The Last Jedi - The First Trailer - ANewMovie -DisneyStrikesBack - TheReturnofTheCast [Archive]

Darth Ultron

2017-04-14, 08:58 PM

It did not look too exciting, but it is the first trailer. And when you take the R1 trailer compared to the movie, we really should not take much from the trailer.

Like it's possible that Luke might say ''the Jedi must die forever'' and then come up with a Disney Friendly 21 century Politically Correct version called Desi. Or something like that.

But it could just be the more poetic ''Last Jedi''. Like Luke trains Rey to be ''the most powerful Jedi ever'', you know for no reason(other then she is a female and they want to make her the most powerful Jedi ever to, um, show equality. So like maybe have a bit where she fights Force ghost Yoda while training and defeats him with her pinky finger Force zap and she says some ultra female thing like ''I'm a woman, we don't try, we do." ). And in any case Kylo Ren shows up, and Luke does the awesome ''stand their like Ben did '' and let Kylo kill him. And then Rey will be...dum,dum,dum...the Last Jedi!

Though they need to add in the ''star wars'' parts so it's not just ''the magic sword ninja philosophy'' movie. Maybe the New Empire Order has made another all powerful super weapon...again. Maybe the rebels will hide on a...um...desert planet so the New Empire Order can attack them with Walkers, again. Maybe Snoke will try to turn Rey to the dark side...ohhhh...and he will be her father, of course.

Cikomyr

2017-04-14, 09:24 PM

Ramza00

2017-04-14, 09:59 PM

Watches the new trailer and all I am thinking, are we watching the same series anymore? I seem to recall this scene being one of the most famous scenes in the original 3 movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF2YVSoBSPg

Yet in the first movie with Luke being back besides a brief cameo he is now saying the Jedi need to end.

Darth Ultron

2017-04-14, 10:07 PM

...dude, whats your beef about women? Like, half of your argument is anti-woman strawmanship

I'm just saying don't be all shocked if Luke tests Rey's blood and is like ''wow, you have more metaclorins then Ankin did!''

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-14, 10:08 PM

...dude, whats your beef about women? Like, half of your argument is anti-woman strawmanship

Well as a person who utterly hates Ray as a character, I can sort of understand what he meant, if just phrased improperly.

No Disney won't kill off the Jedi. Its too marketable a phrase. Jedi is near synonymous with Star Wars.

But Ray if not meeting the literal definition of mary sue, is a boring dull character that did not grow and has no space for growth as a person. Her entire last story was one of near effortless progress and unstopability. And one could accuse this trend of ignoring proper character growth in exchange for somehow making up for past sociatal injustices.

So he may feel concerned with the idea that maybe Disney is pushing for an idea that somehow Disney wants to represent the extinction of the Jedi order as a good thing because it ties together with previous cultural problems somehow.

Now I disagree with this profusely, but Ray is still a garbage character, and people dismiss any criticsm of her or her arc with the accusation of people who hate her having a bais against women. When in reality its a bais against any character that seems almost like a self insert fanfic.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-14, 10:26 PM

But Ray if not meeting the literal definition of mary sue, is a boring dull character that did not grow and has no space for growth as a person. Her entire last story was one of near effortless progress and unstopability. And one could accuse this trend of ignoring proper character growth in exchange for somehow making up for past sociatal injustices.

I have to say, I didn't realise why I prefer Finn to Ray/Rey/Rae/Rei before reading this, but now I realise that is because he did grow as a character during TFA, at least somewhat. My friends know that my like for how he is currently makes me terrified that they're going to make him a force user, I'm hoping instead he becomes a RebellionResistance soldier and ends up swooping in with a bunch of troops either at the end of this film or during Episode IX and saving the day, because I think it would fit him better.

Now Ray could be redeemed for me if she becomes a better character and stops being a super special person the force comes easily to. If they just establish that mind control is the thing she's particularly good at and the rest she has to train for that'll be a start*, then give her some sort of flaw (I don't know what'll be good though, any ideas), and then give her an arc beyond 'learns more stuff' then I'll be happy.

I'll watch the advert when I wake up, it's been long enough.

* You can argue that the final fight of E7 is because she's just more experienced in actual hand to hand, which is slightly strange but not unbelievable.

Darth Ultron

2017-04-14, 10:41 PM

No Disney won't kill off the Jedi. Its too marketable a phrase. Jedi is near synonymous with Star Wars.

Don't be so sure. To some deep in the halls of the Disney Evilcorp, getting rid of the ''old stuff'' to make room for ''new stuff'' is a great idea. Like Jedi were great and all, but they are old and politically incorrect. Disney Desi will be much more awesome, much cooler and politically correct(like the Desi council will have three women on it, including an African American woman and a Chinese woman. At least two humans with genders other then ''male or female''. And at least two humans with orientations that are not just ''likes males or likes females''. Oh, um, and an alien too.

And as no one has any Disney Desi merchandise, they will have to run out to the stores and buy it.....right at Christmas time!(or, Winter Gift Giving Day).

