I did something like that when I was, like, 15 or 16 or however old I was. This was before I was on OT.com. I did more to try and make TPM look like a spinoff (Rogue One wasn’t even out yet lol) than to make AotC and RotS fit in more with Machete Order, though.
Luke says some stuff about how the Jedi allowed Sidious to destroy them, which means they apparently deserved to be destroyed, for some reason? He says the legacy of the Jedi is failure, despite the fact that the Jedi had been able to keep the Republic together and thriving (for the most part) for thousands of years. And he says that the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi, which isn’t some groundbreaking statement. Everyone already knew that. The Jedi never claimed that the Force belonged to them.
The Jedi never claimed to own the Force, but if you wanted to be trained in the Force, you became a Jedi. That was your only avenue. If the goal of the Jedi is to preserve peace and justice in the galaxy, this makes a lot of sense. It’s harder for someone whose goals are counter to peace and justice to become powerful in the Force if the only place they can learn is from the Jedi. But it creates one single point of failure, and if the Jedi themselves fail, the whole galaxy falls. This is exactly what happened in the prequels.
There’s also the fact that Luke, given his unconventional path to knighthood, would definitely not have been the traditionalist, prequel-like Jedi the new canon portrays him as. He would have reformed the Order to correct its flaws, rather than just throwing the whole thing out without trying to change anything. But, I’ll save that for another post.
It’s really dumb that the New EU seems to make Luke kind of traditionalist, but even in the context Rian Johnson was writing in, where Luke’s Academy is mostly undefined, it doesn’t matter how much reform Luke brings to the Jedi when the fundamental function of the Jedi remains the same. Luke recreates the same point of failure that led to the fall of the Republic simply by trying to bring the Jedi back.
I get that the point is that Luke is supposed to be wrong, so we can see him have a change of heart at the end.
It isn’t so much that is ideology is wrong, but that his solution is. Luke’s ideology in the movie, that positioning the galaxy to rely on heroes to solve their problems for them isn’t a good idea, is absolutely right (and that’s why it’s so mind boggling that TRoS ends the same way as RotJ without addressing this). But he was wrong in thinking that it meant the Jedi, or something like the Jedi, have no place in the galaxy.
Stardust1138 said:
… but as long as films like Marvel and what Star Wars is becoming are successful the storyteller will be pushed out of the equation.The MCU is light years ahead of the Star Wars franchise where consistent story and vision are concerned. Casting, writing,
The MCU’s “writing” is like the “writing” of a porno or an 80s video game. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important. It’s weak and barely existent because story isn’t the point. The point is to push your buttons for a bit, and the story’s only there because people aren’t yet ready to just watch two hour long SFX sequences like they are now ready to just play games and watch people having sex.
Star Wars, for what it’s worth, is at least supposed to be about the story. The overarching story may now be a train wreck, but the only reason the MCU isn’t a train wreck is because there’s nothing in the train to wreck it.
I also struggle to understand George and Prequel zealots’ narrow minded views of people not liking the Prequels is because “you just don’t understand them” or “no, you must watch X, Y, Z to understand George intent and his films”, or simply trying to work George into every post or thread they make. This seems to be a more recent occurrence online in general for PT discussions. Rarely ever talking about the what occurs onscreen, what they themselves actually enjoyed about the the PT, or adding anything new to the discussions, other than condescension and some veiled insults, and also derailing the original topic of the thread. I’m not talking about about the everyday regular Prequel fans or people who simply enjoy most things Star Wars, just the G&P zealots.
Of course everyone is grateful to George for Star Wars, his creation and his dedication, but Star Wars thankfully moved on far beyond George and his retconned and re-invented visions. There is so much more to try, to experience, and enjoy.
The irony of it is Original Trilogy fans can be the exact same way. So it’s not just a Prequels fans thing to do but something I’ve seen Original fans do as well.
Source: My bum
No, actually, I really want to call this out here. You just kind of… assert this and hope it’s taken as fact. Can you give any examples of OT fans behaving the exact same way? Just so the goalposts stay where they belong, specifically I’m looking for:
All of these are par for the course when talking to a dyed-in-the-wool prequel zealot.
Isn’t it just as narrow focused to not try understanding a piece of art and claiming it’s boring without understanding all of the reasons for what it is actually telling us?
If this is you providing an example of OT fans being like that, then one, you don’t seem to understand what ken-obi was talking about, which seems to be the case when you say
So no reason to pinpoint just Prequel fans at first as the only ones who can go a little far in how we all discuss the films.
