Shopping Maul

yotsuya said:

Shopping Maul said:

I liked Luke’s vibe in TLJ in theory, but the execution bugged me somewhat. Luke in exile was great. Luke reconsidering past events and pondering (as I have as a fan) the idea of Jedi hubris was great. Luke suggesting that the old Jedi orthodoxy had to die was great. All the stuff about the Force and ‘balance’ and how no-one has a particular claim to it was absolutely great.

What I didn’t like so much was the idea of Luke being on the back foot with all this. Having Yoda come back to give Luke a lecture on ‘failure’ annoyed me. Luke transcended his masters in RoTJ. Yoda and Obi Wan wanted Luke to simply kill the bad guys. Luke chose a more personal, Zen route. I’d prefer he’d been doing the grumpy hobo routine in TLJ as an act - similar to Yoda’s initial test in TESB. This could have been his way of forcing Rey to take her destiny into her own hands, a new and different path away from the usual formalised Jedi training routine. Once Rey had flown off to confront Kylo, Luke could have revealed his cunning duplicity to Yoda and they could’ve burned down the Jedi tree together. Then, after Luke’s great skype-battle with Kylo, Rey could’ve realised what he’d done and be like “you sly devil”.

This way he could’ve played the hobo but still been the Luke we all love and respect without being diminished.

If you didn’t notice, the scene with Yoda doesn’t alter the more Zen route he took in ROTJ. Yoda isn’t advising him on the force, he is advising him how to teach. Advising him as a fellow master. I think because Luke was so pivotal, Rian didn’t just have him fill the master/mentor role immediately. He brought back some of that negativity that characterized Luke in ANH and TESB. It created a nice character journey for Luke to take him where he needed to be to help Rey.

Yes, but that’s my point - that Luke was brought back to ANH/TESB levels to reboot his arc. Yoda says (in TLJ) “young Skywalker, always looking to the horizon” when it was actually this attitude that saved the day in RoTJ, namely that Luke ‘looked to the horizon’ and took an emotional, idealistic path with regard to the bad guys (as opposed to just killing them).

I just think returning the OT characters to pre-RoTJ status, while not so bad in theory, could’ve been handled better. Leia as rebel leader, rather than Jedi kindergarten teacher, was a no-brainer since her Skywalker heritage was a story convenience that added zero to her character. Han going back to smuggling was kind of dumb - he should have been recruiting pilots from the outer rim or something which would have kept him on his post-RoTJ path while still serving the divorce narrative.

But returning Luke to pre-RoTJ status diminishes RoTJ (and this is coming from someone who doesn’t even like RoTJ!). I think the ‘broken recluse’ idea could have been served in a cleverer way without sending Luke backwards. And he didn’t help Rey. She helped him.

I liked Luke’s vibe in TLJ in theory, but the execution bugged me somewhat. Luke in exile was great. Luke reconsidering past events and pondering (as I have as a fan) the idea of Jedi hubris was great. Luke suggesting that the old Jedi orthodoxy had to die was great. All the stuff about the Force and ‘balance’ and how no-one has a particular claim to it was absolutely great.

What I didn’t like so much was the idea of Luke being on the back foot with all this. Having Yoda come back to give Luke a lecture on ‘failure’ annoyed me. Luke transcended his masters in RoTJ. Yoda and Obi Wan wanted Luke to simply kill the bad guys. Luke chose a more personal, Zen route. I’d prefer he’d been doing the grumpy hobo routine in TLJ as an act - similar to Yoda’s initial test in TESB. This could have been his way of forcing Rey to take her destiny into her own hands, a new and different path away from the usual formalised Jedi training routine. Once Rey had flown off to confront Kylo, Luke could have revealed his cunning duplicity to Yoda and they could’ve burned down the Jedi tree together. Then, after Luke’s great skype-battle with Kylo, Rey could’ve realised what he’d done and be like “you sly devil”.

This way he could’ve played the hobo but still been the Luke we all love and respect without being diminished.

