Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Post-release)
- Thread starter Vivek
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Well, in the game company's defense, they gave names and backstories to everyone so the GMs could use them in their games as NPCs.
sztriki
Sr Member
I'm reading Rinzler's Making of book on and off. There was an article in that where George was talking about the names and it was the most maddeningly unhelpful pieces of information ever, went something like:
Tarkin: Well I just came up with that name.
Kenobi: I liked it, it just came from thin air.
Darth Vader: It's a good sounding name, sounds a bit like Dark Water. Then I just came up with it.
And so on...
You mean wolfman, devil, buttchin and UFO bloke?
Also, let's not forget Lumpy, Malla an Itchy!
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Solo4114
Master Member
While I find the creation of backstories for everyone, including frikkin' Ice Cream Maker Guy (Wilrow Hood. Look it up), to be incredibly silly, I can't fault West End Games for their work with Star Wars. A ton of stuff that we now have as part of the canon came from their work and source books. The company was incredibly imaginative and really added a lot of background material that helps flesh out the universe and make it feel alive.
Which, of course, was the whole point. While good GMs can come up with their own material just fine, it's always helpful to have a jumping-off point.
Which, of course, was the whole point. While good GMs can come up with their own material just fine, it's always helpful to have a jumping-off point.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the immersive world building and it's necessary to make a successful game. It's just a personal preference of mine. I used to be into all the EU novels as a teenager and would soak up anything and everything Star Wars because I was obsessed with the brand as much as the stories themselves. Now I'm only interested in the films and all the ancillary stuff, while cool in a way, is just not for me anymore.
DARTH ANIBAL
Sr Member
Solo4114
Master Member
It's not an ice cream maker, it's a camtono.
Unless that's huttese for "ice cream maker" I don't care.
squirk
Master Member
Just watched this again tonight. As much as I love Rey, anyone else here hope that she has “peaked” in TROS, in the best possible way?
By that I mean that after some 50+ years of back-and-forth between Republic-Confederacy-Empire-Rebel Alliance-New Republic-First/Final Order, we truly get some measure of final, lasting triumph? Not that the galaxy won’t have problems and crises, but that it won’t be flipped on its ear and totally subjugated yet again by some new burgeoning threat in 20 years.
The reversals of fortune make for great melodrama, but at this point, I feel like I’m ready for the good guys to enjoy an enduring long-term victory.
By that I mean that after some 50+ years of back-and-forth between Republic-Confederacy-Empire-Rebel Alliance-New Republic-First/Final Order, we truly get some measure of final, lasting triumph? Not that the galaxy won’t have problems and crises, but that it won’t be flipped on its ear and totally subjugated yet again by some new burgeoning threat in 20 years.
The reversals of fortune make for great melodrama, but at this point, I feel like I’m ready for the good guys to enjoy an enduring long-term victory.
DARTH ANIBAL
Sr Member
I'm not blind to the flaws and wasted potential of the ST, I just enjoy it as its own thing. That said, I agree. For that to happen, like it or not, this needs to really be the end of this specific storyline. And yes, that means not just moving forward or backward in the timeline of events directly related to anyone even thrice removed from the Skywalkers.
There's a galaxy's worth of "problems and crises" to explore with new characters. Moving forward, one would hope that some hard-earned lessons can be applied to future GFFA content.
Joek3rr
Master Member
I really hope (probably a fools hope) that there is never content set after Episode IX. To give the Skywalker saga some weight and finality.
That was one thing I always disliked about Legends. The story continued so far past ROTJ, that it made that whole 1-6 feel like an insignificant blip. There was always a bigger Sith, or some other new threat bigger then Palpatine.
cboath
Master Member
Well, when the novels began in the 90's, they were only allowed to work in a certain area. Pre-ANH was blocked without explicit permission. Author's WANTED to play with the existing characters. By the time that may have changed, a new company book the rights to books and decided to make some giant story line/path etc and then author's were bound to that.
Then the prequels came.
You can jump a hundred of 500 years into the future post ST and be fine and you're not limiting anything. There are no actual skywalkers left unless someone wants to say Han/Leia had another kid and him them away after Ben flipped. Or Luke had a kid along the line somewhere, etc...
Either way, jumping way ahead i don't see an issue.
WWI doesn't diminish the Civil War, WWII doesn't diminish WW1, Korea, Vietnam, etc.
Then the prequels came.
