR-type world now. Even so, there are things in in Tolkien’s world that breaks the established rules in order to tell a symbolic story. This is especially true for Gandalf’s magic, which is notoriously hard to pin down to any coherent internal logic. Though to Tolkien the themes trumped lore, and he chose the abstract and mythic approach.

Yes, SW has strong SF elements baked into it, but even a forcefield generator, if seen through an abstract lense can simply be a SF-ified version of a castle wall that needs to be brought down by invading army. Likewise, I don’t agree with the idea of there being AI or proper robots in the OT. The droids are effectively space-ified slaves. They are symbolic humans (and based on the two peasants in Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress). It’s hard to do a space fantasy, or science-fantasy, without established technological tropes slipping through, but the OT never really does much with these ideas because they don’t matter beyond their symbolic meaning and recognisable surface function. In Star Trek it matters how a warp drive works (even if the science is a bit questionable in hindsight), but the hyperdrive in SW is simply an engine. Ulysses had sails, Han has a spaceship engine. And considering the sounds it makes, and since we see X-Wings being fuelled by seemingly gasoline (or something similar), its basically a “normal” engine added to space ships. No dilithium crystals or atomic reactors needed here.

Anyway, I hope you don’t take this response as being harshly worded, as I think you raised a lot of excellent points. And admittedly, drawing the line between the abstract and the “literal” in fiction is extremely difficult and the lack of any universally agreed upon genre definitions doesn’t exactly help either. And I’m more than willing to agree with the use of science-fantasy being applied to SW, even if I personally think space-fantasy is better. Though you obviously don’t seem to label it as just SF, there are those that do, and that I do strongly disagree with.

Right, I wouldn’t say Star Wars is entirely science fiction. I’d probably call it sci-fi/fantasy or something like that.

I agree with what you’re saying about surrealism in the world building, and the example of Odysseus’ adventures at sea. I guess the giant asteroid worm and the Sarlacc pit are examples of things in Star Wars that are somewhat analogous - trials for our heroes to overcome with little inherent logic on their own.

I also agree that something like a deflector shield can be replaced with a castle wall, but I think Star Wars also contains elements that cannot be replaced with some pre-technological approximation without losing a lot in the translation. The Industrial Revolution inspired the emergence of sci-fi as a new story-telling genre that seemed fundamentally different from any genre that came before. While there are obscure examples of pre-Industrial stories that arguably incorporate elements that superficially resemble sci-fi, the stories that emerged during the Industrial revolution, like Frankenstein, seemed categorically different because they extrapolated from current technological developments in order to imagine ways that technology could radically impact humanity in the future, while also bestowing the human inventor/scientist with powers previously reserved for gods or the supernatural.

My argument is that Star Wars incorporates themes that are directly related to the effects of technology on humanity, and thus can only have meaning to a post-Industrial, technological society. I agree that a deflector shield can be translated to a castle wall and a laser gun can be translated to a bow and arrow - but then you have themes like “spirituality vs. technology” with Darth Vader warning the Imperial elite not to rely so much on their “technological terror” or Luke Skywalker switching off his targeting computer before pulling off an impossible shot. These elements invoke themes that cannot be meaningfully translated to a pre-Industrial, pre-technological equivalent without losing a ton of meaning and social context in the translation. Even the Death Star and the political implications it has - an absolute technocratic, totalitarian dictatorship with no need for bureaucracy - invokes dystopian fears and themes that can’t be translated to a pre-Industrial equivalent without fundamentally altering their essence.

I mean, the Romans and other pre-Industrial civilizations could not even conceive of a Death Star or an atomic bomb and what it could mean for governance and politics. Their notions of political power were rooted in things like manpower and ties to the divine or previous dynasties. Sure, they developed some impressive new technologies with military applications, but this had a limited effect on the average person and never inspired writers or poets to imagine a fundamentally different future by extrapolating from current technological developments. It would take the wide-ranging effects of the Industrial Revolution to inspire the emergence of science fiction as a categorically new genre, and I think Star Wars includes important themes that only make sense in a post-Industrial, technological society.

I know this essay is very popular here, but I’ve always disagreed with it.

In practice, people often define science fiction as “you know, lasers and robots and space ships and shit”. Obviously, Star Wars meets this criteria. But a more useful criteria for science fiction probably entails stories that are in some way actually about how some hypothetical future technology or development affects people and society. Stuff like Contact or Blade Runner are obviously sci-fi under that definition, as are movies like the Matrix or Terminator. These movies are actually about how some new technology or future condition affects people and society. This definition is not a binary thing either - there’s obviously a “sci-fi spectrum” here, and a movie can be both sci-fi and other genres simultaneously.