DrDre said:

Shopping Maul said:

With regards to Rey, whatever fanboy misgivings I may personally have about the writing, I do think its great that Kathleen K. and co. have given young girls their own Luke Skywalker to look up to and dress up as.

I’m in two minds about this, because to me it feels like putting the cart before the horse. I agree with the idea that these franchises could use a lot more female protagonists and antagonists, and that gender should not be a determining factor in casting a character in general. As such on average there should be about an equal number of male/female protagonists, and antagonists. However, I consider the statement, that young girls cannot relate to or identify with Luke Skywalker, because he’s male to be inherently sexist. The character of Luke Skywalker is an avatar for the desires and hopes of both men and women. As such, it shouldn’t matter, if the character is portrayed by a man or a woman. Lucas wasn’t trying to cater to a specific gender group when he created the character. Consequently, Luke could have been a girl, and the story would have played out in exactly the same way. The only time the gender of a character matters, is when that character, has specific traits, that are gender specific, or if you want to specifically relate to a specific gender group. In all other cases casting should be driven by having equal representation of men and women, not by the sexist notion, that men can only relate to men, and women only relate to women.

Honestly Dre, and I’m not being deliberately evasive here, I wasn’t thinking that deeply about what I was saying. Of course girls can relate to Luke Skywalker (there are angry female Youtubers doing just that as they admonish the Kennedy/RJ version of Luke) but I was talking in a basic cosplay sense of it ie now there’s a ‘girl’ Luke that gives little girls the option of dressing up as (and admiring at whatever level) a female Star Wars hero in the Skywalker mold.

moviefreakedmind said:

Shopping Maul said:

and I love seeing kids responding to Rey and Kylo and the new cast.

Why?

I think it’s just really cool how this franchise had endured across generations. Most films from 1977 are just ‘old movies from 1977’ now. With SW we are still following the same story 40 years later! It’s so awesome to see kids at Comicon dressed as Rey and Kylo and Phasma, knowing that I was enjoying the exact same feelings when I was their age. Call me sentimental I guess!

With regards to Rey, whatever fanboy misgivings I may personally have about the writing, I do think its great that Kathleen K. and co. have given young girls their own Luke Skywalker to look up to and dress up as.

I think Star Wars will just carry on more or less forever (like Star Trek) with ebbs and flows in popularity. And, like Star Trek, fans will continue to draw their own canon-lines.

Personally I think the series pole-vaulted its shark in 1983. I guess I’ve chosen a particularly uncompromising shark! But my own fannish conservatism aside, I really enjoy the new movies as a kind of ‘what if’ observation, and I love seeing kids responding to Rey and Kylo and the new cast.

The thing that saddens me the most is the very reason this site exists - namely that Star Wars 1977-1983 does not exist and the kids who are discovering this wonderful universe can only reference the deeply inferior (IMO) Special Editions and never get a true sense of where this incredible saga came from.

I think Mon Mothma should have been Snoke. Hear me out…

What if instead of CGI Snoke we’d been presented with a hooded female/crone-type figure (something like Palpatine in the prequels but a woman)? She’d have the same hologram relationship with Kylo and Hux in TFA, and of course speculation would run rampant as to who she was. Did Palpatine have a sister? Is she Plagueis, or a Kenobi, or Luke’s great grandmother etc etc.

In TLJ we’d suspect Holdo on the back of the Poe/Holdo dynamic. But this would be rebutted when Holdo does her self-sacrifice. Maybe Commander D’arcy might be looking suspicious at this point (possibly a double agent for Mothma) - or any of the other women populating the Resistance. Amongst all this we’d get a small scene with Mon Mothma. She and Leia would share a tender moment where Mothma, formerly Ben Solo’s mentor/tutor during the formation of the New Republic and now running a college campus/military training centre in the Bothan system, would express to Leia that Ben had a good soul and will surely find the right path. Fans would write the scene off (for good or ill) as mere fan service and pay it little heed. Basically it would mirror the Palpatine/Sidious vibe of the PT but in this instance the audience would have no idea.

