Everybody Loves Star Wars

[KestrelPi]

I really want to clarify I didn't answer your question in order to have another debate about TLJ, it's just that I think TLJ is very relevant to why I find RoS to be a cowardly piece of fiction.

[s-island]

2 hours ago, Remi said:

I like Star Wars, too. More than I like Star Trek. I’ve never actually watched Star Trek, so maybe that’s an unfair comparison?

That could be it.

 

I also quite enjoy Knights of the Old Republic.

[BaronGrackle]

32 minutes ago, KestrelPi said:

I really want to clarify I didn't answer your question in order to have another debate about TLJ, it's just that I think TLJ is very relevant to why I find RoS to be a cowardly piece of fiction.

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.”

Edited September 8, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[BaronGrackle]

22 minutes ago, s-island said:

That could be it.

 

I also quite enjoy Knights of the Old Republic.

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.

Edited September 8, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[KestrelPi]

I really want to clarify I didn't answer your question in order to have another debate about TLJ, it's just that I think TLJ is very relevant to why I find RoS to be a cowardly piece of fiction.

[Wally B.]

11 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

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.

Moving on from the Jedi order doesn't mean forgetting it completely and destroying their legacy.

It means acknowledging their errors while learning from both the good and the bad parts of their history.

The thesis of The Last Jedi isn't "destroy the past", Luke and Kylo are both wrong about this. The thesis is "let's move forward, with an eye on the past and another in the present".

"Abrams" resolved this in the sequel by stating that "nope, the past is the only thing that matters, we defeat the emperor (the only really cool bad guy who should come from the past because that's what important) by using that good past force genes that came from Skywalker and (apparently) Palpatine".

[BaronGrackle]

7 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

Moving on from the Jedi order doesn't mean forgetting it completely and destroying their legacy.

It means acknowledging their errors while learning from both the good and the bad parts of their history.

The thesis of The Last Jedi isn't "destroy the past", Luke and Kylo are both wrong about this. The thesis is "let's move forward, with an eye on the past and another in the present".

"Abrams" resolved this in the sequel by stating that "nope, the past is the only thing that matters, we defeat the emperor (the only really cool bad guy who should come from the past because that's what important) by using that good past force genes that came from Skywalker and (apparently) Palpatine".

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"?

Edited September 8, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Niemandswasser]

36 minutes ago, s-island said:

That could be it.

 

I also quite enjoy Knights of the Old Republic.

 

I still like Bounty Hunter.

[Wally B.]

1 minute ago, BaronGrackle said:

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.

 

Couldn't that be easily interpreted as "let's move forward, with an eye on the past and another in the present"?

That's a cool interpretation too, but that only makes me wonder how come RoS merits this kind of thoughts while TLJ doesn't.

Maybe I was a bit too hard in saying that "this is how Abrams resolves it", I meant to say that that's how it felt to me.

[Remi]

6 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

 

I still like Bounty Hunter.

 

The Force Unleashed was actually quite enjoyable. Never got around to the sequel, alas.

[BaronGrackle]

5 minutes ago, Wally B. said:

That's a cool interpretation too, but that only makes me wonder how come RoS merits this kind of thoughts while TLJ doesn't.

Maybe I was a bit too hard in saying that "this is how Abrams resolves it", I meant to say that that's how it felt to me.

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.

[Niemandswasser]

10 minutes ago, Remi said:

 

The Force Unleashed was actually quite enjoyable. Never got around to the sequel, alas.

I second the latter half of this post.

[BaronGrackle]

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

[ThunderPeel2001]

6 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

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?

 

Star Wars follows the classic mythological structure (according to Joseph Campbell) which could be summed up as: Farmboy is forced into the wider world. Meets wizard who teaches him skills. Rescues princess. And pure and true of heart uses the skills the wizard taught him to defeat the bad guy and save the day.

 

"The Force is strong with this one" is just acknowledging this wizard training.

 

Knights of the Old Republic was amazeballs. Loved the music, too.

Edited September 8, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Aro-tron]

I guess my problem with the sequels is that most of the characters don't develop in particularly satisfying ways between movies.

