Vladius

Channel72 said:

Vladius said:

Trees are more familiar to a lot of people, that’s true. Myself included. They’re still huge trees though, some of the largest on earth. I’ve been there in person and it doesn’t diminish the movie for me. If you’re doing all the planets as single biomes eventually you would end up covering a temperate forest world, not to mention they already had Tatooine in the same movie, so there’s a contrast there. You could do a jungle maybe, but that would also feel similar to Dagobah in the same movie.

There wouldn’t be fan films in the first place without films to be fans of!

True. The main issue is ROTJ has this 25-30 minute “Endor dead zone” where pretty much nothing happens (for some definition of “nothing”). They get trapped by Ewoks. C3PO is mistaken for a God. They’re carried to the Ewok village. Luke does a magic trick. Leia is there with new clothes somehow. They tell campfire stories, etc. This is about when you change the channel.

Now, I can see how you might counter this by saying something like “yeah but the same shit happens in ANH with endless scenes of R2/C3PO wandering around, getting caught by Jawas, sitting on the sandcrawler, etc.”

And yeah, it’s hard to argue that the ANH stuff is somehow objectively “less boring” than the “Endor dead zone” in ROTJ. But here’s my attempt anyway: the ANH slow scenes take place in the first movie before there’s that much of an ongoing narrative or built-up stakes. We’re basically in “exploration mode” at this point. But with Endor, we’re in the middle of a major climactic Rebel military op. When a film like this stalls in the middle of Act II for 3PO jokes and campfire stories, it’s more likely to test audience patience. Whereas with ANH, the slow scenes happen at the very BEGINNING when we’re just sort of along for the ride and learning about the world of Star Wars. It’s a very different context, which for me, makes a big difference. Also the ANH scenes have way more of an “alien vibe” than anything on Endor.

Maybe that helps communicate this point more clearly. Now excuse me while I take 100mg of Adderall so I can pay attention to ROTJ.

I know what you mean. Tatooine is sweeping landscape shots and the plot hasn’t been completely set in motion yet. Endor is mostly close ups with main characters we already know. But the point that was made before about it not being Gen Z friendly definitely applies. I would also say the instinct of someone who’s seen both dozens of times is just “skip it skip it skip it” and get to the action.

They’re getting to know the ewoks and making them loyal allies, which is a key point for the rest of the movie and not something you can just speed through without explanation. It has multiple layers where Leia gets to know Wicket first and fights alongside him, then they impress them with the Force, then the storytime gives the ewoks a frame of reference for the battle and their history. If you just had one of those things, or a bribe or something, it wouldn’t make sense. But when 3PO announces that they’re part of the tribe and Han starts asking for serious support, the audience goes “yeah, I could see that” because it had setup and it wasn’t rushed.

Also it’s a fun adventure about our heroes exploring an unknown world and almost getting eaten. This wasn’t a time when we had Revenge of the Sith with a gigantic action setpiece every few minutes with huge sinkholes and exploding volcanoes, or 50 EU books about the main characters going on other adventures. Sure, by comparison with that, Endor looks fairly mild and tame. That’s fine though. Again, this was made in the early 1980s. Its competition was reruns of Star Trek, Star Wars knockoffs, B movies, glacially paced westerns, and books. People need to chill out.

A lull in act 2 makes a lot of sense given that the opening is Jabba’s palace and the ending is a huge battle sequence cutting between a lightsaber duel, a ground fight, and the largest space fight we’ve seen yet.

I don’t really care and I don’t think this is something I would have wanted to see.

Trees are more familiar to a lot of people, that’s true. Myself included. They’re still huge trees though, some of the largest on earth. I’ve been there in person and it doesn’t diminish the movie for me. If you’re doing all the planets as single biomes eventually you would end up covering a temperate forest world, not to mention they already had Tatooine in the same movie, so there’s a contrast there. You could do a jungle maybe, but that would also feel similar to Dagobah in the same movie.