And if fans hate it...well the next movie will just be ''Return of the Jedi'', er, um, ''Jedi Reborn''!

Daer

2017-04-14, 10:57 PM

Perhaps Luke turned towards order of Revan. :) well one can only dream.

Doubt they will do it but perhaps it is not great idea to suggest in trailer that they are doing worst possible idea. Though seeing Ray training i doubt it is death of jedies but beginning of new jedi order ...

I really woudl wish some movies of old republic when there was lots of powerful jedies and siths fighting.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-14, 11:08 PM

Don't be so sure. To some deep in the halls of the Disney Evilcorp, getting rid of the ''old stuff'' to make room for ''new stuff'' is a great idea. Like Jedi were great and all, but they are old and politically incorrect.

Your mistaking the Times. The 80s was the time of "Out with the Old in with the NEW". Nowadays corporations are deathly scared of taking risks. Ratio of Based off of Old/New content was always low, but this decade has especially low risk content with only something like 10% of any movies being based on original content.

Now Ray could be redeemed for me if she becomes a better character and stops being a super special person the force comes easily to. If they just establish that mind control is the thing she's particularly good at and the rest she has to train for that'll be a start*, then give her some sort of flaw (I don't know what'll be good though, any ideas), and then give her an arc beyond 'learns more stuff' then I'll be happy.

I'll watch the advert when I wake up, it's been long enough.

* You can argue that the final fight of E7 is because she's just more experienced in actual hand to hand, which is slightly strange but not unbelievable.

They would have to retcon the entire last movie.

She beat people that spent years training to defeat warriors of combat......OK. But she also instantly masters force...But she also knows a ship she never flew better then the person who flew it before because...Im shes a parts junkie (And Han isn't?). She learns to shoot like a deadeye in a couple of blasts, she knows parkour and takes no guff.

If she has things to learn further then she will be taking down Star Destroyers singlehandedly next movie. But I know what will happen. Suddenly Kylo ren is Ratcheted up in "Skill" this film so that he is seen as a legitimate threat again as he defeats her and then she defeats him next film.

Which is just power creep and a total copout but whatever.

Darth Ultron

2017-04-14, 11:28 PM

Your mistaking the Times. The 80s was the time of "Out with the Old in with the NEW". Nowadays corporations are deathly scared of taking risks. Ratio of Based off of Old/New content was always low, but this decade has especially low risk content with only something like 10% of any movies being based on original content.

Disney EvilCorp would take the risk.

Suddenly Kylo ren is Ratcheted up in "Skill" this film so that he is seen as a legitimate threat again as he defeats her and then she defeats him next film.

I can see that too. A Kylo and Rey fight were ''suddenly'' Kylo is all like a Master level Sith Lord and master swordsman who has years of training and experience who just swats Ray away like a fly with the ''your training is not complete, your not Jedi'' .

Then Luke steps in and saves Rey...Kylo and Luke fight, until Luke does the old ''if you strike me down I'll become more powerful then you can possible imagine" and Kylo kills him.

Then like an earthquake (wink, wink) will separate Kylo and Ren so he can't kill her and he will be all like ''ok, see you next movie!"...

The movie writes itself....

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-14, 11:33 PM

Disney EvilCorp would take the risk.

Well Ray WILL be the one to reform the Jedi under her leadership, but they will still be called Jedi. Gotta keep that Market.

The movie writes itself....

Yup

SuperPanda

2017-04-14, 11:37 PM

One good possible avenue for Rey to develop into which was left open in the last story is how angry she seemed to by in her fight with Kylo Ren. I personally put that down to the director telling her to be "intense" to convey the power of the force as it "awakens" but it is there.

If Rey's connection to the force is uncommonly strong (almost a given at this point) and her emotions are tapping into the dark side with out her knowledge there is room for some legitimate struggle there. I see two problems with that.

1) Making her character flaw that she's "emotional" would ring hollow compared to Kylo Ren's outbursts and would smack of gender stereotypes likely to draw flak. The first of these I think solves itself though. Kylo is clearly struggling with his emotions and his implied arc was that he has trouble sustaining his "dark-side" emotions. This could be a result of his tantrums - he vents off the anger and doesn't hold it in. Rey on the other hand is holding on to her abandonment issues and potentially a bunch of resentment at who knows how many other people. Her apparent strength and confidence could be a facade she keeps up as defense and it could be drawing her to the dark side. Her development could be in learning to let go of those things - which is in keeping with source materials which inspired the force.

2)For this type of development to be meaningful she'd need to go dark for a while - she'd need to actually fall into becoming a Sith and I don't think Disney has the guts to do that. Ideally it would coincide with Kylo questioning his devotion to Snoke and the dark side.

And a last problem - there would need to be something which provoked that turn towards darkness which means either Luke has to knowingly push her towards the dark-side or she needs to be "duped" by Snoke (Kylo already failed to recruit her). That could be what "The Jedi need to end" is hinting at, but thats a stupid way to set it up.