You can jump a hundred of 500 years into the future post ST and be fine and you're not limiting anything. There are no actual skywalkers left unless someone wants to say Han/Leia had another kid and him them away after Ben flipped. Or Luke had a kid along the line somewhere, etc...
Either way, jumping way ahead i don't see an issue.
WWI doesn't diminish the Civil War, WWII doesn't diminish WW1, Korea, Vietnam, etc.
Only when it was handled right and moved the story forward. I liked elements from the EU, as I have the films from ROTJ on. I like the premise of the military genius Thrawn showing up and whipping the remnants of the Imperial Starfleet into shape. I like the premise of Daala coming out from the communications black hole (ha) where she'd been assigned, seeing a bunch of Imperial higher-ups squabbling over who's going to be the next Emperor rather than cooperating to destroy the Rebellion, and ends up wiping them out when she can't get them to work together and claiming their assets. I like the Solo kids. I like Mara Jade. I like Luke's arc post ROTJ for the most part. There are a lot of elements that got streamlined into the ST (some okay, some really badly).
But when it was about the superweapon of the week, or yet another lost/resurgent Sith Lord, it got old. I really wish Lucas Licensing had formed the Story Group a good decade and a half earlier, as the Star Wars Renaissance was becoming a thing. People who could point out Shadows of the Empire made no sense, or that Daala's "fleet" of three Star Destroyers would not send the New Republic into full-on freakout. Maybe even taken a dip into the Japanese medieval period that Kurosawa took inspiration from for his films to construct an overarching timeline scaffold of how things needed to be when, and turn it over to the authors to decide which situation they wanted to flesh out.
One of the better things I feel the EU did was Legacy. Shoving the main story to one side, I like that the Republic had collapsed yet again, and for the same reasons. While the Imperial Remnant had flourished under the dynasty of emperors descended from Jag Fel and Jaina Solo. They were benevolent and egalitarian and really drove home that the problem earlier wasn't the Empire, it was the Emperor. In general, I feel that the EU did best when it did character delves, like Planet of Twilight or Tatooine Ghost or Millennium Falcon, and not when it was trying to do galactic-scale events. The elements that stick with me from the works I'm less fond of are the character moments. Leia's discomfiture when Thrawn's bodyguard calls her "Lady Vader". Daala killing off the warlords, accompanied by Pellaeon and a pair of Royal Guards with the black hem of mourning still on their robes. The history of the ruins on Yavin IV. Crap like that.
Joek3rr
Master Member
Would you have preferred an adaptation of the old EU over what we got?
Oh, HELL, no. But a bit more mindfulness of and inspiration from the better parts of it, maybe. Twins tend to run in families, so Leia having fraternal twins would have been a good carryover, up to and including the girl having to take down the boy after he turned to the Dark Side. At the same time, I know they'd have trouble justifying what they included over what they didn't, so I understand why they wiped the slate. Unfortunately, there were elements that worked and fit and were good that got jettisoned along with the rest to avoid those worries of favoritism.
I would be thrilled if Disney+ ended up airing an animated anthology series set between ROTJ and TFA that filled in some of the gaps, and maybe use EU elements for inspiration. Admiral Daala, perhaps. The nascent New Republic settling a conflict a la the Nagai-Tof War of the comics. Hoojibs. Character delves like Tatooine Ghost or Millennium Falcon -- I'd be fine with seeing a young Ben Solo wanting to know where his dad's ship came from.
That's the main thing. We have nothing for two decades -- more for our central characters. That's where a lot of the EU happened. We don't get to see Luke coming into his own and establishing a new Jedi Order and training center. We don't get to see Leia help forge and form the New Republic. We don't get to see her and Han's courtship and marriage and kid(s). We have no segue. ROTS ended with the formation of the Empire and Obi-Wan riding off into the desert to begin his vigil over Luke... which is where ANH starts. ROTJ ends with Our Heores as one big happy family having just saved the day, and a generation later when we pick up again there's no throughline. Luke's missing, Han and Leia have split up, Lando and Wedge are nowhere to be seen, and we have this guy Poe we know nothing about, whose droid eventually makes his way to this girl Rey we know nothing about. And both of them feel like we should.
