Channel72

JadedSkywalker said:

I get that part about Sidious being behind both sides of the conflict so he could declare himself absolute ruler. Why did Jar Jar give him emergency powers again? Also, Padme was maneuvered into making him Chancellor in the first place. When Bail Antilles probably would have won the election. Since Palpatine is the one who stirred up lies that Valorum was corrupt, but you can’t argue that he wasn’t ineffective as a chancellor. He was a friend to the JEDI, I guess that made it doubly useful to ruin him.

Well, that’s what I’m saying, the Prequel scripts have very little “connective tissue”. They convey the bare facts relevant to the plot and that’s it. For example, in Phantom Menace, Palpatine uses his alter-ego to manipulate the Trade Federation into invading a planet, causing the Senate to lose faith in the current Chancellor and replace him with Palpatine. Those are the bare facts, but the connective tissue just isn’t there.

Like for example, I have no clue why the Trade Federation even agreed to invade Naboo. We can assume their goal is to get lower taxes, but there’s no connective tissue in the script that explains why they believe invading Naboo will result in lower taxes. So we have to mentally stitch the script together and assume some elaborate backstory between Sidious and the Nemoidians that explains why they even listen to him and why they believe he can get them lower taxes and why they believe that blockading and then invading some random planet will lead to lower taxes eventually. Lucas just didn’t do the work to thread these plot elements together in a clear, coherent narrative.

JadedSkywalker said:

Other than Revenge what is Palpatine’s endgame, Ian is brilliant but the story makes no sense if you bother to ask questions. What was the trade federation boycott of Naboo about, Tariffs? What in the force does Sidious need taxes for. Why does he want to ruin the Naboo. And that is just in the first episode. In II he makes the Jedi the Generals of his army to then in III just murder them all because he sets Anakin on a path to betray them.

The writing in the Prequels forces the audience to fill in lots of gaps, especially in Phantom Menace, because the script is loaded with hand-waviness. I think AOTC and ROTS are a bit more straightforward: Palpatine’s goal is to kill all Jedi and become an absolute monarch. He does this by forcing the Republic into a civil war and making them use an army he created in advance. He antagonizes the Jedi by abusing his emergency powers, then when some Jedi representatives confront him, he kills them and accuses the Jedi of insurrection. Then he presses the “off” button on the Separatist army (???), and sends Anakin to kill their leaders. Then he builds a Death Star over the next 20 years and then fires the Senate. Finally, after all that, he finally gets to relax and enjoy his absolute unlimited power… for about a few days or so, before the Death Star explodes.

I kind of feel bad for Palpatine now… like, he did all that work and he put up with those stupid Nemoidians and the stupid Senate and their boring meetings for 20 years and then some random whiny kid blew up his cosmic fear machine.

JadedSkywalker said:

Get the mods involved I have no way to prove who and who isn’t a sock I have to use best judgment and treat people equally.

Wait, is anyone real? Am I real?? Are we all sock puppets? I’m having an existential crisis now.

JadedSkywalker said:

The problem i have with Oz though is that Dorothy was bonked on the head and it was a dream, without Oz being a real place, a secondary universe the myth is shattered. Film is almost perfect for me but for the ending.

But then Dorothy went back to Oz in the 80s, had some more adventures, then returned to Kansas again, but this time the existence of Oz is at least ambiguous. Also, one time Diana Ross ended up in Oz where she met Michael Jackson.

^ Okay, thanks for the explanation.

I guess these days with cheap VPNs everywhere it’s pretty hard to prove sockpuppetry, which is probably why the forum moderators don’t do anything. You’d really have to use probabilistic methods and compute some metric like variation of information to compare posts from different accounts to find similarities in writing style. But this requires a decent sample size for accuracy and the forum moderators likely don’t have the time for something like that.

I have no idea what’s going on.

Out of curiosity, how do you all know there are multiple sock puppet accounts posting here? I mean, the person accused of using sock puppet accounts is someone that has created some genuinely interesting, well researched, high-quality threads. I agree their recent post attacking Spartacus01 is just… bizarre - not quite sure what to make of that.

Anyway, I’m just curious what the evidence is, and the history behind all this, since this seems to be a well known thing around here.

I was thinking about the dinner scene on Cloud City. It’s a great, iconic scene - Han and Leia casually walk into the dining room, believing everything is okay, only to see Vader just sitting there at the head of the table.