Some might prefer an even stricter definition or criteria for sci-fi. Under this stricter definition, a movie’s themes should not be reducible to conventional themes, i.e. the movie can’t simply use sci-fi elements as window dressing to tell a conventional, non-sci-fi story. For example, arguably something like Terminator 2 has prominent themes about motherhood, fatherhood, and determinism/fate. The movie doesn’t necessarily need science fiction elements to explore those themes. It could be reimagined as a story with the same themes and overall plot structure but with the sci-fi elements removed. For example, it could just be about a delinquent teenage orphan on the run from something while an unconventional father-like figure protects him. You don’t necessarily need killer time-traveling cyborgs to explore those themes - but they do make the movie a lot cooler. On the other hand, a movie like 2001 - A Space Odyssey is irreducibly science fiction, because the sci-fi elements are absolutely required in order to explore the themes the movie wants to explore, like space exploration, AI and the long-term evolution of the human race. But this stricter definition is pretty impractical, because few people use the term “sci-fi” in such a narrow way.

Anyway, I think Star Wars - at least A New Hope - is actually science fiction using either of these definitions (even the stricter one!). Most people are likely to describe A New Hope as a “hero’s journey” or a fantasy about a young farmboy who meets a space wizard and goes on a fantastical adventure. But the main plot is also very much about a new technological super-weapon, and how it affects society as a political game-changer, making an absolute technocratic dictatorship possible and stable over the long-term without any accompanying bureaucracy or democracy. There are also themes of “man vs. machine”, spirituality vs. technology, etc., all of which are themes that are not reducible to non-science-fiction themes.

Moreover, the “Star Wars is fantasy not sci-fi” argument is often used defensively in the context of discussions about obvious absurdities, like Han Solo walking around inside an asteroid, exposed to the vacuum of space, with no protective suit and a magical source of artificial gravity. Fans (and Irvin Kershner himself) often hand-wave away such criticisms with arguments about the artistic merits of Star Wars viewed as surrealism or expressionism. Star Wars certainly has elements of surrealism and expressionism, but the films also anchor many sequences around objective rules based on technological systems - e.g. we can’t penetrate the deflector shield so we need to blow up the shield generator.

Fundamentally, the boundaries between sci-fi and surrealism or fantasy are often arbitrary, based mostly on the experiences and expectations of the average person living today. If I complain that Han Solo shouldn’t survive in the vacuum of space, somebody might respond by telling me “Star Wars isn’t supposed to be science fiction.” J.J. Abrams said exactly that (“Star Wars is not a science lesson”) when fans complained that the bright red Starkiller beam in Force Awakens shouldn’t be visible in the sky.

But why exactly do we accept this? Probably because most humans have never been to outer space, so the average person doesn’t have the experience or mental model to develop expectations about how outer space works. Thus, they’re okay if a movie ignores the reality of physical conditions imposed in outer space if doing so increases drama or spectacle. Okay, but what if there was a scene where Han Solo dives into a river, and then just starts walking around underwater for hours, with no breathing apparatus? If no explanation is provided, the audience would be like “WTF? How is he not dead from lack of oxygen?” It’s doubtful anybody would respond with “Who cares! Star Wars is fantasy, not sci-fi!”. Because of course, the average person in the 21st century has the experience to understand intuitively that humans can’t breathe underwater. If a movie violates this intuition, the audience gets frustrated.

Even pure fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, generally adheres to the audiences’ base-line expectations about physics on a human scale. If Frodo Baggins falls off a tall cliff we expect he will die when he hits the ground. If he falls into a river and can’t swim, we expect him to drown. If these expectations are violated and no explanation is provided, the audience becomes frustrated. Pure surrealism or expressionism, on the other hand, doesn’t even necessarily require this minimal adherence to some baseline set of expectations rooted in the common shared experiences of being human. So I’ve always felt that labeling Star Wars as surrealism, expressionism, or pure fantasy - often defensively - to be pretty arbitrary, based mostly on our current, average experiences of reality, which change rapidly with each passing year as humanity collectively experiences new things and learns more about the Universe.

I don’t expect Star Wars to ever be hard sci-fi, nor do I want it to. It relies extensively on fantasy conceits like the Force, FTL travel, and space dog-fights. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend it’s entirely expressionist, as if objective, physical rules should always be a secondary concern, or that it doesn’t incorporate themes that are irreducibly science fiction.

Superweapon VII said:

After further consideration, I’ve realized I also want a Ziro the Hutt movie directed by John Waters.

Only if they use AI to resurrect Divine as a Jedi Master and/or Sith Lord, preferably done in a way that shows very poor taste.

Acbagel said:

Every Jedi in the Temple who can confirm Sol’s whereabouts at the time of all these murders. Folks, this is not like Sol is within a 30-minute drive and could sneak out, kill a master, and make it back to Youngling Class in time (though this show does indicate starships can enter orbit and teleport across the galaxy in mere seconds). The accusation is that he was stealing starships, or has some unregistered personal starship, flying across the galaxy, killing Indara, sneaking around Olega and being involved in tons of other events and killing Torbin, sneaking to Khofar and killing half a dozen Jedi and Kelnacca, then flying to Brendock to kill himself. Sol. SOL. The softest, sweetest teacher… COME ON.