It's what I've grumbled about a lot with the ST. Yeah, we knew nothing about Luke and Ben and Leia and the droids when we first saw Star Wars. The conceit was that we were coming in in the middle of a serial and if we'd been watching, we'd know who at least some of those characters were. Now, with the PT, we do. We have the connection from episodes three to four. We know Luke is Anakin's son. We know Leia's his daughter, although there's some confusion for a bit over that when she references her father on Alderaan. We definitely know who Obi-Wan is... TFA was made in a way that deliberately recaptured that feel of coming in in the middle of the story -- except that it is part of a serial now, and we have seen the previous episode(s)...
Star Wars started with the standard model of resolving the cliffhanger from the previous installment. A trope used in the James Bond and Indiana Jones films, too. But for an actual serialized story, it should go from cliffhanger in one episode to resolution in the next. I've ranted plenty about George's all-over-the-place approach to the OT and how that affected everything that would come after. The transitions from Star Wars to Empire, and Empire to Jedi, are almost perfect. Death Star destroyed but Vader survived... and we see the Rebels have moved basses and Vader's trying to find them. Han is captured and Our Heroes plan to rescue him... and they carry that out. The rest? Not so much. We actually needed Rogue One to properly fill in the cliffhanger ANH is resolving. ROTS ending where it did left way too big a gap -- but that's what happens when George paints himself into a trilogy corner.
I'm really looking forward to seeing where The Mandalorian leads, and what other things might follow. It might end up being the better organic continuation to the story left off at the end of ROTJ, and lead more naturalistically to the situation as we see it at the beginning of TFA. But that's problematic in its own right. There is no "Skywalker Saga" of nine films, beyond the desperate hopes of some marketing team. The story, to make sense, needs Clone Wars and Rebels and Rogue One included. Solo and Resistance don't hurt. We'll have to wait and see with The Mandalorian and Kenobi, but I have a feeling they'll be more relevant to "the Skywalker Saga" than not. As interesting as it is to see the whole thing taking shape as new things come out, I don't like that we essentially have to wait until it's all over to be able to watch it beginning to end.
So while the EU wouldn't have worked wholesale, it at least had the benefit of being a bit less scattershot.
I agree with you with the exception that Rogue One is necessary. I suppose if you watch all the films in chronological order that might make sense and perhaps I misunderstood you.
TPM, AOTC, Clone Wars, ROTS, Solo, Rogue One, ANH, ESB, ROTJ, Mandalorian, TFA, TLJ, TROS.
Perhaps it's because I only consider the three films and the fact that that are a self contained story that the addition of an anthology movie doesn't feel necessary to me.
TPM, AOTC, Clone Wars, ROTS, Solo, Rogue One, ANH, ESB, ROTJ, Mandalorian, TFA, TLJ, TROS.
Perhaps it's because I only consider the three films and the fact that that are a self contained story that the addition of an anthology movie doesn't feel necessary to me.
Exactly what I meant. Rogue One fills a narrative hole left by George. ROTS ends nineteen years before the next episode, with infant Luke being left with his step-uncle. The opening crawl tells us about a whole lot of stuff we didn't see. Civil war? Rebellion? Battle? Princess Leia? What the heck is all this? Just as George sorta kinda skipped over almost the entirety of the Clone Wars we'd been curious about for more than twenty years, he also then retroactively skipped over the formation of the Rebellion. And, to amend your list:
And even then there are painful narrative gaps.
Well, yes. You come in in media res with Star Wars, don't need the backstory to make sense of what's going on, follow the characters through Empire and Jedi, everyone has a party, done. See the "where Star Wars stands with me currently" thread. Everyone has their own take, their own canon and apocrypha. It's fine to begin and end it with the OT, and only the OT. Just as you know through our PMs where I stand with the extant story material that extend from both ends of the OT. Since it's there, I'm doing what I can to work with it. Since we have the PT, and since it's only a trilogy, I feel we need Clone Wars, Solo, Rebels, and Rogue One to properly establish the narrative throughline into the OT. As it stands, Star Wars can't exist as just the nine saga films. There are too many holes.
I had a feeling that was the context you were referring to, so that makes perfect sense and I am in full agreement, taking that perspective on it.
I'd honestly forgot all about Rebel and Resistance. It's just so crazy to me that all of these smaller films, books, comics, cartoons, and TV shows have to be retconned into the story to fill in important gaps. Which is why as much as I love Star Wars, narratively it's a total mess when viewed as one giant saga.
