Ohhh, that's good rationalizing around the 1970s costume & filming limitations . . .
Yeah, I heard about this too although not sure how canonical it is.
Palps was mad that Vader screwed up and lost to someone "significantly" weaker than him (Obi Wan) and getting mutilated in the process. He was still powerful but his full potential was impacted significantly, hence why he purposefully had Vader in an ill-fitted cybernetic suit so he would be in pain every time he moved and needed to adjust to his larger and stiffer movements. The pain also fueled his dark side and made him more powerful.
I don't think anyone need be beholden to George's ideas for the sequels. I mean, some of what I heard made me think "Man, I'm glad they didn't make that." But that said, what George always brought was soul to his work. Good or bad, it always came from a genuine, earnest place and one that went beyond merely "vibes."
I dont mean Disney had to completely take Lucas' treatments verbatim and shoot but it was the story he proposed. As we discussed, he has both great ideas and bad ones so they could have used it as a basis to build the sequel trilogy. Instead, they chose to do it completely themselves, had the gall to ask him to review it so he clearly noticed that his treatments were trashed, then said they had "no guidance" when making the ST to justify why its not as successful as the MCU.
Here I strongly disagree. I don't think anyone was any more of a "Mary Sue" than Luke or Anakin were "Gary Stus". I also don't think it's a problem to want to expand the audience beyond just little boys and to include little girls. I don't think that was ever part of the problem with the ST. I do think you identify the bigger problems below, though.
Luke and Anakin suffer pretty significant setbacks and struggles during their time in the story. Luke struggles to get in touch with the force and even moving rocks was tough. Hence he sees how much he still has to learn when Yoda easily lifts the X-wing when he could not. It then becomes clear how much stronger and confident he has become in RotJ compared to ESB.
Anakin's story is about suffering. He believes he is entitled to success because he is the one and is super arrogant but gets put in his place multiple times. Makes quite a good villain as a result because he is constantly working harder to get stronger and improve. He is talented but loses to those with more wisdom.
We really dont see Rey struggle or have difficulty doing things. She gets a hang of the force pretty quickly, doing things in TFA that Luke couldnt do until RotJ despite no guidance or a teacher. Apart from some funny moments, we dont have Luke actually sit down and teach Rey but she essentially steals the books and learns on her own. She never loses a fight. She is able to fix the falcon easily. Anakin is supposed to be a Gary Stu and even he struggles more.
There is a difference between "expanding" the audience and redirecting. Expanding means introducing more characters to appeal to new prospective customers while keeping the keys to retain the original audience. ST basically forgoes men to prioritize women with the men mostly being idiots and incompetent while the women are always right and powerful (Rey, Holdo, Leia vs Finn, Poe, Han, Luke).
Doing this well would be Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol including women on the team so more women would be interested in the movie while still keeping Tom Cruise as the main character kicking ass.
I gotta be honest...most of the EU I experienced was, well, crap. Mediocre fan fic that didn't deserve to be retained and certainly shouldn't bind the filmmakers. The more they lifted actual storylines from the EU, the more pissy the fans would've been about why didn't they do this when they did that and so on and so forth. The "worldbuilding" aspects of some of the EU -- much of which was created by the folks at West End Games -- is amazing and worth preserving. The actual stories themselves, though...with a few exceptions are all "mediocre to terrible." Now, granted, I didn't read anything after about 1999, so I don't know about the later EU stuff. But I do know that there was just so damn much of it that it didn't make sense to keep it....unless they did what I'd originally kinda hoped for, which is to fling the story waaaaaaaay far into the future, like, 4-6 generations removed from the OT heroes, to the point where the are figures of legend, and then tell the story. That'd preserve: (1) the EU itself, (2) the "happily ever after" aspect of the original heroes, and (3) the ability to tell new stories without being hemmed in by garbage EU material (or good EU material, for that matter).
I agree not everything or even most of the stuff in the EU wasnt good. There was still alot of stuff people liked (Thrawn being a big one) that they could have used as inspiration on how to take the ST. I actually think villains like Thrawn would have been better than rehashing the Sith vs Jedi conflict. Lucas did use history to tell his story and after a monopoly power collapses (aka the Empire), its not suddenly peace but often a squabble among various factions vying for power. How the Galaxy would return to rule and how that government system would be post-Empire would be interesting and also something only Leia could do (doubt farm boy Luke understands enough of the intricacies of galactic politics), hence would have made Leia the "protagonist" of the ST like they wanted.
Yeah, I think the cast was fantastic. They're incredibly charismatic and fun to watch and I'd love to see more of them in better stories. And yes, that includes Kelly Marie Tran, whom I think was done dirty by some really disgusting aspects of the "fandom" (and, if you credit some of the rumors, by Carrie Fisher's death and various editing decisions). The look of the sequel trilogy was generally good, but also "safe" in many respects. I used to dislike the slick look of the prequels, but I have to say that in hindsight I appreciate that they were really trying for something different and expanding the view of what the Star Wars universe is. With these films, it was "like the old stuff, but new, but just like the old, but also new."
I agree. I did not like Tran's character but that isnt the fault of the actor. She is just doing a job and its not her fault she got a mouthpiece character. Same for Bodegya as Finn.