Clearly, Sol was so powerful he used astral projection to appear on Coruscant teaching Younglings while he was really out on a violent murder-spree across the stars.

NFBisms said:

On the contrary (and I know this won’t move the needle for you), something I actually kind of appreciated here was the effort this went to show the Jedi not as space cops. I think that angle gets overplayed a bit; it’s easy to villainize them in that lens, but that’s hardly the point. This has a more productive distillation of the subtext.

Ehh… I don’t know. I haven’t watched the whole show yet, but I remember in Episode 2 they literally have the Jedi in a helicopter-like ship hovering in the sky at night with blinding floodlights beaming down, screaming things like “This is the Jedi! You are under arrest!” over a megaphone. I really could not tell the difference at that point between the Jedi and the LAPD.

The Jedi in this show did more “cop-like” things than they ever did in the Prequels, like arresting people, interrogating suspects, etc. While we often joke that the Prequels basically turned the Jedi into glorified space cops, I don’t think the Prequel Jedi ever actually arrested anyone, except when Mace tried unsuccessfully to arrest Palpatine. The closest they come to stereotypical cop-like behavior in the Prequels is when Anakin starts yelling at that shape-shifting assassin outside a nightclub in Attack of the Clones. But for the most part, the Prequel Jedi were portrayed as diplomats, negotiators and advisors in The Phantom Menace, and then as bodyguards, soldiers and Generals in the other two films. In Attack of the Clones Obi-Wan took on the role of a detective when investigating the assassination attempt on Amidala, but he comes across more like a Private Investigator or FBI agent than a police officer.

I now want to see a parody show where the Jedi have to cruise around the Galaxy and show up to random people’s houses to settle civil or domestic disturbances. In the first Episode, Jedi Master Plo Koon and his new Padawan respond to a 10-16 at the intersection of Dune Street and Kerner Plaza in South Central Mos Eisley, and talk down a meth-crazed Jawa who became violent after a Twi’lek that lives upstairs complained about loud cantina-band music blasting all night.

Spartacus01 said:

I always viewed Padmé’s death as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anakin acted upon his fear of losing her, and this is what caused her death in the first place. In this sense, I always thought it was a compelling death. Also, I am of the opinion that Leia’s mother being alive when she was still a little child was never a good idea to begin with, so I’m more than happy that the Prequels retconned it.

Sure - I imagine Lucas probably wanted Padme’s death to be an ironic self-fulling prophecy, like something out of a Greek tragedy, where a character tries to stop something from happening but then inadvertently causes that very thing to happen, because you can never escape Fate, etc. It’s like the pre-modern version of a time-loop paradox.

But I think Padme’s death doesn’t quite work as an ironic self-fulfilling prophecy, because Padme doesn’t actually die from anything Anakin does to her directly, but rather she dies mysteriously of a broken heart later on. Maybe it would have worked better if Padme actually died from complications during childbirth brought on by injuries she sustained when Anakin force-choked her.

Spartacus01 said:

I’m aware of the fact that this is a very unpopular opinion on this forum, so I hope I will not get crucified.
I don’t like the idea of explaining Leia’s memories in Return of the Jedi in a literal way, that is by making Padmé survive to the events of Revenge of the Sith. Force visions are the best way to explain Leia’s memories, especially when you consider that her descriptions in Return of the Jedi are very vague. In fact, Leia herself said that she only remembered vague images, so I don’t get why they couldn’t just be the product of Force visions. After all, in The Empire Strikes Back it was Yoda himself who said that the Force allows you to see “the future, the past, old friends long gone”, so there is no contradiction really. Also, Padmé being alive at the end of Revenge of the Sith and not appearing in A New Hope is super-jarring, especially if you watch the movies in chronological order, and having her death occur between the two trilogies without actually showing it is not a good idea in my opinion.

I won’t crucify you - but… I think it’s obvious that a “Force vision” wasn’t the original intent of the person who wrote Leia’s dialogue in Return of the Jedi. Clearly, they meant to communicate to the audience that Leia/Luke’s mother was alive when Leia was a young child. The Prequels changed this for no real narrative benefit. They didn’t even use Padme’s death for some compelling narrative purpose - like for example, having Padme’s death push Anakin over the edge and fall to the Dark Side. Instead, it was only the fear of Padme potentially dying that pushed Anakin over the edge. Padme didn’t even need to actually die, yet for some reason Lucas made her die anyway, despite the cost of violating continuity with ROTJ.

Overall, it’s not such a big deal. Attempting to explain the discrepancy with a “Force vision” is fine - and certainly not the worst attempt at damage control from fans - but it’s still just fan damage control after an obvious (and pointless) retcon.

