Lets talk all things Star Wars
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HeartBlade
Sr Member
Still sold a gun to an assassin lol. I mean I do get it. Vader is one of the greatest threats to peace in the galaxy and his death is necessary to reestablish peace from the Jedi’s perspective. Luke is the only one with the potential to take down Vader (and maybe Leia) and telling him could result in Luke hesitating to attack Vader or even refuse to do so.
But let’s say Luke did kill Vader by his hand and with his dying breath, reveals that he is Luke’s dad. Luke was devastated from the reveal in ESB. I think actually killing him and find out would be even more devastating, driven further by the fact that his trusted mentors lied to him. Luke would be another prime candidate for Palpatine to turn into a Sith.
patrickivan
Sr Member
Oh ******, this nonsense about the good guys being bad...
Star Wars is about good vs evil. Simple. But people want to project their ideals and perspective of the real world into every little thing about a fantasy series literally about good versus evil.
But ever since the sequel trilogy, this notion that the sequel trilogy Jedi were all pretty much corrupt and THAT led to their downfall, has just completely snowballed into an avalanche.
The dark side had grown so strong, that the Jedi were blinded by what was going on around them. Simple. Bad was overwhelming good. It wasn't arrogance. Unlike my post here
Good was practically destroyed. Hero's rose up to fight the dark/ evil. Good defeats evil.
The god damned wheel of good vs bad.
Yoda and Ben "using" Luke to confront Vader was semantics. From their perspective and Vader's, Anakin was dead. He's more machine now than man. What they didn't understand was Luke's incredible power was more than just with the Force. It was his incredible love and compassion, and so much so, for someone he didn't even know other than as a tyrannical villain in the galaxy.
Yoda and Ben's intent clearly wasn't to manipulate Luke. They were guiding him as best they could considering their limited abilities. Ya know, dead and on the verge of death.
Star Wars is about good vs evil. Simple. But people want to project their ideals and perspective of the real world into every little thing about a fantasy series literally about good versus evil.
But ever since the sequel trilogy, this notion that the sequel trilogy Jedi were all pretty much corrupt and THAT led to their downfall, has just completely snowballed into an avalanche.
The dark side had grown so strong, that the Jedi were blinded by what was going on around them. Simple. Bad was overwhelming good. It wasn't arrogance. Unlike my post here
Good was practically destroyed. Hero's rose up to fight the dark/ evil. Good defeats evil.
The god damned wheel of good vs bad.
Yoda and Ben "using" Luke to confront Vader was semantics. From their perspective and Vader's, Anakin was dead. He's more machine now than man. What they didn't understand was Luke's incredible power was more than just with the Force. It was his incredible love and compassion, and so much so, for someone he didn't even know other than as a tyrannical villain in the galaxy.
Yoda and Ben's intent clearly wasn't to manipulate Luke. They were guiding him as best they could considering their limited abilities. Ya know, dead and on the verge of death.
harrisonp
Sr Member
The Ben/Yoda lying to Luke plot is kind of the fault of making it up as they went along in the OT, but it mostly works out and can stay a simplified good vs evil hero’s journey if that’s what you want.
The prequels were overtly political and influenced by George’s own outlook, so it opens up the morality discussion a little more IMO. The Jedi do a lot of morally grey things in those movies, “we’re not soldiers” proceeds to lead a massive army of manufactured humans. They’re dogmatic and dismissive of human emotion, with even a “hippie” Jedi like Qui Gon approaching the force as something that can be quantified through science. All of that makes those movies more interesting to me, and without those tangential points they would be very boring.
The prequels were overtly political and influenced by George’s own outlook, so it opens up the morality discussion a little more IMO. The Jedi do a lot of morally grey things in those movies, “we’re not soldiers” proceeds to lead a massive army of manufactured humans. They’re dogmatic and dismissive of human emotion, with even a “hippie” Jedi like Qui Gon approaching the force as something that can be quantified through science. All of that makes those movies more interesting to me, and without those tangential points they would be very boring.