Mando Knight

2017-04-14, 11:56 PM

Here's a possibility: Luke says the line from the trailer early in the movie. He's failed as much as his mentors have in restoring the Order, he's in hiding from his own fallen nephew, and the Galaxy seems to get along just fine without any Jedi around to "fix things."

Then Rey convinces Luke that the Jedi are still needed as a symbol of hope (or whatever), and he will reluctantly take her on as his new apprentice, but not before remarking that she'd normally be too old to begin training.

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 12:08 AM

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 12:17 AM

Hey man, if Lukes Actions actually impacted the Galaxy and made it better, the time skip would have to be much longer, so we couldn't use the original cast.

Or the antagonists would have to be very surprising and unfamiliar so we wouldn't be able to re-use the same exact ship designs over again for merchandise.

Zevox

2017-04-15, 12:51 AM

Still sucks and invalidates everything about Return. Luke was supposed to be the one to do it, not Rey. He shouldn't need anyone's help to stop his entire life from turning out to be pointless.
Yeah, that is the fear. The Force Awakens was in large part a rehash of A New hope. Will The Last Jedi follow suit, setting up Rey to rehash Luke's arc from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as the new pupil being trained as the last hope of the near-extinct Jedi/slightly different equivalent? That would be pretty dull.

Hopefully they've got something else up their sleeve, and can still make something good out of the sequels. If not, well, at least they've shown they can do good side stories.

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 01:13 AM

Yeah, that is the fear. The Force Awakens was in large part a rehash of A New hope. Will The Last Jedi follow suit, setting up Rey to rehash Luke's arc from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as the new pupil being trained as the last hope of the near-extinct Jedi/slightly different equivalent? That would be pretty dull.

Hopefully they've got something else up their sleeve, and can still make something good out of the sequels. If not, well, at least they've shown they can do good side stories.

Rey walks out of a cavern after a strenuous trial, then we see speeders fight walkers, then we see rehashes of the X and A wings fight TIE fighters with rehash Nebulon B's.

There isn't a single damn original concept in the entire video.

BWR

2017-04-15, 01:18 AM

I am not impressed. Some of that may very well be lingering disappointment from TFA, but I doubt this is going to be much better. I liked literally none of the characters introduced in TFA and getting more of them will only start things off badly.
Some of it is how Luke obviously just gave up after screwing up an apprentice. For all the faults of EU, when one of his apprentices fell, he took it on the chin and tried to make things better.
And a lot of it is how it seems that this will be yet another remake of a much better movie while trying to convince people it isn't.

Zevox

2017-04-15, 01:47 AM

Rey walks out of a cavern after a strenuous trial, then we see speeders fight walkers, then we see rehashes of the X and A wings fight TIE fighters with rehash Nebulon B's.

There isn't a single damn original concept in the entire video.
I don't see any issue with the vehicles - this is still supposed to be the same galaxy, and the time jump wasn't huge, it only makes sense that they would have the same or similar starfighters and the like. And I do like my starship battles, so you won't ever hear me complaining about those. What bothers me is recycling plot points and conflicts, like The Force Awakens' main source of conflict being that the villains now have an even bigger, more powerful Death Star. Or Rey being another unlikely hero from a desert planet with powers she isn't initially aware of that she inherited from a family she barely knows anything about. Or Kylo being another fallen Jedi who wiped out almost all of them and would like to finish the job.

If The Last Jedi can buck that trend and present an actually new story for Rey, Finn, and the rest, it could definitely still make me a fan. If it's just going to make Rey even further into Luke 2.0, especially if it does so while, say, having Finn get captured at the end of the film and encased in carbonite (or an equivalent) as punishment for his defecting? There's a good chance I end up deciding to write off the sequels as a waste of time and just look forward to the side stories in the future.

Some of it is how Luke obviously just gave up after screwing up an apprentice. For all the faults of EU, when one of his apprentices fell, he took it on the chin and tried to make things better.
Yeah, I'm trying not to let my familiarity with the EU influence my judgment of the new movies too much, but I can't help but feel the same way. Seeing Luke soldier on to establish his new Jedi Order in the EU despite all of the difficulty he encountered along the way, however mixed in quality it could be, felt like what should have happened after Return of the Jedi. If what's going on in the new continuity is that Luke just gave up and went into hiding after Kylo fell, and not that he's off on some secret mission that could actually help somehow, well, that's a whole lot less satisfying as a story on a basic level. And unfortunately, my money at the moment is on the former.

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 02:38 AM

I don't see any issue with the vehicles - this is still supposed to be the same galaxy, and the time jump wasn't huge, it only makes sense that they would have the same or similar starfighters and the like.

The time jump from ROTJ to TFA is actually significantly greater than the jump from ROTJ to ANH. The jump in ships should have been the same as an Arc-170 to an X-Wing. Or a V-Wing or Jedi fighter to a TIE fighter.

SuperPanda

2017-04-15, 02:46 AM

After letting my thoughts on the trailer sit a little bit more I'm leaning more and more towards thinking this is going to be the "Into Darkness" of nuWars.