So in ep IX Snokette would be revealed to be Mon Mothma. It turns out that back in the day she’d been an confidant/aide to Palpatine and he’d shown her the Dark Side (people would speculate as to whether they’d been Sith Lords with special benefits but the film wouldn’t state so). Mothma had agreed to kill the Bothan spies herself and deliver the false information to the rebels, in exchange for the Bothan system being spared as well as a seat of power at Palpatine’s right hand. The rebel victory scuttled her plans which bore bitter fruit in the intervening years. While Han and Leia were off rebuilding the Republic, Mothma was secretly rebuilding the Empire and filling poor neglected Ben’s head with lies about how his sword-tutor (uncle Luke) had selfishly betrayed his grandfather and brought about the destruction of nice old Palpatine’s vision for a unified galaxy.

I’m sure there are a million better ideas out there, but here is an example of a wild story concept that would completely honour the OT and its conclusion whilst providing a plausible reason/motivation for things to go awry down the line. We’d get a good motivation for a Palpatine successor, a good motivation for Ben’s switching sides, a new war situation that doesn’t simply write off the RoTJ victory, and the ‘subversion’ would be in the new way we would interpret the “many Bothans died…” scene.

P.S. as soon as I wrote this I googled ‘Mon Mothma double agent’ to see if anyone else had had the same idea and found this Reddit article. It doesn’t propose her as a ‘new Palpatine for the ST’ but it does speculate she was on his side during RoTJ (and with benefits)…
https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarsspeculation/comments/5kttz6/mon_mothma_is_really_palpatines_wifesecret/

The bottom line is that JJ didn’t care. As an audience we saw Snoke (along with all the other ‘mystery boxes’) and were like “wow, who is this guy? Where did he come from? Is that big scar a clue? What happened after the decisive Endor victory etc etc” and JJ was simply going “uh, we need an Emperor, a Death Star, a desert planet, a cantina, a Vader, a landspeeder…”

DominicCobb said:

From Holdo’s perspective, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that Poe will lie over like a lap dog and accept her plan. I don’t know why you think she should be able to assume this just because we as an audience see he does later, but that she shouldn’t have confidence that she can take back control. It makes a whole lot more sense to me that she’d trust her and her compatriots’ skills more than she’d trust Poe’s judgment, especially considering the whole reason she hasn’t told Poe in the first place is she doesn’t trust his judgment. She’s completely consistent here, staying steadfast to her plan and her judgment of Poe all the way (like I said, Poe attempting mutiny only serves to make her trust him less).

Not to mention, we can’t even really know for sure that Poe would’ve taken it well. There’s an argument to be made that having Leia tell the plan to him after his plan and mutiny was dead and buried and this was the only option left made him more open to Holdo’s plan. Who knows if in the moment, while Poe was trying to get everything to work, that he would’ve just given up and rolled over.

But this whole idea of Poe being untrustworthy is so bizarrely contrived. There’s nothing up to this point that indicates he has ill intentions or would not be amenable to Holdo’s plan. Okay, he disobeyed Leia’s order to retreat, but it turned out to be the right call given that the Dreadnaught would have destroyed them all upon re-entry into normal space. Even immediately after his demotion he is given the green light to ‘jump in an X-Wing and blow something up’ which shows that there is significant ambiguity to Leia’s position in this regard.

And why doesn’t he trust Holdo? It can’t be a gender thing because he happily works alongside a whole bunch of very capable women - Leia included! It can’t be Holdo’s appearance given that he also works alongside aliens, droids, and lobsters in flight suits. It’s like this whole “she’s not what I expected” routine from Poe is suddenly pulled out of thin air to force a conflict in order to generate this particular storyline.

And what’s the lesson here? What if a similar situation arises and the next leader who withholds information turns out to be a traitor after all? Will Poe sit idly by because, well, you must never question authority?

darthrush said:

DrDre said:

Jay said:

DrDre said:

dahmage said:

what the literal f*$&

goodness, i think i am gonna check out too. now we are saying that because one real life general doesn’t like what they did in star wars, that makes it bad? HAH. you can find a real life general to say that everything that happens in real life is bad too, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. SMH.

