Vladius

StarkillerAG said:
The term “Skywalker Saga” may have been officially embraced during the marketing of TROS, but it’s been around since the prequels: This thread called the movies the “Skywalker Saga” all the way back in 2005. No matter what it’s called though, there’s always been a sense of inflated importance given to the mainline “saga” movies, and I feel removing the episode titles would help reduce that.

So some of the people here called it that unofficially on occasion, in quotation marks because they knew it was a nickname and wasn’t actually what everyone called it. People say it now like it’s a normal thing because of the marketing.

Who are you worried about having this inflated sense of importance? Do you think that there are hypothetical people out there that are afraid to watch Rogue One or something because it doesn’t have an episode title? (I was going to say a number in the name but it does have one lol)

Also they probably should have greater importance. That’s where everything comes from, after all. I think the main thing that frustrates of all of us is that the sequels attached themselves into the 7, 8, and 9 slots that didn’t need to exist in the first place, and seemed to drag everything else down with them. And the contrast gets heightened when you see how poor they are compared to Rogue One and Solo coming out at the same time as mere spinoffs (plus The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian of course.) But we don’t have to accept that. We can just ignore them. No one had any problem before saying “okay, The Clone Wars is set in between episodes 2 and 3.”

The idea of episode numbers in general may have been inspired by serials, but I don’t think Lucas ever intended to not make Episodes 1, 2, and 3: Although his plans for post-ROTJ movies fluctuated constantly, he always said that he would make a trilogy set before the OT later on. He even specifically told the EU writers not to set any of their works before the rise of the Empire (except for the Tales of the Jedi comics), since it would contradict his upcoming trilogy covering those events. It was only with the advent of high-quality CGI in the mid-90s that Lucas decided it was finally feasible to show his concept of the Clone Wars in live-action, with the Special Editions being used as a tech demo for some of the things he was planning to do.

I don’t think this is really true, but it’s hard to tell with Lucas. There were materials (the Thrawn books for one) that introduced certain concepts about the Clone Wars and other things that got contradicted later. Tales of the Jedi itself shows the Jedi much differently (superior in my opinion) from what the prequels do.

Yes everyone would do well to keep in mind that the first time that anything was called “episode” was with the release of Empire Strikes Back in 1980, where it was abruptly called Episode V with no explanation. Lucas claims to have planned out 6 movies, 9 movies, 12 movies, or whatever, but the other main purpose of it was to hearken back to the experience of going to see serials like Flash Gordon in the theater and starting in the middle with whichever one you happened to catch - if you missed a previous episode, it was just gone. That was also the purpose of having title crawls, to catch you up on any exposition that you probably missed.

The idea of having something missing was intentional. Strictly speaking, the prequels are just as unnecessary to the structure as anything else. They were themselves a fun thought experiment, there was no reason to expect that they might get made.

StarkillerAG said:

RogueLeader said:

I sometimes think it would be better to just remove the episode labels from all of the movies.

That sounds almost treasonous, but when I think about it, it’s actually a brilliant idea. Removing the episode titles would both reduce the inflated importance of the “Skywalker Saga” that caused the sequels to feel so disappointing, and allow for animated and TV content to be incorporated into the movies (like I was suggesting with my “Expanded Saga” idea) without it feeling too jarring.

You know you don’t have to call it The Skywalker Saga, right? That was a cynical marketing term created to advertise/justify episode 9. It seems like everyone here bought it hook, line, and sinker but you literally don’t have to. Just call the movies whatever you want and ignore the sequels.

bbghost said:

Vladius said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

I can see how that could work.

On a related note, apparently the idea of slavery being immoral was completely unheard of in the ancient world, even among people who had been slaves themselves, so you could make the Separatists the ones against slavery. Might not work as well though.

What does the real life ancient world have to do with anything

The Republic is fairly analogous to ancient Rome.

In some ways yes, but then what are the Separatists analogous to?

The Republic is much more of a “modern” government and gives a lot more sovereignty and representation to each of the provinces/countries/planets than Rome would.

Most importantly, the Republic is supposed to be mostly sympathetic to the audience. Otherwise we don’t care at all when it gets destroyed and we don’t really want the Rebels to bring it back.

Anakin Starkiller said:

I can see how that could work.

