Channel72

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.

I was rewatching parts of Andor the other day. (God this show is awesome.) Anyway, I was rewatching the prison episodes and I realize that I don’t quite understand the “prison transfer scam” the Empire is supposed to be running.

Basically, we learn that the Empire discreetly murders an entire floor of prisoners because one prisoner from elsewhere was accidentally transferred there after serving out their full prison sentence. The idea is that, unbeknownst to the inmates, their prison sentences never really end. When a prisoner finishes serving their sentence, that prisoner is simply transferred elsewhere and begins serving a new sentence. Presumably this repeats until the prisoner dies, meaning that nobody ever gets out. But the Empire doesn’t want the general prison population to know about this (fearing the prisoners would lose motivation to work I guess) which is why the Empire decides to murder an entire floor of prisoners to prevent this information from leaking out.

Okay, maybe I’m an idiot, but I don’t really understand how this “prison transfer scheme” is supposed to work in general. So a prisoner finishes their sentence and then, instead of being released, is transferred to a second prison (or maybe a different floor of the same prison). But what prevents the transferred prisoner from telling the inmates in the second prison the truth? Maybe all the inmates in the second prison were also transferred there after serving out a sentence, and thus they all already know about the “transfer scam”? But if that’s the case, how does the Empire induce people in this “second prison” (where everyone knows they have no hope of ever getting out) to continue working? Maybe people in the “second prison” are not forced to work anymore? But if that’s the case, what’s the point of this whole “scam” in the first place? It costs the Empire money to house and feed prisoners, and if a prisoner isn’t working on building a Death Star or whatever the Empire is just wasting money keeping them confined for no reason. The Empire may as well just release the prisoners if they’re no longer working and they already served their sentence.

So can anyone clarify exactly how the Empire’s “prison transfer scam” is supposed to work?

Vladius said:

The second death star is fine and the insanely good space battle and throne room scenes (both still never topped after 40 years of trying) wouldn’t be the same without it.

Agreed. The battle of Endor still hasn’t really been topped.

ROTJ has some amazing stuff in it, especially the throne room and Endor space battle. I don’t mind the Death Star 2 either.

Still I think ROTJ has more flaws than the other OT movies. I don’t like how the Jabba sequence is disconnected from the rest of the film, in the sense that nothing in Act I directly causes or leads into the events of Act II (apart from the very broad fact that Han is now around). This is a subjective complaint; most people probably don’t mind. For most of my life I didn’t mind either. But after I started to appreciate how tightly written both ANH and ESB are in terms of Event A leading to Event B, the script for ROTJ seems structurally flawed to me.

The middle act in the Endor forest also really stalls the film, particularly after they meet the Ewoks. For me, the scenes in ANH where C3PO and R2D2 slowly wander across the desert are actually very interesting because Tatooine seems like this mysterious, alien place, and the Jawas as alien tech scavengers are an interesting and creative concept. But Endor is just so mundane - the California redwood forest, while theoretically beautiful, comes off as aggressively bland and often feels like a fan-fiction location. Way too much time is devoted to the Ewoks capturing our heroes, the gimmick with C3PO as their deity, etc. I think the whole Endor sequence really needed to be streamlined and made a bit more visually interesting - perhaps a better cinematographer would have helped. And yeah, the Rebel commandos really needed more screen-time and involvement in the battle.

Your synopsis is much closer to how I always imagined the Prequels than what we actually got. The prominence of Alderaan in the narrative, Anakin’s love interest as an Alderaanian princess/aristocrat, the main villain getting killed by Anakin at the end of Episode 2 and acting as a catalyst for Anakin’s fall… all of that is what I imagined the Prequels would be, and arguably, is much closer to what was implicitly suggested by the tidbits of backstory mentioned in the OT.

Lady Nellith Arcadia is a member of the Alderaanian aristocracy, she is a compassionate, altruistic, and idealistic young woman, an individual with the heart of a true Jedi. She wanted to help others and was extremely empathetic. She was originally supposed to marry Antilles Organa, but the wedding was canceled as she fell in love with the young Anakin. During the War Nellith joined the Republic forces to protect those in need. Her parents eventually allowed her to marry young Anakin (Like Michael and Apollonia). Her political views clashed with that of Anakin, and as she noticed his descent towards darkness she started to drift away from him. She eventually noticed that Anakin is becoming weird in home, and eventually discovers the horrible truth: Anakin is hunting down the Jedi Knights. She broke up with him but Anakin tried to get her back by force, she rejected him and went into hiding. Unbeknownst to Anakin, Nellith was pregnant with his young child.

