Random Star Wars Thoughts

[Doctor Cringelord]

 

[Pikaqiu]

the ultimate uno reverse card ever hahaha

 

[Totenkindly]

With all the Best Buy sales (4K Star Wars films) today, I broke down and got 6 of the 9 on 4K. I mean, $13 a film in 4K considering they are usually great quality upgrades is too irresistible, and my son still has a soft spot for the prequels. I guess love makes us do odd things.

The only two I won't own after today is Attack of the Clones (because it wasn't on sale on Amazon or Best Buy -- I'm not paying $29 for that film) and Rise of Skywalker, which I only saw once in theaters, have been trying for months to work up enough mental fortitude to rewatch, and/or otherwise will never ever buy.

I have to say, despite the highs and lows of The Last Jedi (I'm in a love/hate relationship with it), the 4K release is a high-end 4k reference disk -- it's absolutely amazing to experience on a decent 4K setup. TROS has even better reviews in terms of the disc itself -- but the story/script is the huge problem there underlying the film. I guess I should be happy they at least did a great package.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

It used to bother me that Leia remembered her mother but Luke did not. Why would one twin remember her and the other have no memory, especially considering both were infants? Seems like an obvious oversight, but then I thought about a skill the character Cal Kestis has in the SW game Fallen Order. Cal has a rare ability to see past events and memories by physically touching objects and reading their "force echoes". It is possible that Leia is also one of the rare force sensitives gifted with this ability. Having been inside of her own mother's womb for 9 months, plus being briefly touched by Padme directly after birth, she could very well have sensed and been imprinted with Padme's memories or emotions, which would have been mostly sad and negative at that point.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It used to bother me that Leia remembered her mother but Luke did not. Why would one twin remember her and the other have no memory, especially considering both were infants? Seems like an obvious oversight, but then I thought about a skill the character Cal Kestis has in the SW game Fallen Order. Cal has a rare ability to see past events and memories by physically touching objects and reading their "force echoes". It is possible that Leia is also one of the rare force sensitives gifted with this ability. Having been inside of her own mother's womb for 9 months, plus being briefly touched by Padme directly after birth, she could very well have sensed and been imprinted with Padme's memories or emotions, which would have been mostly sad and negative at that point.

I'm more bothered by Padme dying of a broken heart; it feels so half-assed to me. I prefer the fanon that Palpatine drained her life force to help Vader recover from his injuries.

In an earlier version, she was going to Mustafar to kill Anakin after hearing that he turned to the Dark Side, and didn't succeed. I prefer that to what we got.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett. I didn't have high expectations, honestly. But I like how much they took time to flesh out Tatooine; I don't even really remember anything in the EU that did that to this extent. Again, I like feeling that this galaxy isn't just the same 10 people who are related to each other. Like, of course, Mos Espa would have a mayor, and of course he would be in the pocket of Jabba the Hutt... it's just something I never thought about but is really cool to see alluded to.

How cool was the salsa Cantina Band cover?

Has Mos Espa expanded a lot since Episode II and that's why there are now buildings under cliffs? Maybe it grew into the podrace arena? If so, that's another cool bit of world-bulding.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I'm more bothered by Padme dying of a broken heart; it feels so half-assed to me. I prefer the fanon that Palpatine drained her life force to help Vader recover from his injuries.

In an earlier version, she was going to Mustafar to kill Anakin after hearing that he turned to the Dark Side, and didn't succeed. I prefer that to what we got.

yeah, i would have preferred that too. It would have made her a less passive character, less of a prop in episode 3. It was a shame to see her progress from being a calculated political operator and warrior queen in episodes 1 and 2 to little more than wallpaper in 3. I just don't think Lucas ever knew fully how to use her toward the end of the prequels.


But then I also feel Anakin's fall should have occurred earlier, or at least been shown in a way that didn't feel so abrupt. Clone Wars sort of fixed that, but that is no excuse for the prequels' failure. I'm convinced that a lot of the new warm feelings for the prequels might actually be due to Clone Wars "redeeming" them.

This is the problem with pointing out one flaw in the prequels, it's so easy to get started listing off so many more.