On a related note, apparently the idea of slavery being immoral was completely unheard of in the ancient world, even among people who had been slaves themselves, so you could make the Separatists the ones against slavery. Might not work as well though.

What does the real life ancient world have to do with anything

What about Jedi No More?

It sounds like (technically incorrect) southern US grammar, like “don’t want no jedi no more.” I’m not sure what you’re going for with it.

Anakin Starkiller said:

So basically have the same plot of finding Exegol run through the entire trilogy and Ach-To is somehow a stop on the way there?

No trilogy, it would be one movie, two at most.

thebluefrog said:

Holdo’s kamikaze scene, while visually great, was not a good addition to the SW lore. Yes, yes, all the arguments have already been made, especially as this kind of overpowered attack would actually win the rebellion.

So…why not make that scene part of the final dogfight battle…and involve Luke.

Maybe something like:

Instead of dying after the Force projection, Luke pulls off the greatest Jedi trick and wipes out the fleet from afar and THEN dies. Proving size means nothing and the Jedi are one with everything, including space. He’s gone beyond sabers and fighting with lasers.

I made a video as a proof of concept for a similar idea a while ago, except with Luke moving the ship by projection.

https://vimeo.com/363964146

Password: Luke

I like it a lot. It makes a lot of sense coming in from The Phantom Menace that we establish right away what the Trade Federation is up to.

Couple things:
Is the title a placeholder name?
In the crawl, it should be “led” by Count Dooku, not “lead.”

Peter Pan said:

I’ll admit that putting Palpatine in Lincoln’s place was a really weird feeling at first, but I think it serves ROTS well in the way that it makes the Jedi’s suspicions against Palpatine feel completely ludicrous.

That comparison is already there, and the Separatists are already called the Confederacy. There are a lot of intentional historical parallels with the Civil War, with Julius Caesar and with Hitler. Lincoln did use emergency powers to raise an army really quickly and silence opponents during a secession crisis.

Making the Clone Wars about slavery just makes it more explicit, that’s all I was saying.

Couple ideas:

Make Luke a dead Force ghost from the beginning and minimize his role in the story. Imply that he died somehow or that he ascended to a higher plane. Make the plot of The Force Awakens about finding something else. Make Rey someone that Luke already trained, which explains why she starts so powerful. Maybe start the story with her training. Obviously this would require cutting out huge chunks of all three movies. Personally I would prefer to cut out almost everything in TLJ in regard to Luke, but that’s another topic and you wouldn’t necessarily have to to implement this idea.

Maybe instead of a map to Luke, TFA is about a map to the fleet of star destroyers (similar to the Katana fleet in the Thrawn trilogy.) Maybe the map is destroyed and Kylo gets the wayfinders as an alternative without the good guys knowing, where he meets Palpatine and finds out he’s got the fleet.

The anti-slavery thing does make more sense than what we had. I did like that there were hints that the Clone Wars were a little more ambiguous and less black and white than the American Civil War, but it’s not like the original portrayed the Separatists as anything other than evil either. You still have the ambiguity of putting Palpatine in the place of Abraham Lincoln lol

I really like your ideas. I prefer edits that change the movie’s structure and plot over ones that just tweak whatever the individual editor doesn’t like.

leftshoe18 said:

I feel like Solo and Rogue One don’t really feel like a part of the main saga considering we see basically nothing of the main characters from either the prequel or original trilogies. Did you do any tweaking to make those feel more like part of the sage?

Well, Solo has Han, Chewie, and Lando at least. Rogue One has Vader, Tarkin, and briefly Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Leia, and introduces the rebellion and the empire.

Personally I like Solo as-is with just the Darth Maul scene taken out, and I made a version of Rogue One with some trims to dialogue. It’s not ideal of course but I think it’s fun to think of them that way.

Gavinworld12 said:

I thought about the neat idea of having the initial prequel trilogy condensed into the first episode of a trilogy that has the Obi-Wan miniseries and Rogue One follow it

Then again, some may call me crazy

Some people myself included did this with prequels, Solo, and Rogue One. But Obi Wan would probably be much better if it’s good.

Dang it makes Windu look even more ruthless lol

Probably would bump AotC up to PG-13

I like it. Sometimes the Imperial March is too on the nose and it would be better to save it for the first time hearing it in Empire Strikes Back.