Joek3rr
Master Member
And we haven't even talked about The Clone Wars
How the Jedi went from a thousand generations being the guardians of peace and justice to going on everybody's **** list including Luke's I'll never know. They got blindsided. It happens. Maybe they lost sight of the big picture as well. Okay. Doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater. Then you have Luke who instead of moping about how flawed the Jedi were could've rebuilt them to be "better". Fix it if it's broke. You don't think you can? Fine, go find someone to take it over. But to just let the order die? You think if the Jedi are gone, things like a Sith led Empire won't happen again, Luke? Bad guys will still be bad. Leaving them unchallenged is much worse than anything you thought you did to your nephew.Oh ******, this nonsense about the good guys being bad...
Star Wars is about good vs evil. Simple. But people want to project their ideals and perspective of the real world into every little thing about a fantasy series literally about good versus evil.
But ever since the sequel trilogy, this notion that the sequel trilogy Jedi were all pretty much corrupt and THAT led to their downfall, has just completely snowballed into an avalanche.
The dark side had grown so strong, that the Jedi were blinded by what was going on around them. Simple. Bad was overwhelming good. It wasn't arrogance. Unlike my post here
Good was practically destroyed. Hero's rose up to fight the dark/ evil. Good defeats evil.
The god damned wheel of good vs bad.
Yoda and Ben "using" Luke to confront Vader was semantics. From their perspective and Vader's, Anakin was dead. He's more machine now than man. What they didn't understand was Luke's incredible power was more than just with the Force. It was his incredible love and compassion, and so much so, for someone he didn't even know other than as a tyrannical villain in the galaxy.
Yoda and Ben's intent clearly wasn't to manipulate Luke. They were guiding him as best they could considering their limited abilities. Ya know, dead and on the verge of death.
I know people will argue that was Luke's struggle; coming to the realization he was wrong. The problem as so many of us have argued is there's no appreciable explanation of how Luke's mindset changed over the years. What happened to the guy who thought he could take on the whole Empire by himself? Where's the guy who had faith when no one else did? That's why I don't buy that it was the incident with his nephew that broke him. The Luke we know would've seen his mistake (or actually not made that particular mistake to begin with) and worked to fix it. That's what a hero, flawed or not, would do. That's the shame of the ST. Rather than celebrating what was so great and simple about the originals - namely the hero mythos - it subverts it and does so in the macclunkiest way possible. For as cynical as we become as we get older, it's nice to celebrate something that's pure and morally clear in its presentation. I don't want gray Star Wars. I don't need gray Star Wars. I need heroes to be heroes and villains to be villains. When it comes to stories like Star Wars, I need characters like Luke Skywalker, I don't need lieutenant Dan. There's plenty of stories about lieutenant Dan type characters and they have their place. But for my hero fantasy/mythology, please give me Luke Skywalker.
Is it any wonder why kids are flocking to Marvel for their hero fix? I'm so grateful I grew up with the originals. If I watched the ST first, I would've hated Star Wars.
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Solo4114
Master Member
The Clone Wars cartoon does a looooot of the heavy lifting to establish the Jedi as true "good guys" but ones who got badly played. And a huge part of that is their belief in a lack of attachments and emotion. It's that detachment that prevents them from seeing what's going on with the Sith soon enough. Well, that and the fact that the galaxy is in "The news comes from a firehose these days" mode as every bad thing keeps happening all over the place.
Anyway, on the time-jump-with-no-exposition issue, we've discussed plenty how the decision to include the OT actors necessitated the time jump, and from there you end up with the loss of an opportunity to show the transition from ROTJ to TFA. BUT, a huge portion of the disconnect is down to JJ Abrams being a terrible storyteller who is more interested in building roller coasters and invoking "mysteries" than he is in actually telling a coherent tale.
Drop the rathtar sequence from TFA and maybe shorten a few of the "run around and shout a bunch" sequences and you now have around 10-15 min of screen time (EXTREMELY valuable real estate in a 2.5hr film) to do exposition. You don't even have to do it at once. The film could gradually unspool the info within the structure of the story and in a manner that is organic to the characters' experience rather than the meta-experience of the audience watching the film.