There wouldn’t be fan films in the first place without films to be fans of!

Channel72 said:

ANH in particularly has lots of non-Zoomer-friendly scenes, like C3PO and R2-D2 slowly walking through the desert. That was so 70s.

That’s part of why it irritates me when people say Return of the Jedi is some kind of fall from grace for having a handful of Endor scenes in the middle. There were always parts that were “slow” throughout the trilogy by cracked out modern standards. That’s just how it is.

SparkySywer said:

Vladius said:

It muddles the message and apparently causes some viewers to think that the Jedi telling Luke not to get himself killed in a trap, or to go and fight a necessary spiritual battle, is some kind of moral failing on the Jedi’s part, and not something that is genuinely wise.

Does it muddle the message? I think if someone comes away from the movie thinking Obi-Wan and Yoda don’t want Luke running off to Cloud City because it’s against the Jedi rules to have friends, and not any of the things you mentioned, it’s such a large misreading of the movie they’d have to have been looking at their phone the whole time to think it. I don’t think you can blame the prequels for it. It’s also not what Dagenspear is saying about this scene.

It’s a specific reading of the prequels that a gigantic portion (possibly most) fans have right now, which is that the Jedi forbidding attachment is:

1. their major flaw that causes Anakin to fall and screws everything up
2. directly connected to when they tell Luke not to go to Cloud City to help Han and Leia, and to when they tell Luke to kill Vader (note they don’t actually tell him to kill Vader but that’s a separate bugaboo I have)

I blame the prequels for changing the Jedi and causing confusion with poor writing. The Jedi are written as morons, so when people who like the prequels watch the OT, they assume it’s just more of the same and it’s Yoda and Obi Wan filling Luke’s head with nonsense. Sometimes with the added thing (people here have said this including very recently) that Luke deciding to redeem Vader is him rejecting the attachment thing they taught him.

Another example would be the concept of “Balance in the Force” which has been interpreted to mean equal good and evil in the universe or equal Jedi and Sith. That’s silly, but it is something that the word “balance” suggests if you take it out of context, and it was never really explained in the movies themselves. It gets further muddled by Mortis Filoni material including the Ahsoka show.

By mad I just mean that they thought it was negative and told him not to do it, and didn’t like it when he did. It was slight hyperbole.

It doesn’t contradict the OT, it (according to a fan interpretation) retroactively adds an unnecessary part to it that gets tied in with something unrelated. It muddles the message and apparently causes some viewers to think that the Jedi telling Luke not to get himself killed in a trap, or to go and fight a necessary spiritual battle, is some kind of moral failing on the Jedi’s part, and not something that is genuinely wise.

It goes from common sense and truth about the virtues of restraint, patience, self-control, perseverance, etc. to “oh I remember this, they got mad when Anakin wanted to have a girlfriend or save his mom. This is more of that.” It’s a cheap oversimplification of the factors going into the story. It becomes less about the impetuousness and vigor of youth vs. the patience and experience of old age, and more about the weird stereotypes people project onto the prequel Jedi.

Dagenspear said:
What’s contradictory? What Yoda and Obi seem to speak on in TESB and in ROTJ seem moreso consistent with that idea, than not, to me.

What does it change? Yoda didn’t exist until TESB was developed. It doesn’t change that the story has him there.

In ESB they’re specifically warning Luke against running into a trap. It’s not that they don’t want him to have friends, it’s that they don’t want him to get killed or turned by Vader. Which is almost what happens, he gets his hand cut off and he has to jump into a bottomless pit to get away from Vader. It’s debatable whether Luke showing up gave his friends a chance to escape, but either way, Yoda and Obi Wan were right to warn him against going. Their warnings are more about turning to the dark side, Vader, and his lack of training (“don’t give in to hate,” “remember your failure in the cave”) and not really about “don’t have friends.”