NFBisms said:

If I had to be earnest, I think Andor is the best Star Wars media probably ever produced? It’s perfect. So I will always be grateful for that.

Andor definitely rivals Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality and tone. Comparing the two is probably futile – they’re such radically different productions. Andor has some flaws - I particularly didn’t really appreciate the flashback sequences showing Andor as a child living among some lost tribe of children like Peter Pan or whatever. But that’s such a minor complaint in retrospect - the show is like a 9.999 out of 10. It lacks the “dark fantasy” vibe of Empire Strikes Back, but it has its own unique dystopian vibe going for it that was really lacking in the OT.

I only came to this realization after not really feeling the subsequent releases (Mando, Ahsoka, Acolyte), but also not really feeling any kind of desire to “fix” them like I would. I wasn’t even disappointed. They just weren’t for me.

Yeah, me too. I often find myself wanting to mentally fix movies that captivate me, including the Original Star Wars Trilogy. But yeah, this latest stuff from Disney+ is not even captivating enough to inspire me to want to fix it, it’s just all mostly ephemeral trash designed to maintain subscriptions. Andor was just uniquely special, and I’m kind of shocked it even exists.

Vladius said:
That is a good idea but episodic stories like that are much less popular than serialized stuff now. It’s very close to the Jedi Apprentice series of books, which are about Qui Gon and Obi Wan having episodic Jedi adventures on different planets with different dilemmas. They’re kids’ books and I read them as a kid, but it could easily be done with an adult show, or just more adult books.

Arguably, Mando Season 1 was sort of episodic. There was a through-line with baby Yoda weaved through the entire season, but it was a “soft” through-line, unlike more heavily serialized shows. Many episodes were more or less self-contained. Ironically, people at the time complained about this, labeling it “side quest of the week” or something. But in retrospect, Mando Season 1 is widely regarded as one of the better Disney+ productions, or at least one of the few productions that isn’t bafflingly terrible.

There’s a fine line to be drawn between a series where the through-line is so captivating that “side quest” episodes register as “filler” content designed to pad out the series to meet some production quota, and a series that has a very “soft” through-line that doesn’t completely dominate expectations about each episode. I usually become impatient with “filler” episodes with series that have a prominent through-line, often based around some compelling mystery established in the first episode. But I’m also a big fan of classic shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, where every episode is mostly self-contained, but there are also “soft” through-lines woven through the series, showing up from time to time, usually in Season finales. But these “soft” through-lines were never prominent enough to make the individual episodes come across as “filler”. It also doesn’t hurt that many of those classic individual episodes were high quality masterpieces written by veteran sci-fi writers.

I get the sense that a lot of the writing flaws in these Disney+ Star Wars shows ultimately originate from top-down mandates to expand a 1.5 hour movie pitch into an 8 episode streaming series. At least, that explains why shows like the Kenobi and Boba Fett show are filled with narrative dead-ends, weird decision making, and characters spontaneously changing their minds as needed. But somehow these same writing problems also plagued Mando Season 3 and the Acolyte, which as far as I know were never originally pitched as a movie. So I have no idea what’s happening. I can’t even blame Filoni anymore because non-Filoni shows exhibit Filoni-esque symptoms in the writing. All I know is that good writers seem to be in very short supply, or something about the creative process at Lucasfilm is fundamentally broken. Basically just let Tony Gilroy do everything from now on and we should be okay.

RedLetterMedia recently suggested that a show like the Acolyte - or any High Republic show centering on the Jedi - could be formatted as a Star Trek style episodic show about a team of Jedi, or maybe just a master/apprentice duo, who travel around the Galaxy dispensing peace and justice, with plots based around localized, “problem of the week” style stories and ethical dilemmas, just like old school Star Trek. I realize Star Wars isn’t Star Trek, but the premise of the High Republic could really fit nicely with an episodic style. When I first read about the premise of the High Republic book series, way before the Acolyte aired, one of my first thoughts was “this sounds a lot like Star Trek”. Arguably, the old KOTOR games are somewhat made in this mold as well. You could also do this Andor style, with multiple 2 or 3 episode arcs centering on different independent story lines.

Vladius said:

This entire site exists because of complaining and hating on the Lucas special editions and the prequels and trying to fix them. If you put up all the same stuff everyone here said like 10 or 15 years ago and added some clickbait headlines and thumbnails you people would call them Hateful Toxic YouTube Grifters.

You’re probably right.

The Prequel/Special-Edition debates of the late 90s through early 2010s were way more heated than most people seem to remember. But one major difference between those debates and debates about modern Star Wars was that with the Prequel debates there was no real political dimension. The debates really were almost entirely about quality, or how well the Prequels lived up to the potential dramatic greatness implied in the OT. Whereas nowadays, before we even get to discussions about the actual quality of a new Star Wars movie/show, we often have to first wade through layers of political discourse, usually with all nuance thrown out the window. Also, anything with a political dimension invariably induces people to take sides based on political allegiances first and other considerations second.

