kue

This still to me is Vader at his most terrifying. It’s the details. It’s how relentless he treats his crew, how he calls characters as another user pointed out, and how much he seems to love toying with his enemies. He loves the hunt which makes him a terrifying force practically but he is also ultimately full of rage which makes him terrifying to actually face. Him in actual combat at the end is just the final touch and builds off him already being a terror.

It’s actually quite different to how he was portrayed in Star Wars where he was more of a lackey. Anyone with enough power didn’t take him seriously. Leia, Obi-Wan, even Tarkin were very unphased by him.

At some point I don’t think it matters because Lucas was going to distance himself from the series. The reaction to the prequels in their time really killed off his motivation and desire to be associated with the story. I don’t blame him. People rejoiced when he relinquished his control. I wouldn’t want to feed that audience either.

Fingers are always being pointed around but the entire industry got obsessed with franchising. The successes of early Netflix and the Avengers put dollar signs in the eyes of every studio executive. If Lucas was not going to do like Zemeckis and lock down his work for dear life then oversaturation was inevitable in the 2010s environment. If Disney didn’t have it then whoever else bought it would have spread it thin all the same.

For the stories themselves sometimes I’ll go through an old EU novel and be sad about what was lost. But other times I’ll remember different EU plots that make me grateful there was an excuse to pull the plug. It had moved so far from the original films yet simultaneously so unable to detach from its characters and aesthetics. Cruel irony though that when Disney killed off the EU one of my first thoughts was that we can now forget about the Palpatine clones…

By now I’m very tired of the franchising rush and am glad it’s starting to retreat. So I mostly focus on the good that I did get out of it. I did actually like the sequel trilogy characters and wished the films had handled them better. I thought Andor was brilliant even if the “Star Wars” part felt like an afterthought (I can live with that). Quite enjoyed The Last Jedi. Got to see a new era of Williams. It’s fun to see how his musical interests evolve over his filmography.

But lastly I remember a couple months after The Force Awakens released. My cousin was still a young child and I let her play with one of my toy plastic lightsabers that I pulled from the back of a closet. She had just watched the home blu-ray with her brother and was now running around pretending to be Rey. And all the childhood memories reopened from when I did the same at her age when there was no analysis nor discourse, just my imagination and an exhausted VHS. I think back to that afternoon when I see the internet getting heated about these space adventures again.

Also… I’m still wondering how far Lucas was gonna go with the Whills…