I remember way back early into Abrams' reboot of Star Trek that when the second film was first announced the team declared it would be "Wrath of Khan but better." I can think of no one who thought that was a good idea for many rather obvious reasons, but the one unstated was that a story like that needs at least some degree of subtlety. Everything about Force Awakens and Star Trek 2009 was big, loud, shiny and yes - freaking beautiful. The visuals on their own are astounding, the actors are certainly trying to work hard and are alternately stoic or hamming it up so much that you can't help but enjoy it.

Still with everything so over the top there isn't any room for the quiet moments that you need to make Wrath of Khan or Empire Strikes Back work. Luke confronting Vader isn't amazing to watch because of the special effects but because of the pacing in the scene. The slow menace and the apparent lack of effort on his part. Nothing about Kylo Ren is menacing after Force Awakens. The emperor as a shadowy overlord was menacing because he had Vader bowing before him, the implication was that he was that much greater than Vader himself. Kylo bowing before someone is about as impressive as C-3PO bowing before someone.

Abrams has alot of talent in the "big" places - his visuals are amazing, his gets the "fun" banter of modern movies down, he gets awesome action sequences. For all the hate I have for Into Darkness the Space-Walk boarding scene is freaking cool and very well done - almost nothing about the plot makes sense but its enjoyable enough if you simply don't think. That's what I predict he'll give us. Big, loud, lens-flared, beautiful cinema with great action sequences and about as much narrative cohesion as the alphabet song. It will get you from A to Z but it will somehow skip the Y.

Morty

2017-04-15, 04:42 AM

Looks like it's not going to be a rehash of Empire Strikes Back... probably. I liked TFA, unlike apparently everyone in here, but the plot really did go along the exact same lines as the first film.

The "time for the Jedi to end" thing can mean a lot of things, but it sounds promising. The Jedi Order really weren't very good at their jobs in the prequels, and something evidently went wrong again when Luke tried to revive it. Saying that he "gave up after screwing up an apprentice" strikes me as dishonest. Edgelord Supreme also known as Kylo Ren didn't just turn evil. He kind of murdered every other of Luke's apprentices and wrecked the nascent new Jedi Order.

SuperPanda

2017-04-15, 05:19 AM

Your not alone Morty. I enjoyed The Force Awakens despite all its flaws much in the same way that I still love Star Trek 2009 despite all its flaws.

One of those flaws was how it tried to be A New Hope but bigger, louder, flashier, and more awesome. I'd say it succeeded in doing just that. It traded the quieter, more human, moments for far more impressive SFX and "Bigger" set pieces all around. Star Killer Base (SKB) is a perfect metaphor for the film. Its big, its impressive, it creates so many questions. Yet despite being bigger and more impressive SKB fails to create the impact that the Death Star did both when it is used and when it is destroyed.

When SKB fires its main guns we get the wow shots of it charging and firing similar to when the Death Star destroyed Alderan, and they are bigger, prettier, and far more impressive. We get reaction shots of the planet - we actually see the people who are about to die in massive crowds. For the Death Star we only saw the princess's reaction. By seeing her face up close we get to see the fear, panic, and grief of the event in a way which humanizes it more naturally. With SKB we theoretically should have a bigger reaction because we actually saw the people who died - but we don't because we lack anyone to empathize with. We are left to marvel at the awesome graphics and the raw power of the weapon instead of the very human tragedy of its use.

If this was used in a way which appeared intentional - if it fit into a greater theme of dehumanizing violence and the need for bigger and bigger spectacles to keep the galaxy in check - that could be downright brilliant. Nothing in Force Awakens suggests that was the intent though.

For all my nit-picking complaining, here are the rest of my thoughts on The Force Awakens:

The SFX are amazingly beautiful. The scope feels suitable epic for a Star Wars movie, it does feel like the galaxy has more in it than Tatooine. Finn's story creates some interesting implications for the many faceless mooks in the series - He introduced room to explore some very interesting stories which the "clone army" plot of the prequels intentionally closed off to keep the morality of Star Wars nice and simple. Rey was fine - honestly she was no more annoying than any average chosen one archetype out there. It was big, it was pretty, it was fun, it raised just enough questions for happy nerd discussions about the universe without offering any hint that there was a correct answer. It felt like Star Wars to me.

I have friends who think of Star Wars more how I used to feel about Trek. They felt that Star Wars had a something to it which made it deeper. The OT hinted at a deep religion, a complex lore, a vast universe - all while never actually showing any of it. The Prequels tried to go back and provide answers to many of those questions - and virtually every answer they provided is soundly hated while many questions they raise are more neutral with the fans. The Force Awakens captured that OT balance of "world building" without actually building a world which created the gorgeously hollywood world of Star Wars I wanted to see again. Those of my friends who wanted a more complex and deep Star Wars were very disapointed. The opposite of those has been true with me and J.J. Trek. Those of my friends who wanted to see a gorgeous Trek aesthetic with fun actors and fun movies have absolutely loved JJ Trek. I wanted to see a deeper story than the film makers wanted to make.