 

[Totenkindly]

My kid regularly touts this thing:

The Blackened Mantle

I’m just as amped to see The Force Awakens as everyone else. Unfortunately, I’m much too broke to afford a ticket. Be that as it may, I have a fair bit of Star Wars queued up (ah, &#822…

hammeredcritic.wordpress.com

Lucas had some good "big ideas" but never was very skilled at translating them with nuance into reality -- his writing ability remains on about a fifth grade level. If he had been willing to just hand his general ideas off to real writers who knew who to create authentic drama, then directed to the scripts, it would have been so much better. There was a lot of possibility in RotS that never gets realized, the seeds of the story were there but Anakin's fall just needed a better progression. I was always partial to Padme and Obi-Wan having some level of connection so that Anakin's fears feel more justified, for example; and then him actually killing her, with Obi-wan too late trying to intervene. So many bad philosophical lines instead, with characters spouting off broad homilies and accusations, rather than how people actually think and talk. Anakin also had a lot of reasons to hate the Jedi anyway. There could have been more done with Qui-Gon Jinn too, in his role as a rational outsider and kind of Fringe jedi vs the council which had its own process. I kinda mourn what might have been, if Lucas had been a better collaborator rather than essentially doing a vanity project for something he wasn't talented at (i.e., screenplay) and potentially even the directing, as he was a terrible "actor's" director. He was very talented at the special effects and visualization.

Despite TFA having the large flaw of being a rehash of Star Wars (which lowered its value in the series), at least Michael Ardnt knows how to write a script. It might have been the best regular dialogue/drama writing of the bunch, versus Saturday matinee, aside from TESB.

I enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett. I didn't have high expectations, honestly. But I like how much they took time to flesh out Tatooine; I don't even really remember anything in the EU that did that to this extent. Again, I like feeling that this galaxy isn't just the same 10 people who are related to each other. Like, of course, Mos Espa would have a mayor, and of course he would be in the pocket of Jabba the Hutt... it's just something I never thought about but is really cool to see alluded to.

How cool was the salsa Cantina Band cover?

Has Mos Espa expanded a lot since Episode II and that's why there are now buildings under cliffs? Maybe it grew into the podrace arena? If so, that's another cool bit of world-bulding.

I watched episode 1 today. It was better than expected but I'm kinda indifferent to both it and the Mandalorian so far. The fight scenes were pretty lousy in Bobba Fett E1. The stakes seem pretty low, I never feel like anyone will get hurt (until they do, because the plot demands it). I found the flashbacks and the way he survived kind of cool, but the Tusken Raiders bit felt somewhat cheesy and again kinda "comedy-western" in flavor. The Tusken Raiders seemed more just props than actually unsettling, like they did in A New Hope. It seems geared at 12 year olds.

Long story short, just by being middle-of-the-road, it's still worlds better than TROS; but it's all pretty much a "watch once out of curiosity, then forget about it" series.

Oh, I will give kudos for finally showing male Twi'leks in quantity. It's about time. Usually I just see females who are either exotic dancers or assassins or jedi. They didn't seem to have the spark I expected but it was a nice turn. We've been able to play as either gender and all different colors of twi'lek in SWTOR since the game dropped some years ago, so...

 

[Totenkindly]

Right it was interesting to see the Jennifer Beals in charge and the male Twi'lek as eye candy, so to speak. Although Jennifer Beals is still pretty hot... I just really liked the sort of "underworld politics" on display.

I saw she was on the cast list, after, and immediately thought she must have been the Twi'lek boss in the bar.

I thought the music was fun.

 

[tanstaafl628]

I think Anakin was indeed the chosen one. The problem is that the Force was out of balance. The Jedi were too rigid in their interpretations and it allowed the Sith to systematically dismantle their order. The sad truth was it took 20 years of Sith rule in order to restore that balance, which required Darth Vader/Anakin's participation, and then he was able to finally restore the balance fully by throwing Palpatine down the shaft on the Death Star II.

I think Dave Feloni tried to give us an idea of why the Force got so far out of balance with that Clone Wars Season 3 Episodes 15-16 where Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka are drawn into the world where the Father, the Son, and the Daughter, all live. They are representations of the Force in balance. When the daughter and father die, the son is the only one left, and he represents the Dark side.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

yeah, i would have preferred that too. It would have made her a less passive character, less of a prop in episode 3. It was a shame to see her progress from being a calculated political operator and warrior queen in episodes 1 and 2 to little more than wallpaper in 3. I just don't think Lucas ever knew fully how to use her toward the end of the prequels.