As for what I’d like to see: basically just Andor Season 2. After that I don’t care what happens.

NFBisms said:

The reversion-back-to-“good” is a central tension to the read I’m putting forward here. To tie it back to the OT Vader discussion, in this perspective it’s a performance. Not even necessarily a mask on his true self, but a desperate grasp on to his better self. Gradual or abrupt, linear or nonlinear - is beside my point, I think it’s just supposed to be a struggle. And I do think that has interplay with ROTJ’s portrayal of Vader’s redemption. It’s playing with the question of ontological good/evil. Can someone fundamentally be “just” a psychotic killer? [is it] too late for me son

He wants to believe he has the morals not to kill Dooku, he buries the memory of the Tuskens because that’s not what a good Jedi [master] does. I think the amount of time spent in ROTS of him angsting about his responsibilities vs desires makes it relatively intuitive that he is performing, deferring to doctrine and procedure harder than ever before. (“Not the Jedi way” “against the Jedi code” “never been done in the history of the Jedi”) Compensating for his failure and disappointment in himself into rigidity

This especially when that’s not how he was characterized in AOTC. It’s basically Catholic guilt, sin motivating piety. The Tuskens being evoked early in ROTS as a response to Anakin’s performed morals is functional in that lens.

I do think you’re right about the weirdness of Padme being super cool with the massacre in AOTC, though.

The other things that muddle it is stuff like the Padme death anxiety simply making no sense, and yet being given central focus. The fascism that peeks out also generally just makes Anakin unsympathetic. It’s odd because these explain motivations for different parts of his arc - but they barely if at all synthesize with one another.

1. Padme is cool with Anakin killing those Tuskens because they need to be in love
2. The nightmares of Padme’s death motivate the deal with the devil
3. Anakin’s failed search for absolution explains the upfront costs
4. The fascist side of Anakin gives him something to stay around for when it all goes bad

It’s all a mess BUT i think can be kinda compelling to think through

Sure, I can accept that reading as one way to slightly salvage Anakin’s downfall. I do think it warrants emphasizing though just how bizarre the whole Tusken thing really is, considering that presumably the movie wants us to still have some sympathy for Anakin in Acts II and III of AoTC and then Act I and II of RoTS. The weirdness of it all is partially masked by the sci-fi/fantasy setting. But imagine a (non sci-fi) historical drama where “Anakin Skywalker” walks up to a Bedouin encampment somewhere in Tunisia, pulls out a machine gun, and just murders every single person in the camp, including children. Then he goes back to his girlfriend and confesses, and she’s just like “well we all get angry sometimes” or whatever. Then the rest of the movie frames “Anakin Skywalker” as a standard protagonist engaging in often light-hearted, swashbuckling action-hero fare like nothing happened.

It’s like the script was written by someone with Bronze Age sensibilities - I can imagine an ancient Greek or Mesopotamian hero murdering an entire village for revenge, and being celebrated by poets and playwrights retelling the story to a Bronze Age audience. But for a 21st century space opera, this is pretty unorthodox. Man, George Lucas really is something else.

NFBisms said:

I think it’s important that those upfront costs aren’t his First Dark Side Experience™. It’s still the Tuskens.

What I’m positing is that the guilt and self-hatred of that has permanence, informs his internality, even by the time of ROTS. When he bows to Palpatine, he can agree to the terms because he’s already spent the past three years haunted by what he’s done, already knowing well the shape of evil inside him. It’s what he’s been running away from, to reputation as a hero (a good man), and what he hopes is masterhood (vindication as a Jedi).

I get what you’re saying. I think the problem is how this is portrayed. Ultimately, the script doesn’t present Anakin’s journey to the Dark Side as a linear path that goes from murdering Tuskens in AoTC to murdering everyone in ROTS. The Tusken massacre almost seems irrelevant because there’s no visible consequences to it immediately after the scene where Anakin confesses it to Padme. Anakin immediately reverts to standard good guy protagonist during the Geonosis arena scene. Then the next time we see him at the beginning of RoTS, he’s even more of a standard good guy protagonist, doing standard good guy protagonist heroics. There’s no linear progression. Then he has a moral problem with beheading a defenseless Count Dooku, even though he already mercilessly killed a whole tribe 3 years ago. The movie acts like Anakin’s morals are really being challenged when Palpatine asks him to kill Dooku, as if Anakin wasn’t already a completely psychotic killer.

So Problem 1 is that the films themselves don’t show any linear progression after the Tusken massacre - they almost act like the Tusken murder never happened. (I think Palpatine brings it up one time to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith - that’s the only time after AoTC the Tusken massacre is even acknowledged.)

