Star Wars Star Wars Discussion Thread - LET THE PAST D-! Oh, wait, nevermind

Allanon said:

"Star Wars" is dead. Kathleen Kennedy and Disney did the seemingly impossible: they killed what seemed to be an invincible franchise.

Look, if I had been in charge I would have considered the obvious: there is no possible way the Galactic Empire was going to just be gone after the Battle of Endor. Those Star Destroyers could not have been all the Empire had.

What would have almost certainly happened was, with the Emperor dead, the Imperial Governors and lesser bureaucrats would form petty kingdoms and political spheres. Even if the New Republic was competent (and in the Disney sequels they must have been imbeciles) it would take a long, long time to clean everything up. Against a common threat some of those entities would likely unite, and the New Republic would have to deal with resource allotment problems, it would take time for them to get it together, so those entities would solidify, even after three decades there would be much to be done, especially if the Empire had been an improvement for some worlds (e.g. laid-back governor who got things running and improved things).

The problem with the Disney sequels is that no matter how good someone's version would be we would still know what was going to happen with Luke and Han, and how incompetent Leia became. The only answer is to declare the Disney sequels as garbage that are NOT canon, just bad high-budget fan fiction.

Click to expand...

Disney never invited any of the actual old Star Wars architects into the room when they took over Star Wars. They wanted to reinvent the Star Wars moment from the 70s without grasping with the fact that the cultural zeitgeist was different back then. As such they just aped the big Star Wars moments and never engaged with a setting which gave any writer enormous room to maneuver. They simultaneously changed nothing while pointlessly changing any comfort food that could have been left behind. The easy play was to do the Thrawn Trilogy, not only does this give you leeway to recast the heroes but lets the writer introduce a slew of new characters for use in further productions. But that would have made the Empire the underdog and Hollywood writers don't know how to do that for a thousand and eight reasons.

If was up to me I would have started with the Truce at Bakura, used that to recast everyone (one of the like two things Solo did right was recast Han) and introduce all the new kids to star wars with a low stakes story set right after Return of the Jedi. From there start a series of movies where the New Republic works its was through various warlords, starting with the Eriadu Authority and Tarkins family and moving north. Make the confrontations with Zsinj, Thrawn, and the reborn Emperor the "Avengers moves" of the franchise and spin off the Rouges, Wraiths (as spies or commandos rather than pilots), and some other side adventures as streaming series to take advantage of other genres in the Star Wars universe. If you pace yourself and stick to one movie a year you can sustainably farm Star Wars for the better part of two decades without even trying.

The

f1onagher said:

Disney never invited any of the actual old Star Wars architects into the room when they took over Star Wars. They wanted to reinvent the Star Wars moment from the 70s without grasping with the fact that the cultural zeitgeist was different back then. As such they just aped the big Star Wars moments and never engaged with a setting which gave any writer enormous room to maneuver. They simultaneously changed nothing while pointlessly changing any comfort food that could have been left behind. The easy play was to do the Thrawn Trilogy, not only does this give you leeway to recast the heroes but lets the writer introduce a slew of new characters for use in further productions. But that would have made the Empire the underdog and Hollywood writers don't know how to do that for a thousand and eight reasons.

If was up to me I would have started with the Truce at Bakura, used that to recast everyone (one of the like two things Solo did right was recast Han) and introduce all the new kids to star wars with a low stakes story set right after Return of the Jedi. From there start a series of movies where the New Republic works its was through various warlords, starting with the Eriadu Authority and Tarkins family and moving north. Make the confrontations with Zsinj, Thrawn, and the reborn Emperor the "Avengers moves" of the franchise and spin off the Rouges, Wraiths (as spies or commandos rather than pilots), and some other side adventures as streaming series to take advantage of other genres in the Star Wars universe. If you pace yourself and stick to one movie a year you can sustainably farm Star Wars for the better part of two decades without even trying.

Click to expand...

But the intention wasn't even what you said, which would have been bad enough.

You see, your version of what they did would have meant there was always a chance, however slender, that they could have come up with something good.

