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

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Lord Sovereign

Lord Sovereign

The resident Britbong
Stormies should be the United States Marine Corps in Space: very elite light infantry used for commando roles and storming enemy positions.

By the way, Nazi Germany is a really bad comparison. The Wehrmacht was still in essence a Prussian army whilst the SS armoured divisions were ferocious opponents in battle.

Edit: Palpatine is a cackling evil goblin who ferociously beats his meat to the suffering of others, but he knows his empire can't operate without a functional military.
 
Jaenera Targaryen

Jaenera Targaryen

Well-known member
f1onagher said:
My problem with all this is that it assumes that Stormtroopers are the majority of the Imperial ground forces. They are not, the Imperial army always gets jobbed but they make up the vast majority of the non-Navy Imperial military, and if you're looking for the SS analogs look no further than the ISB and their various task forces. The Stormtroopers are explicitly modeled after German Sturmtruppen (all the way down to the silly mess kit on their backs) and even under the Nazis those soldiers were elite specialists. Reducing your evil bad guys to a bunch of incompetent caricatures does the heroes, the setting, and the audience a disservice because it implies that only by the antagonist being a bunch of useless boobs could the good guys win or the audience appreciate the struggle.

Star Wars needs to remember that the empire has goons other than Stormtroopers. There are Imperial Regulars, Navy Troopers, ISB agents, and many flavors of corporate security that can be used. Andor had the right idea about all this but lacked the discipline to run with it. Unless you're Luke Skywalker or another member of Alliance high command you should not see Stormtroopers at all unless the shavit has truly hit the fan.
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Hey, if you want complete morons, there's COMPForce. COMPNOR's private army, the training program of which literally plays up to both in-universe and meta sci-fi cliches and caricatures about 'the Spartan Way' or 'Training from Hell', resulting in a steep death rate for trainees with most survivors flunking out of the program. Those that stay, despite what those cliches and caricatures claim, are complete garbage as soldiers, to the point that even Stormtroopers saw them useful only as cannon fodder.

Simply put, Stormtroopers, while outside of the regular military's chain of command, were still a military. The Emperor's private army, as it were, but they were soldiers. COMPForce were a bunch of abused ideologues given guns and with enough survival instincts to be trusted not to shoot themselves in the foot, but were otherwise useless on the battlefield.

EDIT: It's telling that while the Imperial Remnant retained the ISB, they didn't bother reconstituting COMPForce. In fact, out of COMPNOR's various branches, only the ISB stayed on in the Imperial Remnant, and the Fel Empire it eventually evolved into.
 
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Jaenera Targaryen

Jaenera Targaryen

Well-known member
Typhonis said:
That is not a mess kit analog. On German soldiers the long round canister was the housing for their gas mask. On a stormtrooper I always thought it was a compressed air supply or re-breather for NBC warfare.
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Air supply, actually. The armor is vacuum and underwater-rated, but only for a limited time and down only to a certain depth. Again, there were specialized variants of armor designed for void and deep water operations.

Seriously, it's not hard to look this up, on the Legends version of Wookiepedia. I had a blast researching this while writing my ST/SW crossover.
 
Crom's Black Blade

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
f1onagher said:
My problem with all this is that it assumes that Stormtroopers are the majority of the Imperial ground forces.
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Well to be fair they more or less are in the films and even the EU barely remembers the Imperial army exists.

f1onagher said:
The Stormtroopers are explicitly modeled after German Sturmtruppen (all the way down to the silly mess kit on their backs) and even under the Nazis those soldiers were elite specialists.
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They clearly took some inspiration from them, being Stormtroopers, but if we're talking about how they're actually portrayed the seem closer to a Marines analogue operating in ship actions and "amphibious" assaults like on Hoth with the Snowtroopers. Nothing in the films suggests the Stormtroopers are particularly "elite specialists" and this is carried over in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars where Lucas depicted the Clonetroopers as closer to rank and file soldiers rather than special elites.

f1onagher said:
Reducing your evil bad guys to a bunch of incompetent caricatures does the heroes, the setting, and the audience a disservice because it implies that only by the antagonist being a bunch of useless boobs could the good guys win or the audience appreciate the struggle.
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This I would strenuously disagree with. Merely because Stormtroopers serve the role of spearmen in the films doesn't make them incompetent caricatures. The Stormtroopers are an intimidating threat to our heroes just a surmountable one so that we, the audience, never truly fear for the heroes safety.

