Lets talk all things Star Wars

[HeartBlade]

HeartBlade what body switching Sci-fi movie?

Tried to be vague but Matrix. I really wonder how the pitch went because I remember it was a “hacking movie” when it was advertised to me. But anyway, weird sci-fi vs known property the wild Wild West.

Although Matrix with Smith likely wouldn’t have been the stellar movie it was with Keanu.

 

[harrisonp]

Ah gotcha, I didn’t immediately make that connection obviously.

 

[ghostryder]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1328850406445813760

 

[Psab keel]

That's nothing compared to the body count in Revenge of the Sith. Plus in that movie you witness the murders first hand, and not just the aftermath.

Not that I'm a fan of Episode 3 but I don't find this scene in 8 as impactful.

 

[ThreadSketch]

That's nothing compared to the body count in Revenge of the Sith. Plus in that movie you witness the murders first hand, and not just the aftermath.

Not that I'm a fan of Episode 3 but I don't find this scene in 8 as impactful.

Instead of being impactful it's just frustrating. We got the Diet Coke of Order 66 just to hit the reset button on the Jedi yet again.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Well that was the point, to reboot the whole thing to ANH 2.0. They didn't want Jedi, they wanted the lone master the student would seek out. The exact opposite of what the OT was setting up with Luke.

 

[harrisonp]

The massacre at the academy could have also actually BEEN IN THE MOVIE. Apologists always say “well they’re 30 years older so you can’t do XYZ story” but Luke absolutely could have had a successful training temple full of students that is at some point besieged by a masked lightsaber wielder. Later in the movie we would learn that Kylo Ren was Luke’s nephew that he believed was lost/killed on a mission as a padawan. Rey and Finn could have been some of the survivors who fight alongside Luke against this new dark threat and his followers. Heck make it so Luke and his students were searching for The First Jedi when Ben was lost, and that “Jedi” turned out to be Snoke, an ancient sith in a Force stasis.

 

[Psab keel]

That would have been really cool! I am just shocked at how little imagination the ST showed. The above post peaked my interest more than anything I saw in the new movies and I've seen this happen often where fans have proposed some interesting story idea that ended up being far better than what we got.

 

[ThreadSketch]

Disney: we're making Star Wars "cool" again!
Anybody on the internet with 1 brain cell, 5 minutes of free time, and 20/20 hindsight: hold my beer

 

[Psab keel]

Even the Mandalorian, though far from perfect, proved that new types of stories could be made and didn't need to totally destroy the mythos in order to be successful.

 

[harrisonp]

A key element for me would also be the discrediting of Leia in front of the New Republic senate in the midst of calls for decentralizing their forces. Leia would be in favor of maintaining their strong govt while others claim it is overreach. Kylo Ren and his knights or whoever would burst in and blow the lid off her lineage, sowing seeds of doubt once people know she’s the daughter of Vader. I do think Bloodline(s?) touched on some of that but I haven’t read it. This would make the whole splintered off Resistance thing make sense.

 

[Psab keel]

Yeah it was very unclear what the Resistance was and why it was removed from the New Republic. At least in the film. Perhaps they delved into the difference between the two in the novel for TFA or some other novels leading up to it, but in the final cut of the movie it's never explained.

The other thing is that the reveal of Vader being Luke and Leia's father to the galaxy might make the New Republic distrust them but I would imagine it would make people trust them more if only for the fact that the two spend most of their adult lives trying to defeat Vader and the Empire. Leia especially because she headed up the Alliance. You'd think that would count for something, despite her lineage. Besides she wasn't raised by Vader, nor was Luke. Both were raised by loving families that gave them a moral compass to combat evil, risking their lives time and again to defeat it.

I suppose from a political view it would be a way for dissent to brew but I was never keen on the idea that the galaxy was so quick to dismiss Leia or Luke because of who their father was given their key roles in bringing peace to the galaxy by the end of ROTJ.

 

[harrisonp]

I can see where you’re coming from for sure, and it’s probably a more sure path not needing to rely on fickle politics at the heart of your story. I think I just get frustrated with how entirely apolitical (in universe) they made the sequel movies. It smacks of back pedaling from the “boring” elements of the prequels.

 

[robn1]

All of this should have been the plot of Episode 7.

The massacre at the academy could have also actually BEEN IN THE MOVIE. Apologists always say “well they’re 30 years older so you can’t do XYZ story” but Luke absolutely could have had a successful training temple full of students that is at some point besieged by a masked lightsaber wielder. Later in the movie we would learn that Kylo Ren was Luke’s nephew that he believed was lost/killed on a mission as a padawan. Rey and Finn could have been some of the survivors who fight alongside Luke against this new dark threat and his followers. Heck make it so Luke and his students were searching for The First Jedi when Ben was lost, and that “Jedi” turned out to be Snoke, an ancient sith in a Force stasis.