But this was yet another franchise taken over and infected by the woke. The intent all along was to turn "Star Wars" into yet another piece of woke propaganda, as with Marvel, DC, "Indiana Jones," etc. x 10. Since cultural Marxists are always Marxists first anything else a distant second anything they take over will inevitably become ruined. The best example was how Purple-Hair-Annoying-Woman rammed that ship into the enemy ships- what, nobody else ever thought of that? The sequels were disjointed, unconnected, poorly plotted and written, an almost chaotic jumble. Also remember how the woke do a lot of backbiting, and it all added up to a guaranteed disaster.

The sequels HAD to fail. The only reason the first one did as well as it did was because they were never supposed to have existed in the first place.

f1onagher said:

Disney never invited any of the actual old Star Wars architects into the room when they took over Star Wars. They wanted to reinvent the Star Wars moment from the 70s without grasping with the fact that the cultural zeitgeist was different back then. As such they just aped the big Star Wars moments and never engaged with a setting which gave any writer enormous room to maneuver. They simultaneously changed nothing while pointlessly changing any comfort food that could have been left behind. The easy play was to do the Thrawn Trilogy, not only does this give you leeway to recast the heroes but lets the writer introduce a slew of new characters for use in further productions. But that would have made the Empire the underdog and Hollywood writers don't know how to do that for a thousand and eight reasons.

If was up to me I would have started with the Truce at Bakura, used that to recast everyone (one of the like two things Solo did right was recast Han) and introduce all the new kids to star wars with a low stakes story set right after Return of the Jedi. From there start a series of movies where the New Republic works its was through various warlords, starting with the Eriadu Authority and Tarkins family and moving north. Make the confrontations with Zsinj, Thrawn, and the reborn Emperor the "Avengers moves" of the franchise and spin off the Rouges, Wraiths (as spies or commandos rather than pilots), and some other side adventures as streaming series to take advantage of other genres in the Star Wars universe. If you pace yourself and stick to one movie a year you can sustainably farm Star Wars for the better part of two decades without even trying.

Click to expand...

They basically had two strategies that would've made sense:

1) Adapt the existing EU, in the form of a "re-imagining for the screen", where you can remove the really dumb bits and add some new bits. Make it all into a coherent whole that can be released (by and large) chronologically, at least as far as the post-RotJ era is concerned. (You can concurrently release other stuff set in the distant past, obviously.) I think it might even be worth it to go back and start with post-RotS works, and then just work forward through the years. This gives you a vast amount of source material, much of which can be adapted straight up, and the rest of which can easily be re-imagined to fit in a bit better. All sorts of continuity snarl from the EU can thus be edited out completely in this process. You'd have enough for many, many years worth of series and films. In the case of many established characters, this would require re-casting, or you'd have to go with some form of animation. (My own strong preference would be for the latter.)

2) Make a completely new continuity. In this case, borrow no elements from the old EU. Throw i all out the window, down to the handbooks and galactic maps and whatnot. Only the six Lucas films and (per his agreement with Disney) TCW now exist. Everything else is gone. Start from scratch and re-imagine the universe. It's explictly forbidden to bring back any EU character or concept. Do new stuff. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but at least you're standing on your own feet. This strategy can allow for sequels that take place a few decades after RotJ, thus avoiding the need for re-casting there. This allows you to capitalise on the 'star power' of the OT heroes. All other stories set in between Episodes VI and VII that feature them would still require re-casting, animation or CGI/deepfake voodoo, of course.

Naturally, Disney did none of this. They just made shittier versions of existing ideas. Nothing was original. They took good characters and made them shit. They took existing ideas and made them shit. They basically took SW... and made it shit.

"Star Wars" had an existing subcreation. To come up with anything requires one to abide by it.

Alan Dean Foster's "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" was interesting in that he only had the first movie to work with. Thus his descriptions of what The Force could and could not do were interesting; ultimately in the canon Luke COULD move things telekinetically but in that book he couldn't- Foster's view of The Force was that it could do a number of things but nobody could really do them all. Old Hallah could move things around, though.

