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Star Wars General Discussion Thread

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Kas is beautifully atmospheric. Which is frustrating since it's one of two places you see at night, and the only one with weather.
 
I'm honestly tempted to grab pencil and paper and try to draw Gorothad, as I picture it. The idea is that it'd be a world-city like Coruscant, but the design brief was Nuremberg 3000 from the start.
 
One thing I'm adding in the timeskip is Kylo Ren's forces doing some serious subjugation of Republic territory, and I'm currently starting up a story following a battle there. I wanna give the New Republic forces some big combat walkers - picturing Clone Wars tech, scaled up a bit.

Presumably this territory will never be explored in canon except with Hux and Pryde, in order to keep Ren as sympathetic as possible, but I have no such qualms.
 
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I've been thinking about Episode VII and sad to say I've been finding still more issues as I fall comprehensively out of love with it. I feel like I'm coming round to Scott Thomas' view that the new character who really mattered to Abrams was always Ben Solo (not necessarily Kylo Ren). Finn gets such a weird half-arc that I feel like his real purpose was to be a misdirect and ensure that Rey being the main protagonist and the (first) new Jedi of the trilogy would be a twist. Which also means that Rey's Force-sensitivity rather comes out of nowhere, and her freakout being in response to the vision instead of the "something inside me" waking up... retrospectively it comes off as rather limp.
 
Catching up on the thread I think that there was more sex going on with the Jedi than they let on. Teenagers who can do cool stuff coupled with hormones and ability to get a sense of others emotions? Yeah I bet Yoda caught more than a few in a broom closet from time to time. Anakin and Obi-Wan couldn't have been the only ones who got tempted while out on assignments when they were young too so I wouldnt be shocked if an occasional fling got ignored by the masters. As long as it didnt become an obsession and you could keep a clear head when it was time to do the important stuff you were ok. Just don't flaunt it to the public where the council has to call you out on it.
 
TLJ Discourse seems to have taken an interesting turn lately: the narrative is now that it's just a reskin of Empire. So yeah, no rehabilitation any time soon.

If anything, I think TRoS is more likely to be embraced over time, because the narrative will develop that it and TFA were how the trilogy was meant to go.
 
bluntblade said:
If anything, I think TRoS is more likely to be embraced over time, because the narrative will develop that it and TFA were how the trilogy was meant to go.
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You know how after the Death Star blows up Alderan, Obi-Wan dudenly freezes, hesitating, because so many lights were screaming at once, and were then extinguished.

That is how the idea of TFA and TRoS being embraced by the fandom makes me feel.
 
Quiver said:
You know how after the Death Star blows up Alderan, Obi-Wan dudenly freezes, hesitating, because so many lights were screaming at once, and were then extinguished.

That is how the idea of TFA and TRoS being embraced by the fandom makes me feel.
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Well, now you can acclimate to it over time. At the end of the day they're about how Star Wars is, like, real cool and how Star Wars fans are the best, so I figure the fandom will eventually accept them with Rey being explained and all.
 
bluntblade said:
Well, now you can acclimate to it over time. At the end of the day they're about how Star Wars is, like, real cool and how Star Wars fans are the best, so I figure the fandom will eventually accept them with Rey being explained and all.
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Or - and this is an alternative - or I can track down my former student and have a duel to the death with him so I don't have to think about it. That works too.

And sure, those are ways to look at the films. After all, those are the movies which have our new cast gush over how awesome and cool the old cast was; those are the films were Rey, Finn and Poe are most obviously Star Wars Fan Surrogates.

But man do I not like that. And at this point I feel the topic has been utterly exhausted, with multiple forums worths of why that is unfair to the Last Jedi, but still.
 
Quiver said:
Or - and this is an alternative - or I can track down my former student and have a duel to the death with him so I don't have to think about it. That works too.

And sure, those are ways to look at the films. After all, those are the movies which have our new cast gush over how awesome and cool the old cast was; those are the films were Rey, Finn and Poe are most obviously Star Wars Fan Surrogates.

But man do I not like that. And at this point I feel the topic has been utterly exhausted, with multiple forums worths of why that is unfair to the Last Jedi, but still.
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I honestly think that with Abrams, every new lead is subordinate to Ben Solo because he's tied to the old films... and that grouping includes Kylo Ren in my book.

At the end of the day, the choice is effectively between someone who says "look, if you can deal with your shit and act like a grown-up then yeah, we can go for dinner" and someone who already has their hands down your pants and thinks it's so hot that you know who Darth Plagueis is and ohmigod your fandom's so big and I'll do anything for you, I'll retcon Rey so her having power totally makes sense I'll promise, I'll give you old Star Destroyers and I'll minimise Rose's part, you won't believe she was even an extra in the last movie...