But like… it’s one of those things that makes very little sense if you think about it. What was the point of staging the dinner? Why didn’t Vader simply arrange for Stormtroopers to come to Han/Leia’s hotel room and just arrest them there? Why the elaborate ruse? Presumably, the Empire already had control of the entire city even before Han and Leia arrived, so the subterfuge just seems unnecessary.

Also, I wonder what happened after Vader disarms Han… did they actually sit and eat dinner? (In earlier drafts, apparently, they did actually sit and eat dinner… not sure how they depict Vader eating, or if he refrains from eating.)

BedeHistory731 said:

Aren’t there schools on the Enterprise-D? I would’ve thought The Traveler couldn’t go within 1000 feet of one.

Obviously, the Traveler manipulated space and time to remove himself from Starfleet’s Interdimensional Sex Offender Registry database.

Japan is a beautiful country with incredibly clean major cities, but it has a severe lack of public garbage cans, making it difficult to throw away trash when you’re out and about.

The United States is a much dirtier country, with trash strewn about the streets of major cities, yet public garbage cans are everywhere and usually easy to find when you need one.

Hmm… so I guess more garbage cans paradoxically leads to increased litter? At least, that’s my clueless, single-variable analysis of this subject that ignores all other factors.

G&G-Fan said:

I’ve gone on rants on this site about some flaws of ROTS, but every time I rewatch it, I get swept up in emotion and really enjoy it.

Man, I wish I had the same reaction. After I saw so many positive reactions to ROTS I wanted to give the movie another chance. But when I tried rewatching it like around 2 years ago, it just came off as hopelessly flawed. There were glimpses of chemistry between Anakin and Obi-Wan in the opening space battle scenes, but it was just way too little and way too late. The middle segment of the movie is a CGI circus featuring a cartoon cyborg riding a unicycle while a cartoon lizard chases him.

Anakin’s turn seemed paradoxically both too sudden and also predictable, because his entire arc was mostly incoherent and spastic. He already slaughtered an entire village in the previous movie, then reverted back to “good guy hero” mode, then immediately agreed to mass-murder children like an hour after we saw him having a fun adventure with Obi-Wan. The Order 66 scenes have some dramatic weight, but just barely. The ending lightsaber duel is mostly meaningless spectacle until the very last scene, when Ewan McGregor breaks down in tears, which I admit does manage to bring out a bit of emotion in me… but again, it’s just way too little and way too late.

I’ve tried to enjoy this movie, and I’ve always been jealous of those who do, because I’ve always wanted an Anakin Skywalker movie I could enjoy. On paper, it’s such a compelling story. The real “Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker” is that his story was never properly told.

I’ve seen lots of people online complaining about the supernatural conception of Mae/Osha via the Force, because they feel it detracts from the uniqueness of Anakin’s story.

I guess this is another symptom of the widespread “reevaluation” of the Prequels online over the past 10 years. But from my perspective, the whole virgin birth and “Chosen One” aspect of Anakin’s story was a completely stupid idea in the first place, so I really don’t care if some later story messes with it. Maybe the Acolyte writers will actually do something interesting with the concept, but I doubt it. The whole concept is just dumb.

For me, this was probably the most enjoyable episode to watch so far. It focused mostly on the Jedi team, which has always been the most interesting aspect of the show. I liked the discussions on Coruscant, and the fact that we’re seeing a “middle management” level of the Jedi hierarchy rather than always focusing on the supreme Council. I also liked the dense forest setting and creatures, etc.

I think it was probably a mistake to have that teaser scene at the end of Episode 1 showing the Sith Lord (and having him ignite a lightsaber for no reason just for the audience). It would probably be more effective to see him for the first time here in Episode 4. The reveal in Episode 4 uses the Sith Lord as a horror movie monster, which I can imagine some people will find stupid, but I thought it was effective.

Unfortunately, this show does seem to contain some Filoni-style “writing wonkiness”, just in smaller doses than previous shows. For example, I feel like Mae’s mission is just really unclear. Her master wants her to kill 4 Jedi. But he also wants her to kill at least one of them - I guess? - without using a weapon. In this episode, Mae and Qimir discuss this, and Mae says she has so far failed to kill a Jedi without using a weapon, and even concludes doing so is impossible. Okay… but I thought she succeeded at doing that when she talked Torbin into committing suicide by drinking poison. So I guess poison counts as a weapon? Does talking count as a weapon? I mean… what counts as a weapon now?