Did you read the article? What’s so shocking about someone using his real life experience on military leadership to make an assessment of how a character behaves in a movie, and whether such behaviour in a real life situation would constitute good leadership? These characters are presented as role models to an extend, and people identify with them. It seems to me, that someone with actual expertise on military leadership would have a more informed opinion, than the average person, but I guess that only matters, if the opinion is favourable to TLJ, like for example when a physicist states Holdo’s kamikaze act would be physically plausible in their “expert” opinion.

You don’t even have to base your argument on a military context to show that Holdo is a bad leader. Bad workplace managers exhibit the same traits. I recoiled at her response to Poe’s questions. Is that how you inspire confidence and loyalty? Dressing down your subordinates and pulling rank?

Even brash, cocky people like Poe are usually well-meaning and only need appropriate outlets for their energy. I always do my best as a manager to maintain the delicate balance between keeping my employees informed and empowered, and still making it clear who’s in charge when the time comes to make a final decision. If I ever spoke to an employee like Holdo did to Poe, they’d be right to lack confidence in my leadership abilities, and if I had a manager who talked to me that way, I’d be looking for a new job. Not an option in the military, unfortunately (well, I guess Poe considered mutiny an option, and I was kind of rooting for him after seeing what a dickhead Holdo was).

I absolutely agree. I also believe one of the main issues here is, that the entire sequence to me is symptomatic of weak writing, since the writer’s intentions are not clear. Are we supposed to recoil at Holdo’s responses towards Poe, or is it RJ’s intention to sympathise with Holdo, since Poe has shown himself to be irresponsible? Why does Holdo treat Poe this way to the point that it results in a mutiny, only to tell Leia, that she likes him later? Why would she treat someone she apparently likes, and respects this way, to teach him a lesson? If so, is teaching Poe a lesson really worth endangering the entire rebel fleet by letting things spin out of control? These are some of my issues with this entire sequence, even if we agree Holdo is a bad leader, was it RJ’s intention to have her come across as such? If so, why does the entire sequence culminate in Poe realizing he was wrong about her? It seems RJ wants us to side with Poe, and experience the lesson through his eyes, but in my opinion Poe’s actions are justified, considering the situation, and her obvious poor grasp on the situation. As such, it doesn’t matter, if she had the greatest plan in the world, since her poor leadership almost resulted in that plan never becoming a reality. If so, why does the movie present the entire situation, as if she was right all the time, and he was wrong? Surely they shared responsibility for this entire fiasco?

This was very well written and put into words how I feel about the Poe/Holdo subplot.

I second this.

One nice nerdy way to view SW canon is to follow the creator’s/creators’ intentions. For example, since Lucas himself has ruled the unaltered OT ‘non-canon’, it’s fair to say that these stories (and their accompanying optional EU) constitute one canon. The prequel outline as discussed by Lucas and Kasdan circa '81 marks the accompanying backstory to that particular canon, including the notion that Leia’s mother died when the twins were toddlers.

The SEs are designed to fit with the PT, so that’s another canon right there (again with optional corresponding EU). Here we get Midichlorians, the Chosen One prophecy, a younger Anakin, Kiwi Boba, and so forth.

With the ST it gets tricky, given that despite Disney’s canon declarations it is clear that JJ Abrams favours the unaltered OT (Han shot first according to JJ) while Rian Johnson seems keen to mention Darth Sidious out loud. At this point canon becomes somewhat a la carte. Clearly the old EU no longer applies though.