But if one assumes the original trilogy and the prequels are canon then one must abide by them. The sequels did not. Yet, at the same time as pointed out above, nothing was really original- rather it was all twisted.

The Whispering Monk said:

I'd list those three movies as canon...they'd be Imperial Remnant propaganda.

Click to expand...

Hmmmm...not a bad idea...

There was a neat interview with Daisy Ridley that was published recently, titled Daisy Ridley's New Hope.

I thought most of the casting, Daisy included, did just fine in the Sequel Trilogy and casted well enough. The issues were... elsewhere. But let's dive in.

In fact, right off the bat, Daisy Ridley shows why she has natural aptitude of portraying a force user.

Inverse said:

"Honestly, the first time I watched myself on screen, I literally thought I ruined Star Wars," Ridley, 31, tells Inverse.

She laughs now as she recounts the then-traumatic experience of watching The Force Awakens for the first time, shortly before it hit theaters. The actor, then 23, had never before seen herself in a leading role — she'd previously booked only small TV roles and was working in a bar when cast — and was overwhelmed, crying on the flight home to London.

Click to expand...

You can see here, a clear example of method acting. She was utilizing force precognition and getting visions of the future that even she could not understand. She could only feel the breadth of corruption that was coming. Combined with her lack of formal training as a Jedi, she was unable to discern what these visions and premonitions actually meant and was unable to deal with the resulting emotions.

Inverse said:

Sometimes I Think About Dying follows a socially awkward office worker named Fran who yearns to connect with others but more often than not retreats into the safety and comfort of her own mind. Each day, sending emails and populating spreadsheets, Fran's morbid imagination casts her as a corpse, splayed out lifelessly in a dark forest or hanging from a crane she sees through the office window.

Click to expand...

Her new movie is apparently a biopic about The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson clearly heavy on metaphor and subversion!!!1

Inverse said:

Whether struggling through social interactions, suggesting her interior state through the smallest of gestures — eyes darting around or lost in deep space, hands fidgeting, voice dialed down to a whisper- as she sits hunched at her cubicle, or finding herself on the living room floor after a panic attack,

Click to expand...

Not sure if the article is talking about her new movie or Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi.

Okay... Okay but seriously. Look at this sage advice Director JJ Abrams gave Daisy Ridley prior to filming the first film of the Sequel Trilogy.

"Understand the scale," director J. J. Abrams had told her when he offered her the part of Rey. "This is not a role in a movie. This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable."

Click to expand...

Also... understand I've only written the first movie, not the whole planned trilogy," director J.J. Abrams later told her off the record.

Inverse said:

At the time, Ridley leaped at the opportunity, but she couldn't have known what was coming.

Click to expand...

Which is ironic, since no one else involved in the Sequel Trilogy knew what was coming either.

Inverse said:

by the time The Last Jedi opened, Ridley's anxiety was so severe that she'd developed holes in her stomach wall.

Click to expand...

Yeah... I'd probably be feeling just as much anxiety if I was the star of The Last Jedi as well, anticipating its release.

Inverse said:

"After the last Star Wars came out and everything was quiet, I was like, 'What the f*ck?'" Ridley recalls. "I was grieving." ... and of the time she'd invested in the franchise, was emotionally intense.

Click to expand...

This is important. We were all grieving, but Daisy Ridley was far more invested in this franchise then even many of the most hardcore fans. She wasn't just seeing the franchise being ruined over the better part of a decade, she was living in it.

Anyways... what is the future for Daisy Ridley? What is this NEW HOPE?

Inverse said:

what's next for Ridley? Well, as announced at a Star Wars celebration event in London last year, she's readying for her much-buzzed-about return to Star Wars, in a new film set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker that will, "tell the story of rebuilding the New Jedi Order and the powers that rise to tear it down."

Click to expand...