Problem 2 is that the Tuskens have always been presented to the audience as mindless inhuman monsters. This further muddies the waters, because presumably we have reason to believe the Tuskens are sentient beings and murdering this whole tribe should be considered a genocidal atrocity. Anakin murdering the Tuskens should push his character way beyond the moral Event Horizon. But the film doesn’t really seem to treat it that way. The film treats it as a “BAD thing”, but not a “REALLY BAD thing”. After Anakin confesses, Padme is just like “well you know these things happen.” Then the issue is dropped, and Anakin reverts back to standard good guy protagonist. Furthermore, Padme, while at times naïve, is presented in these films as a moral compass, advocate for democracy, and voice of reason, especially in RoTS, so if she has no problem with Anakin mass-murdering a whole village, as an audience member I come away with the sense that the Tusken massacre wasn’t even supposed to be that bad.

So when Anakin finally goes “full Sith” mode in RoTS and agrees to murder everyone, it’s difficult for me, as an audience member, to factor in the previous Tusken massacre as a stepping stone towards this decision. Because as an audience member, by the time I get to the Sith conversion scene, (A) I already watched almost half a movie that was acting like the Tusken massacre never even happened, and (B) the previous movie kind of acted like the Tusken massacre wasn’t such a big deal anyway.

NFBisms said:

When he chooses Palpatine, he’s making a deal with the devil to “save Padme’s life”, liberating himself from the [Jedi-informed] conscience he did have. It’s not that what he does from here “doesn’t count” but it’s not a reflection of who he is (well, idk, loaded philosophical question) or who he wants to be. Hayden crying is some of the most striking imagery in ROTS and it happens several times.

I think the problem with Anakin’s decision to follow Palpatine is the absurdly extreme cost of doing so that Anakin has to pay right up front. I mean, I can understand Anakin (or anybody, really) agreeing to do some seriously evil stuff in order to save the life of a loved one. But Anakin is told that, in order to save Padme, he has to basically mass-murder everyone he’s ever known, including children. That goes well beyond “my first Dark Side experience”. The justification, I guess, is that Anakin desperately wants to save Padme and he’s slightly pissed off at the Jedi for denying him a Council seat. But this is so weak - the character-work really isn’t there in the script to justify Anakin’s decision. It’s a ridiculous and jarring leap to go from “well I’m now an accessory to Mace Windu’s murder, I might as well just roll with the whole Dark Side thing” to “I will now methodically murder hundreds of people including defenseless children on the off-chance this Sith stuff pans out and saves Padme”.

But I do agree that Hayden crying in silence is one of the few emotionally compelling things that happens in the Prequels.

I only wish I knew how much of Leia’s sudden personality shift midway through A New Hope was by design, and how much was just weird George Lucas writing quirkiness or a symptom of multiple rewrites by George’s 1970s friends.

The accent shift doesn’t seem intentional, but maybe I’m wrong. Leia speaks with her “Act I accent” when talking to Vader and Tarkin, but also when talking to allies like Obi Wan (via the recording stored in R2). She drops the accent when she meets Luke. So maybe the accent is some kind of “formal speech” used when speaking with dignitaries? But then at the end of the movie, when she arrives at Yavin IV, she does not resume speaking with her “Act I accent” when she’s talking with the Rebel elite like Dodonna (at least I don’t think she does… might have to double check.)

Also, people always say Leia has a British accent during the first half of A New Hope, but to me it actually sounds closer to an old 1930s/40s Trans-Atlantic accent used by the American upper class.

It’s also funny to observe that the destruction of Alderaan seems to be the event that triggers her accent change.

The child-killing thing always seemed WAY over the top to me. It was just too extreme to happen so abruptly. I mean, I agree Vader was always theoretically irredeemable after Alderaan. But we all know that human nature makes it a lot easier to stomach the idea of millions of nameless children dying in a nuclear blast than a dozen or so children being stabbed by someone they trusted. Plus, the child-killing scene ruined any hope of some kind of “slow descent towards evil”. Why was Obi Wan even trying to talk Anakin out of being evil after this?

Also, for a decade before the Prequels, I heard these tantalizing rumors about Anakin Skywalker as this bad-ass Jedi-killer assassin. So when I finally saw him depicted as such in ROTS, only to see him killing a room full of defenseless kids, it just seemed… I don’t know… kind of pathetic. (Cue Prequel defense team: “that’s the point you idiot, didn’t you even watch the Prequels? Stop idolizing Darth Vader, etc. etc. etc.”)

The Exogol battle in Rise of Skywalker is a disgusting mess. And the Prequel battles are mostly just CGI vomit. Somehow, neither the Prequels nor Sequels managed to have a space battle anywhere near as emotionally intense or visually engaging as the Battle of Endor filmed in 1983. And the problem goes well beyond the visual overload in the Prequels and Rise of Skywalker.

