Servii

of_Kaiburr_and_Whills said:

This gives the original films a whole new dimension of thematic power, and is another reason that for me the PT and ST trilogies don’t exist in the same universe as the OT.

I’m going to get off topic here but I want to say that I think this point reminds me of something I’ve always felt about Star Wars. The OT really is its own little universe, the way the story is told, the tone, the characters, etc. It feels like its own realm which no other Star Wars film or EU material has ever been able to match for me. Within the trilogy themselves even, the movies are so distinct and unique in their own right and I think this adds to the feeling for me. They are all different but unified. The thematic elements of the OT mixed with their visuals and characters is something else.

I totally agree. The OT really does feel like it’s on an island of its own relative to the rest of Star Wars. That’s part of what makes it special. The one thing I can think of that comes closest to the OT in tone and style is the Thrawn trilogy.

Here’s how I see it. Given how divisive modern Star Wars is, YouTubers who base their channels around Star Wars or nerd culture are left with two options to retain views. Either they “stand by the brand,” so that their channel’s success becomes bound up with the success of the franchise (Star Wars Explained, AT-AT Chat). Or they go the opposite way and embrace the vitriol, and never stop being vitriolic for fear of losing their subscriber base (Star Wars Girl, Geeks&Gamers).

But then you also have the silent third group who have done the reasonable thing and just moved on. I’ve known Prequel/George stans to fall into all 3 groups, not just the 2nd, vitriolic group.

Edit: I almost forgot about StarWarsTheory. He’s an interesting case. He seems like a decent guy. I think he just wants really badly to keep on being a Star Wars fan and keep getting excited for new Star Wars. But the sequel trilogy kind of broke him, which is why he seems so conflicted a lot of the time. (He even gave TRoS a positive review at first.)

Didn’t Stardust say similar things, albeit in more eloquent/long-winded terms?

They did, but again, that’s still a minority perspective. Most prequel fans I’ve known and talked to prefer the OUT. The number of fans who actually support the repression of the OUT is quite small.

Liking or disliking the ST has unfortunately become a good barometer for such “sides” in the culture war.

It really hasn’t. And you shouldn’t feel like you have to defend Disney Star Wars in order to be seen as on the “right side of history.”

Fuck the Lucas Zealots

Take it easy. I don’t like what he’s saying either, but his is very much a minority opinion, even among Lucas fans. And I don’t see what Vic Mignogna or identity politics has to do with this, either. This isn’t a culture war we’re talking about here.

But yes, what this guy is saying is stupid.

SparkySywer said:

Did G&G Fan edit the title of this thread?

I think a mod did.

I finally watched this show. It was pretty poor. It wasn’t simply that it had cringey moments or that Boba acted dumb, though those are also true. The show was just meandering and dull. It just felt like a Mandalorian filler season that undermined the ending of season 2.

I finally went ahead and rewatched season 1 and saw season 2 for the first time. It’s alright. It’s not great, but it’s decent as casual entertainment. I like the whole premise of a wandering warrior in the vein of Yojimbo and the Dollars trilogy. Where the show loses me, though, is its central conflict of the Empire trying to capture Grogu to harvest his midichlorians to create…Snoke? Or the Palpatine clone, maybe? Either way, it’s not an appealing central conflict for me, and there’s only so much you can do with that concept in a serialized show. Season 3 will probably move away from that, though.

I also think the show is often frustratingly vague about the state of the galaxy. I want to actually see the New Republic in some onscreen media, but we’ve only been given fleeting glimpses so far. I get that they’re setting the story on the anarchic frontier like Spaghetti Westerns, but since Spaghetti Westerns are set in an actual time and place in history, we already know the historical context. But with Mandalorian, our information about the galaxy during this time period is tantalizingly sparse.

Welcome to the forum! I know the primary creator of Despecialized, Harmy, is a member here, and he does post from time to time. It was a big relief to discover Harmy’s projects and this community. I’m glad to see more people finding out about it.

nvm

SparkySywer said:

A few months ago a Mauler fan gave their definition of a bad movie, that being any movie where over 60% of the runtime has problems. Obviously this is ridiculous, 60% is a really random-ass number to pull, and how you would even measure this is beyond me. But I think it kind of says a lot about what that style of criticism is trying to prove.

These types of criticisms are essentially big long lists of mean things you can say about a movie. And the more “problems” you can list off about a movie, the worse it is.

But that style of critique doesn’t address how people actually experience movies. It’s not like when you’re watching a movie you’re counting all the bads you notice, and if it passes a threshhold it’s a bad movie. People experience movies in the big picture.

And this style of critique is completely incapable of addressing the big picture, because a character arc is more than just a combination of character moments. A narrative is more than jut a combination of plot points. Et cetera.

If you wanted to criticize Luke’s character in TLJ in this format, you could only really look at the individual character moment, when the thing that’s actually controversial is the overarching story.

But even making that comparison is way too generous, because they’re not starting from the top down, trying to criticize Luke’s character by finding individual character moments that bug them. They’re going from the bottom up, making a huge, long list of everything that could be considered at the very least an imperfection. And none of it ever amounts to anything.