You know what... I'm going to give this an open mind. It's not up to Daisy Ridley as to whether the film will be good or not. She can only control her own performance, not the upcoming film trilogy itself. We should at least wait and see what Disney has learned from their previous mistakes in the Sequel Trilogy before judging this new trilogy. I mean they almost killed Daisy Ridley last time with the stress... they won't do that again. For all we know-

Inverse said:

Ridley has teased; she only knows the storyline for one film at present but isn't ruling out any involvement in potential, as-of-yet-unannounced sequels beyond that.

Click to expand...

Wait...

Inverse said:

Ridley has teased; she only knows the storyline for one film at present

Click to expand...

Inverse said:

ONLY KNOWS THE STORYLINE FOR ONE FILM AT PRESENT

Click to expand...

No... No... No... No.... Noooo... Nooo... No.

THEY'VE LEARNED NOTHING!!!



They're going to kill her... She' barely survived the filming first trilogy and now those fucking bastards are going to kill her...

Someone did a twelve hour analysis of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.



And no, I didn't watch it cuz by the Bedlam Spirits... that's really long.

It looks like a giant detailed lore analysis of the film, ranging from Gungun Wargear to referencing the Great Hyperspace War to the feminine programming of the Trade Federation protocol droid in the beginning of the film.

Thankfully the Youtuber made a pinned comment with a timestamped breakdown of everything they cover. So that's nice. Apparently it was an ongoing effort that made the video grow into the twelve hour long tumor it became.

Pleasant narrating voice, and describes Disney as "a certain vermin company" and "the foul rodent" within barely ten minutes. I'm sold on the merits of this project already.

It is interesting to see someone that is definitely trying to focus on the positives of the movie.

I think it gets a bit too into the minutiae of things. But still, a good effort for sure.

Skallagrim said:

describes Disney as "a certain vermin company" and "the foul rodent"

Click to expand...

Warhammer fans have taken to calling it “The Great Horned Rat.” It’s beautiful how many rodent insults people have come up with for Disney.

Lord Sovereign said:

Warhammer fans have taken to calling it “The Great Horned Rat.” It’s beautiful how many rodent insults people have come up with for Disney.

Click to expand...

That’s not fair….

The Great Horned Rat only betrays and eats some of its adherents, whereas the Verminous One has betrayed nearly everyone that actually liked their franchises.

Juries still out on whether it ate any of them, but I wouldn’t exactly put it past Disney the Verminous and its servant, Iger the Moronic.

Oh interesting.

I might have to give that twelve hour Phantom Menace analysis a watch over the next... Two or three months/years.

They do make good background watching these longer videos. But I think I've only seen one twelve hour video/stream before. And that too was quite recently and parceled out over a couple weeks.

Allanon said:

Look, if I had been in charge I would have considered the obvious: there is no possible way the Galactic Empire was going to just be gone after the Battle of Endor. Those Star Destroyers could not have been all the Empire had.

Click to expand...

Well if we confine ourselves to just the OT trilogy, since Disney wanted a fresh start as it were, I honestly don't see it that implausible the Empire would implode after Endor.

- The very fact the Empire needed to rule through fear and construct Death Stars in the first place suggests they lack the raw capability to enforce their authority via conventional means. That no matter how large the Imperial starfleet was it likely was rivaled if not exceeded by the million plus systems own local defense fleets.

-The Empire seems overwhelmingly unpopular with crowds celebrating Palpatine's death on Coruscant and even farmboy Luke, who has the most incentive to prioritize the centralizing order the Empire brings, having a negative view of the Empire.

-By the start of ROTJ at least the Rebellion is getting rather overt military aid from nominal member states of the Galactic Empire , ie Dac, with no immediate fear the Empire would just roll up with scores of ISDs and torch the place.

-The Empire had been dealt not one but two massive defeats in terms of manpower, prestige and resources. However big the Imperial Starfleet is, it is a fraction of how big it could have been had those resources not been sunk into, and then vaporized, with the Death Stars.