Example: Rey is on an outer rim planet (Jakku) and doesn't get much news, but what she gets includes news of the Republic's descent and the rise of the First Order as a force of stability. While waiting in line at Unkar Plutt's for her food ration, the holovid is on and she sees a newscast about this stuff which says how the First Order offers stability, and the New Republic is weak, crumbling, and led by Vader's daughter, so are they really all that much better? When she meets Han, she says she doesn't understand, she thought the Republic was good, Luke was a hero, blah blah, and Han explains some of what's happened. Finn says he wants to get to the resistance, and Rey says she doesn't even understand their role. Han explains that the Republic is weakened by political infighting, and Leia's put together a resistance -- still small -- that will oppose the First Order, because the New Republic's fleet is largely disarmed and dismantled at this point. He says that Luke...left after the fall of his academy, but Han doesn't know why. But either way, there basically are no more Jedi after the students fled, hid, turned, or were killed.
There. Bim bam boom, 5-10 min of dialogue. Covers at least some of the ground.
You can leave the deeper question of Luke's true motivations open for the next film (for Luke to explain), but you at least allude to the fact that the temple fell, something went wrong, Ben turned, blah blah.
It could have been done, but it would have had to be done by someone who is actually a competent storyteller, and not merely an illusionist, a rollercoaster engineer, a fan of the veneer but never the deeper substance. JJ puts on a great show. Better than, say, Michael Bay, who also traffics in the same kind of content but aggressively hates his audiences whereas JJ has genuine affection for his. JJ is better able to create the kind of surface-level fidelity-to-source-material that fans want, but that's as far as it ever goes. But he has no substance behind it, no soul. And I gather he's a genuinely nice guy, someone with whom everyone gets along. And that's great. Better that than to be a tyrant on his set, striking fear into everyone's heart, or merely loathing.
But a storyteller, he ain't.
I've gone into some detail in other threads about why I love TLJ, but I love it for two reasons primarily. First, I love that it upends a lot of the surface-level notions of what Star Wars "is" or has to be. The rigid adherence to forms and tropes for their own sake is, I think, a major failing of the Star Wars films. People retort with "Well, but George said they rhyme," but that fails to grasp the deeper issues. They rhyme not because of the form observed, but because of the content they're trying to express. You can contrast Anakin's loss of his hand and Luke's. They "rhyme" but they represent very different things. For Anakin, the initial temptation to give in to his inhuman side and embrace evil. For Luke, the cost of his aggression, and the thing that brings him back from the brink. So, yes, they "rhyme" but the content of their message lies more in the contrast they present. That doesn't mean "You always need a main character who gets his hand chopped off. Otherwise it isn't Star Wars." And I think most people would agree with that sentiment; you don't need a main character who loses his hand in every film.
But there's a lot of "observation of form" like that that a lot of fans seem to believe that you do need, and TLJ rejects much of that. I appreciate that....most of the time.
I also think that there are some interesting attempts at stuff that ultimately fail. The slow-motion chase, for example, was just...a mistake. It probably was meant to create a sense of dread and pressure, but it just felt...well.....slow. Instead of creating dread and tension, it created boredom.
I think the Canto Bight sequence also was...muddled. I appreciate the themes it explores, but the fact that it ends up not working in the end feels...like a long walk for what ultimately proves a short drink of water. The sequence is meant to explore the theme of war profiteering, as well as how Poe and all of the heroes' efforts ultimately endanger the fleet, through a series of bad decisions and bad luck, but while I appreciate that as a trope, it goes on a little too long. I think if you'd shortened the sequence and the "You failed and now everyone's in danger" aspect and then allowed more time to show that Poe and the other impetuous youngsters have learned their lesson, it would've been more widely accepted by audiences. Instead it's more like "Let's spend 20 min on this thing that ultimately will fail, and makes our heroes look like idiots, only to have them....barely escape in the end."
The way TLJ was executed also set up the franchise to break away from what I see as the far-too-restrictive format of trilogies. You could have wrapped up the sequel trilogy and set up a subsequent trilogy that could have unfolded the story of these characters over multiple films, simply because it ended at what is very clearly just a beginning.
Finally, I love the thematic explorations of the film. The failure of the Jedi, the other ways to understand the Force than a simple dichotomy of Light vs. Dark, the fact that Rey is a nobody (or at least believes herself to be) and chooses to be a hero anyway, Luke coming to terms with his failure and sacrificing himself for the greater good, the juxtaposition of Rey-the-nobody and Ben-the-destined-child and how they each want what the other has, etc.
TLJ also utterly rejects the idiotic "mystery box" BS that JJ introduced, because none of it has a goddamn thing to do with the story of the films, nor with the characters' experiences. And I absolutely love that because I absolutely loathe mystery box "storytelling."
