BaronGrackle

Star Wars was absolutely like this from the '90s onward. 😆 But if you were the type to ignore the canon games/books/comics of the old EU before... then why should you worry about the canon of games/books/comics/D+ materials today? You can still pretend like the 9 main saga films are the only things real.

Indy and Harry Potter have interchangeable titles. Try those!

Guys, we've solved it. When Ron Gilbert says he doesn't think of this as Monkey Island 3a or Monkey Island 6, what he ACTUALLY MEANS is that we fans are neglecting the game between Escape and Tales. Return is therefore Monkey Island 5a or Monkey Island 7.

The signature with the little heart (top right) is adjacent to two incarnations of the word "mighty".

I still imagine a Disney-canon version of Jedi Knight where Finn takes the role Kyle Kararn had... a former stormtrooper turned Rebel/mercenary, awakening his Force connection, discovering a secret Valley of the Jedi planet, and sealing it from a faction of Imperial Remnant darksiders. Theoretically, it could exist as a remake. But I have zero hopes.

Guybrush: "Sorry I never got that Love Bomb to you." Wally: "Love Bomb?" Guybrush: "Yeah, the one you ordered from the Voodoo Lady." Wally: "I never ordered a love bomb! I ordered a PLUMB BOB!" Guybrush: "Oh. You should probably cancel that." Wally: "No kidding! I never consented to this."

I'd call Black Widow a femme fatale, and she was hero.

It would be nice if the Switch library had more than RMI in its catalogue.

Force Unleashed 2 had Guybrush Threepkiller, right? I'm a little sad to have missed out on that.

If I can ignore my desire/expectation for tighter settings and worldbuilding, and look only to characterization and themes? Then I don't think I'd have a problem with any Star Wars film.

Concluding from ROS that "the past is the only thing that matters" is unfair, and I don't think it's a theme. In the scene you describe, Rey and Kylo use powers and a Force-relationship unknown to the Jedi who were in past films, and in doing so they destroy Palpatine - an absolute icon of the past. The film ends with Palpatine finally expelled from his role in the galaxy, and with the lightsabers representing Luke and Leia literally buried, where they'll presumably remain forever. Meanwhile Rey and the others move on, the old generation finally gone. She builds her own lightsaber, finally. The first yellow one seen in films. Is there no symbolism there? Couldn't that be easily interpreted as "let's move forward, with an eye on the past and another in the present"?

KOTOR and KOTOR2 are my favorite Star Wars games. It's taken me a very long time to admit that because I'm a Kyle Katarn fan, and I want to say that Jedi Knight will always be my favorite.

Sure, but for example: the theme of "should we move on from the Jedi order?" is rejected by the end of TLJ. We see that because Rey had saved the sacred texts and has them herself. By keeping these texts as an important part of ROS, wasn't Abrams staying loyal to the thematic conclusions at the end of TLJ? EDIT: https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/rian-johnson-even-more-proud-star-wars-last-jedi-five-years-on-exclusive/ From Johnson's recent interview, bolded part is mine: "The final images of the movie, to me, are not deconstructing the myth of Luke Skywalker, they’re building it, and they’re him embracing it,” the director explains. “They’re him absolutely defying the notion of, ‘Throw away the past,’ and embracing what actually matters about his myth and what’s going to inspire the next generation. So for me, the process of stripping away is always in the interest of getting to something essential that really matters.”