A key element for me would also be the discrediting of Leia in front of the New Republic senate in the midst of calls for decentralizing their forces. Leia would be in favor of maintaining their strong govt while others claim it is overreach. Kylo Ren and his knights or whoever would burst in and blow the lid off her lineage, sowing seeds of doubt once people know she’s the daughter of Vader. I do think Bloodline(s?) touched on some of that but I haven’t read it. This would make the whole splintered off Resistance thing make sense.

 

[Joek3rr]

Well that was the point, to reboot the whole thing to ANH 2.0. They didn't want Jedi, they wanted the lone master the student would seek out. The exact opposite of what the OT was setting up with Luke.

The massacre at the academy could have also actually BEEN IN THE MOVIE. Apologists always say “well they’re 30 years older so you can’t do XYZ story” but Luke absolutely could have had a successful training temple full of students that is at some point besieged by a masked lightsaber wielder. Later in the movie we would learn that Kylo Ren was Luke’s nephew that he believed was lost/killed on a mission as a padawan. Rey and Finn could have been some of the survivors who fight alongside Luke against this new dark threat and his followers. Heck make it so Luke and his students were searching for The First Jedi when Ben was lost, and that “Jedi” turned out to be Snoke, an ancient sith in a Force stasis.

That would have been really cool! I am just shocked at how little imagination the ST showed. The above post peaked my interest more than anything I saw in the new movies and I've seen this happen often where fans have proposed some interesting story idea that ended up being far better than what we got.

But there is a lot of imagination. Go through art books, dig up all behind the scenes tweets. It's not like they sat down and wrote one draft and proceeded to film. According to Pablo Hildago episode 7 was going to show Ben's fall and the destruction of Luke's Jedi. With Darth Talon seducing Ben to the dark side. There's a lot of different ideas they explored. But there was big change that had a domino effect on the rest of trilogy. And that was Michael Arndt having Luke not appear until the end of 7. That single change means a big shift in the timeline. All that stuff about Ben and Luke's Jedi Academy become things that happened in the past. And play right into JJ's mystery box style.

 

[Psab keel]

The key difference is that all those interesting developments in the creation of the story show more imagination than what the films ended up being. Brainstorming in the form of written drafts, pre production art work, set design etc are great but they are essentially meaningless with the end result.

Which is why I'm always harping on about judging the movies as they are presented and not delving too much into how they were made because it's irrelevant if the outcome of those efforts differed so drastically from their original iteration.

The phrase, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" seems acutely applied here. You can't make a judgement on a piece of art based solely on the intention of the artist, no matter how well meaning. It may be a factor in how you critique it, but ultimately the work has to speak for itself. Constantly having to justify creative choices made in order to prop up the success of the story, only further exposes it's weaknesses.

Either a story works or it doesn't. To break it down as simply as I can here are the criteria for how I make a judgement on whether a story is good or not.

1. Is the premise interesting?
2. Do I relate to the characters?
3. Does the story effectively follow the basic structure of fiction?
4. If it's a specific genre, does it honor the tropes of said genre in a meaningful way?
5. If it's part if a series, does its continuity match the other installments of the story.
6. Is the theme of the story evident and how well is that theme presented?
7. Am I enjoying the story while watching or reading it?

 

[ThreadSketch]

Key establishing plot points should never be relegated to supplementary material. Period. Your average moviegoer is not going to pick up every tie-in novel, visual dictionary, comic book, etc.; only a certain subset (however large it may be) of the fandom is going to bother with that. If a film hasn't incorporated and displayed vitally important information that impacts the universe/worldbuilding, it's failed.

This would be akin to shoving the Vader paternity revelation offscreen into a book or comic and then expecting us to care about the stakes when the films carry on around it.

 

[Psab keel]

That's exactly it. The number one rule in effective fiction. Show, don't tell. It applies probably moreso to movies and television than it does books because those are visual mediums.

 

[Joek3rr]

1. Is the premise interesting?
2. Do I relate to the characters?
3. Does the story effectively follow the basic structure of fiction?
4. If it's a specific genre, does it honor the tropes of said genre in a meaningful way?
5. If it's part if a series, does its continuity match the other installments of the story.
6. Is the theme of the story evident and how well is that theme presented?
7. Am I enjoying the story while watching or reading it?

Oooh I like this list!

I guess this is where a large dose of subjective opinion comes to play. But for me the Sequels are 7 out of 7, for me. Obviously not everyone is going to agree.

 

[Psab keel]

Thank you I appreciate that. Back when I started working on my novel I did a lot of research and tried to come up with questions that would help me develop my writing. Through that I came up with these questions and others to see if what I was doing worked or not and where I could improve.

I think they apply really well to just about 99% of stories whether they are books, television, movies, etc. The other 1% would be judged differently because they are either not clearly set in a specific genre, or they are art house type of stories that are merely trying elicit a distinct emotion, convey a complex idea that is usually ambiguous, or purposefully trying to provoke you and not really have a theme.