For me, during my crankier moments, my canon consists of Star Wars and Empire (unaltered) with Revenge of the Jedi still yet to be made…

TV’s Frink said:

Shopping Maul said:

Oh please. Did we criticise Ewoks because of ‘toxic masculinity’? Did we balk at the plotholes created by the prequels because of latent sexism? Did we hate Midichlorians because it threatened the patriarchy? Did we cringe at Padme/Anakin’s romance dialogue because we’re trapped in some selfish power-fantasy? No, these were simply film critiques. Nothing more, nothing less. And despite a few racist/sexist imbeciles on the internet (which are everywhere - it’s not a ‘Star Wars thing’) TLJ is getting exactly the same treatment as every other SW movie. This ‘toxic fandom’ crap is getting old. We should be able, as fans, to discuss potential plotholes and canon discrepancies without being told by some sanctimonious article that we don’t understand the nuances of this brilliant film because we’re secretly struggling with our own deeply held sexism/racism.

Must have hit a little close to the mark to get you all riled up like that.

Jokes aside (I’m assuming you were going for humour rather than hostility) this actually illustrates the problem with this kind of argumentation. The author sets up a strawman which goes something like “the detractors are actually reacting to their own inner flaws rather than the ones they’re supposedly highlighting in the film, and any defensive reaction to this claim on their part is proof of its validity”.

Oh please. Did we criticise Ewoks because of ‘toxic masculinity’? Did we balk at the plotholes created by the prequels because of latent sexism? Did we hate Midichlorians because it threatened the patriarchy? Did we cringe at Padme/Anakin’s romance dialogue because we’re trapped in some selfish power-fantasy? No, these were simply film critiques. Nothing more, nothing less. And despite a few racist/sexist imbeciles on the internet (which are everywhere - it’s not a ‘Star Wars thing’) TLJ is getting exactly the same treatment as every other SW movie. This ‘toxic fandom’ crap is getting old. We should be able, as fans, to discuss potential plotholes and canon discrepancies without being told by some sanctimonious article that we don’t understand the nuances of this brilliant film because we’re secretly struggling with our own deeply held sexism/racism.

Chewielewis said:

Just Write | Why We Can’t Agree About The Last Jedi (Or Art In General)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJhOpY7bh6s

An interesting perspective on the Last Jedi controversy.

And here’s the resulting debate between Just Write and Mauler/Wolf…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqj7jfgspQ

Having Luke scream in the Emperor’s voice as he takes the plunge in TESB.

The whole Lucas problem is a simple one - the things he likes about Star Wars are not the things the fans (generally speaking) like about Star Wars. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s pure math. He was famously 30% happy with Star Wars (a 1978 Rolling Stone interview confirms this and the SEs spell it out conclusively) and 100% happy with The Phantom Menace. The fan percentages run the opposite way.

screams in the void said:

Shopping Maul said:

screams in the void said:

I have to say those are my two favorite films as well , although the 1982 Conan did lead me to the works of Robert E. Howard , the creator of Conan , and while the movie uses a lot of his concepts ,there has never been a faithful adaptation to screen of any of Howard’s stories save for a little short story called Pigeons From Hell that was adapted for a 1961 tv show Boris Karloff’s thriller. I love the movie regardless , would just love to see a direct adaptation of a Howard Conan story . Conan was never a slave and would never have gone quietly.I even made a fan edit of the movie showing how I believe the movie could have skewed a bit closer to Howard’s work which you can see here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZSC3LMTw8

Thanks for the link - really interesting take on it all. I must confess I absolutely hated Conan 2011, but I like what you’ve done there. Marvel’s Conan movie adaptation is my favourite comic book of all time (particularly the painted Super Special version) so I loved how you cut between the book and the movie scenes.

I guess where I part company with my fellow Conan-lovers is on the subject of fidelity to Howard. When I discovered Conan in the early 80s I had little sense of where Howard began and ended, diluted as it all was by DeCamp and Thomas and so forth. It was only when Del Rey released their volumes in 2003 that I finally read ‘pure’ Howard. What struck me the most was just how deeply I felt Milius had nailed it. But for me it’s not about the minutiae of Conan’s origins or fidelity to the exact stories so much as it’s about capturing Howard’s attitude. Indeed, it seems to me that the Conan character was really just a foil for Howard to tell a bunch of different stories - from swashbucklers to mysteries to pirate tales to westerns and so on. Conan’s almost a side-character in many of these. He also comes into it all more or less fully formed. There’s no real arc beyond his growing from young upstart to leader of men (and finally King) - which is perfect for the haphazard short stories Howard was telling, but not so great for a movie hero. So I think it was entirely appropriate for Milius to give Conan an arc - an origin and a driving purpose.

