ZkinandBonez

Has anyone read the Zahn novel Outbound Flight? I know I stated in my first post that I wasn’t interested in post-PT novels, but having read the Hand of Thrawn I’m now kind of curious about what Zahn had in mind when describing Thrawn’s backstory. I’m a bit skeptical though as it lists Obi-Wan and Anakin as characters, but I don’t know how important they are to the story.

Would anyone recommend this book, or is it a post-PT retconned mess like a lot of stories from the early 2000’s were?
(I’ve already had some issues with how convoluted Hand of Thrawn was, but a lot of that I imagine would have been easier to ignore if the duology hadn’t been so damn long.)

Zahn also wrote a book in 2004 called Survivor’s Quest which I know absolutely nothing about, but it has Luke, Mara and Thrawn on the cover, so I am a little bit intrigued.

One of the things that I personally love about the old EU is that it, like the OT, didn’t overthink itself. It avoided unnecessary explanations and simply focused on telling fun and interesting stories.

(I still really enjoy the 90’s EU, but it really did start an annoy trend if over-explaining things.)

stealthboy said:

ZkinandBonez said:
(also isn’t YT freighter actually mentioned at some point in the films?).

I think maybe it is referenced in TFA.

JEDIT: Yep: “It escaped capture aboard a stolen Corellian YT model freighter.”

Right.

For some reason I thought it was mentioned in the OT.

stealthboy said:

So my intense fandom is really centered around the films, not the universe it created. I rebel against EU-like things where people try to come up with more explanation of things. I consider Star Wars more space fantasy and less science fiction. As soon as people start treating it like science fiction I get uncomfortable.

Example: The Millennium Falcon is Han’s ship. I’m good with that. But as soon as you start saying it’s a YT-model whatever Corellian blah blah, I’m done with you.

😃

I too get really annoyed when people try to explain the science behind things in SW. I personally never had issues with the ships having serial numbers, that makes sense to me (also isn’t YT freighter actually mentioned at some point in the films?). What really bugs me is when someone tries to explain scientifically how Han made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs by adding some convoluted story of how he flew close to a black hole, and things like that.

I appreciate world-building, but not when it gets so picky and excessively detailed that they forget that SW is mostly fantasy.

ray_afraid said:

Just about sixteen years ago they were everywhere and ran the galaxy. Even Lil’ Annie knew all about 'em! Even if (maybe especially if) there were huge galaxy-wide book burnings, ban on all evidence, believers rounded up, ect., plenty of people would remember it and there would be plenty physical evidence to back it all up.
There just isn’t enough time between ROTS and ANH for me to buy any of it. I’m just not willing to believe that everyone in the galaxy is that stupid.

Lil’ Annie hardly knew “all about’em”. He thought they were unkillable. I don’t remember the details (I haven’t seen TPM in many years) but someone mentioned earlier that it was implied that it was quite unusual for him to recognize Qui Gon’s lightsaber, and that his information mostly came from the space pilots in Mos Espa.

ray_afraid said:

SilverWook said:

Luke arguably grew up in the boondocks.

So did I. Tiny place close to nothing. I still knew world history and the goings on of the current world and so would Luke. He knew about the control of the Empire, sympathized with the plight of the rebellion, ect. He wasn’t cut off from information.

Was the Force part of world history? People in the galaxy may have known to various degrees who the Jedi were, but the Force is a completely different matter. ANH never implies that Luke didn’t know who the Jedi were. He knew about the Clone Wars and never questioned Ben when he said that he was a Jedi Knight. He only reacted to Ben telling him his father was a Jedi, and he simply didn’t know what the Force was.

Like I’ve already said, why would Luke, a poor farmer on a little backwards planet out in the middle of nowhere know about the exact details about to a spiritual order of just a few thousand that mostly operated on the other side of the galaxy. Plus, when the Jedi did travel to Outer Rim worlds they hardly made a big spectacle of themselves. Add twenty years of propaganda and it makes sense that a Tatooine farmer would only know the basics, but no details. Keep in mind that Han, a smuggler from Corellia, a much larger but still kind of backwards world, knew about the Force, but had no reason to actually believe in it. Despite having been roughly 10 years or so during the end of the Clone Wars. He lived close enough to the Inner Rim to know about the Force, but never having met or seen a Jedi he had little reason to believe in the more fantastical rumours/stories he heard about them.