That they are a "safe" threat much like the Droids were in the Clone Wars. Like I said, Star Wars is, at its core, Pulp fantasy. It isn't a military sci-fi where tactics and the benefit ratio of certain armors versus blaster energy consumption really matter to the narrative over things like Good triumphing over Evil.

Which is why Andor has the divided reaction it has because it isn't really Star Wars. Its an unrelated scifi show giving a Star Wars makeover.
 
Captain X

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
Lucas has shown he's been creatively bankrupt since he made the "Special Editions" and the Prequels. It continues to mystify me why people keep making excuses for him. True enough, he expressed some regret for selling Star Wars to Disney after the Sequels, but like they say, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.
 
Lord Sovereign

Lord Sovereign

The resident Britbong
Captain X said:
Lucas has shown he's been creatively bankrupt since he made the "Special Editions" and the Prequels. It continues to mystify me why people keep making excuses for him. True enough, he expressed some regret for selling Star Wars to Disney after the Sequels, but like they say, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.
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He is also a boomer, a chronic one at that, who likely thinks “what’s so bad about diversity?”
 
Agent23

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Captain X said:
Lucas has shown he's been creatively bankrupt since he made the "Special Editions" and the Prequels. It continues to mystify me why people keep making excuses for him. True enough, he expressed some regret for selling Star Wars to Disney after the Sequels, but like they say, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.
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I do not think he was that creative to begin with.

Star Wars is basically a fanfic of the Three Bandits of the Hidden Fortress with elements of Dune, Asimov and Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers thrown in, and probably some influence from Trek, too, of which Lukas was a fan.


He also had a lot of help creating and polishing the ideas and then the actual movies.


So, yeah, turns out he was always a hack that hit it lucky 3 times.
 
Crom's Black Blade

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
Agent23 said:
So, yeah, if you haven't heard yet, but Lukas just screwed Star Wars, Marvel, the rest of Disney and gave his proxies to Igor and joined the ESG woke buffoons.

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Not ideal, and I would be curious as to his motivations, but ultimately I don't think it effects my view of the man. His politics were, to my knowledge, always to the Left so that is what it us.

I will always respect him for his vision and for the fun world he created. That like Ray Harryhausen before him he taught little boys they could dream of wonder and excitment.
 
Agent23

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Crom's Black Blade said:
Not ideal, and I would be curious as to his motivations, but ultimately I don't think it effects my view of the man. His politics were, to my knowledge, always to the Left so that is what it us.

I will always respect him for his vision and for the fun world he created. That like Ray Harryhausen before him he taught little boys they could dream of wonder and excitment.
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He took several masterpieces, chopped them up, stuck them in a hero's journey Korusawa-themed mold, which other people improved greatly on the way, just take a look at the comic "The Star Wars" and compare it with what we got, and that was it.

Ultimately, my view towards him is now the same as Conan's is towards his god.



Give me good entertainment, and/or grant me revenge, if you don't listen, the hell with you!

Lukas was not the first to produce a space opera or an epic fantasy, he will not be the last, and the more he and his generation and kind fuck up, the more of a market to satisfy there will be.
The bigger the unserved market, the more people will want in on it.


People should stop fetishising writers, and movie stars and all the other assorted flotsom.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, they are making a product that people must enjoy for it to be a commercial success.


If they will not, somebody else will.

If they use PR methods such as the media, government bullshit, external sources of financing that keep them afloat for a while and isolate them temporarily from marked forces and monopolistic and oligopolistic practices sooner or later the consumers will flock to some other industry or somebody will find a way to breach through their barriers to entry, or people will start buying the product from abroad, via contraband if necessary.

As to Hollywood, as Razorfist pointed out, it was always red!

The thing is, once upon a time, they knew to keep their politics out of their product and to make a more or less watchable product.

Now, they have gone full woke, and while I might disagree with Razorfist on the precedence between that step and the going broke step, I agree that eventually, in this case probably sooner rather than later, they will croak!

I am Agent23, Crom-fucking-speed, now get out!
 
Crom's Black Blade

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
Agent23 said:
He took several masterpieces, chopped them up, stuck them in a hero's journey Korusawa-themed mold, which other people improved greatly on the way, just take a look at the comic "The Star Wars" and compare it with what we got, and that was it.

Ultimately, my view towards him is now the same as Conan's is towards his god.