 

I like all the characters pretty well in TFA, and wanted to see them have another adventure. I think the characterisation of Poe and Finn is pretty thin, though, and this becomes a problem in later films.

 

In TLJ, the scenes with Rey, Luke and Kylo are strong, and I also like the stuff with Poe as a deconstruction of the 'cocky rebel' trope. On the other hand, Finn's plot is weird. He doesn't seem like the same character as in the previous movie.

 

ROS fails to do anything with the characters that felt meaningful to me, and doesn't pay off the interesting parts of TLJ. Rose could have been the 'Lando' of this trilogy, but she gets sidelined, which retroactively makes Finn's plot in TJI feel even more extraneous. Snoke being dispatched should have led to us seeing what would happen if Kylo took on an Emperor-like role, but they cart out Emperor instead, so we once again see Kylo being subservient to another Sith lord. Ho hum. I actually think Palpetine himself was creepy in a fun way, but he doesn't have a meaningful connection to the remaining characters. Having Rey be his granddaughter I guess is an attempt to give some purpose to his return, but there's no emotional heft to it, and it feels like a retcon. I don't really remember what Rey, Poe or Finn do in this film, except that they go on a mission that is boring.

 

I think what they should have done with ROS is have a big time jump.  TLJ had a real 'last adventure' feel to me, and I would have liked to have seen Episode 9 jump ahead like 10 or 15 years. That which would have mirrored the jump between Episode 1 and Episode 2, and let the first and last episodes in the saga feel like bookends. More importantly, it would have let us see what happens to these characters after they've processed the deaths and sacrifices of the OT characters, and how they shape the world in their absence. You could have had Kylo as a supreme bad guy (or, I dunno, a repentant outcast), and Rey mentoring some kind of new Jedi academy. Maybe Finn and Rose have a family. Maybe Poe's moved on to become a bureaucrat and hates it. Maybe Chewbacca is king of the Republic! Anything, just advance the characters in an interesting way.

 

[Jake]

6 hours ago, Aro-tron said:

I think what they should have done with ROS is have a big time jump. 

This is a wild idea and I love it. They could have avoided the unfortunate fallout of Carrie Fisher’s death, by having her leave the story off screen in the past (a far cleaner way to pay tribute to her than the cobbled together performance they put in ep 9), and Luke could have continued to appear in the story without the time jump having any effect on his age, as he’d be a force ghost. 

[KestrelPi]

I do agree that Finn's stuff is by far the weakest part of TLJ, but I find the rest of it so strong that it makes up for it. And it's not that I think Finn's stuff is bad, it's just noticeably less interesting than the rest of the stuff going on and he worked far better with the other major characters to bounce off.

[BaronGrackle]

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.

[OzzieMonkey]

11 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

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.

I really want Finn to get a show with something like that happening.

[Jake]

There was a brief window towards the end of TLJ, where the dreadnought stad destroyer is coming apart, and Finn finds himself about to face Phasma, and then Phasma gets injured but doesn’t quite die. In that moment for just a second I thought Finn was going to save Phasma’s life and pull her into a ship. I still wish that had happened. I want an alternate universe where Finn, Rose, and Phasma barely escape that ship explosion and then get knocked into deep space together, and have to spend act 1 of the next movie getting back to our heroes. After two movies, Fin could have faced his stormtrooper past head on, Rose could have had a way harder target to test her beliefs against, and you could actually do scenes where Gwendola Christie takes her helmet off and gets to act! Plus I like awkward road trip stories, and the three of them crammed into some tiny ship they barely made it onto before the destroyer exploded seems fun. 

[BaronGrackle]

Quote

Star Wars didn't used to do this! The post-Rogue One world is absolutely wild. Everything is canon, any gap is now an invitation for more media instead of negative space for your imagination to make the world seem bigger than it is. I think it's a huge fuckup in the direction they've taken the IP, and is part of why things are falling apart so badly. Star Wars was not a universe built for everything to be lore hole'd. Oh well!

 

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.

Edited September 11, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Jake]

52 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

 

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.

 

 

Though there are similarities to the EU, it’s absolutely not the same.