But then I also feel Anakin's fall should have occurred earlier, or at least been shown in a way that didn't feel so abrupt. Clone Wars sort of fixed that, but that is no excuse for the prequels' failure. I'm convinced that a lot of the new warm feelings for the prequels might actually be due to Clone Wars "redeeming" them.

This is the problem with pointing out one flaw in the prequels, it's so easy to get started listing off so many more.

I think the Clone Wars show does a much better job characterizing Anakin than the movies did. They did a much better job at walking the line between the "good" and "bad" side of his nature. When we meet Anakin episode II, he seems like a different person and we never really saw how that change came about! I feel like the clone wars does a better job at bringing the "good" side back while still showing conflict. I mean Anakin in Episode II just seems too "dark" already to me. I think if he'd been shown as more "dark" as a kid that would have been ok, but instead we see his personality change in a major way and don't really see why it happened. I mean we can kind of deduce why and EU books have filled that in, but it was a bummer that we never actually "saw" that. (The Darth Plaugeis book has a scene with Chancellor Palpatine where he invites them to sit and Obi-Wan insists on them standing... so it sets up that Palpatine encourages Anakin to do whatever he wants while Obi-Wan as a traditionalist kind of insists on these strict rules. So it's easy to see how tendency to rebel against Jedi ways could really have been stoked given that.)

The Clone Wars corrects this... we don't see it in live action but we get to see things fleshed out more on screen.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Original trilogy: made with a good balance of story and vision. Some things were decided on the fly, but for the most part it is a cohesive story and apparent there was at least some idea or vision of the final product.

Prequel trilogy: definitely made with a vision of a final product (arguably moreso than the OT), but lacked in the storytelling department

Sequel trilogy: lacked a vision of a cohesive trilogy with any satisfying arc. Storytelling strongest in the middle chapter, but overall was lacking. mYsTeRy BoXxXxXxXx


This in a nutshell is why the OT is still better than what came later.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

something I would've liked more in the PT would be seeing more "behind the scenes" moments of the sith lords. I understand the idea was to keep them mysterious, but since we basically know who they all are from almost the start, it was pointless to keep them so in the shadows. We see plenty of the jedi, and I think they missed opportunities to show parallels between the jedi and sith (i.e. perhaps a sith training scene?). You really can't have it both ways and make them menacing. You either need them in the shadows with unclear motives, the audience left wondering when they strike next (like Jaws or Heath Ledger's Joker) or you present them as fully established characters since their motives were already mostly known to the audience by way of Lucas's prefrred method of telling rather than showing. Take Sidious, who is presented as this mysterious operator in the shadows, and yet his entire plan is known to the audience fairly early on in the PT, therefore sapping any sense of danger or menace that might have the audience questioning his next actions or his underlying motives. Dooku, for instance, also could've been a much more mysterious, interesting character. You can tell they sort of tried to tease he might be good (this is an angle I like about Dooku, since he's essentially an idealist and believes he is acting in the best interests of the galaxy, which differentiates him from Sidious and Maul, who both just want to fuck up the Jedi and run the galaxy, but makes him similar to Vader and Kylo, who didn't start out hating the jedi so much as they did mistrusting them and seeing them as failures) but it felt like a half effort.

Another thing the Clone Wars did better, I suppose.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

i think that if miyagi had been in the sw universe, he'd be a jedi. I mean he's basically a mix between yoda and burgess meredith from the rocky movies.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

i think that if miyagi had been in the sw universe, he'd be a jedi. I mean he's basically a mix between yoda and burgess meredith from the rocky movies.

Miyagi is definitely a Jedi Master (though I've only seen Part III, amusingly enough). Not apparently the way Abrams understands it though, there would be some bullshit about Daniel's sacred iconic nunchucks or bo staffs or something. I really, really hate the insistence on the Skywalker saber; (hint J.J it's not everyone's favorite saber). It's not so bad in TFA because it's sort of a link to the past, but everything surrounded it in ROS is so dumb and pointless. It may seem like a minor quibble but to me it's an emblem of everything wrong with that movie. I really wanted Rey to make and use her own lightsaber (ideally a light staff which was actually part of Treverrow's plan) after it was destroyed in TLJ, and instead it's repaired... but then at the end she did make her own but they never show her using it. WTF? I guess she had to bury the magic Skywalker saber (which is also really dumb and doesn't seem like something Jedi would do) before she could build her own. Oh, and then there is that line from Luke that is a major thorn in my craw.