I don't predict that Last Jedi will have a deep story. I'm worried that they'll try to "top" Empire Strikes Back because that is what ruined Star Trek Into Darkness for me. If Into Darkness had removed the Khan reveal and the Wrath of Khan "homage" scenes it would have been a fun stupid movie. Instead because I knew that the film makers thought they were improving on Wrath of Khan I couldn't help comparing the two and thus growing to dislike the new film because of how clumsy it felt compared to the old on.

I think that is exactly what most people feel about The Force Awakens - its so obviously a send up to A New Hope that people compare them and realize that ANH is simply a better made movie despite being much older. Its like watching your local high school's performance of Romeo and Juliet a week after seeing it done by the Royal Shakespeare company at the Globe Theater - it dosen't matter how good those kids are you'll still find yourself comparing them to the masters and as a result finding flaws which otherwise might not have bothered you.

Hopeless

2017-04-15, 08:55 AM

For me TFA was the first movie where I could point out the mistakes!

Seriously from Poe Dameron should have been kept involved so he would recognise the Falcon leading to him flying it to meet Han with Rey keeping it operational demonstrating her remarkable mechanical talents as demonstrated the Falcon needed a co-pilot and you would still keep Finn involved but we would have our successor to the OT cast right there in front of us and it would have developed naturally and well!

Han takes them to Takodana learn about Maz a former student of Luke's who found the lightsaber he left behind on Bespin.

Han contacts Leia leading her to leave New Hosnian right before Star Killer Base turns up.

The literal prototype Death Star its main weapon allows it to recharge its hyperdrive by drawing energy from the system's sun however the process devastates any world or fleet caught between the sun and SKB.

There explains where its origin, shows it is different from the Death Star and gets across how dangerous it is and how insane the First Order is to actually use a weapon even Emperor Palpatine and Grand Moff Tarkin balked at!

Having escaped the carnage Leia turns up with Admiral Ackbar aboard the soon to be decommissioned Home One along with a ceremonial wing of Starfighters in time to catch Kylo raiding Takodana trying to recover the missing part of R2D2's memory core which holds the route to the Jedi Temple Luke retreated to.

We learn First Order Loyalists in the New Republic arranged for the attack that wiped out Luke's new academy, we also learn Kylo was tricked into carrying a tracking beacon so they could follow him straight to it.

Because Luke wanted to keep his new jedi order out of the bureaucratic mess that afflicted the Republic Jedi this was used to turn him into a threat the First Order Loyalists used to strike at the one threat they truly feared.

Luke realising the New Republic had been infiltrated left into exile taking as many of the survivors he could although officially they're all supposed to have died except for him.

Luke arranged for Han to deliver an inoperable R2 to Leia eventually arranging for the missing part of R2's core to return to her once he felt ready.

Sadly what we got was a mess!

As for the trailer... they really should have learned from the mistakes from TFA!

They really should kick that mystery box to the curb and stop hoarding secrets... they really need to start releasing information on this new era rather than keep us guessing as it stands this isn't looking good!

Yes I'm hoping I'm wrong too but I actually liked the teaser from TFA!

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 09:04 AM

Ah yes. Poe. The character sacrificed in order to make Rey look good...

Like she almost highjacks his story really. He's pretty much inoperable as a protagonist after the last story had nothing for him to succeed at.

Cikomyr

2017-04-15, 09:53 AM

Well as a person who utterly hates Ray as a character, I can sort of understand what he meant, if just phrased improperly.

No Disney won't kill off the Jedi. Its too marketable a phrase. Jedi is near synonymous with Star Wars.

But Ray if not meeting the literal definition of mary sue, is a boring dull character that did not grow and has no space for growth as a person. Her entire last story was one of near effortless progress and unstopability. And one could accuse this trend of ignoring proper character growth in exchange for somehow making up for past sociatal injustices.

So he may feel concerned with the idea that maybe Disney is pushing for an idea that somehow Disney wants to represent the extinction of the Jedi order as a good thing because it ties together with previous cultural problems somehow.

Now I disagree with this profusely, but Ray is still a garbage character, and people dismiss any criticsm of her or her arc with the accusation of people who hate her having a bais against women. When in reality its a bais against any character that seems almost like a self insert fanfic.

Except that 3/4 of the rant made the case that Rey is a Mary Sue BECAUSE she is a woman, which is some of the crappiest anti-women strawman argument going among the seediest and sexiest parts of the internet.

He could have made his rant about Rey's Mary Sueness without attacking her gender at every other sentences.

You could make the argument that Rey is a Mary Sue. I disagree, but i understand where it comes from.

But making the argument that they made Rey a Mary Sue because she is a woman and thus "they" want to promote some conspirationist Feminist agenda? Thats Return of Kings crapfest.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 10:04 AM

Except that 3/4 of the rant made the case that Rey is a Mary Sue BECAUSE she is a woman

The argument I understood is that Ray is a mary sue because the Politics of modern time promote this type of character.