Also, the monologue given by the Sith Lord back in Episode 1 did not imply that killing a Jedi without a weapon was some kind of test or challenge - rather, the speech clearly implied that it was simply not possible (or at least not feasible) to kill a Jedi using a conventional weapon like steel or laser, and therefore more subtle methods were required. (Either that or the Sith Lord was speaking about the Jedi as an institution metaphorically, which seems like a stretch). But now the whole thing really feels like a mess - almost like different writers wrote each episode, and never communicated or shared notes.

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?) I suspect the Sith Lord is either an entirely new character, or maybe one of the witches who survived, like the birth mother of Osha/Mae (who seems to be the same species as Darth Maul… maybe they’ll even imply she’s an ancestor of Maul - isn’t Maul connected to witches somehow in one of the cartoons? [/Internet nerd speculation])

Lexa C said:

Tobar said:

Tobar said:

Rule 4: No politics; only light discussion of current events is permitted, and only in the Off Topic section.

Let’s keep the discussion focused on the series itself. If not the thread can/will be locked and offenders will be issued temp bans.

I’m a little confused.

Hatred for the colour of a person’s skin is not politics. It is racism and hatred. That is not political.

The same applies to homophobia, transphobia, sexism or other such similar ignorance. It is hatred.

None of it is political. Politicised, for sure. Incorrectly labelled as “political agendas” to give the ignorance some sort of “legitimacy”, “acceptance” or a platform, also for sure. But it is not political.

It is simply and purely hate and ignorance.

So why is it deemed “political” on here? Is there a post or thread on here that explains that in more detail?

I don’t mean to derail the thread, and would like to continue on just the series itself. There was some posts with suggestions where to continue such discussions but they’ve since been deleted, so I guess they weren’t okay? Is there a relevant thread where to discuss this, or is already being discussed?

Or is it a “that’s just the way it is” thing? And don’t talk about the issues of race, sex, gender, homophobia, transphobia etc in here?

Well, some political ideologies incorporate racism. Like National Socialism (Nazism) - it’s a political ideology, but it’s also based on racism. I agree that Nazism is basically just hatred and ignorance at the end of the day. But strictly in terms of semantics/definitions, it’s also a political ideology (that thankfully has mostly been consigned to the dustbin of history). I think because historically racism has been a facet of many political ideologies (from Nazi Germany to the American South), we tend to think of it as part of the political domain.

I’m not sure to what extent the show wants us to sympathize with Mae. If the Jedi were somehow responsible (either directly or indirectly) for the death of all those witches, it makes it easier to sympathize with Mae’s desire for revenge. But we also see that Mae was always kind of psychotic and had severe abandonment issues: she sort of torments this small animal for fun, and then later flips out and tries to murder her sister (assuming that actually happened as depicted).

It’s the same problem with how Anakin was depicted in the Prequels. We’re supposed to sympathize at least somewhat with him before he eventually turns evil, but even early on he’s already kind of unhinged and then slaughters an entire village.

Acbagel said:

The structure of the episode was a bit confusing. They left out scenes (intentionally, I believe) and presented situations that didn’t make any sense due to the information we were missing. Perhaps you can say this is an effort to generate intrigue for future episodes, but I would say that the sequence of events that unfolded did not make me more interested in learning what the revelations are, but rather they simply annoyed me because they seemingly painted other situations as nonsense. For example:

• Why does Mae hate the Jedi so much when it seems like they were quite willing to negotiate and Sol showed great empathy?
• Why does Torbin feel so much guilt when Mae was clearly the initiator of the violence?
• How did all of the Witches die so suddenly in the same place?
• What were all of the other Jedi doing during this very quick fire/destruction?

I agree - the direction of the Coven fire scene was disjointed and confusing. Mae lights a small flame, which nearly instantly engulfs the surrounding area, then some sort of “reactor room” is shown, causing further explosions/damage to the compound. We then see all the witches dead, their corpses piled up on the floor, but they don’t appear burned.

Giving the show the benefit of the doubt and assuming all of this was meant to suggest some deeper mystery, one possible interpretation is that we’re meant to suspect that the Jedi massacred all those witches for some reason. This would explain why Mae later hates the Jedi, and also explain why Torbin willingly committed suicide, seemingly out of guilt. Of course, it’s a really hard sell to convince an audience the Jedi would do something like this, but perhaps it has something to do with the “dark magic” used by the witch Mother to spawn life using the Dark Side, “an ability some consider to be unnatural”.