But more importantly, two, dude, seriously, the reason people disagree with you over these movies is actually not because they just don’t understand them. And I don’t want to hear about how much you understand and respect how movies are subjective or whatever just for you to hyperfixate on the totally not phantom menace of people who just don’t want to understand the super subtle prequels.
I’m done though for sure as it feels like I’m getting gaslighted for not using the exact words you want me to use
What a fascinating conversation this was.
> I think it’s silly how a lot of prequel fans act in bad faith in these conversations
> Prequel fans aren’t the only ones who are mean bullies, OT fans are like that too
> That’s not at all what I was talking about
> Well, I just have a different interpretation of what you said.
> Your interpretation was wrong. You’re saying I said things which I never did.
> Well, someone else also thought what I thought too.
> This does not change that you thought I meant one thing, and I actually meant something else
> I feel gaslighted and attacked
I don’t want to get personal, but I feel like I have to. You seem to have a chronic inability to admit when you’ve made a mistake and you seem to prefer just continually pulling up excuse after excuse instead of just saying “Oops, I am human and fallible and said something that was wrong.” You very clearly misunderstood what ken-obi was saying, literally why not just admit it?
“Queen” is also a pretty inaccurate description of what the Queen of Naboo actually is and does
This is Mr. Adrian Ministrator
I dislike the idea of chocolate Easter Eggs. It feels to me like consumerist nonsense and corrupts the true meaning of Easter.
I disagree. I like eating chocolate and buying things at the store.
If we’re bringing back OT villains anyway they should’ve just brought back Darth Vader and made him the villain of the whole trilogy
I think they should be reworked into worse movies
Things like the Rule of Two were just made up as an explanation for why Vader and Palpatine were the only ones in the OT.
The Rule of Two could be recontextualized to be just the nature of the dark side, instead of an arcane rule the Sith must follow. Like, masters just tend to pass on their knowledge to only one apprentice, and the lack of multiple apprentices means that over time, the number of dark side masters dwindle to one.
And I think the most brilliant thing about the ST is bringing Palpatine back. People think this was a last minute change, but I think JJ had this in mind from the beginning. It was pointed out before TLJ came out that musically Rey’s Theme was a variation on Palpatine’s theme.
But they didn’t do that. And on top of that, they didn’t ask Ian McDiarmid to come back as Palpatine until a point in 2018
It was actually Jan 2019
Regarding Rian’s tweets and social media posts when he was criticized; Incredibly unprofessional. When you set out to make a sequel in a loved franchise and you openly admit you’re going to turn the franchise and the fans on their ears, be ready for some blowback and be ready for it to be harsh. All that maaaahh deeeeeeek!!! bullshit is just weird and childish. WTF, Rian?
Thing is… he didn’t respond to legitimate criticism like this.
This. You can criticize these tweets as unprofessional (and you’d be right), but the narrative going around in the wider fandom that Rian Johnson attacks fans or responds to thoughtful critique with unprofessionalism isn’t true.
It’s unprofessional but I can’t exactly blame him. I don’t mean to imply all criticism of this movie is invalid, because I don’t believe that. But so much criticism of this movie is absolutely brain-dead (be honest, yes it is), especially at the time. This person specifically is obviously not exactly a deep thinker and it’s hard to imagine this person would be acting in good faith if Rian Johnson had.
He was acting in good faith in the last quoted part, Rian still kept screaming about his dick. Would you respect a 50 year old man screaming that, even if “justified” because some 20 year old insulted his writing?
Really, though, that’s not the point; it’s still embarrassing and childish regardless of circumstance. There were many other examples; it would just take a lot of inordinate amount of effort and time to dig through his long-deleted tantrums. Disney definitely clamped down on him fast.
It appears Rian Johnson didn’t delete that tweet you posted: https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1124530820692283392 and I doubt Disney made him delete any tweets at all, let alone “making” him delete tweets 2 years after his film’s release. That’s not “Disney definitely clamping down on him fast”.
It is a little weird that the guy who posted the tweets to Rian later deleted them all, and has since been banned from twitter.
I’d be interested in seeing more of these “many other examples” of Rian Johnson’s twitter “tantrums” about fans not liking TLJ. When you say “regardless of circumstance”, don’t ignore or forget to also include any of the death threats the toxic “fans” sent to him, of where “fans” on one of the more poisonous reddits announced his death. Was that May 4th too? I think it was? Maybe not. Or where people tweeted him that he worse than Hitler.