-Along with the above the Emperor himself has been slain with no successor meaning not only is there no coherent, singular vision for how to respond but there is a clear risk of fracturing and "Barrack-Emperors". Conversely the Rebellion/New Republic seem united in their opposition to the "Empire" with a clear leadership.

The bigger issue isn't so much that the Empire collapsed, its that Disney had no better idea than to just recreate it with the serial numbers filed off.

Lack of imagination pretty much defines anything made the last decade or so.

Crom's Black Blade said:

Well if we confine ourselves to just the OT trilogy, since Disney wanted a fresh start as it were, I honestly don't see it that implausible the Empire would implode after Endor.

- The very fact the Empire needed to rule through fear and construct Death Stars in the first place suggests they lack the raw capability to enforce their authority via conventional means. That no matter how large the Imperial starfleet was it likely was rivaled if not exceeded by the million plus systems own local defense fleets.

-The Empire seems overwhelmingly unpopular with crowds celebrating Palpatine's death on Coruscant and even farmboy Luke, who has the most incentive to prioritize the centralizing order the Empire brings, having a negative view of the Empire.

-By the start of ROTJ at least the Rebellion is getting rather overt military aid from nominal member states of the Galactic Empire , ie Dac, with no immediate fear the Empire would just roll up with scores of ISDs and torch the place.

-The Empire had been dealt not one but two massive defeats in terms of manpower, prestige and resources. However big the Imperial Starfleet is, it is a fraction of how big it could have been had those resources not been sunk into, and then vaporized, with the Death Stars.

-Along with the above the Emperor himself has been slain with no successor meaning not only is there no coherent, singular vision for how to respond but there is a clear risk of fracturing and "Barrack-Emperors". Conversely the Rebellion/New Republic seem united in their opposition to the "Empire" with a clear leadership.

The bigger issue isn't so much that the Empire collapsed, its that Disney had no better idea than to just recreate it with the serial numbers filed off.

Click to expand...

That's very true, but doesn't that align perfectly with @Allanon's projection of "petty kingdoms" arising? You call them "barracks emperors", but that's essentially the same thing.

Despite its various faults and weaknesses, the original EU generally presents a plausible sequence of events, which fits into this expectation. Immediately after Endor, a number of military leaders -- both major and minor -- turn warlord and start carving out their own petty kingdoms. Meanwhile, the official government is in disarray because Palpatine had no real succession scheme in place. Various cliques fight a war of assassins. Which is won by a chief spook (Isard), who never steps out of the specific mentality of running a brutal dictatorship's secret police, and is as such unfit to actually govern properly under the given circumstances.

Granted, there are several Imperial resurgences-- and that's plausible, since that regime has been in charge for a quarter-century, so it has at least some degree of institutional depth, while an entire generation has been indocrinated from infancy, and the older generation remembers the chaos of the Clone Wars...

But overall, after Endor, the Imperials are fighting a losing battle, and the New Republic is ascendant. The main weakness of the New Republic is that it's so loose a confederation, with conflicting interests that prevent it from being a massive militarist powerhouse that just crushes the Imperial remnant(s). Of course, that's by design, because above all else, the New Republic wants to avoid becoming too much like the Empire. They make a deliberate decision to take it all relatively slowly, and to suffer the existence of one or more Imperial successor states (if sufficiently disarmed), rather than risk becoming the very thing they wanted to destroy.

All of which, taken as a whole, makes a lot of sense, and provides a compelling narrative. One that I feel reflects both your reasoning and @Allanon's.

Skallagrim said:

That's very true, but doesn't that align perfectly with @Allanon's projection of "petty kingdoms" arising? You call them "barracks emperors", but that's essentially the same thing.

Click to expand...

I would say no, @Allanon 's view, at least as I understood it, was that much like in the old EU the Empire wouldn't evaporate post-Endor but have a long, drawn out fight of years if not decades ending with an Imperial Remnant. That the Empire simply has enough resources to consolidate its holdings and for the "petty kingdoms" to solidify back together even as they fight against the New Republic.