When you consider that these things have been created over a period of 40 years by hundreds of different people, it was bound to happen. Though George changing his mind all the time didn't set a very strong precedent for cohesion.
I'd honestly forgot all about Rebel and Resistance. It's just so crazy to me that all of these smaller films, books, comics, cartoons, and TV shows have to be retconned into the story to fill in important gaps. Which is why as much as I love Star Wars, narratively it's a total mess when viewed as one giant saga.
When you consider that these things have been created over a period of 40 years by hundreds of different people, it was bound to happen. Though George changing his mind all the time didn't set a very strong precedent for cohesion.
Solo4114
Master Member
Well, here's the thing. "Final, lasting triumph" doesn't jive with continued existence, ya know? You ever read Watchmen? Remember the part where Veidt says to Dr. Manhattan, "In the end, was I right?" and Dr. Manhattan says "The end? Nothing ever ends, Adrian." It's kinda like that. The story ends...for one group of people. But as long as the world exists, it continues.
While we can diss the show and how it ended (And wonder if the books will ever reach a conclusion), George R.R. Martin's world of Ice and Fire is a good example of this. In the history of that world, there are wars, sometimes cataclysmic wars that rage for years and then come to an end. Sometimes the good side wins, sometimes the bad side does, and then...time rolls on and things change. A tyrant king finally meets his demise, and a good king takes over...until that good king dies and his heirs squander their inheritance, bickering amongst themselves and plunging the kingdom into war again...until one of them triumphs or an outside party takes over (say, a distant cousin), and sets things to order again...for a time, until they too die, and so on and so forth.
A "final, lasting triumph" would require freezing the universe in amber, never allowing it to change. It would require a truly final end to the story. A capstone on the whole thing past which no further development would take place. You could look back in history instead, but you could never go past that point because to do so, you'd need to inject drama into the story (or else the story would be "Star Wars: Episode X -- A Day On The Moisture Farm" or whatever).
This is why when it was announced that the new films would bring back the old heroes, I knew they'd be hitting "reset" on the "final victory" that ROTJ was. The "happy ending" would be undone. This is why when you say "And they lived happily ever after, the end," and your kid says "And then what happened?" you say "Nothing. The story was over. Go to sleep."
What I would far, far prefer is for Star Wars to step away from the "traditional" iconography that has ensnared the EU, fan films, and especially the Sequel Trilogy, leading to a seemingly endless reiteration of the same basic stories over and over again. DO SOMETHING NEW, DAMMIT. I don't need to see Rebellion 3.0/Empire 3.0. The First Order, the Final Order, the Just Kidding I Have One More Order, etc., etc. Star Wars is -- or should be -- about something more than just Jedi vs. Sith and faceless badguys in white and black (and now red!) armor.
Breaking this quote up a bit to address some specific points. First, I think mining history can make for fantastic storytelling. our world has tons of fascinating, drama-filled stories, because at the end of the day, drama is just a (sometimes heightened) representation of the human experience. So, what better source for material than....the human experience through history, right? The sengoku jitai is a great era for storytelling (multiple figures try to unite feudal Japan, none of them succeeding until just the right mix of elements arrives). But you could look at Japanese history before that even, going back to the rise and fall of the Fujiwara house, the Gempei War, the Kamakura Bakufu, and so on and so forth. And you could look at plenty of other periods in history in other nations to see similar, compelling stories, full of intrigue, character, action, adventure, etc.
I think Star Wars could stand to lift stuff like this as frameworks for new stories, but you could also tell a gazillion stories within just the framework of the interwar period between the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War. That's one reason I really enjoyed Solo. It was a fun adventure that took place within the setting, but didn't necessarily have to do with epic battles between titanic forces or whatever. I wish it had done better and the studio had the confidence in the underlying concepts to keep telling stories with those actors and characters and that setting.
I never read the Legacy stuff, but that sounds...bonkers. Was that were "Cade Skywalker" was running around fighting new Sith or something? I dunno. It doesn't really matter to me. I stopped reading the EU stuff around when the Black Fleet Crisis came out. It was just a boring, blah series that I barely remember now, that came on the heels of umpteen gajillion superweapon-of-the-month stories. Zahn's trilogy was great and felt like the real deal, but most things outside of that were just goofy.
I think you get more mileage out of West End Games sourcebooks, personally.