TLJ has flaws, sure, but the stuff I love about it makes me able to ignore it. I get that that's not the case for everyone else, but it doesn't change my experience of the film, nor my disappointment at the potential that JJ then wasted because he and the suits and at least a portion of fandom think you have to paint by numbers or it isn't Star Wars.
I don't see that as the case, but we've discussed this before. I think the failure of the OT heroes was baked into the cake once you brought back the actors and yet still needed some kind of dramatic conflict on the galactic scale. I think much of the failure in the execution of this can be laid at JJ's feet because JJ is a ****** storyteller who didn't bother to explain where things were picking up and thought "the mystery" of it all would be more interesting. He was wrong. It wasn't more interesting. It just hurt the story.
Basically, this. When you watch TFA without any other information, it's really difficult to know how the hell we wound up here. It's jarring. It's confusing. But we don't have a lot of time to think about it because we're on the rollercoaster ride and people are running about and shouting. And then he leans on a bunch of faux mysteries to generate interest, and Johnson rightly says "That stuff's all bulls**t" and sidesteps it entirely. But because a bunch of fans don't recognize the JJ gimmick for what it is, they end up pissed, and the whole thing's just a mess.
Anyway, on the time-jump-with-no-exposition issue, we've discussed plenty how the decision to include the OT actors necessitated the time jump, and from there you end up with the loss of an opportunity to show the transition from ROTJ to TFA. BUT, a huge portion of the disconnect is down to JJ Abrams being a terrible storyteller who is more interested in building roller coasters and invoking "mysteries" than he is in actually telling a coherent tale.
Drop the rathtar sequence from TFA and maybe shorten a few of the "run around and shout a bunch" sequences and you now have around 10-15 min of screen time (EXTREMELY valuable real estate in a 2.5hr film) to do exposition. You don't even have to do it at once. The film could gradually unspool the info within the structure of the story and in a manner that is organic to the characters' experience rather than the meta-experience of the audience watching the film.
Example: Rey is on an outer rim planet (Jakku) and doesn't get much news, but what she gets includes news of the Republic's descent and the rise of the First Order as a force of stability. While waiting in line at Unkar Plutt's for her food ration, the holovid is on and she sees a newscast about this stuff which says how the First Order offers stability, and the New Republic is weak, crumbling, and led by Vader's daughter, so are they really all that much better? When she meets Han, she says she doesn't understand, she thought the Republic was good, Luke was a hero, blah blah, and Han explains some of what's happened. Finn says he wants to get to the resistance, and Rey says she doesn't even understand their role. Han explains that the Republic is weakened by political infighting, and Leia's put together a resistance -- still small -- that will oppose the First Order, because the New Republic's fleet is largely disarmed and dismantled at this point. He says that Luke...left after the fall of his academy, but Han doesn't know why. But either way, there basically are no more Jedi after the students fled, hid, turned, or were killed.
There. Bim bam boom, 5-10 min of dialogue. Covers at least some of the ground.
You can leave the deeper question of Luke's true motivations open for the next film (for Luke to explain), but you at least allude to the fact that the temple fell, something went wrong, Ben turned, blah blah.
It could have been done, but it would have had to be done by someone who is actually a competent storyteller, and not merely an illusionist, a rollercoaster engineer, a fan of the veneer but never the deeper substance. JJ puts on a great show. Better than, say, Michael Bay, who also traffics in the same kind of content but aggressively hates his audiences whereas JJ has genuine affection for his. JJ is better able to create the kind of surface-level fidelity-to-source-material that fans want, but that's as far as it ever goes. But he has no substance behind it, no soul. And I gather he's a genuinely nice guy, someone with whom everyone gets along. And that's great. Better that than to be a tyrant on his set, striking fear into everyone's heart, or merely loathing.
But a storyteller, he ain't.
I've gone into some detail in other threads about why I love TLJ, but I love it for two reasons primarily. First, I love that it upends a lot of the surface-level notions of what Star Wars "is" or has to be. The rigid adherence to forms and tropes for their own sake is, I think, a major failing of the Star Wars films. People retort with "Well, but George said they rhyme," but that fails to grasp the deeper issues. They rhyme not because of the form observed, but because of the content they're trying to express. You can contrast Anakin's loss of his hand and Luke's. They "rhyme" but they represent very different things. For Anakin, the initial temptation to give in to his inhuman side and embrace evil. For Luke, the cost of his aggression, and the thing that brings him back from the brink. So, yes, they "rhyme" but the content of their message lies more in the contrast they present. That doesn't mean "You always need a main character who gets his hand chopped off. Otherwise it isn't Star Wars." And I think most people would agree with that sentiment; you don't need a main character who loses his hand in every film.