I also feel that other writers were scared of REH. DeCamp certainly was. Roy Thomas smoothed out many rough edges to make Conan more heroic and noble (and he completely destroyed Belit IMO). The 2011 film seemed to think that extra violence and nudity was the key - which is juvenile. I think Milius really got Howard. I think he got the essence of Howard, the deep passion and melancholy (and mirth!), the pure love of storytelling at a primal level, the mythic quality. There are some great nods to Howard’s other works in the film - even while the film strays in ‘canon’ terms - and overall I think the movie captures the keynotes of Conan’s life really well. A proper sequel would have had Conan reaching Argos and heading for the sea, very much in keeping with his post-thief career. But alas, we got Conan the Destroyer…

I’m no Howard scholar by any stretch, so I may be well off base here. I think capturing Conan’s character is such a subjective undertaking. Dark Horse’s determination to make a truly Howardian Conan in 2004 (and beyond) was fun but still didn’t feel like Howard to me, even though they ticked all the canon boxes.

Sorry about the rambling! And thanks again for the link - really interesting stuff. May the Crom be with you…

you’re welcome . And speaking of capturing the essence of Howard’s stories , I thought the movie Solomon Kane came the closest .

Oh yeah, Solomon Kane was great. Purefoy was wonderful as Kane. Think I’ll dig it out this weekend…it’s been a while! Thanks!

screams in the void said:

I have to say those are my two favorite films as well , although the 1982 Conan did lead me to the works of Robert E. Howard , the creator of Conan , and while the movie uses a lot of his concepts ,there has never been a faithful adaptation to screen of any of Howard’s stories save for a little short story called Pigeons From Hell that was adapted for a 1961 tv show Boris Karloff’s thriller. I love the movie regardless , would just love to see a direct adaptation of a Howard Conan story . Conan was never a slave and would never have gone quietly.I even made a fan edit of the movie showing how I believe the movie could have skewed a bit closer to Howard’s work which you can see here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZSC3LMTw8

Thanks for the link - really interesting take on it all. I must confess I absolutely hated Conan 2011, but I like what you’ve done there. Marvel’s Conan movie adaptation is my favourite comic book of all time (particularly the painted Super Special version) so I loved how you cut between the book and the movie scenes.

I guess where I part company with my fellow Conan-lovers is on the subject of fidelity to Howard. When I discovered Conan in the early 80s I had little sense of where Howard began and ended, diluted as it all was by DeCamp and Thomas and so forth. It was only when Del Rey released their volumes in 2003 that I finally read ‘pure’ Howard. What struck me the most was just how deeply I felt Milius had nailed it. But for me it’s not about the minutiae of Conan’s origins or fidelity to the exact stories so much as it’s about capturing Howard’s attitude. Indeed, it seems to me that the Conan character was really just a foil for Howard to tell a bunch of different stories - from swashbucklers to mysteries to pirate tales to westerns and so on. Conan’s almost a side-character in many of these. He also comes into it all more or less fully formed. There’s no real arc beyond his growing from young upstart to leader of men (and finally King) - which is perfect for the haphazard short stories Howard was telling, but not so great for a movie hero. So I think it was entirely appropriate for Milius to give Conan an arc - an origin and a driving purpose.

I also feel that other writers were scared of REH. DeCamp certainly was. Roy Thomas smoothed out many rough edges to make Conan more heroic and noble (and he completely destroyed Belit IMO). The 2011 film seemed to think that extra violence and nudity was the key - which is juvenile. I think Milius really got Howard. I think he got the essence of Howard, the deep passion and melancholy (and mirth!), the pure love of storytelling at a primal level, the mythic quality. There are some great nods to Howard’s other works in the film - even while the film strays in ‘canon’ terms - and overall I think the movie captures the keynotes of Conan’s life really well. A proper sequel would have had Conan reaching Argos and heading for the sea, very much in keeping with his post-thief career. But alas, we got Conan the Destroyer…

I’m no Howard scholar by any stretch, so I may be well off base here. I think capturing Conan’s character is such a subjective undertaking. Dark Horse’s determination to make a truly Howardian Conan in 2004 (and beyond) was fun but still didn’t feel like Howard to me, even though they ticked all the canon boxes.