I hope I can just numb myself to it.
 
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bluntblade said:
TLJ Discourse seems to have taken an interesting turn lately: the narrative is now that it's just a reskin of Empire. So yeah, no rehabilitation any time soon.

If anything, I think TRoS is more likely to be embraced over time, because the narrative will develop that it and TFA were how the trilogy was meant to go.
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The idea that Rise of Skywalker will be rehabilitated because it was how the ST was meant to go is silly. Thats like only Season 8 of game of thrones getting rehabilitated because that was how the show was "meant" to go. It being how it was meant to go doesnt matter if the audiance hates it and it has no artistic merit.

I think its more that Rise dampened positive feelings for the ST in general. Just like GOT's finale did. This kind of ultra tight narrative series has all the pieces attached at the hip too tightly for their not to be blowback and more critical scrutiny from an awful finale.

Quiver said:
Or - and this is an alternative - or I can track down my former student and have a duel to the death with him so I don't have to think about it. That works too.

And sure, those are ways to look at the films. After all, those are the movies which have our new cast gush over how awesome and cool the old cast was; those are the films were Rey, Finn and Poe are most obviously Star Wars Fan Surrogates.

But man do I not like that. And at this point I feel the topic has been utterly exhausted, with multiple forums worths of why that is unfair to the Last Jedi, but still.
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The ST has basically been unsure of how to balance telling a story with the old characters while passing the torch to a new generation of heroes from the start. When thats combined with how rushed the production of all these films was, it was kinda inevitable the writing would end up following the path of least resistance towards the old characters being main focus, with everyone else becoming redundant and/deadweight.
 
The perverse thing is that TLJ, now held up as the prime example of what not to do, was written before TFA was released. Given that some of the basement scenes in the latter were shot in October or November 2015 according to David Chen, it's possible that the first drafts were in even before the first film was wrapped. And despite all the on-set conflict, it came in on schedule and under budget.

My point is more that in the conventional wisdom, TRoS is held to be more contiguous with TFA than TLJ. Episode VIII is now considered to exist almost outside the continuity. And Season 8 of GoT came on the back of a series which I seem to recall most people enjoying even if I didn't - the bad stuff wasn't really talked about, I remember people acting as though the problems had arrived out of nowhere. TRoS, on the other hand, feels very much like an attempted course-correction after a despised middle instalment, and it's the hatred which will be remembered about TLJ.
 
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So here's a question I've always wondered.

How the fuck is Mustafar's atmosphere even breathable? Is there an answer given in either Legends or Disney continuity?
 
King Washington said:
So here's a question I've always wondered.

How the fuck is Mustafar's atmosphere even breathable? Is there an answer given in either Legends or Disney continuity?
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The answer, I believe, is "Star Wars is space fantasy, not science fiction". Sorry to be facetious, but I don't think they went that far into justifying it.

I know we're expected to shit on the choreography in VIII now, but it's occurred to me that it does a lot more to portray Rey's character than in her other two films (VII's approach is that she just channels the Force and is angry, IX's is that she did training now so she can use a saber properly). Her little practice session on Ach-To has her adapting moves from her staff-fighting to wielding the saber. Ridley's grin and her springy movements also sell this as a mark of progress for Rey's confidence. But more importantly, it's by adapting and being inventive is how she gets her wins in during the throne room brawl (Kylo, meanwhile, prevails through skill and ferocity). So it's all reinforcing the theme of how Rey as she is has plenty to offer the Galaxy.
 
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bluntblade said:
My point is more that in the conventional wisdom, TRoS is held to be more contiguous with TFA than TLJ. Episode VIII is now considered to exist almost outside the continuity. And Season 8 of GoT came on the back of a series which I seem to recall most people enjoying even if I didn't - the bad stuff wasn't really talked about, I remember people acting as though the problems had arrived out of nowhere. TRoS, on the other hand, feels very much like an attempted course-correction after a despised middle instalment, and it's the hatred which will be remembered about TLJ.
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You're underestimating the hate GOT is getting nowadays I think. Perhaps it's just a product of me being in more critical spaces, but the sins of Season 8 seem to have retroactively made perception of the earlier seasons worse. People now seem to understand that GOT's problems didn't come out of nowhere, and that missteps that can be clearly attributed to the show runners—i.e., anything that isn't a relatively straight adaptation of the books—were all straws that led to the camel's back breaking once the series was forced to stand on its own without the books' guidance.
 
Just finished watching R1 again. The whole siege on Scarif till the end is still one of my favorites in the franchise. Made AT-ATs terrifying again and I really liked how we didn't get the heroic kiss right before they died. I expected some deaths but I didn't think at the time they'd kill all the heroes even if we never saw them on screen after. Does a good job of explaining why Vader is in such a bad mood at the beginning of aNH. "Bitch I literally saw your ship flying away. Don't give me crap about 'diplomatic missions'!"
 