Conversely my view was that even at its height with its fully military power undivided the Empire, in essence, lacks the resources to actually enforce the writ of its laws. Its the six hundred pound gorilla that can drop kick any one system but if all or even if a majority told them to pound sand the Empire would be up the creek. Hence the need for a superweapon to force the systems in line.

Post-Endor I would imagine it would be the Empire with "resource allotment problems" rather than the Republic as system after system either openly revolts against the seemingly universally unpopular Imperials or plays neutral to see who wins forcing the Empire to squander men and material fortifying their own territory. A burden the New Republic seemingly wouldn't share.

As such I truly don't think the "Barracks Emperors" would live long enough to form their own petty kingdoms anymore than Rome's Barracks Emperors did. Rather they would be another drain of dwindling resources from in-fighting and easy targets to be picked off by the much more singular in vision New Republic or any regional, "nationalist" polity.

Skallagrim said:

and that's plausible, since that regime has been in charge for a quarter-century, so it has at least some degree of institutional depth, while an entire generation has been indocrinated from infancy, and the older generation remembers the chaos of the Clone Wars...

Click to expand...

Well my point would be that we don't see this indoctrination. Luke is of that generation you speak of and shows no love for the Empire nor does his friend Biggs. And again these are Outer Rim peasants who would be the most likely to appreciate a strong, centralizing authority to maintain order.

Similarly memories of the Clone Wars, a war fought for the ideals of the Republic, would likely hurt the Empire since the CIS were more or less just the autocratic GE but with more alien overlords. If anything the Republic could capitalize on the fond memories of Clone Troopers liberating worlds from CIS tyranny contrasted with the ruthless actions of Stormtroopers once Palpatine effectively pulled a putsch against the Jedi and, to a lesser extent, the Senate forming the Empire.

Skallagrim said:

Despite its various faults and weaknesses, the original EU generally presents a plausible sequence of events, which fits into this expectation

Click to expand...

The EU ultimately had the need for an ongoing story and thus required an Empire to still exist whereas Lucas did not at least to the same extent. That isn't to say the EU version of events are bad merely that they were not the only or even more plausible chain of events if we're using the films as our launch point.

Crom's Black Blade said:

Well my point would be that we don't see this indoctrination. Luke is of that generation you speak of and shows no love for the Empire nor does his friend Biggs. And again these are Outer Rim peasants who would be the most likely to appreciate a strong, centralizing authority to maintain order.

Click to expand...

What good is a strong, centralizing authority if the Empire takes it over. You know they already started to nationalize commerce in the central systems? Won't be long before those peasants are just tenants, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire.

In the EU, the Core generally supported the Empire until the destruction of Alderaan. Sidious was actually aghast when he heard what Tarkin had done, and according to Mara, if the Alliance leadership didn't surrender or was destroyed promptly, Sidious planned to make Tarkin a scapegoat for it. Alderaan's destruction was not planned, as while Sidious definitely enjoyed the Force screaming at the simultaneous death of billions, the political damage just ran too deep for the personal satisfaction to be worth anything.

Also, the Empire in the EU was, despite its own claims to the contrary, even more decentralized than the Old Republic. It was pretty much a feudal empire in all but name, thanks to Sidious' efforts to dilute (at best) the Senate's authority, and his own preference for ambitious and powerful vassals that he could pit against each other, reducing the threat to his power while also allowing them to wield power and influence they had proven they could win, in accordance with Sith philosophy. Just off the top of my head, the various power blocs included the old Human nobles (basically COMPNOR in the EU, really), the corporations (ironic, I know), the various Moffs and Grand Moffs, Imperial Intelligence (basically the Isards), and of course, the military. Hell, there were already pocket kingdoms even before Endor, the Outer Rim was essentially Tarkin's personal fiefdom before he got blown to dust at Yavin*, and of course, there was the Empire of the Hand in the Unknown Regions, among others.

*Something that greatly disappointed the Emperor, and not because Tarkin failed to destroy the Alliance leadership, but because he couldn't torture and publicly execute Tarkin for his bungle at Alderaan.