SW may be futuristic, but peoples lives are more comparable to roughly a hundred years ago than modern society. Imagine then if you’d only heard about these warrior monks that lived on the other side of the planet. They’ve been gone for twenty years, but you know enough history to know that they actually existed. But then when some guy claims that they actually had magical powers, it’s improbable that you’d actually believe him. Even if if the guy swore he had actually seen it personally.

Lord Haseo said:

Luke had a social life though; Biggs, Tank and his other friends outta know about the Jedi.

Also shouldn’t there be footage of Jedi that existed? Surely some beings would have had video documentation of them due to the Clone Wars being so expansive. And if not from that then from the Jedi being general peace keepers. The Empire removing the footage Holonet isn’t a suitable excuse to cover this up.

Should there be footage though? Does the SW galaxy get news like we do? Did the Jedi get media attention?

SW operates more on the logic of a fantasy series than it does regular Sci-fi. Despite all the future tech, people live very old fashioned lives. I don’t think Luke had a TV or Internet.

We’re only assuming that the Jedi were “well known”. Sure people may have been aware of their existence, but I’ve never gotten the impression that anyone (other than politicians, generals, etc.) knew exactly what they were capable of. Most people in the Galaxy probably assumed that their powers were just rumour even before the Empire.

ray_afraid said:

So how is it that Luke has never heard of “the force”? I’ve always read Mark’s reaction to imply that Luke has never even heard the phrase used in the way Obi-Wan has used it.

Well, why should an outer rim farmer know what an Inner Rim belief system that has been banned for 20 years is?

I too tend to ignore the PT canon, but even those movies implied that most people in the Galaxy didn’t know too much about the Force, even when the Jedi were still around. Plus, there’s what, a few thousand of them at most? And they spent most of their time in the Inner Rim. And when they were on missions they weren’t exactly dealing with common folk.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that after 20 years of propaganda the already legendary Jedi turned into myth quite easily. And Luke wasn’t exactly on the most well informed planet in the galaxy.

flametitan said:

ray_afraid said:

So how is it that Luke has never heard of “the force”? I’ve always read Mark’s reaction to imply that Luke has never even heard the phrase used in the way Obi-Wan has used it.

I’m putting money on Owen being that micromanaging of Luke’s life that Luke never got to learn what the force was if he had heard of it before.

Also this.

Sougouk said:

ZkinandBonez said:
He did however have Wookiees help destroy the DS in the first draft of ANH.

Cool, I had no idea Wookies had a big part in the first draft of ANH. You learn something new everyday.

Dark Horse Comics turned the first draft into a comic series in 2013; The Star Wars. It’s pretty good, and a lot more fun to read than just the screenplay.

Sougouk said:

Regarding Ewoks in ROTJ, I remember seeing something years ago, that Lucas originally wanted to make a planet of Wookies.
It could’ve been on a Discovery Channel program. However, since the Chewbacca costume was made of horse hair, and was extremely expensive, they had to change it completely. Make a planet of small creatures, using less expensive material. The name Ewok came from Economical Wookie = EWOK.

I don’t know if he ever actually considered it during the making of ROTJ, although that was my impression as well. He did however have Wookiees help destroy the DS in the first draft of ANH. So he might have planned to recycle this idea, only to change them to Ewoks for practical reasons like you mentioned. So Lucas did since the very beginning toy with the idea of a primitive culture helping the rebels take down the technologically superior Empire. So regardless of what one might think of the Ewoks as they turned out, the core idea has a very appropriate symbolism to it.

I like it. It’s simple yet slightly ambiguous without being as odd and vague as TFA.

TV’s Frink said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I’m personally pretty indifferent to ROTJ at this point.

Which is an indictment of it as the conclusion of the OT.

“Indifferent” as a poor choice of words. What I meant was that I neither see it as either brilliant or bad. My critical view of it is pretty indifferent. Like I said, what is good is good enough for me so that I can ignore the “bad”, which I don’t find as bad as some people do. I enjoy ROTJ quite a lot, I just acknowledge it’s flaws without being as critical of them as some people are. I honestly don’t think the general concept of the Ewoks were a bad idea, I just wish it had been handled better.