Rian Johnson doesn’t come off well in that tweet you posted. But I don’t know the context of it, others in that thread seem to be think RJ was “shitposting” or simply “owning” that kevin guy. Given the amount of vile and way of the top shit thrown his way over the years for making a film some people didn’t like, I’ll give him a pass for being a bit sharp to someone who is now banned from twitter for whatever reason.
I’ve no love for TLJ either, other than it looking stunning and was at least an attempt to move Star Wars forward to take risks, but the hatred, threats and shit he received was way over any acceptable critical “norm”.
I’d rather not dig through archives of #chans and dead forums if you aren’t acting in good faith
Is Rian posting unprofessionally on 4chan and dead forums?
Lucas said “balance” was removing the Sith.
It is 90% of the time, and then that other 10% it’s the Mortis arc of TCW where balance is pretty explicitly an equal amount of Light and Dark.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s George Lucas
It’s unprofessional but I can’t exactly blame him. I don’t mean to imply all criticism of this movie is invalid, because I don’t believe that. But so much criticism of this movie is absolutely brain-dead (be honest, yes it is), especially at the time. This person specifically is obviously not exactly a deep thinker and it’s hard to imagine this person would be acting in good faith if Rian Johnson had.
Well, a big problem with that is that it isn’t a trilogy. It’s two movies, a long ass cartoon, and then two more movies. It isn’t conducive to telling a character arc. One movie is more than enough to set Anakin up as a hero, and the third movie is way more than enough to show him adjusting into being a cyborg monster, something that’s honestly icing on the cake and not actually an essential part of this story.
Anakin only destroys the Sith on an absolute technicality.
I feel like that’s the entire point. The Jedi misinterpreted the Prophecy.
If what you mean by this is that Anakin’s not supposed to be the Chosen One in a very literal sense, you’re wrong, at least according to George Lucas. He describes Anakin as a very straightforward Chosen One who does defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force in RotJ, at least until he changed his mind and decided Leia was the Chosen One, except not because he never ended up making that ST.
Anyway, Chosen Ones and prophecies are dumb and Anakin isn’t the OT’s protagonist, but that’s just my two cents.
What could’ve been pretty interesting, IMO, is if Anakin was more of a deconstruction of the Chosen One trope contained entirely within the prequels. The obvious way would be if Anakin does bring balance, it’s just that “balance” is not necessarily what the Jedi expected, like if it turns out the Jedi were the cause of the imbalance and he brings balance to the Force by toppling them.
People are too obsessed with the idea of trilogies. Honestly they should have never bothered numbering the Star Wars movies at all, and should have just filled things in with whatever movies they wanted to make. So like, for instance, they could have just made a bunch of movies about young Anakin at different stages of his life, or about other characters in that time period (which could feature Anakin as a supporting character or guest character), and we wouldn’t know the exact one where Anakin would turn to the dark side, but we would see the gradual transition. And then a later movie could just be about him hunting down Jedi. Others could be about other characters, like Obi Wan.
I mean that’s eventually what the Star Wars meta narrative evolved into, when you factor in Clone Wars and all the standalone movies and Disney Plus shows. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just written things that way in the first place, instead of forcing the prequels and sequels to mirror the OT.
While I think it would’ve been great to have a movie of just Darth Vader killing Jedi
Moving his turn earlier doesn’t necessarily mean the ending is nothing but killing Jedi. A more convincing arc could’ve been:
Set Anakin up as a hero
Anakin succumbs to the dark side
Anakin’s friends fail to pull him back to the light
Well, I’m perfectly aware that Star Wars has not always been Anakin’s Saga since '77, but I actively support the retcon, and I think that the Hexology, as a whole, can be described as Anakin’s Saga, even if Star Wars has not always been so from the beginning.
I mean no disrespect but it only become retconned to be Anakin’s Saga around '99, or maybe '05 when ROTS was released and this new Saga was completed.
I was only mentioning it as some fans online claim “it was always Anakin’s Saga” elsewhere online which is both annoying and untrue.To be fair I think it could be said it goes back even further than that in a way. George told Jim Bloom of ILM during stages of post production of Empire, “The first trilogy is about the young Ben Kenobi and the early life of Luke’s father when Luke is a little boy.”.