Give me good entertainment, and/or grant me revenge, if you don't listen, the hell with you!

Lukas was not the first to produce a space opera or an epic fantasy, he will not be the last, and the more he and his generation and kind fuck up, the more of a market to satisfy there will be.
The bigger the unserved market, the more people will want in on it.


People should stop fetishising writers, and movie stars and all the other assorted flotsom.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, they are making a product that people must enjoy for it to be a commercial success.


If they will not, somebody else will.

If they use PR methods such as the media, government bullshit, external sources of financing that keep them afloat for a while and isolate them temporarily from marked forces and monopolistic and oligopolistic practices sooner or later the consumers will flock to some other industry or somebody will find a way to breach through their barriers to entry, or people will start buying the product from abroad, via contraband if necessary.

As to Hollywood, as Razorfist pointed out, it was always red!

The thing is, once upon a time, they knew to keep their politics out of their product and to make a more or less watchable product.

Now, they have gone full woke, and while I might disagree with Razorfist on the precedence between that step and the going broke step, I agree that eventually, in this case probably sooner rather than later, they will croak!

I am Agent23, Crom-fucking-speed, now get out!
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I feel like 3/4th of this had nothing to do with what I said bordering on "old man yells at clouds" and the remainder...I'd say Star Wars is more than the sum of its parts. That is is not just Korusawa films spliced with WWII footage.

I enjoy Star Wars and I respect Lucas for creating it. I admire having a dream and seeing it realized, to construct something that will inspire future generations. Just like the serials of his youth inspired him.

If you don't that's fine. You do you. But that's not me.
 
Agent23

Agent23

Ни шагу назад!
Crom's Black Blade said:
I feel like 3/4th of this had nothing to do with what I said bordering on "old man yells at clouds" and the remainder...I'd say Star Wars is more than the sum of its parts. That is is not just Korusawa films spliced with WWII footage.

I enjoy Star Wars and I respect Lucas for creating it. I admire having a dream and seeing it realized, to construct something that will inspire future generations. Just like the serials of his youth inspired him.

If you don't that's fine. You do you. But that's not me.
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And I enjoyed Star Wars too, once.

But then we had prequels and sequels and somebody "selling his children to slavers" then defending those same slaves from those who would kick them out.


I am addressing your respect for the guy and you bemoaning that he has fallen.

Then I am going off on a rant about woke Hollywood and "creatives" with oversized egos pushing their stupid politics on the audience.

And the "outro" is a humorous allusion to 2 YouTube cultural commentators I rather like.
 
Husky_Khan

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Agent23 said:
He took several masterpieces, chopped them up, stuck them in a hero's journey Korusawa-themed mold, which other people improved greatly on the way, just take a look at the comic "The Star Wars" and compare it with what we got, and that was it.

I am Agent23, Crom-fucking-speed, now get out!
Click to expand...

Agent23 said:
I do not think he was that creative to begin with.

Star Wars is basically a fanfic of the Three Bandits of the Hidden Fortress with elements of Dune, Asimov and Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers thrown in, and probably some influence from Trek, too, of which Lukas was a fan.

He also had a lot of help creating and polishing the ideas and then the actual movies.

So, yeah, turns out he was always a hack that hit it lucky 3 times.
Click to expand...

So "now" that we know George Lucas politics we can safely say Star Wars is just Kurosawa ripoff trash he ripped off lol?

Hopefully no one realizes Gene Roddenberry, JMS, RA Salvatore, Bryan Fuller, Michael Stackpole, Michael Moorcock, Paul Verhoeven, James Cameron, Stan Lee, Ronald D. Moore, Eric Flint, George Orwell, Hideo Kojima, Harry Turtledove etc are also liberal and we can post facto say their work is trash now because Razorfist and guy with mask (Doomcock?) made us aware of such decades after the fact.

I've lost all respect for their accomplishments something something.

Just read Heinlein and Dune over and over again I guess.
 
Crom's Black Blade

Crom's Black Blade

Well-known member
Agent23 said:
I am addressing your respect for the guy and you bemoaning that he has fallen
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I don't think I'm "bemoaning" anything. I acknowledged Lucas action then noted how it largely didn't matter to my opinion of him.

That what I respect him for has nothing to do with his politics.

Agent23 said:
And the "outro" is a humorous allusion to 2 YouTube cultural commentators I rather
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Oh I got the reference, I quite enjoy Razorfist, his rants and the coming Iron Age
 
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