In ROTJ the position is reversed, they’re telling him he needs to confront Vader because he’s ready and trained enough. The message isn’t “kill Vader because he’s your father” because they hate family and friends, it’s that he has to be willing to confront Vader and the Emperor because that’s his duty and his final Jedi trial. Obi Wan says to bury his feelings for his sister because they could be made to serve the Emperor (again, this almost happens), but he also says they “do him credit.” Obi Wan is the one who brought the subject of his sister up in the first place (after Yoda brings up “another Skywalker”), so they weren’t trying to hide her like they were trying to hide Vader’s identity before. They hid Vader’s identity because they believed Luke wasn’t ready for the burden and didn’t have enough training yet, and because of Ben’s own wounded feelings.

Not a single EU author, or seemingly Lucas himself, ever interpreted either of these two scenes as “Jedi aren’t supposed to have families, romantic partners, or spouses.” Not even after Phantom Menace in 1999, all the way up until 2002. Quite the opposite, they treated families of Jedi as completely normal and even expected.

NeverarGreat said:

Dagenspear said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t believe in the doctrine of attachment it was made up on the prequel. It exists literally nowhere in the original trilogy or the expanded universe before episode II. In fact Luke wins because he doesn’t follow what Ben and Yoda told him, his attachment to his father turns the tide of the war bringing Anakin back to the light.

I disagree. Luke rejects allowing his connections be used to control him in ROTJ. He literally throws his lightsaber down rather than allow Palpatine and Vader to use those he cares about to get him to compromise. Palpatine taunts Luke using the deaths of those he cares about, arguably his attachments. Vader taunts Luke with the idea of him getting to Leia. Both moments lead Luke to lash out and act in compromise. Luke’s moment of heroism is him rejecting that being used against him.

Vladius said:

You’re correct that it was made up in 2002 for Attack of the Clones. But nothing about what Obi Wan or Yoda told Luke in the OT applies to it either.

They both suggest to Luke that it’s more important for him to focus on the mission than allow his feelings for his friends to compromise him. They don’t use the word attachment, but I think the idea of it is there.

Personally, I think this addition to the story harms nothing, but adds to it and makes the Jedi specific in their focus and goals.

I think there’s an argument either way - Luke is warned by Obi-wan to bury his feelings deep, lest they be used by the Emperor, and they are indeed used that way. Luke tossing away his sword could be read as a rejection of his attachment to his friends, and this reading would vindicate Obi-wan’s warning.

However, I think it’s important to note Luke’s words in this moment. He doesn’t say anything about giving up his friends, accepting their deaths, or acting as an emotionless island of calm; no, his words are ‘I am a Jedi…like my father before me.’ He is standing over the body of his father, still believing in the ultimate goodness of the man despite all of Vader’s actions to the contrary.

I would argue that while Vader and the Emperor have been threatening Luke’s friends in general and Leia in particular in order to goad Luke into attacking, the true test has always been whether Luke loses faith in his father. This is because Luke’s entire journey to becoming a Jedi was predicated on the myth of his father, the heroic Jedi Knight. If this myth can be shattered, if Luke comes to believe that even the greatest Jedi can be corrupted, then Luke himself must fall.

And so when Luke declares ‘I am a Jedi…like my father before me’, he is affirming that some core of Anakin Skywalker was never corrupted by the Emperor, and thus Luke is impervious to the Emperor’s tricks as well. Luke is choosing to place his faith in his father, declaring a connection in that moment between father and son that none of his mentors believed could still exist.

This reading, I think, even adds depth to the precept of ‘no attachments’ in the prequels. One interpretation of events is that Anakin’s selfish love turned him to evil, and that Anakin should have listened to his mentors and abandoned Padme to her fate. But in another reading, it was the Jedi’s teaching of non-attachment that caused them to become isolated and vulnerable, and that led Anakin to reject the Jedi when their teaching conflicted with his love. In this reading, Yoda’s teaching was in the wrong, and when Yoda repeats his mistake with Luke, it is only Luke’s independence and relative lack of training that saves him from the pitfall that doomed his father.