But there's a lot of "observation of form" like that that a lot of fans seem to believe that you do need, and TLJ rejects much of that. I appreciate that....most of the time.
I also think that there are some interesting attempts at stuff that ultimately fail. The slow-motion chase, for example, was just...a mistake. It probably was meant to create a sense of dread and pressure, but it just felt...well.....slow. Instead of creating dread and tension, it created boredom.
I think the Canto Bight sequence also was...muddled. I appreciate the themes it explores, but the fact that it ends up not working in the end feels...like a long walk for what ultimately proves a short drink of water. The sequence is meant to explore the theme of war profiteering, as well as how Poe and all of the heroes' efforts ultimately endanger the fleet, through a series of bad decisions and bad luck, but while I appreciate that as a trope, it goes on a little too long. I think if you'd shortened the sequence and the "You failed and now everyone's in danger" aspect and then allowed more time to show that Poe and the other impetuous youngsters have learned their lesson, it would've been more widely accepted by audiences. Instead it's more like "Let's spend 20 min on this thing that ultimately will fail, and makes our heroes look like idiots, only to have them....barely escape in the end."
The way TLJ was executed also set up the franchise to break away from what I see as the far-too-restrictive format of trilogies. You could have wrapped up the sequel trilogy and set up a subsequent trilogy that could have unfolded the story of these characters over multiple films, simply because it ended at what is very clearly just a beginning.
Finally, I love the thematic explorations of the film. The failure of the Jedi, the other ways to understand the Force than a simple dichotomy of Light vs. Dark, the fact that Rey is a nobody (or at least believes herself to be) and chooses to be a hero anyway, Luke coming to terms with his failure and sacrificing himself for the greater good, the juxtaposition of Rey-the-nobody and Ben-the-destined-child and how they each want what the other has, etc.
TLJ also utterly rejects the idiotic "mystery box" BS that JJ introduced, because none of it has a goddamn thing to do with the story of the films, nor with the characters' experiences. And I absolutely love that because I absolutely loathe mystery box "storytelling."
TLJ has flaws, sure, but the stuff I love about it makes me able to ignore it. I get that that's not the case for everyone else, but it doesn't change my experience of the film, nor my disappointment at the potential that JJ then wasted because he and the suits and at least a portion of fandom think you have to paint by numbers or it isn't Star Wars.
I don't see that as the case, but we've discussed this before. I think the failure of the OT heroes was baked into the cake once you brought back the actors and yet still needed some kind of dramatic conflict on the galactic scale. I think much of the failure in the execution of this can be laid at JJ's feet because JJ is a ****** storyteller who didn't bother to explain where things were picking up and thought "the mystery" of it all would be more interesting. He was wrong. It wasn't more interesting. It just hurt the story.
Basically, this. When you watch TFA without any other information, it's really difficult to know how the hell we wound up here. It's jarring. It's confusing. But we don't have a lot of time to think about it because we're on the rollercoaster ride and people are running about and shouting. And then he leans on a bunch of faux mysteries to generate interest, and Johnson rightly says "That stuff's all bulls**t" and sidesteps it entirely. But because a bunch of fans don't recognize the JJ gimmick for what it is, they end up pissed, and the whole thing's just a mess.
Another person who didn't pay attention to the dialogue and completely missed what was happening. Yeah the Jedi were too adherent to their dogma so they missed almost every warning sign. They also became arrogant as Yoda tells Mace and Obi-Wan. They believed they were right and that they had completely destroyed the Sith (despite knowing about the Rule of Two somehow...), and then were arrogant enough to believe that they were so good they couldn't get played. Then because the Dark Side was rising it was clouding the Jedi's ability to see what was happening, again the movie tells you this. About the only thing you could fault the Jedi for is that they should have rejected leading the Grand Army of the Republic and said that wasn't their job. Some of the EU books were great about addressing this, the Republic Commando books in particular, showing some Jedi who left for that reason.