Another possibility is Mae believes (perhaps due to some misunderstanding) that the Jedi massacred all those witches, but she is mistaken, and different POV perspectives of the Coven fire will later shed light on what really happened.

Who knows. We’ll see. But the worst possible outcome is probably that what we saw of the Coven fire is simply meant to be a straightforward, face-value depiction of what happened. Meaning that Mae’s little fire inexplicably killed everyone because the writers were too lazy to think of anything else. I lean more in the direction of believing the disjointed footage of the Coven fire is meant to suggest a deeper mystery that will be later revealed via a different POV of the same events.

I guess the general problem is there’s no directorial cues in the Coven fire scene that lead the audience to experience a sense of mystery or intrigue, or suggest something is “off”. Like the sort of directorial cues you’d see in a Hitchcock or Kubrick film where even a normal conversation can be made to feel “off” and laced with mystery/intrigue. The Coven fire is presented in a straightforward, but weirdly disjointed manner, in a way that feels more like bad editing rather than imbued with intrigue. But I suspect there is, in fact, a greater mystery here surrounding what actually happened during the Coven fire.

This episode fully leans in to what was implied about the Jedi in the Prequels: they go around imposing their will on the Galaxy like the Spanish Inquisition, snatching away Force-sensitive children essentially at gunpoint. The Coven acted like they had no choice in the matter, and instead tried to trick the Jedi into leaving. Nice “Guardians of Peace and Justice”. They’re more like the Galactic Gestapo.

I never liked how the Prequels portrayed the Jedi and this show really leans into that portrayal. Ahh well, it is what it is.

Anyway, I was also a bit confused when the entire Coven compound went up in flames so quickly. The walls don’t even look flammable - they look metallic, but that fire spread really quickly and somehow instantly killed everyone except Mae. Yet the corpses didn’t appear to be burned. I can’t tell if that’s supposed to hint at some deeper layer of mystery, or if the writers just want us to accept the fire at face value. I don’t know, maybe everyone died from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning. (Has this Coven ever heard of sprinkler systems?? And why am I spending so much time thinking about the physics of fire with this show??)

Overall, I thought the episode was okay. I like the Jedi characters - they actually have distinct, interesting personalities and even warmth, unlike most of the Prequel Jedi. It’s also interesting to see another sect of Force users with their own interpretation of the Force, even if they’re basically just a remix of the Dathomir witches.

Also, I don’t think this episode was that redundant. I mean, all we knew before was that Osha’s family died in some fire and Mae seemed to blame the Jedi. I didn’t necessarily expect that Mae herself started the fire. But I do agree that the first two episodes shouldn’t have revealed so much information, especially since so much of it was revealed in rather clunky expository dialogue. Like at one point one of the Jedi actually tells Osha something like “your entire family was killed, etc.”. Pretty clunky, and completely redundant since we see these events play out in Episode 3 anyway.

One thing that suggests a deeper mystery here is the fact that in Episode 2, Torbin willingly killed himself, implying he felt extreme guilt over something he did to Mae and wanted to atone for it. Nothing we saw in this episode explains that.

One problem with Padme is that she doesn’t really do much in ROTS. Most of the scenes where she does anything significant (negotiating with other Senators to form a proto-Rebel alliance) were cut from the movie. And even if those scenes remained, they really have no impact on the plot of RoTS itself.

I think Lucas just didn’t know what to do with her. The main problem from a writing standpoint is that all the main characters in the Prequels - except Padme - are super-human Jedi. It’s hard to write her into the story and have her do anything to drive the plot, except in the political arena. Even in AoTC she mostly just follows Anakin around after Act I. They integrated her into the action scenes at the end, but it was kind of clumsy because she’s not too helpful in an action scene when everyone else is a super-human Force user. Her character was best utilized in Phantom Menace, where her decisions and actions largely drive the plot. But in AoTC and ROTS, there was very little for her to do in the Jedi-centric narrative.

And of course, she doesn’t even have 1% of the personality and chemistry of Leia.

Anyway, the best female characters are in Andor. Mon Mothma and Dedra Meero steal the whole show in my opinion.