Sorry about the rambling! And thanks again for the link - really interesting stuff. May the Crom be with you…

screams in the void said:

also worth mentioning is that the first writer of the original Marvel Star Wars , Roy Thomas , was best known as the writer of Conan Comics and petitioned George Lucas to green light the comic and convinced Stan Lee to take it on . I am also a huge Conan fan , almost as much a fan of it as Star Wars . And Roy Thomas’ writing helped shape my vocabulary as a kid

I second this! TESB and CTB are my absolute favourite films. I have a (more or less) full set of the Marvel Conan series.

I guess it makes sense, given that Time Magazine called CTB a ‘psychopathic Star Wars’!

screams in the void said:

ZkinandBonez said:

A while back I found these six pages from an old article about the “Goodwin-years” of Marvel Star Wars. I don’t know what magazine this is from, but I made them into a PDF and figured I’d share it here.

‘Star Wars Under Archie Goodwin’ by Kurt Busiek

Cool article , thank you for sharing . I saw Archie Goodwin signing and talking to fans about this series at the Chicago Comic Con back in early 1995 and he was one hell of a nice guy. I think he had a great handle on the characters , I have to disagree with part of this article though as I thought his first story arc on the water world felt like it could have been an awesome Star Wars movie and it had the sense of grand scale and pacing that are a Star Wars hallmark . And while I like that Infantino had a quirky style that got the essence of the characters in interpretation , I am partial to Walter Simonson or Ron Frenz with Tom Palmer . Goodwin did write some of the best stories though and David Michellinie wrote the penultimate arc between issues 55 and 63 with the Shira Brie /Pariah story arc.One of the things I like most about Goodwin though , and he mentioned this himself in the letters column of one of the issues he wrote, was that he realized Darth Vader was too good a villian to be over used and was more effective when used sparingly so he had more of an impact .This is one thing Current Marvel does not get . While some of it has been ok in my opinion , having a Darth Vader series misses the point.And back to the article , yeah , Michellinie’s Tarkin/Death Star story was a bit of a rehash , but it did anticipate the events of ROTJ and the same could be said of TFA. I also enjoyed a lot of the stories written by Jo Duffy with both Ron Frenz and Cynthia Martin prior to them getting their hands tied and the series getting a little wonky the last few issues .

I think Michelinie did ROTJ better than Lucas did! The Tarkin made sense because it used Death Star tech in an innovative way (as opposed to “hey, here’s a bigger one!” a la ROTJ and TFA). Plus its destruction was from within rather than just another ‘exhaust port/main reactor’ scenario. The Hoojibs on Arbra (complete with hover-bikes) did ‘cuteness’ and Endor much better than ROTJ. And finally Shira Brie would’ve made an infinitely better ‘other hope’ than the clumsily shoehorned Leia.

The real answer to all this remains the same - treat the SEs as ‘Director’s cuts’ and leave the OT alone, matte lines and all. Make both available on modern formats.

In the case of Mos Eisley, an often overlooked point is this - filling the spaceport with dinosaurs and CGI hijinks completely detracts from what made the cantina work in the first place. The scene worked because the spaceport itself was quite tame on initial approach - some Stormtroopers, some droids, some Jawas etc. Then Ben says “this place can be a little rough” and boom! - alien weirdos everywhere. That’s the magic of the scene. That’s why it was iconic. It was about the timing and unexpectedness of the moment. That’s why when Lucas tried to top it with Jabba’s palace, many folks were like “eh, it’s just a bunch of muppets”. The joke had already been told.