In the end, I think the question to ask is, what is more likely: that Luke, whose primary character trait throughout the OT is that he will do anything to save his friends, is suddenly able to emotionally distance himself from those friends enough to defy the Emperor? Or is it more likely that Luke, who has been proclaiming the goodness of his father the entire film, is able to persevere in that faith until the end? I think that the latter interpretation is more valid, and I think if you asked a random viewer in 1983, you would probably hear the same.

This is overcomplicating it and it seems contradictory only because the attachment thing was made up in 2002 to create a “forbidden love” angle for Anakin, like I’ve been saying.

It’s bizarre running into zoomers online who try to explain the prequels to you like you weren’t there when they came out, while in some cases they were barely even alive, or not alive yet at all. No no no, you don’t understand, everyone loved the prequels when they came out, but also they were underrated and secretly genius, and also The Clone Wars fixed them. It was a tiny minority of terrorists led by the hateful Plinkett that harassed Lucas, Ahmed Best, and Jake Lloyd, and conspired to create the sequel trilogy. (Obviously this is an exaggeration of what they think, but what they actually think is still loony.)

Part of a general trend where people think if they watched the most recent video essay or even a 30 second clip about something they’re an expert, and they have no concept that people physically experience things in the real world even if they’re not documented in a place where they see it. When I worked at a middle school recently a kid tried to explain 9/11 to me like I had never heard of it.

Channel72 said:

It’s important to note that the main value of the Plinkett reviews was they were essentially a compendium of salient critiques about the Prequels. I don’t think Plinkett actually introduced a single original point of criticism. I don’t say that to disparage the reviews at all - rather, I say it to refute the oft-heard claim that widespread dislike of the Prequels resulted from the viral popularity of the RLM reviews, or that Prequel criticism could be reduced to parroting a list of Plinkett points.

A 1999 movie review of Phantom Menace articulates almost every main Plinkett point about TPM, a decade before Plinkett.

And multiple 2004 posts from this very website bring up the “no main character” criticism.

And anecdotally, most of Plinkett’s Prequel criticisms are things my friends and I talked about privately throughout the 2000s, before the Plinkett reviews. A lot of these criticisms are just obvious - especially the CGI stuff and the overall “feel” of these movies in comparison with the OT.

The main value of these reviews was that (1) they compiled all the most salient criticisms in a single video, (2) the criticisms attacked the fundamental problems with the Prequels, rather than the more common mainstream “Jar Jar is stupid” critiques, (3) they used a unique, comedic framing to express these criticisms, rather than the typical 2000s “rage critic” where the reviewer just screams and rants about how the movie sucks, and (4) they employed some really hilarious editing techniques, like cutting off a rambling point mid-sentence to move on to another segment.

Of course, regarding point (3), it seems a lot of people were put off by the “Buffalo Bill” serial killer voice. I personally found it pretty funny (I thought the comedic device of exaggerating the obsessive sci-fi nerd stereotype by merging it with a deranged, pizza-roll eating serial killer was brilliant at the time). But I’ve seen many people say the reviews were unwatchable due to the voice, which perhaps somewhat limited their audience appeal.

However, as I said, we’ve arrived at a point where these reviews need to be watched with some historical context in mind. Nowadays, Youtube is a career and countless movie reviews with 1-hour or more runtimes exist. But in 2008/2009, the idea that someone would actually make a 1-hour movie review about Star Wars or Star Trek would register as insanely anti-social to many. Only an extremely anti-social obsessive sci-fi nerd - a real-life incarnation of “Comic Book Guy” from the Simpsons - would ever do something as anti-social as that. The reviews therefore leaned into this by employing dark humor, making the narrator a deranged psychopath who watched Star Wars movies with his victims, and casually discussed Star Wars action figures while one of his victims was tied up in the background.

You nailed it again

Channel72 said:

I found some of them extremely funny - particularly the whole bit going over Anakin’s approach to romance.