 

The EU deliberately existed on a different plane from the films. The old rule was, if a new movie comes up that invalidates EU, so be it: that part of the EU doesn’t matter. That happened multiple times over the years, creating little funky contradictions. (Not to mention the movies themselves were created one after another, with characters, locations, and concepts introduced just to serve the needs of the movie, and no real thought to what else could happen with them, until after the dust had settled.) The different book series and comics and stuff also didn’t all fully hinge on each other, and weren’t incentivized to promote each other. And, a lot of the EU was fanciful “what ifs,” about strange pockets of the universe, or characters or eras we had never seen before. Their goal was often to make the universe bigger. This made the whole EU feel “opt in.” If there were parts you liked, you could enjoy that and ignore the rest. The gap in canon priority between the films and the EU also, at least for me, created a nice cushion of air where my imagination could slot in. "I wonder what happened here?" could be met just fine with my own answer.
 

Now there are no tiers of canon, it's all one thing. And now the Star Wars universe is undeniably built with an aim for getting you to engage with the other parts of it, to create feelings of missing out when things show up cross media that you don't understand. It's the feeling of reading a superhero comic where the asterisk shows up on a line of dialog and tells you "see Fantastic Four #203": The Dark Saber showing up at the end of Mandalorian, or walk-on roles in Rogue One by characters from the animated TV shows. The whole thing is now entirely about stitching the corners together, filling in gaps in space and time in the lore. It means that any character who ever shows up, almost definitely already has a backstory locked in, a spinoff series or comic planned, where you will be told exactly what happens to them. To me that makes it all seem SMALLER. Nothing is expanding Star Wars outward anymore, it’s all looking in on itself. And there's no real room for you to imagine the rest of the universe for yourself, instead fans are asked to marvel at the web being woven for them.

[ThunderPeel2001]

8 hours ago, Jake said:

To me that makes it all seem SMALLER. Nothing is expanding Star Wars outward anymore, it’s all looking in on itself. And there's no real room for you to imagine the rest of the universe for yourself, instead fans are asked to marvel at the web being woven for them.

 

That's exactly how I felt about the EU. After I learned they'd written stories for every character we see in the Moss Eisley cantina -- even the ones only seen for a few frames -- I knew the EU wasn't for me. I want to be able to imagine that stuff, not have someone fill it in for me. (Same reason I didn't watch Solo, incidentally.)

[BaronGrackle]

8 hours ago, Jake said:

The EU deliberately existed on a different plane from the films. The old rule was, if a new movie comes up that invalidates EU, so be it: that part of the EU doesn’t matter.

Could you not still see things this way, with Episodes I-IX being the nine movies treated as unassailable films? There are a handful of books and comics that take place during this time period, including novelizations of the films themselves. My understanding is that they often contradict whatcthe films actually gave us. So can you not choose the trilogy films to supercede the books/games/comics/shows/non-trilogy films, when these contradictions happen?

 

Example: the new expanded universe says that yhe reason Rey speaks Shyriiwook wookiee language is because she found an old Imperial ship with language tutorials on it, and she learned the language that way. I find this explanation ridiculous. If one were the type to ignore the old EU and to only pay attention to film episodes I-VI, then what is stopping one from ignoring the new EU and only paying attention to film episodes I-IX?

 

Other example: Coca-Cola and Sprite are now canon in the Star Wars new EU. They aren't in the I-IX films. Can't we therefore choose to pretend they aren't actually in the universe?

[Jake]

6 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

Could you not still see things this way, with Episodes I-IX being the nine movies treated as unassailable films?

I could choose to see them that way! In fact I often take it one step further and pretend rise of skywalker doesn’t exist   And it mostly works!

 

But there is still the fact that the people creating the work and building the universe are going about it in a fundamentally different way. Though you’re right that I can continue to ignore things if I want, my counter argument to that is any new piece of Star Wars media now reminds me that I’m ignoring the other stuff. The old EU wasn’t built around Marvel style cameos trying to all be backdoor pilots for each others shows. 
 

So it goes. It just means I’ll engage with Star Wars less than I wish I could, which is historically nothing new!