Speaking of the Rule of Two, I wonder if only Yoda and some of the top Jedi knew about this because in TPM Ki Adi Mundi says the Sith are extinct, and he's even a council member, so you'd think he would know. It seems like a big secret to keep from the other Jedi for 1,000 years.
While this idea persists, I think it's far too nuanced for George to have come up with himself. I think it's fans reading too much into it and shows just how much damage TLJ did not just to the OT but the PT as well by trying to upend the nobility of the Jedi Order right from the beginning of the saga.
The answer is that George wrote the PT Jedi as being far too dumb to see what was clearly happening right in front of their faces and laying the reason for it as the Dark Side clouding their judgement. If it was truly hubris that led to their downfall then it would have had way more emotional punch watching them get picked off during Order 66. Palpatine may have plotted and schemed but he was also playing against total idiots to the point where he has to directly come out and tell Anakin he's a Sith and even then when Anakin informs Mace, Mace is shocked.
That's not hubris on the Jedi's part. That's being stupid. The fact that it took three movies (and like 13 years in the chronology) for the Jedi Order to see what Palpatine was doing doesn't speak to their arrogance, but does speak to their stupidity. Dramatic irony is a tool George never learned how to use effectively as a writer and the reason why his work improved in the OT era films was with the help of people who did know how to use it properly.
A lot of fans may buy this idea of the hubris of the Jedi because it gives more credibility to Luke's mindset by the time of the sequels but it also undermines the efforts of Obi-Wan and Yoda who, while flawed, are heroes none the less, despite what Rian wants people to believe. The thought of the late great Alec Guinness's character being nothing more than an arrogant jerk breaks my heart and hearing Mark Hamill say as much in The Last Jedi was a devastating thing to hear. Not to mention that he would have such a scathing view of his former mentors after one misunderstanding with his nephew seems far too extreme a reaction when by this point he should have mastered his emotions.
I for one reject this notion because it changes the entire perspective on the clear dilineation between good and evil that George established from the beginning. While this element did grow and change as the OT developed, it was never thrown out entirely and it boggles my mind that some fans were so quick to get on board with it, chalking it up to Star Wars needing more "adult themes" in the form of moral relativism. Star Wars was made in response against that very idea and a huge part of the success of the film with audiences. Just watch Empire of Dreams if you don't believe me.
George's entire premise was a wholesome adventure serial that had clear definitions of good and evil and he made concerted efforts to make sure it was never abandoned completely because he wanted young people to have positive role models to aspire to, ultimately giving Star Wars it's hopeful message. Having Luke buck against this idea for an entire movie, only to realize the error of his ways and change back into his former self, feels like the cinematic equivalent of treading water. It embraces cynicism and apathy, ultimately rejecting them both and uses a beloved icon to do it when Star Wars was never about that to begin with. That's why fans rail so hard against it because it wasn't necessary and ruined the legacy of Luke Skywalker in the process.
In the hands of more capable writers Luke abandoning the teachings of his masters could have worked, especially if they'd developed Luke's first hand experience of being able to reconcile his own training in the old Jedi Order philosophy of evolving past attachment, with the emotional component that ultimately led to helping redeem his father, namely the love between parent and child. That feels like a more natural evolution for his arc than to throw in the towel after one failure.
The answer is that George wrote the PT Jedi as being far too dumb to see what was clearly happening right in front of their faces and laying the reason for it as the Dark Side clouding their judgement. If it was truly hubris that led to their downfall then it would have had way more emotional punch watching them get picked off during Order 66. Palpatine may have plotted and schemed but he was also playing against total idiots to the point where he has to directly come out and tell Anakin he's a Sith and even then when Anakin informs Mace, Mace is shocked.
That's not hubris on the Jedi's part. That's being stupid. The fact that it took three movies (and like 13 years in the chronology) for the Jedi Order to see what Palpatine was doing doesn't speak to their arrogance, but does speak to their stupidity. Dramatic irony is a tool George never learned how to use effectively as a writer and the reason why his work improved in the OT era films was with the help of people who did know how to use it properly.