(Honestly, I bet Abrams just thought the mask looked cool.) But giving ROS the benefit of the doubt here... Kylo does give his iconic "let the past die; kill it if you have to" line to Rey in TLJ, and it does sort of echo what Luke has told her about the old Jedi Order. For a long time I thought this was a theme of TLJ. But other fans have told me... and Johnson has clarified... that Rey and Luke rejected that mindframe by the time the film ended. Since ROS mirrors Kylo against Rey, while simultaneously drawing them together both literally through their Force bond and figuratively in their journeys for identity (a story element begun in TFA and developed in the other two films with a gradually increasing scale), is it so unbelievable that Kylo would likewise have rejected his "kill the past" mindset by now? He only got rid of that helmet after Snoke humiliated him over it. After killing Snoke and taking his place, is it not feasible that Kylo could likewise reject Snoke's old humiliations, repairing the helmet so that it was both old but also distinct? This would be a criticism against Rey taking the name Skywalker? Fair enough. I've never liked the name "Skywalker Saga" for the nine films. It didn't exist until ROS marketing. But to be fair, Johnson has said that TLJ rebuilt and reaffirmed the Skywalker name and myth. Maybe Luke felt the Skywalker legend caused problems, but by the end of TLJ he had changed his mind and reasserted the Skywalker legacy to (as conceived by the story) its greatest level of hype. https://www.businessinsider.com/star-wars-rian-johnson-interview-about-the-last-jedi-fan-backlash-2017-12 "As I worked out that his arc was going to be coming to a place where he does this big heroic act that is going to be spread throughout the galaxy — basically taking back the mantle of Luke Skywalker, a Jedi master, a legend — it just slowly became clear to me that it would be this big grand act. It would be an act of mythmaking. And if there was ever going to be a place in this entire trilogy to give him this emotional moment of a goodbye, this was probably going to be the most emotionally potent place to do it." Consider also the dialogue between Resistance members at the end of TLJ, indicatingcthat Luke's actions here wiuld be told and probably inspire countless worlds to join their cause. One could argue that, since TLJ ended with the Skywalker legend being more important than it had ever been, that the direction had already been set for Rey to honor the surname in some way. Wait! I missed the scene myself, but others have told me that Rey secretly takes the Jedi texts herself, right? When Yoda tells Luke there is nothing in the texts Rey doesn't possess, he is being very literal. The texts weren't burned. Yeah, I think they just had no idea where to take the story. I don't take it as a rejection of Kylo as an antagonist (he still served as one until the end, and felt he was using Palpatine for his own ends), but as something else that Abrams probably thought would be pretty cool.

One more thing: have you considered that RoS isn't particularly "cowardly"? Sure, I hate it for the feel of the film itself. All of my considerations to setting and factions apply here, along with macguffin hunts shoehorned. But what was cowardly?

It is fascinating how many angles and generations of people like certain parts of the franchise called "Star Wars". The Expanded Universe from LucasArts games and the novels of the '90s are sort of the main reason I like Star Wars at all. The films are okay, but... that's mainly because they sort of demand respect for the sake of birthing the setting. This might also mark a difference in approach that Favreau and Filoni take in their works, as opposed to Abrams and Johnson. That's an interesting thought experiment. I still don't think the original film supports it, and the following films definitely turn against it, but I confess it's intriguing to reimagine that film with this as a part of it. In recent years, I've grown to respect the initial films in sagas like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Rocky, and *gasp* Monkey Island, and I enjoy thinking about how we would see these sagas differently if they were a single standalone. We could wax further on the nuances one can pull from the original Star Wars' depictions of the Empire and Rebellion, and I would love it, absolutely love it. The idea of a series of novels/games focusing on the setting in ANH but departing from the decisions of ESB and ROTJ is something I would just eat up. Hey, hey, my last post was much more tangential in its shade against TLJ specifically!

Alternative: Critics stick to a 7-8 range that they casually predetermine before playing the game, based on the idea of MI being a niche title done well. Fans vote for maximum score or minimum score, resulting in an average around 7-8 like the critic score?

A two-headed monkey logo, for Doublefine Monkey Island? But no. If it had been Ron, Dave, and Tim again, the monkey would have been three-headed.

It was unfair of me to dismiss the perspective that worldbuilding "doesn't matter", but I'm glad I did, because it resulted in a few of you elaborating on the take. In Star Wars, the factions and setting have always been a focus of things I enjoyed or disliked. I hadn't much considered the perspective of not caring about it, as seeing the different groups as mere vessels for the main characters to shoot. The Timothy Zahn books, the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games and novels, the original Battlefronts... in many ways, my favorite characters in Star Wars might have become "Rebel Alliance" and "Galactic Empire". I never saw the films as a narrative about the Skywalker family... I saw the films as a universe of opposing forces, in which there happened to be members of the Skywalker family. That's also why I never felt TLJ had a theme of "the Skywalkers aren't special"... the roles they have in the other films aren't particularly more pronounced than the roles Kylo and Luke have in TLJ, in what is supposedly a vast universe. If a lot of people feel similarly to you guys, it might explain why I've heard criticisms of Rogue One having "forgettable" characters. I loved all of those characters. They were DNA strands of a young Rebel Alliance, which you recall is one of my favorite protagonists in the saga. If you guys really do value variety and uniqueness in these films, then you're doing a huge disservice to TFA! I hate TFA, but one of the unjust criticisms against it is that it's just a copy of ANH. Haters say it's simply a worse version of ANH, and I've rarely seen defenders dispute the claim. Do you want to subvert expectations of the themes in A New Hope? Imagine if the Empire wasn't strong enough to have the Rebels on the run; imagine if they had to complete their objectives quickly and retreat before the Rebels overpowered them. Imagine if the Death Star was the only chance they had at making the galaxy notice them... and it was still destroyed by the film's end, leaving them with nothing. Imagine if, instead of Darth Vader, it was someone trying their best to BE what they imagined Darth Vader to be, and failing miserably? And what if instead of killing the hero's mentor and establishing himself as a future threat to the hero, it instead ended with Luke throttling him and leaving him for dead? Would your expectations have been subverted? This was the film JJ Abrams created. (If they had leaned into that, anyway.) The state of the First Order and Kylo at the start of TLJ should have been nothing like the state of the Empire and Vader at the start of ESB. So when Vader says, "The Force is strong with this one", you don't see that as an indication that the Force is stronger with some people than others?