The problem is these movies have forgotten how to build up tension and suspense leading up to the battle. There’s rarely like, a briefing room scene, where they go over the objectives, the stakes, etc., so we can follow the action during the battle and have some emotional reaction to the ups and downs, the set-backs and victories. Like with the Battle of Endor, when they realize the deflector shield is still up, we understand how fucked they are, because we know the mission objectives. Then the fleet of Star Destroyers shows up, and then we discover the Death Star superlaser is operational. The Rebels then try to merge their fleet with the Star Destroyer fleet in desperation, just to survive long enough until the shield generator comes down.

But in the Prequels you have stuff like the Battle of Coruscant in ROTS which, while visually stunning occasionally, is mostly just an emotionally empty CGI mess. We don’t know who is winning or losing, nothing that happens really means anything because we don’t know how it affects the overall battle. The battle itself is really just a backdrop against which the main characters try to carry out a rescue operation. That’s fine - but there’s never any other proper space battles with clearly communicated objectives, and action we can get invested in by following the ups and downs, set backs and victories. I mean, in the Death Star attack in A New Hope, pretty much every single X-wing that gets shot down feels significant.

In Force Awakens, they tried to redo the Death Star attack from A New Hope. They even had a briefing scene, but they kind of play it for laughs and meta-jokes. Then the actual battle just feels rushed and emotionally empty. You can’t really follow the action or react emotionally to any ups and downs. There’s no main characters even involved. Then in Rise of Skywalker, they sort of tried to setup some mission objectives for the Exegol battle - I think they had to take out a communications tower or something, but the whole thing makes very little sense. The battle also quickly devolves into a cloud of nonsense, at one point showing horses charging across the surface of a Star Destroyer, and Palpatine electrocuting the entire atmosphere.

Superweapon VII said:

If Star Wars was the least bit realistic, all warfare would be done by droids. You wouldn’t put a organic being with imperfect reflexes into the cockpit of a fighter and send them to take out an artificial planetoid and sacrifice their life needlessly if you have the technology to build a robot fighter equipped with a strong AI which isn’t limited by the flaws that flesh is heir to.

In the Prequels there actually was an entire army of droids and fighter-ships with droid or AI pilots. But the movies insist that cloned humans are superior somehow. The excuse is that organic/biological beings are better at thinking creatively which gives them some sort of advantage in combat - a pretty dubious proposition.

I guess Jedi pilots might actually be superior to an AI in some cases. Even the best AI can only probabilistically try to predict the future, but a Jedi has actual, supernatural precognition.

Yeah, Qimir is turning out to be a great villain. He’s the most interesting character on the show.

Lee Jung-jae as Sol is also great. There’s a brief scene in this episode where he almost cries, and the acting is just top notch.

The main problem with this show is that the main character(s), Osha/Mae, are really the least interesting characters. The problem with Mae in particular is her motivation seems very incoherent. It changes all the time, forcing the audience to come up with explanations on the fly. At one point she wants to turn herself in to the Jedi all of a sudden, but then in the next episode she just starts fighting the Jedi, and then in this episode she deceives Sol by pretending to be Osha and contemplates murdering Sol when his back is turned. I mean, it’s fine for a character to have mixed or inconsistent motivations, or to be hesitant or unsure of what they want. But Mae’s actions came off to me as confusing, as if different writers were not communicating with each other when they wrote for Mae.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Qimir somehow connects with the Knights of Ren. The Kylo music in the previous episode is one hint. But also the imagery of training on a small, remote island, is obviously meant to invoke the Sequel Trilogy. If Qimir turns out to be “Ren” or whatever, it would also sidestep the issue with the Sith being discovered prematurely in the timeline. Qimir did say the word “Sith”, but he was kind of vague about. He said something like “you’d probably call me a Sith” or whatever, as if he didn’t have the words to explain exactly what he was. Although, Qimir quoting the Sith mantra, “peace is a lie”, is an obvious counter-point.

I have no idea what sort of lore exists around the Knights of Ren in comics/novels, but maybe they’re some offshoot order of Dark Side users that began with a former Sith or whatever.

theprequelsrule said:

I like the concept of him from Star Wars 1977. He was a peer of Obi-wans (quite close in age) who was murdered by Obi-wans young pupil Darth Vader. A great starfighter and cunning warrior; Obi-wan obviously finds nothing wrong with praising martial prowess. This is because The Jedi were basically special forces rather than warrior monks. They probably banged a lot of chicks.

Certainly this guy did:

I’m really surprised the writers never allowed Rey to actually use her yellow lightsaber in Episode 9 (except for a brief shot moments before the credits roll). In ROTJ, the final installment of the OT, Luke whips out a cool new lightsaber with a unique color that had never been seen before. It’s uniquely Luke’s weapon, and he uses it for the whole movie. I’m surprised they didn’t do the same for Rey, but instead kept the blue one for all 3 films. (Wasn’t that Anakin’s saber? I try to forget these movies.)

Bizarrely, unless I’m remembering wrong, the previous movie (Last Jedi) even set things up so that Rey would need a new lightsaber in Episode 9. Isn’t there a scene in Episode 8 where her lightsaber is ripped apart? You’d think that would nicely segue into a new, personalized lightsaber for Rey in Episode 9. But I guess not.