A lot of fans may buy this idea of the hubris of the Jedi because it gives more credibility to Luke's mindset by the time of the sequels but it also undermines the efforts of Obi-Wan and Yoda who, while flawed, are heroes none the less, despite what Rian wants people to believe. The thought of the late great Alec Guinness's character being nothing more than an arrogant jerk breaks my heart and hearing Mark Hamill say as much in The Last Jedi was a devastating thing to hear. Not to mention that he would have such a scathing view of his former mentors after one misunderstanding with his nephew seems far too extreme a reaction when by this point he should have mastered his emotions.
I for one reject this notion because it changes the entire perspective on the clear dilineation between good and evil that George established from the beginning. While this element did grow and change as the OT developed, it was never thrown out entirely and it boggles my mind that some fans were so quick to get on board with it, chalking it up to Star Wars needing more "adult themes" in the form of moral relativism. Star Wars was made in response against that very idea and a huge part of the success of the film with audiences. Just watch Empire of Dreams if you don't believe me.
George's entire premise was a wholesome adventure serial that had clear definitions of good and evil and he made concerted efforts to make sure it was never abandoned completely because he wanted young people to have positive role models to aspire to, ultimately giving Star Wars it's hopeful message. Having Luke buck against this idea for an entire movie, only to realize the error of his ways and change back into his former self, feels like the cinematic equivalent of treading water. It embraces cynicism and apathy, ultimately rejecting them both and uses a beloved icon to do it when Star Wars was never about that to begin with. That's why fans rail so hard against it because it wasn't necessary and ruined the legacy of Luke Skywalker in the process.
In the hands of more capable writers Luke abandoning the teachings of his masters could have worked, especially if they'd developed Luke's first hand experience of being able to reconcile his own training in the old Jedi Order philosophy of evolving past attachment, with the emotional component that ultimately led to helping redeem his father, namely the love between parent and child. That feels like a more natural evolution for his arc than to throw in the towel after one failure.
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It wasn't even hard. Yes, getting into my "fixing Star Wars" reqrites, but just as a for-instance... I have them meet Anakin when he's already a teenager (Luke-ish), so even though he's grumpy at being stuck on Tatooine, his compassion comes through. Skipping his virgin-birth origins, he's the Chosen One because he was supposed to get the Jedi back in connection with the people they were supposed to serve and protect. But they'd gotten so scared by thousands of years of war with the Sith that they resisted all emotion -- not just finding a healthy balance. No Dark-Side pall -- they'd partially cut themselves off from the Force without realizing it. The Council muffed it by trying to make Anakin more like them, rather than seeing in him what they had lost. His inspiration, though, while it didn't cause institutional change, was noticed by Jedi like Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Bariss Offee, and Ahsoka, leading them into clashes with the Council or leaving the Order altogether.
After the Emperor's downfall, Luke starts trying in earnest to find what he can about the Jedi, learns about their later asceticism, learns about the Schism in the Order that led to the Sith Empire, learned how they used to be much more humble and lived with the people rather than above them, and is struggling to process all this and turn it into something teachable when the whole Ben thing happens. He cuts himself off because the pain is just too much -- not just his own failure, but being able to feel all his students and friends through the Force. I don't know that he intends to live out his life like that, but he definitely needed to get his emotional feet back under him. So he didn't feel everything that happened while he was cut off, and has fresh guilt to process. "It's like a poem -- it rhymes". When he reconnects, he understands why Obi-Wan did what he did on the Death Star, and does his own version. In flesh, he's getting too old for heroing. But by becoming one with the Force, he can help the new Hero in ways he couldn't chasing around after her.
And yes, we needed to see all this on the big screen, in linear episodic form. By thumbnailing it like this, it loses a lot of the context and heart -- I've got bits from about eight episodes in those two paragraphs. What Star Wars needed back in 1976 was a Kevin Feige. Someone who saw what it could be and had George be the idea guy/consultant, so he could keep doing his own indie movies, while the people who wanted to dump their time and energy into making this the best thing they could started with Episode I and told the story all the way through, filmed a bit like Lord of the Rings -- a year of principal photography, then one film released per year as they finished each episode. Then a gap between each trilogy as the next was hammered out and filmed -- like, three years. That kind of three-on-two-off cycle would have seen all twenty-seven episodes I have in my rewrite released in about the same timeframe as it took to get us to TROS.