This is awesome and really seems like the obvious way Anakin’s love interest should have been implemented. I still can’t fathom why Lucas drifted so far off course. Somehow we ended up with a romance between a 10 year old boy and Natalie Portman

Jeez, those movie ticket prices…

fmalover said:

In that scenario I fear Lucasfilm would have turned into Filoni’s fanfiction playground. I’m glad we aren’t living in that world.

Wait what? I am actually living in that world. Can you help me build a transdimensional portal so I can come to your timeline, where Lucasfilm isn’t just Dave Filoni’s fan-fiction playground?

^ Also their uniform sucks. In ANH, I always thought those soldiers in the Tantive IV were like Alderaanian security or military forces. But somehow this uniform became the standard New Republic uniform.

JadedSkywalker said:

I feel like what was set up in Empire Vader tempting Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor was a plot line poorly used in JEDI, or was it dropped completely?

It feels like it was basically dropped completely. From a certain perspective, you can argue that Luke and Vader DID actually team up to defeat the Emperor - but that’s obviously missing the point. When Luke turns himself in on Endor, Vader and Luke have a brief discussion. The subject of overthrowing the Emperor is never brought up for some reason. Vader seems to feel at this point that he has no choice but to turn Luke over to his boss.

Vader’s potential disloyalty to his master is only briefly explored with a single line of dialogue, in the scene where Palpatine tells Vader that Luke will willingly turn himself in. Palpatine asks Vader “Are you sure your feelings on this matter are clear?” (meaning, are you sure you won’t fuck me over and side with your son?) But other than that, it’s never explored. The plot mechanics kind of set things up so that Vader is backed into a corner and has no choice to turn Luke over to the Emperor once Luke turns himself in. It’s really very unsatisfactory in light of what was set up in Empire Strikes Back.

I never read the Republic Commando series, but I always hated the TCW version of Mandalorians. I’m familiar at least with the old school KOTOR depiction of ancient Mandalorians, with their amazing armor and Basilisk War Droids and all that. The whole saga of Mandalore the Ultimate is awesome and an incredible bit of Stars Wars mythology. It’s such a shame that this style of Mandalorians was never realized in live action or even cartoons. Instead we get this sterile, weird dystopian cube city that belongs in THX-1138 or something. The Mandalorians were originally more or less the Star Wars version of Klingons, only way cooler due to being more shrouded in mystery and having suits with cool gadgets.

It’s cool that the Republic Commando series integrated the Mandalorian warrior-culture stuff into the Clone army. It’s also still kind of baffling to me that the Prequels never even once address the glaring ethical problems with using an army of clones. It would have added some much needed depth for the Jedi to at least talk about it, even if they shrug it off as a necessary evil or something.

Some more thoughts about Yoda and his relationship with the Rebellion:

Overthinking this a bit, I guess I have to agree that it makes very little sense that Yoda isn’t more actively involved with the Rebellion. Sure, he’s not a warrior like he was in the Prequels - but so what? He’s a Jedi with the ability to see the future (at least partially). He could be an invaluable asset for Rebel military intelligence. They could ask him to use the Force to ascertain the probability that some mission will succeed or fail, or use the Force to predict what the Imperials will do in certain situations. The ability to see the future (even if it’s not 100% reliable) would be invaluable in terms of military strategy and intelligence gathering.

But this is supposed to be a fantasy and Yoda is an archetype: he’s the wise master that lives in a remote location and will semi-reluctantly train those who are willing to learn.

I just watched the first episode.

Maybe I’m just getting tired of Star Wars content as of late, or maybe I’m just too easily disappointed by nerd nitpicks that occur to me. But like… I turn on this show, and the first episode starts out with this crazy battle in a dark forest at night on the planet Dathomir. Robots are fighting witches who use space bow-and-arrows, General Grievous comes along and has a lightsaber fight, etc.

And all I can think is, does anyone remember that Star Wars has space ships in it? Why the hell is this battle even happening? Why doesn’t General Grievous just nuke the whole continent from orbit? He’s clearly not interested in taking prisoners.

I know. I know. We’re WAY past that at this point. But remember how in the OT, Vader’s generals wanted to destroy Echo Base from orbit, and only resorted to a ground invasion because of the shield? Remember how the old EU had this concept of “Base Delta Zero” (nuking a planet from orbit)?? Remember space battles??