Now we have a giant overpopulated CGI city followed by a descent into a roomful of dudes in cheap rubber masks.

Way to kill a moment George.

Mavimao said:

Shopping Maul said:

Sorry to change the subject, but during the scene where Threepio said “Master Luke!” on Crait, did anyone else wish Luke had said “no, just Luke” before he winked?

Nice!

I’d thought of another “small touch” idea, but it would probably have been really clunky to include: Kylo Ren tells his subordinates to broadcast the destruction of the Resistance live to the public.

Well I did wonder how Broom Boy and co. got wind of the new Skywalker legend, so that’s a cool idea!

Sorry to change the subject, but during the scene where Threepio said “Master Luke!” on Crait, did anyone else wish Luke had said “no, just Luke” before he winked?

Creox said:

Shopping Maul said:

Seriously, we’re on a site that was created by adults (like me) who can’t handle the fact that their favourite childhood film had some cartoon dinosaurs inserted into it. We collect action figures and read comic books and discuss at great length just how white the snow on Hoth might have been on the original 1980 film stock. Yet someone writes a long dissertation about one of these movies and suddenly everyone’s like “gee, get a life dude”.

Isn’t this exactly the place for such a post?

Actually your two thoughts on the matter are not the same issue imo.

One is about finding anything and everything about a movie you dislike and with surgical accuracy complete a thesis on why it sucks so bad.

This is much different than falling in love with a movie despite it’s flaws and enjoying discussions around that…

One thing is not like the other.

This site exists because we all want the original SW movies to be released on modern formats. We have petitions and discussions and fan edits and long debates about colour correction. We endlessly lament the SEs and ‘Han shot first’ and discuss which changes we can live with and so on and so forth.

Normal people don’t care. Normal people go “eh, it’s just a couple of scenes, get a life nerd”. And I say screw them! I don’t come here to be ‘normal’. I come here to nerd out over dumb stuff like the Sith rule of two and why a giant lobster should have had a noble death in TLJ.

I just find it odd that, in a sea of SW obsessiveness, a person writing a long and well-thought out piece about one of the movies constitutes some kind of limit.

Matt.F said:

Someone writes a long ‘negative’ dissertation.

Didn’t your grandmother tell you “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all”.

There’s some truth to the notion that positivity is more inspiring and engaging than negativity. The context of this being a kids film further adds to the ‘whiny entitled fanboy’ feeling one gets when reading such post.

The guy also flagged so many points of grievance that it becomes impossible to reply to with anything other than ‘get a life’ style comment (just one or two and we could have debated).

Following such grandmotherly advice means we may as well not have a forum. By that logic we’d merely have a series of very boring posts praising each and every aspect of the films. Like I said, the entire premise of this site was to call out the creator of the franchise on a creative decision that ‘normal’ people generally don’t give a toss about. We’re all ‘whiny fanboys’ here - whether it be disliking aspects of the saga or moaning about the crushed blacks in the official blu rays. I see no problem with this. The poster clearly loves SW enough to write a detailed and well-thought out essay on why he/she disliked an aspect of the saga. That in itself IS positive.

If any of us really felt that SW was ‘just a kids film’ then none of us would be here. Of course there are subjective limits to what might constitute a healthy fannish obsession with the movies, but merely writing a long negative review about one of the movies hardly qualifies IMO. I take your point about ‘positivity’ in general, and there is some real bile out there on the net. I just don’t think this is an example of such, and I’d hate to think that anyone who was tempted to really nerd out and write something substantial would now find themselves self-censoring on a site that is, by definition, a place for SW nerds to share and enjoy their nerdiness unfettered.

Seriously, we’re on a site that was created by adults (like me) who can’t handle the fact that their favourite childhood film had some cartoon dinosaurs inserted into it. We collect action figures and read comic books and discuss at great length just how white the snow on Hoth might have been on the original 1980 film stock. Yet someone writes a long dissertation about one of these movies and suddenly everyone’s like “gee, get a life dude”.

Isn’t this exactly the place for such a post?