That movie is so much more disrespectful to the OT characters than TLJ was. The whole idea of the Emperor coming back really does make everything they (and Anakin) did completely pointless, and just everything else about the way Luke and Leia were handled was so bad. Solo actually comes out ok, I'll admit, even though it doesn't make sense. That was one of the moments where the acting was almost enough to save the movie. It's too bad nothing about Kylo Ren in the movie actually makes any goddamn sense because Adam Driver is really an amazing actor. The movie is pretty shitty to the new characters, too. Everybody in that movie was handled poorly, which is a shame because they are all good actors and I liked those characters.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

something I would've liked more in the PT would be seeing more "behind the scenes" moments of the sith lords. I understand the idea was to keep them mysterious, but since we basically know who they all are from almost the start, it was pointless to keep them so in the shadows. We see plenty of the jedi, and I think they missed opportunities to show parallels between the jedi and sith (i.e. perhaps a sith training scene?). You really can't have it both ways and make them menacing. You either need them in the shadows with unclear motives, the audience left wondering when they strike next (like Jaws or Heath Ledger's Joker) or you present them as fully established characters since their motives were already mostly known to the audience by way of Lucas's prefrred method of telling rather than showing. Take Sidious, who is presented as this mysterious operator in the shadows, and yet his entire plan is known to the audience fairly early on in the PT, therefore sapping any sense of danger or menace that might have the audience questioning his next actions or his underlying motives. Dooku, for instance, also could've been a much more mysterious, interesting character. You can tell they sort of tried to tease he might be good (this is an angle I like about Dooku, since he's essentially an idealist and believes he is acting in the best interests of the galaxy, which differentiates him from Sidious and Maul, who both just want to fuck up the Jedi and run the galaxy, but makes him similar to Vader and Kylo, who didn't start out hating the jedi so much as they did mistrusting them and seeing them as failures) but it felt like a half effort.

Another thing the Clone Wars did better, I suppose.

The prequel trilogy should have just picked one Dragon villain and STUCK with it through the whole trilogy instead of introducing them and killing them off fairly quickly. Jango Fett kinda works for me but drop Dooku and Grievous and keep Maul. Or keep Dooku. Grievous I always thought was lame, but Dooku had potential (along the lines of what you said) that was never utilized.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Now this is podracing!

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This is the kind of respect Luke shows to a Jedi weapon as a Jedi in the OT.

TLJ haters were too thick to notice that the moment in the beginning parallels this; it isn't even something Luke had never done before. This is true for the other major moment people complain about. It's nothing "out of character" for him; it's just that they have a certain idea of the character that isn't really backed up by the source material.

 

[Totenkindly]

This is the kind of respect Luke shows to a Jedi weapon as a Jedi in the OT.

TLJ haters were too thick to notice that the moment in the beginning parallels this; it isn't even something Luke had never done before. This is true for the other major moment people complain about. It's nothing "out of character" for him; it's just that they have a certain idea of the character that isn't really backed up by the source material.

I would have rather seen him shove it up the Emperor's ass, but to each their own.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I don't think I have an issue with those Luke Skywalker scenes (apart from the the uncanny valley stuff), but to me it confirms that they aren't going the retcon route, which means that Rise Of Skywalker is unfortunately canon. They are establishing why Luke Skywalker's attempts to build the Jedi Order failed. I get that people don't like that, but this was something that was kind of locked in and unavoidable really after TFA set that up. I probably would have preferred something different but since they decided to just undo everything the OT characters did in that first movie (so they can rehash it again), they're kind of stuck with it unless they go the retcon route. I like TLJ because I think it's the most interesting thing you could possibly do within those parameters. ROS has to make matters worse by establishing that the Emperor didn't even die and is also the grampy of our hero.
Those ant robots were cool. I think I might like Book of Boba Fett better than TFA, though I don't care for how Fett is just a straight up good guy (but that was really in Mando season 2, also). Mando is shown to be still more morally ambiguous in his first reappearance, it's very odd and annoying how much of a boy scout Boba Fett is.