I do still like the idea, though, of a "certain point of view" approach to side projects -- animated or live-action -- that focus on some of the characters or events from outside the primary narrative. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead style. Clone Wars as Ahsoka's journey. Rebels to focus more on how the Alliance got going. Something post-ROTJ as the New Republic is getting established. Something like Resistance, to show what's going on in the galaxy as the First Order is starting to nibble around the edges. But those would be fun delves, not required viewing to understand other content or supply context the films lack.
After the Emperor's downfall, Luke starts trying in earnest to find what he can about the Jedi, learns about their later asceticism, learns about the Schism in the Order that led to the Sith Empire, learned how they used to be much more humble and lived with the people rather than above them, and is struggling to process all this and turn it into something teachable when the whole Ben thing happens. He cuts himself off because the pain is just too much -- not just his own failure, but being able to feel all his students and friends through the Force. I don't know that he intends to live out his life like that, but he definitely needed to get his emotional feet back under him. So he didn't feel everything that happened while he was cut off, and has fresh guilt to process. "It's like a poem -- it rhymes". When he reconnects, he understands why Obi-Wan did what he did on the Death Star, and does his own version. In flesh, he's getting too old for heroing. But by becoming one with the Force, he can help the new Hero in ways he couldn't chasing around after her.
And yes, we needed to see all this on the big screen, in linear episodic form. By thumbnailing it like this, it loses a lot of the context and heart -- I've got bits from about eight episodes in those two paragraphs. What Star Wars needed back in 1976 was a Kevin Feige. Someone who saw what it could be and had George be the idea guy/consultant, so he could keep doing his own indie movies, while the people who wanted to dump their time and energy into making this the best thing they could started with Episode I and told the story all the way through, filmed a bit like Lord of the Rings -- a year of principal photography, then one film released per year as they finished each episode. Then a gap between each trilogy as the next was hammered out and filmed -- like, three years. That kind of three-on-two-off cycle would have seen all twenty-seven episodes I have in my rewrite released in about the same timeframe as it took to get us to TROS.
I do still like the idea, though, of a "certain point of view" approach to side projects -- animated or live-action -- that focus on some of the characters or events from outside the primary narrative. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead style. Clone Wars as Ahsoka's journey. Rebels to focus more on how the Alliance got going. Something post-ROTJ as the New Republic is getting established. Something like Resistance, to show what's going on in the galaxy as the First Order is starting to nibble around the edges. But those would be fun delves, not required viewing to understand other content or supply context the films lack.
ghostryder
Legendary Member
Star Wars Novelist Alan Dean Foster Wrote Episode IX Treatment Retconning The Last Jedi: “It’s a Terrible Film”
Novelist Alan Dean Foster wrote a treatment for Star Wars: Episode IX that the prolific author [...]
comicbook.com
He had me, then lost me with the part droid Rey... The last Sequel should have started with Luke waking up and the whole last movie was a Force vision of what not to do. Even then it was too late for damage control. The Sequel Trilogy could have easily been decent if they had cleaned up the bland mess of TFA and had good writers who understood SW. Too bad Lucasfilm didn't have any good authors that they knew of over the last 29 years...
sztriki
Sr Member
Jenny Nicholson's video on this is the way to go, had me in stitches:Star Wars Novelist Alan Dean Foster Wrote Episode IX Treatment Retconning The Last Jedi: “It’s a Terrible Film”
Novelist Alan Dean Foster wrote a treatment for Star Wars: Episode IX that the prolific author [...]
ghostryder
Legendary Member
Star Wars: A budding romance between Finn and Rey had to be removed from 'The Force Awakens' novelization
During a recent interview, movie-to-book writer Alan Dean Foster opened up about his novelization for Star Wars — Episode VII.
sztriki
Sr Member
So far I only thought AFD was a hack writer (read his ANH, Splinter in the Mind's Eye and the 3 Alien adaptations, terribly written pulp all of them) but I'm convinced now that he's also a brat...Star Wars: A budding romance between Finn and Rey had to be removed from 'The Force Awakens' novelization
During a recent interview, movie-to-book writer Alan Dean Foster opened up about his novelization for Star Wars — Episode VII.www.syfy.com
ThreadSketch
Well-Known Member
Because our squad needed an excuse to call some bozo troopers aboard to knock them out and steal their armor.
Because escape pods don't have sensor shielding. Han had smuggling compartments, so the ship needed a deeper scan.
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