It’s somewhat reminiscent of Across the Stars (the Padme/Anakin love theme)

adywan said:
Now the big thing they are complaining about it fire in space and the fact that there is a campfire cracking sound for the fire. Well, for one, fire in space is nothing new with Star Wars. This isn’t sci-fi and its never really followed real world physics. It’s fantasy.

The “fire burning in space” scene kind of bothered me too, and I mostly like this show so far.

Obviously, Star Wars is fantasy, and issues like this go back to Empire Strikes Back, with Han walking around inside a giant space worm that lives in an asteroid in the vacuum of space, wearing nothing but a small oxygen mask on his face. And also for some reason there’s gravity inside the worm. Irvin Kershner once commented on this scene, saying Star Wars is fantasy and real world physics don’t apply.

I mean, I get it… it’s fantasy. But I’ve always found the argument that “it’s not supposed to be sci-fi it’s a fantasy!!” to often be self-serving and problematic. I mean, how far do we take this? Let’s take the Acolyte example with the “fire burning in space” scene. What if there was a similar scene that showed orange flames burning, crackling and flickering continuously under water? Should we just shrug and say “it’s not science fiction!!!” in that case? I doubt your intuition would lead you to think so, because the average person in the 21st century intuitively understands that fire doesn’t burn underwater (at least not without some exotic combustion source), but very few people have such an intuitive understanding of conditions in outer space. But that might change some day, perhaps sooner than we realize.

A better way to put it might be: why is “fire doesn’t burn in space” considered a rule that should only apply in science fiction? What about “fire doesn’t normally burn underwater” or “humans can’t breath under water”? Why do these apply beyond the genre of science fiction - even in pure fantasy?

The boundary between sci-fi and reality continues to blur with each passing day. There are things in Star Wars that now seem bizarrely counter-intuitive, like the fact that R2-D2 can’t communicate in English using a voice synthesizer, but my smartphone from 2019 can. I don’t blame the original 1977 Star Wars for that one - in 1977 they couldn’t possibly have correctly intuited things like that. But by 2024 I feel like “fire doesn’t burn in space” should not be a rule confined exclusively to science fiction. Even pure fantasy implicitly operates with baseline assumptions about real-world physics or chemistry. When we watch Lord of the Rings for example, we expect that people can’t breathe underwater and a flaming wooden torch won’t continue to burn underwater (at least not without some magic). So why is outer space so different? Again, the only reason is implicit assumptions by the writers about the intuition/experience of the average viewer - something that changes (often rapidly) with the times.

Of course, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me because I can’t possibly hope to be 100% consistent about this. For example, I wouldn’t want Star Wars to suddenly remove all sound effects from space combat scenes, because that would detract from the viewing experience way too much. But I would argue writers should at least try - when possible - to maintain baseline real-world physics, as long as it doesn’t detract from the story too much. We have to accept some fantasy things like hyperspace travel, sound in space, the Force, etc., because forgoing such things for the sake of scientific accuracy would be too destructive to the story-telling experience overall. But fire burning in space is just pointless.

Mild spoilers, obviously:

So I start watching the first episode, and the first thing I start thinking is how surreal it feels to be watching Trinity start fighting Matrix-style in a Star Wars show. Clearly there’s also some inspiration from classic Asian martial arts films here. But at least Trinity isn’t wearing black leather with sunglasses and riding a motorcycle while using the Force to freeze bullets in mid-air. The opening fight scene certainly plays with audience expectations, making us wonder when somebody will finally pull out a lightsaber. But I like how the Jedi abstain from igniting their lightsabers until shit gets real. Unlike the Prequels, where they ignite their lightsabers every time someone sneezes.

Other random observations:

• Name dropping Nar Shadaa
• Is this the first time live-action Star Wars featured magnetic zero-gravity boots?
• I’m glad the Nemoidians no longer have their dumb accent, but I hate that they speak English. I know the Prequels are to blame for this, but I hate how Star Wars has significantly reduced the use of alien languages and subtitles in favor of using accented speech to denote “other-ness” ever since Phantom Menace.
• The Nemoidians look better than they did in Phantom Menace.
• We see a fire burning in the vacuum of space but it behaves like it’s burning in an oxygen-rich atmosphere. (I tell myself to just shut up when I have such nerdy thoughts)
• I like how the Jedi don’t all wear stupid Tatooine robes.
• Coruscant looks kind of… I don’t know, low res? I’ve always wanted to see a modern depiction of Coruscant with state-of-the-art CGI, but none of these Disney+ shows manage to surpass early 2000s CGI. Coruscant never looks as good as Blade Runner (the original and the new one).
• Jedi Younglings still suck. The child acting sucks and it reminds me of how tragic it is that Star Wars is forever saddled with stupid Prequel Jedi lore.
• For a Force user suspected of murdering a Jedi master, they sure don’t put much effort into restraining Osha when locking her up in the prison ship. Vader wanted to freeze Luke in carbonite just to transport him safely, and Luke was barely even a Padawan. Here we potentially have a powerful, highly dangerous assassin that can kill with her mind, and they just slap some handcuffs on her and throw her in a cell with ordinary criminals.
• I like the music - it’s clearly inspired by classic Williams riffs
• I like how Osha concentrates hard but fails to use the Force initially, showing that mastery of the Force degrades over time when unused, like a physical muscle or skill. When Osha’s Force powers fail, she resorts to MacGyvering her way out of the cell. (How old am I that I still think of that reference?)
• Osha saving that unconscious prisoner with the face-hugger attached to his mouth is a nice example of “show don’t tell” implemented correctly, letting us know Osha is actually a good person unlike her psychotic twin sister.
• A lot of people are complaining about the pacing, but I didn’t notice any pacing problems, at least in these first two episodes.
• At the end of the first episode, the secret Sith Lord delivers a monologue saying that a Jedi can’t be killed with a weapon, so an Acolyte must kill without a weapon. This sounds like the beginnings of some really interesting philosophy, but we’ve already seen that Mae actually can kill a Jedi with an ordinary throwing knife. This seems thematically dissonant. (We course correct later when Mae fails to kill Torbin with a conventional weapon, but succeeds in guilting him into suicide.)
• They make a big deal out of the possibility that Osha might be guilty of killing a Jedi Master because some local identified her. But this should be really trivial to clear up, since Osha has a very solid alibi. She was working as a mechanic on a distant starship, which would have logs, surveillance, etc. Fortunately, the mix up is quickly resolved in episode 2 anyway.
• They drop the line “Peace is a lie”.
• The Jedi really take to their role as the “RPD” (Republic Police Force) with their megaphones and high-powered floodlights in the sky. I mean, I know the Jedi have always been basically supernatural cops since the Prequels, but “Guardians of Peace and Justice” from a more civilized age never really conjured up imagery of a helicopter hovering overhead casting down blinding floodlights while screaming orders over a megaphone, saying stuff like “This is the LAPD! I mean Jedi! You are under arrest!”.
• I like the Japanese-style forest with the Wookie Jedi, but other than that the locations are mostly just bland, generic, “Galaxy’s Edge” type stock Star Wars “frontier towns” that we’ve seen a million times before across various Star Wars media. For example, I can’t tell the difference between the first location where Mae kills Indara and the second location where Mae and her chemist friend kill Torbin. These two locations seem indistinguishable to me, yet I think they’re supposed to be different planets.
• The identity of the Sith Lord that trained Mae is fresh fodder for some old-school Internet nerd speculation. Is it Darth Plagueis? An apprentice of Darth Bane?? A reincarnation of Exar Kun??? A Knight of Ren?? Ren himself? Stimpy? Supershadow?? The amount of completely stupid possibilities is endless. (Most likely it’s a new character, which is for the best.)

I enjoyed the first 2 episodes for the most part. The surreal vision that Osha has of her evil twin in the first episode is a bit… much, but it’s serviceable.

Overall, not bad. Seems like this show has promise. It doesn’t have that same “Andor effect” where you quickly realize within like 10 minutes that the quality is next-level, but it also isn’t anywhere nearly as bad as the Filoni stuff. It’s like a 6.5 or 7 out of 10 so far, but it grabbed my interest and I look forward to more episodes.

StarkillerAG said:

2. “It’s by DISNEY… and it’s NOT Andor?! It MUST be bad! REVIEW BOMB!!! REVIEW BOOOOOOOOMB!!!”

Well… I mean… to be fair, if you adopt this attitude, then statistically you’re likely to be correct.