If I’m remembering correctly, all Jedi lightsabers in the Prequels were either blue or green. The only exception was Mace Windu’s purple saber. Fans and EU writers later ascribed meaning to these colors, with blue and green denoting positive things like “peace” or “life”. Apart from Star Wars, psychologically speaking, blue and green are associated with feelings of serenity, calm, life, nature, etc - things that reflect the Jedi philosophy.

The Sith used red lightsabers - a color associated with violence, passion, fire or blood. Windu’s purple saber apparently reflected his ability to partially tap into the Dark Side in limited ways - thus his lightsaber is purple, a combination of blue and red. (In reality, I think Sam Jackson just thought it would be cool to have a purple lightsaber. Fans or EU writers derived the lore after the fact.)

Perhaps yellow never appeared in the Prequels because colors like yellow and orange share certain psychological similarities with red, in the sense that they invoke things like “heat”, “fire”, “alert”, “warning”, etc., and thus seem a bit too “Sith-y” perhaps, or at least not sufficiently “serene” to be appropriate for a Jedi. I don’t claim that George Lucas consciously went through such a thought process - it’s just my conjecture.

Later on, Disney probably started depicting yellow lightsabers merely for the novelty factor. They wanted to show some cool new lightsaber colors we hadn’t yet seen, and there simply aren’t that many colors remaining that would work visually. So they went with yellow.

Channel72 said:

Anyway, the show seems to be hinting that Qimir might actually be the Sith Lord - with Qimir prodding Mae along and then conveniently disappearing before the Sith Lord appears. But I kind of doubt it, because it seems too obvious at this point. (Also did Qimir stash his cool Sith armor under a tree somewhere in advance?)

Well… clearly I was wrong about this. I can’t believe it was actually Qimir. Like… they made it so obvious that I thought it had to be an intentional misdirect.

Anyway, I’m glad I was wrong, because Qimir is actually kind of awesome as a Sith. And the fighting style is unique and frenetic.

Probably the best episode so far. Still lots of problems though, like the Jedi ability to read minds is just frustratingly inconsistent. I’m wondering why they didn’t try to read Qimir’s mind back in Episode 2 when they interrogated him. Actually, why didn’t they arrest him? He was clearly an accessory to murder. This is a consistent problem with this show - the writing is just very sloppy sometimes. Mae and Osha have now switched places - just like in The Parent Trap! What wacky antics will ensue? And why can’t Sol sense that the person in front of him is not Osha? Whatever. Sometimes I wish I could enjoy a Star Wars show without having to question what’s happening every 5 seconds.

JadedSkywalker said:

Why were the actors in the original able to convincingly act to puppets and bluescreen, why was the dialog in most places much more natural. What happened. Lucas can’t have slipped that much in 16 years between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. Some essential thing was missing and I can’t quite quantify what.

The “Secret History of Star Wars” is mostly about trying to answer this question. It’s an interesting read if you have the time. Basically, the conclusion is that Lucas never slipped. He was always this way, even back in the 1970s. But the difference is that when making the OT, Lucas had much less control and was beset with problems and limitations. This had the effect of smoothing over many of Lucas’ weaknesses. The dialogue was often rewritten or cleaned up by Lucas’ friends, there was more push back about things since Lucas had not yet ascended to the status of demi-God at that point. An entire movie (Empire Strikes Back) was directed by Kershner, often without any oversight from Lucas, etc.

theprequelsrule said:

And I will say what others are afraid to say: one of the reasons I like the OT is because the protagonist is a man. I like the hero’s journey idea. It is inspiring and more men need stuff like that in their lives. It is okay for something to be about and for (primarily) men and their experiences. The opposite is, of course, also true.

Ironically, Disney originally bought Star Wars because they wanted to expand their appeal to the male demographic. For decades, Disney content was more associated with the female demographic (e.g. Disney princesses, etc.) Bob Iger wanted to expand Disney’s appeal by encompassing broader content that would appeal to both men and women. That was, according to Iger, part of the long-term strategy behind buying Marvel and Star Wars - to get more males watching Disney content. Obviously, at some point between 2012 and the late 2010s, this thinking shifted.

Personally, I really like the idea of a female protagonist for Episodes 7 through 9. I think having another male protagonist for the third Trilogy would be too repetitive. If I could rewrite episodes 7 through 9, I would keep the female protagonist (I’d rename her though, I hate the name Rey). My primary gripe with the Sequels is not that the protagonist is female, but rather that they wrote the story as a reboot which wiped out all the prior progress established in the OT (e.g. the New Republic, Luke’s Jedi order). I would have loved a trilogy starring Rey, where she becomes Luke’s star pupil, and ultimately she carries on the Jedi torch after Luke dies. But that’s just not what we got.