I haven't read a single media article yet that shares criticisms regarding the artstyle.

::pat, pat::

Wasn't that the only time Vader used the Force around his officers, in that first film? Motti may have been the only guy in the room who doubted they existed. Your point being that any person should have been able to "feel" the Force if they try? The film indicated that only some people were strong in the Force, so it wouldn't have worked for everyone. And Luke went his whole life without knowing how to feel the Force anyway, until a Jedi started him down the path. True, it was wrong of me to reference mistakes from TFA and apply them to TLJ. In TFA, the First Order was not a credible military threat. It consistently lost its battles against the Resistance. But it pulled off a surprise terrorist attack with a superweapon, after which the superweapon was destroyed. In TLJ, at least the First Order is shown as being able to fight the Resistance in battle. That being said... the only way I can even attempt to make sense of that chase sequence, is to headcanon that the First Order is very tiny and doesn't have any other ships or fighters to end the chase. Just a tiny First Order chasing a tiny Resistance, not even on the radar of the bulk of the galaxy. Sadly, the intro text and dialogue/tone aren't in line with such a take. It's PRETTY CLEAR that they're big and powerful, they have vast resources, and there's not much to oppose them other than the Rebels. It's a clear situation, a clarity we never get to see with the First Order-Resistance-Republic as depicted in any of the Sequel films. Hard disagree with the last sentence. I could not believe the First Order was "a large threat" in TLJ, the tiny group of ships incapable of cutting off or using fighters against the tiny group of Resistance ships, completely oblivious to Resistance trsnsports leaving and returning to both ships casually. I'm not sure what could have surprised you, apart maybe from Luke casually throwing the lightsaber aside at the start. The film starts with the knockoff chase from ESB, it has the knockoff training with an old Jedi, it had a group go to a bar of scum and villainy, throw in illegal parking from Spaceballs, add the throne room scene also included in ROTJ and ROTS (a group of Force users enter a throne room and start talking... it would have been genuinely surprising if they all left the room alive, or if Kylo or Rey had died instead of Snoke... killing Snoke was the lazy choice), and wrap it up with the Battle of Hoth diet version. Yeah, I liked Luke using a Force projection. At that point, I liked seeing Luke doing anything at all... after he spent the entire film conpletely forgetting his character development from the original films, and being confused because the old Jedi ways were wrong - because I guess Johnson didn't realize that every single Star Wars film has already indicated that the old Jedi ways were wrong. That is unwarranted. Yes RoS betrayed TLJ, but remember that TLJ did everything it could to betray TFA, and it burnt any possible bridges that RoS could have used to recover. One of the few things I enjoyed about TLJ was how it mercilessly tore into TFA. When Snoke reprimanded Kylo for losing to an untrained girl? When he told him to take off the ridiculous helmet? When Rian Johnson did that, he was echoing the internet at the time. He took fan complaints against TFA, and he put them into the dialogue of the film, in order to join the ridicule against TFA while implying that his film would be better. When you call RoS cowardly, you drop the same pronouncement on TLJ.

Grackle is too dumb to cross-quote ThunderPeel2001: Can we agree that this is an issue with the overall narrative of Star Wars, and not an issue with the original Star Wars film (ie A New Hope) as a film in and of itself, when it was released and still alone? A lot of the premises you listed aren't established until later. We didn't even know the Emperor used the Force, and it's easy enough to believe that Vader's own power was rarely demonstrated and subject to rumors! In which film? In the original, Luke blocked a few training shots in front Han, after missing several others -- easy to dismiss as lucky. Luke making that shot on the Death Star was a huge deal, the first time he was shown to excercise any substantial control over the Force to us the audience... and, apart from Vader, most people would have likely just interpreted it as a really good shot, no space magic involved.

I'll start that thread...