Of course we never got to see Luke as a little boy but the story grew and evolved. However the key I think is that he said the first trilogy would focus on Anakin and Obi-Wan. This ended up being true. He talked about this in another quote that the Prequels were meant to give Anakin’s side of the story since the Original Trilogy is more relying information from a certain point of view of those that knew him.
None of this means that the OT is parts 4-6 in Anakin’s story.
It is his story after all up until Disney came into the picture and decided to not use his Sequel Trilogy treatments.
It’s not as clean cut as Lucasfilm deciding not to use his sequel trilogy treatments. Because of how much of the ST we know specifically came from Lucas’s treatments, it’s probably more likely that they decided not to be bound by them. Although it’s not like we have his treatments to compare.
A lot of the time you also claim that there are ideas in the PT which were meant to be resolved in a Lucas ST, but this is also very unlikely. George Lucas never had plans for an overarching saga, and I doubt when making the prequel trilogy he thought any further ahead than the movie he was currently working on, with very rare exceptions. The information we have on his ideas on the ST were contradictory and read like multiple separate concepts for an ST from different points in time at best, more likely there were just a couple points in his life where he thought about it and brainstormed, but never committed to any idea. Ideas for a PT that predate the 90s are the same way, with the most consistent details (Vader being in the suit because of a fight with Obi-Wan on a volcano) having the depth of a DnD character backstory. Not even that example goes as far back as the production of ANH, where the original idea was that it was just a regular space suit for breathing in space, where they figured Vader and the Stormtroopers might be often.
It’s also curious the original concept for A New Hope had a prophecy called the Son of Suns. So he was toying with idea of a prophecy in the early concepts too.
Maybe, but a Chosen One prophecy is also a common fantasy trope. It doesn’t imply Star Wars was always Anakin’s saga. I mean, the Son of Suns is obviously Luke, and not the guy who isn’t even Anakin yet. As far as Lucas was concerned in 1976, Anakin is Luke’s sword in the stone.
To be honest, Luke is a far better candidate of being the Chosen One than Anakin even with the prequels. Anakin only destroys the Sith on an absolute technicality. Not that Luke even has a strong argument, either. This is why the Chosen One as a concept works so poorly for Star Wars.
IDK what Stardust’s talking about when it comes to Palpatine’s hubris or whatever.
I’m talking about this moment not long afterwards. Palpatine believes him to be dead. His arrogance and overconfidence is on full display as it is with Luke later.
I know that, it’s just not the deeper meaning of Yoda’s cloak falling has nothing to do with Palpatine’s hubris.
I’m not familiar with the prequels, so I guess it’s lost on me as to why that’s not subtle. Neither here nor there. I’ll never see them, so it doesn’t matter.
IDK what Stardust’s talking about when it comes to Palpatine’s hubris or whatever. Maybe the prequels are less clean cut than I thought. This is when Yoda feels he lost the fight against Palpatine (not just the duel but also the wider conflict), the visual metaphor of the cloak falling is just to represent the fall of the Jedi. Metaphorically it marks the point in time where the Jedi lost. Not that deep, but cool that this idea is reinforced visually.
It’s nothing personal towards anyone at all what I am saying.
I don’t feel insulted by what you say in any way. I just think it’s silly that the only reasons you seem to ever give why someone would disagree with you is that they just don’t understand the prequels. The prequels are not difficult to understand. The very, very last thing they are is subtle, and the amount of “visual literacy” you need to comprehend them isn’t that much.
It isn’t really that hard to figure out what something like this is trying to say.
Nor is George Lucas’s visual storytelling particularly unique or complex.
None of this is a dig at the prequels, by the way, and “hard to understand” is not a good goal to have when writing a Star Wars movie.
My point is,
This all merely means I think it could be examined more closely instead of just assuming there’s no deeper meanings behind certain things
People absolutely do think there’s deeper meanings to the prequels, examine them, comprehend them correctly, and still come away with the conclusion that the prequels are bad. The debate over the prequels is not between people who know what they were trying to say and people who don’t know what they were trying to say, it’s between people who liked what they were saying and people who don’t like what they were saying.
I’m brand new to this forum, this is my first post. I’m a huge fan of the original trilogy, and I’m not a fan of much else 😃 I love games, toys, etc. that focus on the original trilogy.
