joefavs

I finally got off my ass and applied for grad school. Let’s hope I have some much, much bigger good news in a couple months.

Because of Biggs Darklighter, I always thought the"nounverber" surnames were a Tatooine thing. Maybe it has to do with slavery on Tatooine?

Anyone else do any tabletop Star Wars gaming? I’ve really enjoyed Fantasy Flight’s stuff recently, I’ve played both their card games and I’d like to try their miniatures games. I also picked up some of the handbooks for the West End Games RPG a little while back but I haven’t had the chance to really sit down and learn them yet.

I would argue that Luke was responsible for the Emperor’s downfall simply by his presence. You say his actions didn’t have any tangible effect on the outcome of the Battle of Endor, but think about what happens when you take him out of the equation. Without Luke, the Empire simply steamrolls over the Rebel fleet well before they have the chance to take out the shield. Because he wants to seduce Luke, though, the Emperor draws it out like a cat playing with a mouse. Palpatine knows he can wring some drama and torment for Luke out of the situation and that this will render him more vulnerable to corruption, so he keeps it going way longer than he has to. Luke nails it when he says “your overconfidence is your weakness”. He knows that if he can hold the Emperor’s attention, his friends will have a chance to succeed that they wouldn’t otherwise. It’s easy to overlook it with all the Vader drama, but really Luke is playing for time.

And as for “unintended coincidences”, isn’t that kind of the Force’s whole MO? Luke’s goals are fulfilled in ways no one could have foreseen because he chooses the light and doubles down when given the chance to turn away. That Vader himself turns and the Emperor is destroyed as a result is an affirmation of the whole saga’s cosmology.

I’ve considered the idea that Vader’s failure to corrupt Luke in ESB sort of broke his ambition. I think it’s possible that when we see Vader in ROTJ he truly no longer believes that he’s capable of going up against Palpatine, and he really does just want to serve his master because he has nothing else left. The fire is certainly gone in his characterization; maybe that’s the point rather than it just being lazy or inconsistent writing.

Between Rian Johnson’s trilogy and Benioff’s and Weiss’s series, it sounds like they’ve got plenty of serialized stories in the pipeline. I certainly don’t feel any desire for episodes X-XII, but ask me again in a decade and I may have changed my mind. In the immediate future, I hope we get a third anthology film, because abandoning that project after only two movies seems like an awkward way to leave things. Kenobi would be my first choice of the usual options that get thrown around, but I do also want a Solo follow-up while Alden Ehrenreich is still the right age for one. Beyond that, I guess my only hope is that Rian’s and B&W’s movies have some sort of radically different setting from what we’ve already seen, in terms of either time or space. The obvious play is to delve into the deep past and do something akin to KOTOR, but I can think of a couple ways to make something fresh in the same general era as the Skywalker saga as well. Something focused on exploration could be interesting. I think that a sort of Star Trek/Indiana Jones mashup with a (New or Old) Republic (or even Imperial) crew in the Unknown Regions would be a lot of fun.

Does anyone have a good list of the most essential episodes/story arcs? I’m reluctant to commit to revisiting the entire thing, but I am interested in doing at least a partial re-watch before the new season hits next year.

It’s solidly in the middle of the pack for me. It’s certainly not a high point of the series, but there’s a lot more hand-wringing about it than I think is warranted. It’s fine.

ZkinandBonez said:

Getting major Gwendolyn from Saga vibes from (presumably) the Naomi Ackie character.

Possessed said:

If only I knew who that was I might agree.

Connix is the ST’s Wedge (I can’t remember if I’ve said so here before, so sorry if I made this exact same post three months ago).

ROTS is definitely my least favorite. It’s got the laziest, most haphazard writing of the lot. I get the distinct impression that it’s just going through a checklist of things that still needed to happen in that trilogy without any effort to arrange it into an elegant arc. The Grievous character is one of the most irksome examples of this. It seems painfully obvious to me that his only reason to exist is because they killed Dooku off too early and needed a secondary antagonist for the bulk of the movie. He’s only there to give Obi-Wan something to do while Anakin’s going bad. The infuriating thing is that Dooku had the potential to be an interesting character but they never made any attempt to pay his story off.

I’ve also never been able to shake the sense that from around the Jedi Purge onward, the script sort of treats its characters like a kid playing with action figures. Yoda fighting the Emperor has always struck me as particularly stupid as others have said, but Yoda and Obi-Wan cutting down swaths of clones at the temple has always rubbed me the wrong way too. Oh, and bringing up the thing about Qui-Gon’s ghost out of nowhere in dialogue instead of, y’know, having Qui-Gon’s ghost appear. God that movie is dumb.

I’ve actually grown sort of fond of AOTC recently. It’s not a good movie, to be sure, but it is so goddamn weird, and I just can’t help but have some appreciation for that strangeness. TPM’s got its moments for nostalgia’s sake but it’s largely a snoozefest, and I’m bothered by how slapdash and half-assed ROTS is, but I think AOTC is off-beat enough to be interesting.

The only TLJ figures I have are the 6" Black Series figures of Luke and Rey. I’ve got the standard 3.75" figures for most of the TFA characters as well as Jyn, Chirrut and Vader from R1. I’ve also got 6" Black Series figures of Vader and Thrawn. I haven’t got anything from Solo yet, but I plan to buy the Black Series Lando if I ever see it in the wild. I usually get these things at Target or my local comic shop. Barnes & Noble sometimes has them too.