Josanael said:

This Polygon article provides an interesting interpretation angle to the series: Boba is not an incompetent hero, he is a villain, that just doesn’t care. 😁 https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/22929592/book-of-boba-fett-hero-vs-villain

I wonder if that would work as a way to emphasize his characterization in a fanedit as well.

This is really dumb, even for Polygon

I would like a link as well

The only quote out of those that was a direct Lucas criticism of the Jedi was

[The Jedi] sort of persuade people into doing the right thing but their job really isn’t to go around fighting people yet there are now used as generals and they are fighting a war and they are doing something they really weren’t meant to do. They are being corrupted by this war, by being forced to be generals instead of peacemakers. – George Lucas for E! Behind the Scenes - Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith

This makes sense and is true, and they were sort of placed into that situation by Palpatine. They could have done a more thorough job to investigate where the clone army came from in episode 2, and you can argue that that was because they were getting seduced by the power of having an army, but in the movie it just looks foolish. Yoda is already aware that the war is a bad thing, and all throughout episode 3 they are trying to end the war as quickly as possible and not drag it out forever.

But the central “dogma” of renouncing attachment is something Lucas always said was a good thing, and fear was always what led you down. He’s said that as recently as last year. https://youtu.be/V7LhwO0EGi4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi#Influences

"Lucas explained, the Jedi are trained, allowed and expected to love people, even their enemies, the Sith, but they are not supposed to form attachments and that’s because attachment led to the dark side of the Force.[9] When one was owning, having, possessing, getting or wanting and attaching to things, one become afraid to lose them, whether it to be pleasure, a person or experience. The fear of loss feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, thus, an attached person is selfish and unable to let go. The fear of loss turns into anger, which will lead to hate, and hate will lead into suffering, mostly on the part of the one who is selfish, because then one will spend their lives being afraid rather than actually living. Whereas compassion, the light side is caring and giving and thus it is love, and the opposite of attachment - it is everlasting joy, devoid of fear of loss and the pain of loss. “As long as you love other people and treat them kindly, you won’t be afraid.”[10]

Lucas, identifying himself as “Buddhist Methodist” or “Methodist Buddhist” stated that his philosophy of non-attachment, depicted in his movies was influenced by the fact that he was from San Francisco, the “Zen Buddhism capital of the United States”.[10] In 2020, he indicated that the Jedi were “designed to be a Buddhist monk who happened to be very good at fighting.”[3]"

EddieDean said:

Respectfully, Vladius, that definitely was intentional. Both George Lucas and Dave Filoni have said in interviews that the Jedi dogma seen in the Prequels was deliberately intended to be taken as a negative, and a factor in Anakin’s, the Galaxy’s, and the Jedi’s fall. (Whether or not that idea successfully landed for audiences is up for debate.) Dave’s explicitly said something along the lines of “that’s why they live in a literal ivory tower”. And the elements of TLJ where Luke criticises the dogmatic past of the Jedi order were apparently a feature of George’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy which he sold to Disney.

That said, whether or not we choose to emphasise or retain those intentions in a fan edit is of course entirely up to the editors.

I’m not posting that for conflict, just for information.

Speculating now, I think he intended that Qui-Gon was supposed to represent the first challenge to that dogma (hence his lower standing in the order), Yoda to represent entrenched dogma fading as he realises its flaws near the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s meditations (in life and as force spirits) to represent their coming to understand an alternative existence within the light side of the force, and Luke as the intended inheritor of the new order.

Anakin would have been the first inheritor of the new Jedi if Qui-Gon hadn’t been killed, causing the tragic cascade that led to Vader, delaying the light’s revival. Luke was the new hope, delayed in his path by the presence of Vader. After Return of the Jedi, Luke sought to rebuild the order - already a better one based on the limited information he had, and under the guidance of the force spirits - but in his attempt to rebuild what was lost he still incorporated some of the old dogma, as we’ve seen recently. The tragedy he caused his own family with Kylo Ren and the failiure of his new/rebuilt order sent him, like Yoda and Obi-Wan, into doubt and exile, before the discovery of Rey (and his reconnection with Yoda) helped her forge what will follow.