I’m personally pretty indifferent to ROTJ at this point. I see what’s “wrong” with it, but it doesn’t really bother me. What’s done right is good enough for it to even out for me.

Plus I’ve never seen the Ewoks as a flaw so much as a somewhat odd execution of a pretty good concept (Wookiees, like in the ANH first draft, or something similar probably would have worked better though).

imperialscum said:

TV’s Frink said:

If you’re watching the OT and you see Hayden that’s your own fault.

Bad memories will pop up subconsciously and there is no choice about that. While one can choose to not accept the content of those memories, they will pop up either way (provided one has normally functioning brain) and pollute the current experience.

Despite having grown up with the PT I can easily watch the OT without thinking of Hayden Christensen whenever I see Vader. As a kid I did imagine Hayden under the mask, but as I grew out of the PT I gradually learned to not think like that. Now I actually find that whole concept somewhat absurd and I can’t really imagine anyone else but Sebastian Shaw. If you’re willing to simply ignore the PT and just focus on the old it really shouldn’t be that hard.

Handman said:

Other franchises, like Star Wars?

Well, I was kind of thinking about how Star Trek jumps back and forth in terms of modernity. Stories that aren’t set apart more than a few years can have vastly different looking technology. And some times when they make prequel stories or go back in time they try to semi-upgrade the look of how things looked.
Aliens kind of also did this. Despite having prequels that take place only a few years prior to the originals the tech is suddenly much more modern looking.

A HI-RES LOOK AT THE USER INTERFACES OF ‘ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY’

Some of these are really awesome.

(I’m glad they’ve stuck with the retro designs and not tried to modernize it like other franchises has tried to do.)

Well, it makes sense for them to do this regardless of what they end of choosing to do with Leia in the next two films. Even if they do decide to write her out of ep.IX and have her character die in ep.VIII, they’ll still have to add some CGI. They obviously didn’t shoot a death scene so they’d have to use CGI to put Leia into such a scene.

Getting the rights to her appearance is just good “insurance” at this point regardless of how they end up using it. It’s a tad hasty, yes, but Disney has a lot of money riding on this and not too much time to solve the problem. However ep.VIII doesn’t come out until roughly 11 months from now, and they’ll have even more time to plan ep.IX, so it’s not like won’t have time to monitor how the fans react to this.

ray_afraid said:

timdiggerm said:

Remember when people were pissed that Diego Luna wasn’t playing Biggs, because he has a mustache?

If you take the deleted scenes from Star Wars as canon (I do), then Biggs only joined the Rebels about a week before Luke got to Yavin. Wouldn’t make any sense to have Biggs involved in that story.

Just FYI;

According to the old EU, and I do believe it was implied in the radio play as well (which was “Lucas canon”), Biggs had actually joined the rebellion months before the deleted scene at Tosche station. Him returning to Tatooine and telling Luke half-truths (he had already gone to Bestine) was two-fold; to “recruit” Luke to the rebellion as well as creating a sort-of alibi should he be arrested.

Either way it’s a nice little head-canon possibility. It is for me anyway.

suspiciouscoffee said:

The next one actually includes those two stories and more! Issues #94-99 and #104-115 are listed.

I did actually read SWW #104-115 quite recently. They’re kinda weird. Not necessarily bad, but really weird. Kind of half SW half Forbidden Planet.

SWW #94-99 are some of the best though. Same writer and illustrator that made the (US) #12-23 (+ #24-37 which will be included in the next volume.)

suspiciouscoffee said:

Finished reading all the comics in my book.

Included in personal canon

Star Wars #7-23

• Excluded #1-6 adaptation as it differs from the movie, although it was a very good adaptation.

Pizzazz #10-16

• Excluded the story from #1-9 because it includes four android kids that can control fire, wind, rain, and earth respectivelt without using the Force. I didn’t much care for that.

Star Wars Weekly #60

The next omnibus in the series will hopefully include more of the UK exclusive stories.
(EDIT: Never mind. It does include the rest of them.)