It’s often forgotten that the Plinkett reviews were somewhat novel at the time, being among the first “long-form” reviews with an hour or more runtime. They came out at a time when Youtube videos had a length limit (I think maybe 10 minutes max or something), and so they were initially released in 10-minute segments. At the time the Phantom Menace review was released, I remember the length of the review being commented on frequently. Of course, nowadays there are tons of extremely lengthy movie reviews on Youtube.

Also, there is a lot of “lost context” going on with these reviews. The reviews themselves formed something of a meta-joke, playing around with the idea of an obsessive sci-fi nerd that would make such long reviews about a science fiction franchise. The fact that the obsessive sci-fi nerd is also an insane serial killer is for the sake of an absurdist exaggeration of the stereotypical basement nerd. (The meta-joke is probably more evident with the Star Trek reviews than with Star Wars.)

However, this meta-joke is now somewhat obscure, and likely lost on a 2023 audience, because the “obsessive sci-fi nerd” stereotype has mostly disappeared. Formerly nerdy stuff is mostly mainstream now, and being extremely enthusiastic about Star Wars is generally not correlated with “weird obsessive basement-dwelling nerd” anymore. So the whole Silence of the Lambs/serial killer schtick has lost a lot of social context, and probably comes off as inexplicable to many viewers.

You nailed it

I like his movies but this is just a loser opinion. People that think this way don’t understand that it’s supposed to have mythological and spiritual qualities. It’s unsurprising that he put the overly simplistic interpretation of Dune into his Dune part 2 movie.

I get that you’re not going to change it and I understand your reasoning, but I have to wonder if we even watched the same movies, if you think that there aren’t parts that are creepy or at the very least mysterious in Star Wars. Obviously the overall tone of all the movies put together is heroic and adventurous, but there are lots of parts that stand out as weird or eerie. The jawas themselves aren’t that freaky, but the inside of the sandcrawler with all the strange droids and the music weirded me out as a kid.

I think it should be kind of creepy and mysterious given they’re about to get ambushed by jawas and put in the dark room with all the weird droids.

Spartacus01 said:

Vladius said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t believe in the doctrine of attachment it was made up on the prequel. It exists literally nowhere in the original trilogy or the expanded universe before episode II. In fact Luke wins because he doesn’t follow what Ben and Yoda told him, his attachment to his father turns the tide of the war bringing Anakin back to the light.

You’re correct that it was made up in 2002 for Attack of the Clones. But nothing about what Obi Wan or Yoda told Luke in the OT applies to it either.

Personally, I like the way the old EU handled it. There was a time when Jedi were totally free to get married and have families. Then, somewhere between Tales of the Jedi and the KOTOR comics, the no-marriage rule was introduced. But later on, Luke got rid of that rule when he started his own Jedi Order. I think this kind of development adds depth to the lore, and makes the Jedi feel more organic and grounded. It shows that the Order evolved over time, made mistakes, and tried to learn from them.

It shouldn’t exist in the first place and it doesn’t make sense given how many Jedi specifically came from Jedi families. It was implemented arbitrarily because of Attack of the Clones coming out. It makes the lore much weaker because it places a hard limit on the kinds of stories you can tell, and it causes the writers and audience to spend way too much time and effort criticizing a fake problem and thinking they’re smart for doing it. It would be okay if it was just one Jedi sect or another Force tradition.

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t believe in the doctrine of attachment it was made up on the prequel. It exists literally nowhere in the original trilogy or the expanded universe before episode II. In fact Luke wins because he doesn’t follow what Ben and Yoda told him, his attachment to his father turns the tide of the war bringing Anakin back to the light.

You’re correct that it was made up in 2002 for Attack of the Clones. But nothing about what Obi Wan or Yoda told Luke in the OT applies to it either.

It’s definitely going to be the Disney+ one, unfortunately

JadedSkywalker said:

I was thinking about it today and I much much prefer the idea of Vader hunting down the Jedi knights. and not an order 66 killing younglings, none of that is what lines up with what Kenobi said in SW.