This gets to the fetishization of Star Wars and people's utter inability to understand what makes for good storytelling. JJ included. It's part of why I say that he's basically made really good quality, big-budget fan fiction. He falls into exactly the same type of myopia that other fans do, reiterating for no other reason than "This is what they did before."
Your example of the in media res thing is a good one. Star Wars films generally start in media res in two ways: (1) they stick you in the middle of the story or (2) they stick you in the middle of the action. But the two are not the same. I have no problem adhering to a formula that sets you in the middle of the action in every film. That's fine by me. The blockade runner escaping the Star Destroyer, probe droids flying off in dozens of different directions, Vader's shuttle landing on the partially completed Death Star II, the Jedi delegation approaching Naboo, etc., etc. That's all middle of the action. Something's already happening as soon as you pop in, and it's usually told visually, at least initially.
That's a far cry from setting us in the middle of the story bereft of any bearings. It worked in Star Wars, because we knew nothing about the universe anyway. As the first film, literally everything is new, so in some ways, it's easier to accept that you don't know where you are or what's going on, and it will all be revealed (assuming the movie is good). With every film since then, we've been operating within a framework where you already know something about the universe, the setting, some of the characters, how things work, etc. You aren't a blank slate anymore, so the film has to at least make sense in context.
When TFA came out, upon first viewing it, I was baffled as to the difference between the Republic and the Resistance, why it was necessary, who the hell this Snoke guy was and where he came from, what the hell the Knights Who Say "Ren!" were (turns out.....nothing. They were nothing. Just something that sounded cool that was then ignored almost entirely), etc., etc. It was completely bewildering and off-putting because we already had familiarity with the universe, but not with the current state of affairs.
That's the key difference.
Exactly. Although I'd quibble perhaps with Rogue One being absolutely necessary. I think it's nice to have, and it does a little to flesh out "How'd we end up here anyway" between ROTS and ANH, but even then, it's basically a snapshot. You don't see how the rebellion really grew, etc. But at least he soooorta sets things up for ANH. At the end of ROTS we see the Death Star under construction and Obi-Wan leaves Luke with Owen and Beru....and then we pick up with the plans for the Death Star being ferried away and landing exactly where a now-grown Luke is about to find them. It doesn't fill in enough of the gaps but at least it isn't leaving you saying "Wait, what the hell is all of this? What's this Empire? Who's this Darth Vader dude?"
And that's because they insisted upon bringing back the OT heroes, and telling the new stories in a trilogy format. I get why they did it for marketing purposes....but it was a really terrible idea for storytelling purposes. Like...really terrible. It is, I believe, a central part of why the ST is as controversial as it is. There is no way to leave intact the victory of ROTJ and tell a meaningful story involving the future of those characters and have it all be told and wrapped up in 3 films. But again, the insistence upon the trilogy format is just more fetishization of the past without any consideration for whether it makes for good storytelling. Why do we do a trilogy? Because we have to do a trilogy. We've always done a trilogy. So we have to do it again. And yet, the true reason is "Because Lucas was creatively and emotionally exhausted by the process and decided to tap out at 3 films, originally." But, sure, let's limit ourselves to trying to tell a compelling tale in three 2-ish hr movies just because that's the way it happened when we were kids.
Eh, I think the EU was plenty scattershot. And where it wasn't being scattershot it was too often stuck in a fishbowl. I mean, as you say, there are good things from the EU (some of which have survived, e.g., Thrawn, adaptations of WEG sourcebook material, etc.), but there was also a whoooooole lotta trash taken out in the process.
I think Rogue One helps for context, as does Rebels and Solo. I haven't seen Resistance yet, so I can't comment on it. But helping for context -- while certainly important -- isn't entirely necessary to tell a story in a somewhat new context. Once you get your bearings (which can be done through the narrative itself as information is gradually revealed), you can follow along. By contrast, I think Clone Wars is absolutely critical because it not only helps for context, but also truly establishes Anakin as a hero headed down a dark path, while developing and deepening the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan. In other words, instead of simply helping to establish setting and background, it directly serves the central narrative of the films (at least AOTC and ROTS).
That said, I'm glad all the additional material exists. I do find that it enriches my enjoyment of the films. Hell, the Clone Wars cartoon actually got me to a point where I now kinda sorta don't mind AOTC as a starting point (although I don't think it's necessary), and I genuinely enjoy ROTS. They still have their flaws as films, but as part of a larger story that includes the Clone Wars, they end up being a lot better.
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