I’ve got enough buddies who are going to want to see the new Star Wars content that we’ll probably end up splitting a subscription three or four ways. I have zero interest in any of the non-SW content this thing is likely to have, so I may even just cancel my subscription in the off months with no new SW releases.

In terms of the feature films, this is without a doubt the best time I’ve been alive for at least. Which isn’t saying much, but still. I adore both ST films to the point where I rank them higher than ROTJ, I really dug Solo, and even though Rogue One doesn’t really do it for me, it’s still head and shoulders above the PT in terms of execution.

I’m not sure what to make of Rebels because it’s the only SW show I’ve watched as it aired. I binge-watched TCW for the first time in the months leading up to the premiere of Rebels, so I didn’t really live with it for as long. Since Star Wars wasn’t really on TV in my youth, I’ve thought of both shows as a sort of bonus; they’re nice to have, but they’re not central to my experience.

I think the golden age of video games was most certainly the late 1990s to the mid 2000s. That run of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, Episode I: Racer, Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader, Jedi Outcast, KOTOR I & II, Bounty Hunter, Battlefront I & II… It’s hard to imagine anything now beating that deluge of great games even if they were trying harder, but the two new BF games in the five years EA’s had the license is just a terrible showing (though I do think both of those games are plenty fun).

I’m disappointed with the books as well. There have been some real gems since the reboot (Bloodline, Thrawn, Catalyst, Phasma), but since they started making new movies I feel like they’re consciously avoiding doing the kind of sweeping stories with large ensemble casts that I loved most in the Legends era as novels. I understand why, of course; in those days the books were the main thing going in Star Wars, and now the movies have that role and the novels function as supplements. It’s a bummer, but if it’s the price I pay for new films, I’m fine with paying it. I’m hoping that after the ST ends we get something with Rey, Finn and Poe in the same spirit as the old Bantam novels that followed the big three.

Didn’t read many pre-Disney comics, but I’ve really liked a little more than half of the new ones.

One area where they’re really killing it right now is in the tabletop gaming stuff that Fantasy Flight has been putting out. I’ve played both of the card games that are currently out and would like to try some some of the miniature-based stuff soon. Really well-balanced, well-paced play with just the right amount of complexity. The old Decipher CCG from the 90s holds a lot of nostalgia for me, but I think the current games are actually more fun at the end of the day.

I think that covers all areas. If I missed anything, I suppose I must not have a very strong opinion about it anyway.

After stringing me along as an intern and then a temp for two years, the lab where I work finally gave me a real job with benefits today. Now, I’m actually currently in the process of applying to grad school and will be quitting in five months and moving to New York if I get in, but I’ll happily take the pay bump and the optical insurance in the meantime.

Oh Jesus, it didn’t even register when I typed it.

It’s not actually even the “it sucks” stuff that’s getting to me (that’s easy enough to ignore), it’s the “civil discourse”. No matter what the topic, it somehow always ends up with people grappling about their feelings RE: TLJ.

What I see happening time and again is that some troll will jump into a conversation related to but not strictly “about” some element of TLJ and offer up a glib blanket criticism of the entire film. Then some well-meaning but misguided dope will attempt to engage with the troll and post a rebuttal. Then the folks who’re negative on the film but aren’t generally trolls about it see this as an invitation to pile on their own grievances, and the whole thing spins into the same tired TLJ debate for pages and pages before getting back on track (if it ever does). If this is helpful to you, fine, more power to you. But I finished processing the movie a while ago and it’s just tedious as all hell to see everything inevitably getting sucked down that path and I frankly don’t need it.

This isn’t only a criticism of this place either, I’ve stepped back from Star Wars stuff on Twitter and elsewhere too. Talking about Star Wars on the Internet feels like a chore across the board, and I’m sure that has at least as much to do with me as it does the discourse. I know I’ll be happy to jump back in when we’re done battling for the soul of this thing, but until then I know where I stand and hanging around watching everyone else sort out and re-sort out their own feelings ad infinitum feels frustrating and unproductive to me, and ultimately just isn’t at all fun or interesting.

I never actually intended to go away, but I haven’t really posted in a few weeks now because in the time since The Last Jedi came out I’ve grown to find the sorts of discussions that take place here exhausting. I’m not at all tired with Star Wars itself, I’m just tired of having to be a fucking lawyer about it. Call me when you guys want to speculate and theorize about stuff without re-litigating whether or not TLJ worked every six posts.

Any new developments as far as 2.5 is concerned? Thread’s been pretty quiet.

Hereditary. It fucking ruled. Exactly my kind of contemporary horror flick.

OutboundFlight said:

Will there ever be a point when these Disney-haters are truly happy?

Oh sure, 15 years from now when there’s a new thing to dump on and no one can be bothered to remember how loud they were about these. See: the PT.

It also would’ve been a perfect time to recanonize Prince Xizor.

Just saw it again at a different theater, and evidently the projection at the other place was iffier than I realized because I was floored by how much better everything looked tonight.

RE: Maul, I didn’t have as much of a problem with it the second time. His reasons for being there are messy and convoluted, but enough people I know in the real world still feel pretty passionately that killing Maul off to early was one of the biggest missteps of the PT, so I guess getting him back in the (big screen) mix has the potential to be fun. I found the stuff Filoni did with the character engaging and interesting; I just find his survival itself preposterous. I guess I’ve got more incentive now than ever to get over that and just have fun with it. It’s definitely not a hill I’m willing to die on, so eh, what the hell.