They’re not criticizing with a fine tooth comb, they’re not catching lots of problems. They’re catching lots of meaningless nitpicks and missing actual criticism.

There’s a lot of people who say that people only care about these problems in movies they already didn’t like, and happily ignore them in movies they do like. I think this is a bad argument, if a movie has problems you probably don’t like it, kind of by definition. But looking at it at from this angle kind of makes that argument make sense a little: These aren’t actual problems, whether or not you like a movie has absolutely nothing to do with them. You’ll recognize these sorts of “problems” to dunk on a movie you already like, but either aren’t motivated to seek out these sorts of “problems”, or you aren’t receptive to them when you find them, because you already like the movie and they don’t actually matter.

Yeah, this is pretty much correct. It’s why Mauler’s metric for judging media is so skewed. He starts off by viewing a movie as a hypothetical Perfect 10, then detracts points based on how many supposed errors he finds. But that’s an awful way to judge a complex piece of art. And it’s arrogant to start calling a movie “objectively bad” based on that metric. I see that now.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-game-paused-amid-studio-shakeup-1.1797328

Apparently, they’ve fired the remake’s art director and its design director. And development is being put on hold.

I just realized that the OT follows the Always Sunny in Philadelphia team dynamic. Luke is the looks. Leia is the brains. Han is the wildcard. Chewie is the muscle.

I was going to say Mara Jade or Kyle Katarn, but having thought about it, I’d want the ancient Sith wars to be canon again. I know they contradict George’s words on the matter, but one of my biggest problems with the current canon is its lack of a well defined galactic history.

If they ever brought back Dromund Kaas, I’d love if it looked like that.

I definitely do. Old Tatooine felt more desolate and mysterious. It felt like a place in a Spaghetti Western crossed with Arrakis. The Mandalorian sort of got that vibe back, but not quite. Prequel Tatooine didn’t really have that quality as much. There was the homage to The Searchers in AotC, but the planet in general was made much more bustling and lively.

I hadn’t really thought much about the difference in architecture, to be honest. I always noticed more how the general atmosphere was different.

As curious as I am to see how further sequels would have turned out, ESB does have a very “penultimate” vibe to it. It doesn’t simply feel like a second movie. It feels like it’s building up to a finale. So it would be weird if several sequels to it came out over the following years.

Play “Komm, süsser Tod” over the TRoS end credits.

Ben Solo’s middle name is Quadrinaros.

In hindsight, the Mando Season 2 finale would have been the opportune moment to introduce a recast Luke Skywalker. Luke showing up was already a pleasant surprise for people, but then he could take off his hood and reveal Sebastian Stan or whoever’s face. Then Lucasfilm could announce future projects featuring Stan or whoever as Luke.

Disney and Lucasfilm blame the recasting for Solo’s poor performance, but I don’t think that’s really fair. It’s all a matter of timing and execution with recasts. And that Mando episode would have been the ideal time for it.

Superweapon VII said:

tl;dr: fandoms and social media suck.

Yep.

STK is good for how much it tries to call out all the jerks who have ruined the Star Wars fandom and is a safe space for people to like the sequels without being yelled at or belittled.

So, criticizing the prequels is all well and good, but criticizing the sequels is “ruining the fandom”? The vast majority of Star Wars subs are largely positive about the whole franchise. It’s not like sequel fans are some oppressed minority.

BedeHistory731 said:

Servii said:

BedeHistory731 said:

The Mauler subreddit also works for this.

SaltierThanKrayt is worse, though.

I think it, StarWarsCantina, and MawInstallation are the only worthwhile places to talk Star Wars on reddit.

I haven’t been on StarWarsCantina lately, but MawInstallation is pretty decent.

BedeHistory731 said:

The Mauler subreddit also works for this.

I don’t like any Star Wars subreddits, but I think STC is one of the less bad ones, mainly because of how hostile other subs are towards any criticism. STC does have its problems, though. They’re still naive a lot of the time, desperately hoping that the next Star Wars product will somehow be an improvement. And they tend to stan the prequels and Rogue One a bit too much, and react negatively to criticism of those movies, which is hypocritical given why the sub was started in the first place.

SaltierThanKrayt is worse, though.

JadedSkywalker said:

It would have been a destruction of the character. But what if we didn’t know who the new Vader was, Luke is missing. at the end of Force Awakens the New Vader removed his mask and its Luke Skywalker. Not Ben Solo.

Reminds me of the “Luke is Kylo Ren” theories floating around before TFA came out. I wasn’t a fan of that idea.

There are ways to make an idea like this work. The key is that you need to turn the whole concept on its head in some way. You want the new “Vader” to be imposing and authoritative and worthy of the mantle, but he also needs to be a very different character from Vader once we peel back the layers and see his inner motivations.

That’s why I like the idea of Ben Solo taking up the “Vader” mantle reluctantly, and hating the role he feels he has to play. Maybe he isn’t actually even on the Dark Side. I’d go all in on emphasizing the “play-acting” nature of the character.