The argument isn't that "Well if this character was male they wouldn't be a mary sue" its that "This character was made a mary sue, in order to right some kind of societal wrong".

Its not really conspiritorial. Its a common trend in our current years. I think its a terrible trend and writing has really suffered as a result.

Edit: Not the trend of Female characters. The Trend of bad writing.

SuperPanda

2017-04-15, 10:28 AM

Except that 3/4 of the rant made the case that Rey is a Mary Sue BECAUSE she is a woman, which is some of the crappiest anti-women strawman argument going among the seediest and sexiest parts of the internet.

The argument I understood is that Ray is a mary sue because the Politics of modern time promote this type of character.

Its not really conspiritorial. Its a common trend in our current years. I think its a terrible trend and writing has really suffered as a result.

I think you're both right, probably both agree, and yet are speaking from different perspectives looking at the same thing.

One argument for why Rey is a bad character is that the powers that be are trying to change the world by presenting unrealistically competent characters to show people that "girls can be cool" and that their social message and agenda prevents decent story telling - therefore things suck because of a girl protagonist.

A similar argument for why Rey is a bad character is that society has changed to the point that films are getting alot more flak for things like representation than they ever did in the past. Big studios are trying to adapt to this but are doing so in a reactionary way. In trying to please their audience and avoid criticism they are terrified to let the character be a three dimensional person and as such they become a bland mary-sue.

These two look the same at first but the first presumes several things which are intrinsically "anti-women" such as that a hyper competent female is "unrealistic" to begin with or that "girls can be cool" is somehow a subversive message instead of pure common sense.

Both of these arguments ignore the argument which assumes the least number of variables and has plenty of evidence backing it up: Rey is a poorly written character because the writers didn't do a very good job. With the possible exception of Finn, and even there his character is pretty thin, none of the characters in The Force Awakens were particularly well written. The question was more about how much they irritated people. Personally, Kylo Ren's acting bothered me an order of magnitude more than Rey's hyper-competence in the finale.

While there is a trend towards female protagonists in Holywood right now this can be traced rather nicely to what films are profitable. Social Media also has exponential increased the hype engines the studios use for marketing (evidenced by this thread) and the potential for backlash/outrage at perceived slights. It requires far fewer leaps of logic to assume that the extremely cautious film corps would seek to capitalize on the ability to generate Hype while minimizing the potential for social media backlash wherever they can.

TV and Film sometimes does push an agenda. Sometimes like the Star Trek: TOS - that agenda can be pushed subtly through diversity. Sometimes that agenda gets pushed obnoxiously. Most of the time the agenda is "get as much of the customer's money as possible." The bigger budget the film is, the more likely its looking for money more than any other agenda. Oscar bait movies also tend to be pushier with agendas than summer films.

Edit: Leaving my reply - but after seeing your edit Scowling Dragon I'm pretty sure we agree 100% already.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 10:46 AM

I agree with you Super Panda and to clarify my position:
Rey isn't a bad character because shes unrealistic. Its that she's just too competent to present interesting tension and character growth.

As for the poorly writtenness: Yes. All these types of characters are just poorly written. My point being is that I often enough find to my irritation this type of archetype being given a pass for reasons of social adjustment.

I have no doubt that the reasning behind this is just cold hard cash...So yeah we agree nearly 100%

Morty

2017-04-15, 11:02 AM

Sure would be nice to have a thread about Star Wars without debates about whether or not Rey is a Mary Sue.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 11:11 AM

Sure would be nice to have a thread about Star Wars without debates about whether or not Rey is a Mary Sue.

Yeah I know! Why did she have to be so poorly written! :smallcool:

Mando Knight

2017-04-15, 11:40 AM

The time jump from ROTJ to TFA is actually significantly greater than the jump from ROTJ to ANH. The jump in ships should have been the same as an Arc-170 to an X-Wing. Or a V-Wing or Jedi fighter to a TIE fighter.

It's not that unreasonable: real-life military vehicles saw a rapid development leading up to and during WWII, tapering off near the end of the Cold War, and most aircraft lines currently in service even in the US have service lives of several decades (including upgrades and variants like ANH's T-65 X-Wing to TFA's T-70).

As a reference for capital ships, the CV-6 USS Enterprise served as a carrier for 9 years, the CVN-65 Enterprise lasted 50.

Ah yes. Poe. The character sacrificed in order to make Rey look good...

Like she almost highjacks his story really. He's pretty much inoperable as a protagonist after the last story had nothing for him to succeed at.
His role in TFA was actually expanded to what it was in the final script. Originally, he was just going to die rather than survive to serve as the super-ace face of the Resistance's fighter corps. He's basically Wedge with more screen time.

J-H

2017-04-15, 11:46 AM

Yeah, Poe was odd.
I thought his name was Paul (with a British accent on it) until I started reading posts after watching the movie.

In the background fighter battle over the Mas cantina fight, I noticed one X-wing doing a bunch of acrobatics and getting a bunch of kills, and figured it was probably him. Maybe the Force is strong in him?

