of_Kaiburr_and_Whills

“Never gonna get it, never gonna get it,”

This is a shame. 😕 I really was looking forward to this film, and with the new Disney schedule it looks like we won’t be seeing (at least for the next 5 years.)

I love the idea of these standalone stories from different directors, all with their different styles and ideas. I wonder if the Star Wars standalone idea is truly dead now, since it looks like there may be drama with Taika Waititi’s film too. We also can’t forget that the Kenobi and Boba Fett movies were also scrapped, partially due to the focus on making Dinsey+ series (which they obviously became.)

StarkillerAG said:

Yeah, agreed with everyone else on Filoni’s lack of subtlety. It’s hard to take Clone Wars fans who gush about how “dark and mature” the show is seriously when the show literally states the moral at the beginning like an episode of GI Joe. Filoni has some good ideas, but he needs someone like Favreau to moderate his more childish impulses.

I’m glad you mention the Clone Wars. I think the show is good, don’t get me wrong, but every time someone talks about how “dark” it is I raise an eyebrow. Even in the show’s “darker” episodes, like the Umbara arc, its all intercut with goofy antics or fun action/adventure to try to keep the kids entertained. And I don’t have any issue with stories being aimed more towards kids or whatever, but I’m not going to pretend Clone Wars as a whole was “dark and mature.”

This ties into something I’ve been thinking about lately when it comes to media and entertainment, “what makes something for kids?”

NeverarGreat said:

There’s the ever more common perception that Star Wars has always been made primarily for children, and I think Filoni has a lot to do with crafting that perception. Dude has like two types of stories to tell (doing favors and found family), and he tells them over and over without any subtlety or complexity. It’s not that these stories are bad, but at a certain point it feels like Star Wars should be more than that.

100% agree. Too much found family/lone wolf and cub for me lol.

Here’s one: I don’t think Dave Filoni is “saving Star Wars”.

Rebels was his birthchild and it was very well done. He also was a good fit as Supervising Director on Clone Wars I feel. But going into Clone Wars S7 and beyond I’ve had trouble connecting to anything he’s been a part of.

Mandalorian started off pretty decent, though I don’t enjoy his take on Mandalorians (mostly because he tried bringing over elements of EU Mandos, which I also am not crazy about.) Season Two was a bumpy ride but still enjoyable for the most part, the abundance of grand cameos took me out of it.

The final season of Clone Wars was disastrous I thought, and completely took Ahsoka’s character off the rails. Its the small things about how she is portrayed I don’t like there. She acts hypocritically and the way the episodes are edited and planned out make her look like she’s always in the right, with no consequences or realization either.

And while he wasn’t the prime director on stuff like Boba Fett, his influence over these side projects and the MCU-like nature of the “Mando-verse” is something I am strongly against and I’ve already clocked out of these series.

But here’s the thing, I’m not trying to “hate” on him or whatever. I do think he is a very talented and creative individual who cares deeply about the stories, characters and fans. I just disagree with his vision most times and his stuff just isn’t for me and that’s okay.

There’s always going to be different types of stories for different people. I love Solo. I love Visions. I thought Fallen Order was excellent. There are things like Rogue Squadron that I am looking forward to.

BedeHistory731 said:

The reshoot footage in the PT is something you can’t un-notice once you notice it, especially with regard to wigs and fake beards.

I need to know which scenes!

Saw Bullet Train recently. I thought it was fun and dumb and I enjoyed it.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a very good Indy movie and deserves to be acknowledged as part of the series. I concede it may not be as good or as classic as the others, but it is still very good.

I sort of see the saga as having different “timelines.”

So for example, there’s the OT timeline which is just the OT, another is the OT and the Ewok movies. One has the PT, and the altered variants of the OT. One variant of that includes The Clone Wars (2008). Another variant is only altered OT + Solo.

Now for my “personal canon” I see it this way:
The Clone Wars (2008), Solo, custom altered OT, Ewoks.

I’ve also got one I like to use for EU stories I enjoy and it is as follows:
Custom altered OT, The Han Solo adventures by Brian Daley, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, Shadows of the Empire, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, The Jedi Academy Trilogy (?).

I don’t really like the idea of canon, I tend to just focus on what I do enjoy and pair it up with whatever fits thematically if that makes sense.

My favorite adaptation of Splinter was the Blue Milk Special version.

https://www.bluemilkspecial.com/comic/splinter-of-the-minds-eye-part-40/

So Vader is a Trekkie!

rocknroll41 said:

BedeHistory731 said:

Maybe we’d have been better off if Lucas just made “The Star Wars” into a novel series. Who knows, maybe it would’ve been adapted into a set of movies?