If not I’d recommend; The Day After the Death Star and Way of the Wookiee.

(Star Wars Weekly #60 is actually the only pre-ESB UK story I haven’t read.)

http://omegaunderground.com/2016/12/24/boba-fett-movie-seemingly-revived-next-standalone/

If only this was true…

“To counter-act the prequels, the Boba Fett spin-off movie planned for 2018 has an interesting twist pitched by Episode VII writer Lawrence Kasdan: the spin-off will start with a complete stranger killing Boba Fett and taking his armor, starting a Man-With-No-Name bounty hunter tale. So: someone kills the Boba Fett from the prequels and takes his armor and name. One thing is for certain is that Kasdan didn’t like the prequel and wants no Bobba Fett Clone in the spin-off film.”

It seems it’s impossible to have new SW movies without there being a bunch of hopeful Boba Fett related rumours. This reminds me of the whole “Sydow is playing old Boba Fett” thing.

‘Star Wars’ Braintrust Sets Meeting to Plot Leia’s Life After Carrie Fisher’s Death

“insiders tell The Hollywood Reporter that at least two key scenes are planned for Episode VIII and Episode IX: a Leia reunion with Luke Skywalker and a confrontation with Kylo Ren.”

“insiders say Leia was to have been a bigger part of Episode IX than VIII.”

“Trevorrow […] is due to arrive in L.A. the week of Jan. 10 for meetings with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy to discuss options.”

Tobar said:

Mithrandir said:

NeverarGreat said:
Furthermore, in the case of Tarkin, he distracted from the primary villain: Krennick.

I would say the main villain was supposed to be Tarkin all the way, and then Krennick was created just because by the very premise of this movie, the villain would have to be defeated and shown as incompetent, and going by his rank, position and reputation in ANH, Tarkin wouldn’t have been the case.

However, a Star Wars movie centered around the Death Star one week before the beginning of ANH without any trace of Tarkin would have raised a lot of questions as well.

I think the solution they found to solve this issue was, among many other things, elegant, regardless of how good CGI was.

^This.

And it all depends really, when it comes to CG. I still say Jurassic Park looks stunning to this day. I think RO’s Tarkin will age fine.

Just remember that there’s more practical effects dinosaurs in Jurassic Park then there are CG ones. Having animatronics/puppets in close-ups does help make the CG in tge wide shots seem more convincing, despite its age.

(I personally think the lack of this technique will have a negative impact on current CG when rewatched in the future.)

Does this excuse it though? All it proves is that it’s a passable effect.

I mean, I thought the CG in the PT was really good when I was a kid. In my teens I started to realize how imperfect it was. Now much of it just looks awful. I have a feeling that the new SW movies will suffer from the same effect over the next couple of decades. Maybe not as much (thanks to a decent amount of practical effects), but I don’t think they’ll age too well. And I think Tarkin will be one of the effects that will stand out the most.

Wexter said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I personally really like Dark Empire, and the fact that it didn’t really acknowledge Zahn’s books outside of the crawl is fine with me. More time spent making an interesting and different story, rather than spend too much time trying to connect everything.

I used to like Dark Empire as well. It did feel like jumping the shark at several points, but it had a very nice pulp comic feel. I also have to admit I am not a huge fan of Zahn. Always felt like his stories were really smart, but ultimately not that exciting.

Well, to be more precise, I really like Dark Empire I. II and Empire’s End are kinda weird, and “jump the shark” s few times as you said. I still enjoyed DE II for it’s art, but I have mixed feelings about the plot. It was oddly inconsistent. Empire’s End was just weird both in terms of the underwhelming plot and the change of artist.

I can’t really comment too much on Zahn until I’ve read more of his work. The Thrawn trilogy I really liked. Not perfect, but I thought Thrawn was amazing, the other characters were interesting, the action was good, the pacing was good, etc. But Hand of Thrawn has been a bore with the occasional interesting parts (depends of what character it’s about). The plot itself is clever, like you said, but it’s not very exiting.

Did Thrawn write anything prior between the Thrawn trilogy and Hand of Thrawn? I should ask this question in the recommendations thread, but if so are they any good? His writing seem to have gone from good to dull pretty in a fairly short period of time.