Welcome to the forum king
Stardust1138 said:
the only thing I can think of that I dislike about the Original Trilogy is Luke and Leia kissing but in a way there’s a lot of mythology that does the same thing. So while it is weird that they do kiss it’s not completely unheard of within myth and we know it influenced GeorgeIt’s truly sad how Lucas has spent decades crafting this revised image of himself as some deep thinker who embarked on a grand 12-film/6-film/9-film/the media made that up/it was always my idea/etc, Saga (genuflect).
Rowling does the same thing. I wonder if creating something that becomes as popular as Harry Potter or Star Wars does stuff like this to a person. Are there any other examples?
Sure, but sometimes you have to step back and say, “Wow, I’m spending countless hours looking for deeper meaning in family space fantasy movies. Maybe I’m no better than the nerds who memorize wikis.”
I think you absolutely can ascribe deeper meaning to Star Wars movies, even the prequels and sequels. The Star Wars fandom wouldn’t be so passionate if this weren’t the case. Star Wars isn’t indie arthouse kino and George Lucas isn’t Francis Ford Coppola, but he was a friend and close colleague of his. Star Wars isn’t Marvel either and Lucas isn’t Michael Bay.
That said, and I truly do mean no disrespect to Stardust1138 (because this is all an internet argument over above average space movies after all)…
Mental gymnastics and insane stretches have always been required by Prequel fans when in discussion with others who did not enjoy these films or point out the discrepancies between the two trilogies. I am surprised many Prequel fans themselves rarely seem to question why Lucas’ poor writing for the later Trilogy created so many needless plot-holes and contradictions, and still look to use such gymnastics and stretches instead.
This is spot on. I almost feel like it’s a culture within the prequel fandom, because prequel fans talking about the basic plot of the prequels is full of more headcanon than what’s actually shown on screen.
All I’ll say is there’s always another side to every story. Everyone gets something different from what they see as we each have different experiences that shape us. We can choose to view something from a more personal perspective or we can view it from a more artistic perspective. I tend to view it from both but I recognise not everyone cares to go down that rabbit hole. That’s there choice but in my humble opinion especially with something as profoundly moving as Star Wars can be I question why you wouldn’t want to understand George Lucas and his point of view but in life you can’t always understand why people think as they do. I don’t know anymore in life if we truly ever understand each other but it’s human sympathy that is more valuable than ideologies, beliefs, and thought processes.
As others have said on here you assume too much. You assume that others have not also viewed the films from different perspective. You also do not factor in it is possible to view the films from such differing perspectives and still not like or enjoy them.
That is quite a narrow and limited view to take.
I would also counter that by saying I think it’s more to do with the perception of how you view the films.
and
It didn’t bother her in the slightest. She’s not been influenced by me or the years of baggage we as a fandom have with it. She’s taking the story as it’s given to her in the order George wanted her and everyone to see it. Perhaps in general that’s a lesson we can all learn from on both sides that we shouldn’t project but share as the author intended versus what is personal to us until after we give the newbie a chance to form their own thoughts.
As above you assume far too much. People have watched these films in various orders, and some will have watched the Prequels before watching the Original films.
“Baggage as a fandom?”
“A lesson to be learnt?”
“we shouldn’t project but share as the author intended”
But these are only taken into account if we didn’t like the films, right? You seem to be of the opinion Star Wars fans turned up to watch the Prequels with a closed mind, already deciding they didn’t like them before seeing them, and knew nothing of George prior to them. Or if they didn’t like these movies they didn’t simply didn’t understand them.
I would suggest you open your mind to what others are saying to you when they are of the opinion they didn’t enjoy the Prequels very much.
What you are saying is insulting and a little narrow minded. Even when overlooking some brief lip service about “all views being respected” in your posts, it seems obvious you have no respect for people with the view that the Prequels were not enjoyable movies.
I do think a lot of the problems some have lay with they don’t understand it how George Lucas views it. There’s a lot of fans that are simply satisfied with the spaceships and spectacle of it or don’t try understanding things like why the Yoda in Attack of the Clones is different from where we see him in The Empire Strikes Back.
“Everyone who doesn’t like the prequels just doesn’t get them and they don’t think any more deeply about these movies than a caveman.”
I need something more than that and like being able to draw lines between the two trilogies.
“I, the annointed one, however, need a little more than what you Australopithecines seem to sustain yourselves on.”
However that doesn’t mean I think it’s wrong to have your own personal point of view on things with this very thing being what is enjoyed most or not being interested in finding the juxtapositions.
Of course
Replace all the actors with nefarious exact copies