The weirdest thing about AOTC is how it starts off with a fairly interesting mystery of “who tried to kill Queen Amidala?” The assassination mystery was a nice hook to grab audience interest and kick off the plot. But bizarrely, the mystery sort of just fizzles out, and ends up mostly forgotten by the characters after Act I. The mystery is eventually resolved in such an incidental and anti-climactic way (during a brief conversation between Dooku and Nute Gunray on Geonosis) that I didn’t even notice it the first time I saw AOTC. It turns out Nute Gunray wanted Padme dead for some unexplained reason, I guess as simple revenge for the events in Phantom Menace. So Padme’s attempted assassination had nothing to do with her opposition to the creation of an army for the Republic - indeed it had nothing at all to do with the main plot of AOTC. It’s also weird that Nute Gunray, who has all the resources of the Trade Federation at his disposal, needs to ask Count Dooku to hire some assassin to kill Amidala.

Also, given that Count Dooku is “in the know” concerning Palpatine’s secret plan to start a war, it would have made more sense (and been more relevant to the plot) if Dooku himself was solely behind the assassination, since he wanted to make sure the Republic ended up with an army, and Padme could potentially have decreased the chances of that happening. It would also be somewhat of an ironic twist, since the audience would be inclined to suspect that some pro-army faction of the Republic was behind the assassination attempt. The audience shouldn’t suspect the Separatists, since the Separatists should ostensibly be aligned with Padme’s goal of preventing the creation of an army for the Republic. Then again, the whole Republic/Separatist conflict itself is so poorly fleshed out that the audience probably barely has any idea what’s going on anyway.

Unfortunately, the whole trench run makes very little sense in light of real-world technological advancements. Even in the 21st century, precision strike missiles can hit relatively small stationary targets from significant distances away. The latest precision strike missile system from Lockheed Martin claims to be able to accurately hit a target over 400 kilometers away, with a CEP (circular error probable) of about 1 meter. Granted, those missiles are designed to be fired from the ground, but even the much older Raytheon AGM-65 series systems, which are designed to be fired from a moving plane, can hit targets 25 kilometers away with a CEP of about 1.5 meters. So even with current technology, the 2-meter wide shaft on the Death Star would be possible to hit from at least 25 kilometers away. And obviously, the chances of hitting it directly would approach 100% if you fired at it multiple times.

Additionally, these 21st century missiles are designed for precision strikes inside a gravity well and atmosphere, meaning that calculations must account for the Earth’s gravity and curvature, air currents and weather conditions. But none of that would apply in the vacuum of space, so the calculations for a precision strike would be even easier and the strike accuracy would be much better on average. (Presumably the 140km diameter Death Star creates a negligible gravity well.)

Of course, to be fair, we’re not really comparing apples to apples here, because the goal of the Death Star trench run was not merely to hit the target, but to ensure the torpedo travels in a straight line down the shaft, perpendicular to the trench, for around 70 kilometers until it hits the reactor. Since the X-wing is traveling perpendicular to the shaft a few meters above the trench floor, the torpedo would need to follow a perfect quarter-circle arc, or else magically perform a very tight turn. This would require the torpedo to be fired at exactly the right moment. This seems very difficult to pull off even with some hypothetical super-advanced future targeting system, depending on how fast the X-wings are actually moving. However, assuming the torpedo has its own propulsion and maneuvering systems, the X-wing pilot could simply fire the torpedo well before coming into range of the shaft, and allow the torpedo itself to just travel in a straight line parallel to the trench and then make the quarter-circle arc turn at the right moment, adjusting speed as necessary. (Although admittedly that is probably beyond the capabilities of modern precision missile systems.)

But really, all of this demonstrates that the whole idea of a trench run makes very little sense to begin with. It would make way more sense to just fire multiple torpedoes from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, in a straight line directly at the shaft. We can speculate that maybe they didn’t do this because the Death Star’s defensive laser turrets would just intercept the torpedoes. But this explanation doesn’t really work because (A) dialogue in A New Hope specifically says the turrets are too slow to reliably hit the small X-wings, so the turrets probably wouldn’t be able to hit every single torpedo if a barrage of them were fired at once, and (B) even if the turrets could reliably intercept every single torpedo, the Rebels could first fly X-wings along the trench with the sole purpose of destroying the surrounding turrets, and then after those turrets are neutralized, fire a barrage of torpedoes directly at the shaft from a distance.

Of course, then Luke wouldn’t fulfill his hero’s journey, and that would totally suck. So let’s just ignore this entire post.