Starting with the Prequels and their silly Napoleonic-style land battles, Star Wars has basically completely stopped trying to be even 1% science-fiction anymore. I know Star Wars was always mostly fantasy (the Force, giant space worms, etc.) but the OT and old EU incorporated plenty of military sci-fi elements. Large spaceships have lasers that can be used to destroy Rebel bases from orbit. But ever since the Prequels - and especially with the Filoni cartoons - Star Wars is often closer to pure high-fantasy, with occasional visits to space. The action has shifted almost entirely to lightsaber battles instead of dog fights in space.

Also, an “energy” bow and arrow is completely stupid and impossible to take seriously. I’m sure someone will point out how Chewbacca had a “space cross-bow” in the OT, but whatever.

TLDR: Disgruntled nerd rants about Star Wars, news at 11

fmalover said:

Channel72 said:

the main characters are given arbitrary leadership roles that don’t suit their previous story-arcs

Lando being promoted to General in no time sticks out like a sore thumb.

Just throw in a line about the “battle of Taneb” or whatever and I’m sure the audience will buy it.

Seriously though, it’s not just Lando. Why are Han and Leia specifically leading the Endor ground team? They’ve never been established as “Seal team 6” commando types, and really this is something that ANY high-ranking rebel leader could do. It doesn’t utilize Leia’s diplomacy skills or Han’s smuggling skills. Not to mention, from the perspective of the Rebellion leadership, Han was last seen trying to leave the Rebellion to go pay off Jabba, and then spent the next year MIA frozen in carbonite. And now they’re putting him in charge of this super-critical mission? The overall problem is that ROTJ is the first time in Star Wars where the main characters’ involvement in the main story (at least after Act 1) seems contrived and unnatural.

ROTJ is a rare case in that there are just so many things fundamentally wrong with it (the Jabba sequence is disconnected from the rest of the movie, the whole Endor sequence is bland and poorly-paced, the main characters are given arbitrary leadership roles that don’t suit their previous story-arcs), but at the same time there’s just so many things that are awesome about it: the space battle over Endor, the confrontation between Luke, Vader and the Emperor, and one of the most poignant and perfect endings in movie history.

Spoilers:

I was afraid something stupid would happen like Omega suddenly discovers she can use the Force. Fortunately, that never happened. There’s a scene where the lead Imperial scientist (Dr. Hemlock) unleashes some sort of experimental clone super-soldiers that use light-saber like weapons, and I was afraid something dumb would happen like these soldiers would be able to use the Force. Fortunately, the writers had some restraint and no Force antics occurred. We also never find out what Project Necromancer is, so we’re left to assume the obvious implication. But it doesn’t matter, because the project gets promptly cancelled by Tarkin because the Imperial scientists forgot to backup all their data to their Imperial iCloud account. (I also like how Tarkin orders some random scientist to “redirect all funding to project Stardust”, as if some random scientist would have the authority to do something like that.)

The main plot throughout the season is derived from the same template used in The Mandalorian: evil Imperial scientists are doing “vague science shit” related to something with cloning and Midichlorians, and their entire project depends on capturing a single Force-sensitive child whom they need for their nefarious experiments. The details of their project are never fleshed out, but we’re left with vague hints that these Imperial experiments somehow tie in with later events related to cloning Palpatine, or Snoke or whatever. The Mandalorian decided to eventually finally explain that the goal was to create Force-sensitive super-soldier clones, whereas The Bad Batch wisely never explains anything. In both cases, the project goes nowhere, and serves only as a plot device to explain why bad guys are after a little child and good guys have to protect the child.

Anchorhead said:

Channel72 said:

I mean, officially it’s all canon. But you know it’s not.

Officially, it’s all make-believe.
I’ve never understood the power people hand over to Lucasfilm\Disney. Watch what you like, ignore the rest.

For the record, I’m not addressing you specifically. Just a general statement on how some people really struggle to reconcile the stories Lucas, Lucasfilm, and Disney, and various authors have created over the years.

It’s a universal thing - not specific to Lucasfilm. The idea of “canonical” stories versus apocryphal “fan-fiction” goes back to the Bible. In that case, “canonical content” implied official approval of the Church, as opposed to the Disney/Lucasfilm story-group - but it’s the same idea. Whether it be religious adherents, Tolkien fans, or Star Wars fans, people care about “canon” because they care about experiencing a shared (fictional) reality that other fans/followers can agree is “valid” and actually “happened” as part of the larger on-going story. If you throw out canon, you’re left with something bordering on solipsism - isolated individual fandoms.