The only force spirits we’ve seen have been those Jedi that challenged or questioned the order’s dogma, which seems deliberate. (And, for me, makes the final moments of Rise of Skywalker Ascendent all the more powerful, continuing that thread into Rey.)

Can you point me to those Lucas interviews? I’m still skeptical of that. I don’t think it landed for audiences at all until people came in after the fact to be contrarian and say that the prequels were underrated (“secretly genius”), and Filoni is a good example of that.
People are going to do the same post-facto rehabilitation of the sequels and have already started.

Like I said, I think his personal religious and political philosophy includes those Buddhist and ascetic elements and he felt that those were genuinely good things for the Jedi. He’s also said that attachment, fear of loss, and pleasure-seeking are what can lead you down to evil and that that’s what happened to Anakin.

It’s also unclear what people mean by dogmatism. Do they mean that instead of “no attachment” there should be “some attachment but not too much?” Or do they mean no rules on attachment at all?

In any case, whether it was Lucas’s idea or not, I just find the new Jedi he made incredibly uninteresting and completely different from what we saw in the original trilogy and all the material before the prequels, which Lucas also signed off on.

CaptainFaraday said:

Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”

I really don’t like this aspect people attach to the prequels. I don’t think Lucas intended it at all. He genuinely believes in eastern philosophy and the concept of detachment from material things, including people, to become more spiritual, and that the Jedi are good guys. You could sincerely argue that the Jedi were right to not want to train Anakin and to teach him to let go, because it did lead him into trouble. (The only aspect that goes against this is the contradictory Chosen One stuff, which makes it seem like the purpose of his existence was to get in close with Palpatine so he could bring him down much later. But that’s another issue.)

In any case, I think it’s better to just remove the attachment ban/forbidden love stuff altogether. From the Lucas perspective it doesn’t play well to a modern western audience and comes across as cold, and from the revisionist perspective it takes away Anakin’s agency and responsibility for his actions. It makes it less a personal tragedy and more some kind of weird cautionary tale about the dangers of suppressing people’s Freudian urges or something.

What’s more, TROS doesn’t actually change that or abandon it. Palpatine repeats the same stuff he says to Luke, to Rey, “strike me down.” They copy the part where he directs Luke/Rey to look at the battle going on (after this was already copied in TLJ.) They just ignore what he said or justify it by making it so she reflects his own attack back at him, like Mace Windu does.

StarkillerAG said:

RogueLeader said:

Either way, you kind of just end the series with an old man’s face getting melted.

To be fair, the old man who was getting melted was the most evil person in the galaxy, so I don’t have much sympathy for him.

In general, I’m kind of glad TROS chose to eschew the whole “kill him and you’ll be just like him” trope. I get that it’s “part of the fabric of Star Wars” or whatever, but I’ve always thought it was stupid: Luke kills millions of underpaid, abused foot soldiers while everyone around him cheers, but the instant he meets someone who committed mass genocide it somehow becomes wrong to kill him? Despite all of TROS’s flaws, JJ realizing that idea is stupid is probably the best decision he ever made.

It’s not stupid. It’s because Luke would be acting in anger and doing exactly what the Emperor wanted, turning to the dark side in the process. The Force and the dark side have supernatural influence over the situation in a way that they don’t in a normal battle scene. The conflict is a primarily spiritual one and has nothing to do with the outcome of the Battle of Endor. “Soon I’ll be dead, and you with me.” That’s one of the Emperor’s temptations, to goad Luke into thinking he can reverse the losing battle, or take revenge, if he just works up the nerve to kill him.

Luke wasn’t going there to take out the enemy military leader or something like that (such as Obi Wan vs. Grievous.) If he was, it would be a sticky ethical question like it is at multiple times in Revenge of the Sith (such as executing Count Dooku and Mace Windu getting ready to execute Palpatine.) But that’s just not why Luke was there, it wasn’t about that.

Since the Empire is already built and the damage is already done, Palpatine is really only an old man who can shoot lightning bolts (and none of the rebels knew the second part.) It’s not Luke’s responsibility to carry out punishment. The Death Star and the Emperor are going to get blown up anyway, and he’s on a personal quest to confront/redeem his father.

EddieDean said:

Vladius said:

I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.

Which edit was that, Vladius?

I honestly don’t remember, sorry. It was many years ago.