The only character from TFA that I would want to read a book about (for more history) is Kyle Wren. Kylo Ren. Whatever. Of the Knights of Ren, which are mentioned nowhere else. And he's the only one. And he follows a giant ugly Sith lord named Snopes.

Worldbuilding in TFA was sub-par.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 12:06 PM

For some reason I got the names Confused. I meant Finn. He has character growth in the story, but his role is pretty much over because he was established as a joke in Episode 7.

Giggling Ghast

2017-04-15, 12:21 PM

Man, you guys are a bunch of downers.

I think maybe Luke's proposing the creation of a new order that combines the philosophies of Jedi and Sith. This would potentially end the cycle of young Jedi falling to the Dark Side and the Sith constantly destroying themselves.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-15, 12:24 PM

For some reason I got the names Confused. I meant Finn. He has character growth in the story, but his role is pretty much over because he was established as a joke in Episode 7.

Grumble grumble Finn should totally be back in a supporting role.

I also think that in some ways TFA should have been Finn's story in the way TLJ is obviously going to be Rey's. He had an interesting setup, a guy raised as a soldier to believe in a cause who has a crisis of faith and defects once his friend dies. I think if he'd got a bit more focus and the story had been on 'Rey, Finn, and Poe, the new Star Wars crew' it would have been a lot better as a film, and then at the end he ends up in a coma and Rey goes off to train as a Jedi with Luke and Poe stays as the Resistance fighter ace.

Now I understand why Rey was the protagonist, and wish that Disney had not written her in such a way that I didn't wish her story had focused on someone else. I've seen well written female characters, and plan to start Honor Harrington soon because I've heard it's a good sci-fi story with a female lead, I just don't think Rey was a good character. Maybe The Last Jedi will redeem her, I'll only go and see it in cinemas if friends invite me because I'm not overly into Star Wars anymore.

Deathkeeper

2017-04-15, 12:55 PM

Blah blah balance, without us it wouldn't be so bad, sins of the father, our time is past, blah.

Oh come on Disney. If you look into the Force, you should see something vaguely more interesting and sophisticated than just the balance of darkness and light. For all his monomythic flaws, Lucas was never that strangled by stale tropes.

But bargain basement philosophy aside, it'll be nice actually seeing Hamill on screen again, embittered veteran or no. Finn still be unconscious is nice, we're not brushing past to him being completely fine after a time skip.

Define "stale tropes" because the prequels were about The Chosen One and a secret, tragic romance. That is about as stale as it gets.

I thought the trailer was fine.
PS- hi Scowling! It's been ages.

Mando Knight

2017-04-15, 01:16 PM

I think maybe Luke's proposing the creation of a new order that combines the philosophies of Jedi and Sith.
Except that doesn't make sense because of the nature of the Sith. Argue about the values of a "balanced" view of the Force all you want, but Sith philosophy is a philosophy of manipulation and destruction for personal gain. Moderating Jedi philosophy with Sith teachings is like saying "our elitist club of self-ordained super-cops is maybe going down the wrong path. We should start trampling our foes underfoot and exterminate their children, just for balance's sake."

Morty

2017-04-15, 01:19 PM

The Glyphstone

2017-04-15, 01:35 PM

happyturtle

2017-04-15, 01:37 PM

The thing about having female leads in big budget movies is NOT that we (as women) need them to be perfect. But we do need them to be there. We need women who aren't about getting pregnant and dying in childbirth (because they lost the will to live no less!) We need women who aren't there to be a reward for the men. We need women who aren't there to be raped or murdered or fridged as character development for some man. We need women who aren't there to get their clothes off for the fans. We simply need women who are there doing all the things men have been doing in movies since movies have been a thing.

Leia was exactly what we want. And yet she still had to kiss her brother, date a scruffy-looking nerf-herder, and wear a gold bikini, just to be fourth billing after Luke, Han, and Vader. Hermione Granger is what we want. And yet she was always overshadowed by the stupid boys. Ripley is what we want, if we ignore Resurrection and everything after that.

And yes, for me, Rey is what we want. Lonely, PTSD, hyper-competent, Force-user Rey.

Hollywood may be getting it wrong. (Hollywood is always getting it wrong - no surprise there!) They tend to lean more towards bad writing than not. And character development is always thin when you only have 90 or so minutes. But I'm glad to have an actual female lead.

hamishspence

2017-04-15, 01:38 PM

Not to pick up, but it's generally implied or outright explicit that you need the low-level precognition and reflexes of a Jedi to avoid mutilating yourself with a weightless plasma blade in a fight.

In very early Legends (West End Games material) yes. However, that's generally been ignored by later material. And by the newcanon too. Han ends up wielding a lightsaber alongside Luke & Leia in the Marvel SW comics. And Kanan teaches Sabine to wield the black-bladed "Darksaber" in Rebels. Luke fights a lightsaber-wielding stormtrooper.