Maybe. Sometimes I consider the sw77 novelization (The Adventures of Luke Skywalker), Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and the three Han Solo Adventures books to be “true” Star Wars.

I could roll with this lol.

1. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - I could watch this movie anytime I think. It will probably always be my #1, with the rest moving up and down depending on how I feel at the time.

2. The Last Crusade - Favorite part is the River Phoenix flashback. The banter throughout the film is good too.

3. Temple of Doom - It fell on my rankings recently but I was going back through some of it and it lands pretty well. Its also a classic.

4. Raiders of the Lost Ark - Once more, a classic.

That’s an entirely valid way to look at it and one I’ll probably circle back to at one point. I completely see how ESB and ROTJ add to the world of SW, but it’s not worth it to me.

Right now, I’m just so burned out on franchise filmmaking that I relish in the idea of standalones. Leaving on a high note > overstaying your welcome. Some people see ROTJ or ROTS as that high note, I see Star Wars as that high note in this moment. One excellent movie and that’s it. ESB isn’t a Highlander II or Jurassic Park II: The Lost World, but it’s decisions led to far worse things to come for the franchise.

In recent times I’ve come to feel the same way about films, I really don’t like these drawn out series. That’s why I’m not the biggest fan of TV show formats. And while they are still franchise movies, I’m excited by the prospect of these new standalone Star Wars films. That way I can take them or leave them when there’s one I don’t like, and it’s not dependent on other films. For example, I wasn’t that big a fan of Rogue One, but absolutely LOVE Solo!

For the Original Trilogy, I view it more as a standalone film that happened to get two sequels. I think I already said it on this thread, but each of the films feel so distinct, you can tell they weren’t all planned together and all three seek to accomplish different things.

Now, I grew up with the prequels, but I find myself hardly ever watching them because they, way more that the OT, demand to be followed upon. I’m not sure the best way to put it, so I hope that makes sense. Its one reason I think I love the Indiana Jones movies so much. All four are all pretty self contained, and are their own story with shared characters, not trying to tell an elaborate overarching epic. I wish more film series were like this.

BedeHistory731 said:

Sometimes I only want the 1977 original to be canon. Maybe I’ve soured on the long-term issues around Vader being Luke’s father, IDK.

I feel that way sometimes. The film certainly has its own distinct properties. Plus it was being made under the impression it might be the only Star Wars anyway and though some plot lines were left open just in case, it really does wrap itself up pretty well.

Looks intriguing so far.

Anchorhead said:

The entire franchise is make believe.
Lucas and/or Disney deciding what’s real vs otherwise is laughable. That levels ranking they came up with is even more so. If you like a series of novels, read them. That’s canon for you. If you don’t like something, ignore it.

Your imagination decides the story that moves you and the world you escape into when you read. Same goes for the films, games, or TV shows. When you were kids, did you stop playing with the toys or figures if someone said you weren’t imagining your own story correctly? Of course not.

Why in the world would you allow Lucas or Disney to do that now? Man, some of the takes that Lucas came up with and then claimed they were the real story were idiotic. Darth Vader as a little kid building 3PO? That is spit-take level ridiculous.

I really like the Zahn novels. So for me, Luke grows up, marries Mara Jade, and they have adventures fighting the good fight. That’s my Luke Skywalker. It sure as hell isn’t some old kook who tosses his lightsaber over his shoulder and then goes off to milk a giant sea creature for a snack. WTF?

There are hundreds of Star Wars novels and stories out there. Read and enjoy. They’re every bit as real as the rest of the GFFA.

Perfectly said. Too often people take these stories like they’re some sort of holy sacred text with religious truth. They fight and argue over what’s “real” and what’s “canon” and I firmly believe it is ruining the way people enjoy and experience entertainment and fiction.

I think this is a very valid point of view that I tend to agree with. I’m sure people will chime in arguing which interpretation is the right one, and it may be right, but it definitely feels like it has been muddled, arguably by Lucas himself as time went on.

But I personally think the ambiguity feeds into the Force’s religious connotations in-universe pretty nicely, since religions have fought wars over which interpretation is right, with either side claiming theirs is the Truth.

Very good point. For better or for worse, and like a real religion, the Force and the Jedi have so many different interpretations.