Renewal said:
You're underestimating the hate GOT is getting nowadays I think. Perhaps it's just a product of me being in more critical spaces, but the sins of Season 8 seem to have retroactively made perception of the earlier seasons worse. People now seem to understand that GOT's problems didn't come out of nowhere, and that missteps that can be clearly attributed to the show runners—i.e., anything that isn't a relatively straight adaptation of the books—were all straws that led to the camel's back breaking once the series was forced to stand on its own without the books' guidance.
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I guess that figures. Still, there are different factors at play - GoT isn't playing off nostalgia for older media to reward fans of same, and like I say, none of its seasons were responding to a reviled predecessor.
 
bluntblade said:
I guess that figures. Still, there are different factors at play - GoT isn't playing off nostalgia for older media to reward fans of same, and like I say, none of its seasons were responding to a reviled predecessor.
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Eh, I'd still say you're overly cynical at the moment and overstating how reviled TLJ will ultimately be. I've made this point before, but prequel hate was so vile the fandom destroyed Jake Lloyd's life and mental health. It'll take time and maybe the right auxiliary work to rehabilitate the era, but the turnaround on the prequels shows that it's definitely possible.
 
We'll see. The fact that the creative leads on the films involved were so at odds is a novel factor, so I'm curious to see how that will be viewed in the years to come. The Prequels are One Man's Vision, which tends to count for a lot with the filmbro crowd.
 
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bluntblade said:
I guess that figures. Still, there are different factors at play - GoT isn't playing off nostalgia for older media to reward fans of same, and like I say, none of its seasons were responding to a reviled predecessor.
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The problem is that the ST's focus on nostalgia pandering makes Rise of Skywalker inherently unpalatable as a whole in retrospect.

You come to the ST cause you loved Luke, Han and Leia? They all dead. Their kids are dead. The new republic they fought for is dead. Even fucking Nien Nunb is dead.

It's not actually an ending that someone who adored the OT can get behind. And the OT nostalgia pandering built into the ST is just not going to appeal to anyone not fond of the OT. I really don't think these are qualities that will I open the ST up to on a whole being rehabilitated in retrospect.
 
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SGTschlock said:
The problem is that the ST's focus on nostalgia pandering makes Rise of Skywalker inherently unpalatable as a whole.

You come to the ST cause you loved Luke, Han and Leia? They all dead. Their kids are dead. The new republic they fought for is dead. Even fucking Nien Nunb is dead.

It's not actually an ending that someone who adored the OT can get behind. And the OT nostalgia pandering built into the ST is just not going to appeal to anyone not fond of the OT. I really don't think these are qualities that will I open the ST up to on a whole being rehabilitated in retrospect.
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I mean, no disagreement there. I was a new fan brought on board by TFA, and it was really dispiriting to have a film force-feeding me nostalgia for a film I have never loved, at the expense of characters I adored.

The mistake, of course, was failing to realise that those new characters were just meant to be nostalgia conduits.

The lack of an epilogue for anyone but Rey (which is there to assure us that old Star Wars is still the most important thing, not do anything for her character) also hurts the notion that anything in the new trilogy will stick except for the Sith dying... and that'll be retconned in Episode X, I don't doubt. There's no suggestion that the New New Republic won't fail just like its predecessor did, or that Rey will succeed in building a new Jedi Order.
 
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bluntblade said:
I mean, no disagreement there. I was a new fan brought on board by TFA, and it was really dispiriting to have a film force-feeding me nostalgia for a film I have never loved, at the expense of characters I adored.

The mistake, of course, was failing to realise that those new characters were just meant to be nostalgia conduits.

The lack of an epilogue for anyone but Rey (which is there to assure us that old Star Wars is still the most important thing, not do anything for her character) also hurts the notion that anything in the new trilogy will stick except for the Sith dying... and that'll be retconned in Episode X, I don't doubt. There's no suggestion that the New New Republic won't fail just like its predecessor did, or that Rey will succeed in building a new Jedi Order.
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See, my problem here is that this presumes that there was any explicit intent in the purpose or the role of the new characters. A ST that knew what it was trying to do (make a story about the old trio's legacy more than anything else) would have likely dispensed with the likes of Poe/Finn/Rose as anything more than tertiary characters cause they don't actually factor into the main plot in the slightest. They don't actually enhance the nostalgia pandering or relate to the Kylo Ren redemption plot in any meaningful way. The problem with the new characters is not what they intended to do with them. It's the absolute lack of any meaningful intent for their place in the trilogy. They're vague half baked concepts that were shoved in without an idea of what they were supposed to do.
 
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