The Prequels and Sequels both suck for entirely different reasons. The Sequels had no singular vision, which resulted in an incoherent mess. The Prequels had a solid concept and singular vision that was implemented in one of the most bafflingly worst ways possible.

I think the Prequels and Phantom Menace in particular ended up with a significantly more juvenile tone than the OT because George Lucas (self-admittedly) isn’t good at writing dialogue, and since he didn’t have as much help writing and polishing the Prequels as he had with the OT, he resorted to mostly slap-stick humor because it’s just much easier to write.

I mean, in A New Hope, C3PO has some comedic lines that at least required some decent writing skills, like “Don’t you call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease!”, or (scolding R2) “Just you reconsider playing that message for him! No, I don’t think he likes you at all. No, I don’t like you either.”

We can spend all day analyzing Lucas quotes from the last 40 years, but we can’t avoid the obvious fact that significant parts of The Phantom Menace are just obviously tonally different than the OT. Specifically, TPM relies heavily on slapstick humor for comedy relief. Whereas, comedy in the OT was derived mostly through character interactions and dialogue, like Han Solo bickering with C3PO or Leia, C3PO bickering with R2, etc.

To be clear, I’m not saying the OT had zero slapstick comedy (examples of OT slapstick include C3PO kicking R2, the Sarlacc burping, Ewok antics in ROTJ, etc.), just that it had way less than the Prequels, to the extent that we can accurately describe OT comedy as mostly defined by character interactions and dialogue. In contrast, TPM had very little dialogue-based comedy (a few one-liners from Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan), but heavily featured slapstick Jar Jar antics, like stepping in Bantha shit, dropping things, getting electrocuted, basically the entire Gungan battle at the end, etc.

Slapstick comedy is generally considered more juvenile, and is often one of the main forms of comedy in children’s movies because children universally understand physical comedy. That’s why Phantom Menace seems more explicitly designed for children than the OT. So regardless of anything Lucas says, the fact is that Phantom Menace objectively relies way more on slapstick comedy than the OT does, making it a lot closer tonally to movies that everyone agrees are made for children (like Disney/Pixar cartoons).

There’s a scene in Watto’s shop where Jar Jar performs slapstick antics in the background (juggling, dropping things, getting kicked by a droid) for a good portion of the scene, and of course the ending Gungan battle heavily features Jar Jar slapstick. There’s simply nothing in the OT comparable to those Jar Jar scenes. At most you have an Ewok accidentally hitting himself in the face with a sling - a brief joke lasting about a second. At the same time, Phantom Menace has much less character-driven humor than the OT. Obi-Wan arguably has a few funny lines (“we picked up another pathetic lifeform”, etc.), but in general the characters in TPM behave so formally that character-driven humor is very rare.

OT humor was similar to the humor of Indiana Jones: mostly character-driven with a few instances of slapstick. And both featured some dark material. Also, while the MPAA rating system is often an inconsistent mess, in general PG rated movies (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) have traditionally been considered to be designed for older kids, adolescents and adults, whereas movies made explicitly for 10 year olds and younger are more commonly rated G. So Lucas can claim Star Wars was always for children, but there’s a clear, qualitative tonal difference (especially in terms of humor) between movies like the OT and G-rated children’s movies (e.g. Disney/Pixar cartoons).

Phantom Menace is rated PG, but weirdly relies heavily on slapstick humor more often associated with G-rated children’s movies. This problem is compounded by the cartoonish voice and appearance of Jar Jar and the fact that TPM is the first Star Wars movie to feature a child actor main character. Not that children can’t star in more mature, adult-oriented films (just ask co-star Natalie Portman), but when they do they usually don’t go around acting like an exuberant “Leave it to Beaver” character half the time. If 10-year-old Anakin acted more like Indiana Jones’ side-kick Shortround or even a member of The Goonies, perhaps I would bitch slightly less.

Finally, I also question the historical accuracy of Lucas’ claim that fans complained about C3PO to anywhere near the same extent that they complained about Jar Jar. At least, those scenes in A New Hope heavily featuring C3PO certainly didn’t prevent Star Wars from becoming an unprecedented cultural phenomenon that inspired millions of people to wait in line to see the movie for a 20th time in 1977. Plus, C3PO functions as comic relief much differently than Jar Jar. Again, most jokes in the OT involving C3PO rely on dialogue, not slapstick, despite the occasional instance where C3PO kicks R2 or has his head on backwards or whatever.