Okay, no particular order but here we go:
Jurassic Park (1993)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Indiana Jones (All four of them)
Galaxy Quest

Of course there are lots of other movies I’ve seen that I thought were absolutely fantastic but not things that I would return to often for casual enjoyment.
Metropolis
Mr. Smith goes to Washington
Twelve Angry Men

Then there are the films that I thought were pretty darn fun and/or entertaining but again, wouldn’t watch as much as those first ones.
Blade I and II
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
John Carpenter’s The Thing
They Live

Hello everybody, I completely missed this thread when I first signed up but I’m still very new so I figured I do it ASAP. I’m Rich, I’ve been a Star Wars fan most of my life and am super glad to have found this forum. I can’t quite remember how I found this place, but like many others here, I was doing research into the Original Trilogy edits and whatnot. (I’d known all about the Special Editions for years of course, I just recently stumbled upon this forum.) Star Wars has always been a fun adventure for me to escape into and I’ve been fascinated by it for years.

That’s all I got for now, and I’m looking forward to the discussions to be had here. MTFBWY

Found this conversation so I’m officially bringing it back from the dead!

When I was younger, around age 8 or so when I got into Star Wars, I started getting lots of the Lego Star Wars sets. Years and years have passed but I still do get some every now and then and these days I’m able to get bigger sets than I would have back then.

On display right now I have the UCS Slave I, the 2020 AT-AT, Obi-Wan’s home, a TIE Fighter and an X-Wing. I still have some left from when I was younger but they’re put away in storage right now.

I’ve had my eye on the 10th Anniversary Battle of Endor set lately but boy is it pricey these days.

It’s great because it’s open-ended. Was Obi-wan himself a clone? Was he a template for clone forces? Was it a designation given to him by clones, perhaps as a form of endearment? Was it a designation to disguise his prior identity as Ben Kenobi? Was it perhaps his choice of Jedi name once he became a true Jedi much like Darth Vader may have been Anakin’s Jedi name? There’s no knowing which (if any) of these theories is true, and that makes it, like the Clone Wars themselves, a brilliant bit of worldbuilding that ignites the viewer’s imagination.

This is the thing I love most about Star Wars- it leaves a lot of to be imagined. I cannot remember which order I watched the films in when I first did, but one thing I distinctly remember was when watching the original film imagining what the Clone Wars could have been when Obi-Wan mentioned it. Suffice to say my imagination imagined something a lot more gritty and messy than what we got but I digress on that. Absolutely love all the possibilities.

This gives the original films a whole new dimension of thematic power, and is another reason that for me the PT and ST trilogies don’t exist in the same universe as the OT.

I’m going to get off topic here but I want to say that I think this point reminds me of something I’ve always felt about Star Wars. The OT really is its own little universe, the way the story is told, the tone, the characters, etc. It feels like its own realm which no other Star Wars film or EU material has ever been able to match for me. Within the trilogy themselves even, the movies are so distinct and unique in their own right and I think this adds to the feeling for me. They are all different but unified. The thematic elements of the OT mixed with their visuals and characters is something else.

Servii said:

I finally watched this show. It was pretty poor. It wasn’t simply that it had cringey moments or that Boba acted dumb, though those are also true. The show was just meandering and dull. It just felt like a Mandalorian filler season that undermined the ending of season 2.

Meandering and dull is the perfect way to describe it for me. Not to mention the way they actually told the story was bumpy and I don’t feel it flowed well. I do not care much for the series. 😕

Interestingly enough, there was speculation back in the 80’s that Obi Wan was a clone designation, possibly derived from OB1.

I really like this and I don’t know why.

bkev said:

Well… does calling a Lightsaber a LifeSaver for at least a year count?

I have the most frustrating story about this!

When I was like 6 or 7 (Just before I really got into Star Wars) I wanted a Lightsaber toy for Christmas because I thought they looked so cool. When I was composing my Christmas list I wrote on there “Life Saver” because I had misunderstood what it was called. When Christmas day came around instead a cool blue lightsaber I was gifted plenty of Life Savers candies (among other gifts of course!) I was very confused but quickly realized that whatever those laser swords were, they certainly must not have been called Live Savers.

I think everything to say about this already has been said, but I’ll put in my two cents anyway.

We see Stormtroopers successfully defeat their enemies on the Tantive IV and on Hoth. Obviously there’s also a lot of plot armor regarding the main heroes always escaping and as we see on Endor with the Ewoks, who I’d also argue were pretty good warriors in their own rights.

They really aren’t that bad of shots and I don’t think its unbelievable at all that Stormtroopers would have such good aim.

This is a case of a joke in the fandom becoming a genuine talking point and criticism I think, one based on little, or very circumstantial evidence, that then seems to become a predominant idea which is held as almighty truth by some because it is reinforced by memes and jokes. (Again, my two cents on this.)