A Young Jedi named Darth Vader was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil. He helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights, he betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

And Lucas original prequel outline of Vader being a Jedi assassin and secret Sith is better than what we ended up with.

Of course you have to still keep the part about Kenobi lying, because in Star Wars when he said that he wasn’t lying and Luke’s father was killed by Vader.

And then you get the certain point of view speech in Return of the Jedi and Luke looks at him, WTF Ben, with his looks. A certain point of view really?

Obi-Wan says that Vader “helped” the Empire do it, so clearly he wasn’t the only one. I’ve said this before but I don’t think a movie about Vader hunting generic Jedi we don’t know would be as compelling as people think.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Also even if they do go through with it, they’re probably going to do something horrendous to it. Maybe it’ll be green or yellow, or be DNR’d to hell.

JadedSkywalker said:

For me its Visions Ronin. The entire episode from start to finish. Its feels like if Kurosawa made Star Wars.

The idea a Sith can be a good guy or at least morally grey is very outside the box from the idea of George Lucas good guys and bad guys, and good guys use blue and green, bad guys use red.

The idea of good Sith and Evil Jedi is only hinted in EU in things like the OLD Republic MMO.

The only other example I can think of is the Kotor comic where the masters commit murder and frame a padawan. Zayne Carrick.

Ronin is cool but I don’t think he’s supposed to be a good guy, and the idea of Good Sith is lame. It’s very much in the box for people who believe in gray jedi, balance in the force means equal light side and dark side, etc. which is a large part of the fans.

The Acolyte is another prominent example recently.

It looks nice but there is something elegant about the original blaster fire being streaks of pure red.

oojason said:

A full, official interactive map of the Star Wars galaxy has been restored on StarWars.com.

The map will be updated periodically as new planets are revealed.
 

Check out the Interactive Map of the Star Wars Galaxy here: www.starwars.com/star-wars-galaxy-map
 

He was talking about the physical geography on the planets themselves.

Octorox said:

For the second game, I would definitely try out the “content restored” mod that reintroduces a lot of content that was cut from the game due to rushed production. Otherwise you can just play the versions on steam or console.

The Steam one had an update that includes restored content by default, but there are fan mods that go a little further. I will say though that a lot of people overestimate how much was cut and think the story is confusing because of cut content, and not because they didn’t go through the effort of figuring it out through dialogue or looking around.

Spartacus01 said:

JadedSkywalker said:

EU purists who insist it was a part of George’s vision and that the prequel and the EU all fits together as one piece.

Who insist the Saga was always about the father, the son and grandchildren. And the bending over backwards and stretching things to act like EU wasn’t just a way for George to make lots of money on tie in fiction. That he was in no way beholden to, but could borrow from if he so desired.

I may agree with them on Disney SW to an extent, and even on Filoni retcons and destruction of the EU lore. But to act like the prequel was perfect and also didn’t destroy SW canon is incongruous. And its George’s vision the original must be suppressed, George as godhead in a religion, I reject that.

There was one continuity and canon I’ll admit that before Disney made the Expanded Universe legends. But Lucasfilm always put films and tv projects above video games, comic books and novels.

And George allowed Filoni to do whatever he wanted and to throw out the EU completely. It’s like there were two Star Wars universes before there were three branches, but Filoni was taken up into Disney Star Wars and EU was abandoned, made Legends aka lies, tall tales.

My philosophy with Star Wars Canon is pretty simple: I consider Canon whatever I like, and I just ignore what I don’t. I don’t care what George thought was Canon, or what Lucasfilm labeled as “C-Canon” or “G-Canon” or “Legends” or whatever. If I like the story, the characters, the way it expands the universe, then it’s Canon to me. Period. And if something feels off, ruins characters, breaks internal logic, or just rubs me the wrong way, I don’t care how official it is. I just mentally toss it out. As simple as that.

So say we all!