Of course, I actually agree with you. The concept of “canon”, especially as applied to something everyone agrees is fictional, is kind of stupid. It helps in terms of creating a shared experience that has agreed-upon boundaries for the purpose of fan enjoyment and discussion. But the downside is that really shitty content always ends up in the canon. For me, I like to consider the OT as canonical, and Andor as “deutero-canonical” (to borrow a stupid term from the Catholic Church). Everything else is pseudepigrapha and fan-fiction.

^ K-2SO is one of the best new characters introduced in Disney Star Wars. He’s a different sort of comic relief than C-3PO. Most of the humor with C3PO is other characters reacting to him, especially Han Solo getting pissed and always telling C3PO to shut up. K2SO is more about sarcastic quips, often involving his superiority to humans. Some of his best lines:

“I find that answer vague and unconvincing.”

“Not me. I can survive in space.” - after the human crew members lament the possibility of dying in space.

I am pretty confident that Tony Gilroy will properly handle K2SO in Season 2.

Yoda can’t help the Rebels because he’s old and he’s basically just a teacher, not a warrior. The Prequels messed this up by portraying Yoda as a warrior.

As for stuff in the OT I don’t like:

Well, ANH and ESB are probably my favorite movies of all time - but they’re not perfect. ANH in particular has a lot of problems, which is understandable because it was the first movie, and a lot of “Star Wars lore” hadn’t yet been established. But I have to admit, the entire ending to ANH barely makes any sense:

• Leia takes the Falcon to Yavin IV, despite knowing they’re being tracked. She spent the entire movie - even endured torture - trying to keep the location of the Rebel base a secret. But at the end, after strongly suspecting they’re being tracked, she’s just like “well whatever hopefully it all works out.”
• You can argue she did this strategically, to lure Tarkin and the Death Star to Yavin IV, so the Rebels would have a chance to take it out - but from her perspective this would have been a completely insane gamble. She didn’t know if the Death Star plans would reveal any weakness, or even if they did, whether it was something they could discover and figure out how to exploit in the few hours they would have before the Death Star arrived.
• Even if this was supposed to be some insane strategic gamble on Leia’s part, they still make no effort to evacuate the base, like they do with Echo Base in Empire Strikes Back. The moment Leia arrived at Yavin, they should have initiated an evacuation of all personnel except for the fighter pilots necessary to attack the Death Star.
• And then even after they miraculously blow up the Death Star via Luke’s one-in-a-million shot, instead of immediately evacuating, they still don’t evacuate the base. Instead, they stay around for an award ceremony. It’s unclear why a fleet of Star Destroyers doesn’t immediately show up at Yavin and obliterate the base.

That last point is likely partially a result of ANH being the first movie. With only ANH in mind, we can perhaps infer that the Rebels didn’t evacuate Yavin IV because they figured it would take weeks or months for the nearest Star Destroyer to arrive at Yavin. (Later movies made this an impossible option, as hyperspace travel seems to take only a few hours most of the time - perhaps a few days at most.)

These issues with the Death Star assault likely occurred because originally, the ending to ANH was written without any “ticking clock” countdown as the Death Star comes into firing range of Yavin IV. Originally, the Death Star didn’t come to Yavin at all. Rather, the Rebels just someone know where the Death Star is (I guess it was still parked at Alderaan), and after discovering the weakness they fly X-wing squadrons to the Death Star. I think Marcia Lucas suggested that the Death Star should actually show up at Yavin, which introduces a much-needed “ticking clock”, so the Rebels have limited time and a dramatic count-down before the Death Star blows up Yavin. But unfortunately, this introduces the side problem that it makes Leia look incredibly reckless. I thought of a solution to this once that probably makes everything work, providing both the ticking clock and not making Leia look crazy - but I wouldn’t bother trying to implement a fan-edit because most people don’t have any problems with the ending to ANH.

Strict adherence to canon is probably difficult to maintain over long time periods. Star Wars has been around for almost 50 years, and is now split between two “official” continuities (Legends and Canon) - both of which are internally inconsistent. In another 50 years, there will probably be a more complicated set of different continuities, especially as technology eventually enables movie-quality fan-film productions or different studios get their hands on Star Wars IP rights.