Some of the first Star Wars concept art by Ralph McQuarrie included lightsaber-wielding stormtroopers, for that matter.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-15, 01:41 PM

The thing about having female leads in big budget movies is NOT that we (as women) need them to be perfect.

Wow, I didn't know women had hiveminds. Awesome. How does the representation of hive minds speak to you? I think the way that Hive minds are always portrayed as a negative is grossly offencive.

Kitten Champion

2017-04-15, 01:45 PM

It's pretty heavily implied he's Force-sensitive as well, although I'm not sure. I guess it depends on whether a Muggle can fight with a lightsaber. They never do, but... is there anything about a lightsaber that requires Force sensitivity to use?

I hope not. One of the things I liked about both The Force Awakens and Rogue One was its restraint in that. I don't reasonably expect any Star Wars movie or television series to exclude Force use/users in some respect - much less ones subtitled The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi - but there's a saturation point where it begins to eat into the appeal the rest of the universe could potentially have.

Having Rey fulfill that expectation is enough, Finn's situated pretty well as an audience surrogate.

hamishspence

2017-04-15, 01:51 PM

Some of it is how Luke obviously just gave up after screwing up an apprentice. For all the faults of EU, when one of his apprentices fell, he took it on the chin and tried to make things better.

Generally, when Luke's apprentices fell in the EU, they didn't kill off all his other apprentices.

Probably the most damage done by one apprentice, to the Academy, was by Brakiss in Young Jedi Knights (by which time Luke had already trained a large number of Knights) - Brakiss destroyed Luke's Academy on Yavin IV, leaving it in ruins.

But Luke himself, and most of his Knights, Masters, and current class of trainees survived - and they rebuilt the wrecked Academy.

Morty

2017-04-15, 02:04 PM

Not to pick up, but it's generally implied or outright explicit that you need the low-level precognition and reflexes of a Jedi to avoid mutilating yourself with a weightless plasma blade in a fight. Han could use Luke's saber to cut open the Tauntaun for warmth, but probably not to fight with.

Sounds about right.

I hope not. One of the things I liked about both The Force Awakens and Rogue One was its restraint in that. I don't reasonably expect any Star Wars movie or television series to exclude Force use/users in some respect - much less ones subtitled The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi - but there's a saturation point where it begins to eat into the appeal the rest of the universe could potentially have.

Having Rey fulfill that expectation is enough, Finn's situated pretty well as an audience surrogate.

Can't say I disagree, or that I wouldn't like Finn as a normal guy, but fighting Kylo Ren with a lightsaber for a good while does point towards him being Force-sensitive.

warty goblin

2017-04-15, 02:36 PM

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 03:17 PM

Generally, when Luke's apprentices fell in the EU, they didn't kill off all his other apprentices.

Probably the most damage done by one apprentice, to the Academy, was by Brakiss in Young Jedi Knights (by which time Luke had already trained a large number of Knights) - Brakiss destroyed Luke's Academy on Yavin IV, leaving it in ruins.

But Luke himself, and most of his Knights, Masters, and current class of trainees survived - and they rebuilt the wrecked Academy.

Luke lost every apprentice and almost everybody in Dark Empire. I think Kam Solusar was the only guy who made it out of there alive, and barely. Luke also screwed up and lost people multiple times in the original Marvel run.

But even then, that's not a reasonable explanation, it's an excuse. They wanted a hard reset and they got it. I have zero interest in justifications about how this super srs and for real plotline is better than all the stories where his apprentices fell, since even those were widely mocked since Dark Empire is so contentious and Jedi Academy is forever tainted by the sun crusher.

hamishspence

2017-04-15, 03:33 PM

Luke lost every apprentice and almost everybody in Dark Empire. I think Kam Solusar was the only guy who made it out of there alive, and barely.

Vima Da-Boda did as well - she turns up in Crimson Empire III.

"Losing people who die heroically fighting the long-standing villains" is a bit different from losing all your people to your own apprentice-turned villain.

It's like with Obi-Wan and Yoda - they lost everybody to Palpatine + Vader - they don't try to reestablish the Jedi Order - because they know that if they start training people, Vader and the Emperor will eventually sense it, and hunt them down.

They only started training Luke when they figured there was no more time left to spare (Yoda was approaching the end of his lifespan).

Ashen Lilies

2017-04-15, 03:47 PM

I don't see how Finn was sidelined at all. Until the very end, he was pretty firmly in the position of Rey's co-protagonist. She's simply the one who got to kick Darth Edgelord's ass in the end. We'll see how it goes for him in the sequel. But I doubt he'll spend much of it in a coma. It's pretty heavily implied he's Force-sensitive as well, although I'm not sure. I guess it depends on whether a Muggle can fight with a lightsaber. They never do, but... is there anything about a lightsaber that requires Force sensitivity to use?

Not to pick up, but it's generally implied or outright explicit that you need the low-level precognition and reflexes of a Jedi to avoid mutilating yourself with a weightless plasma blade in a fight. Han could use Luke's saber to cut open the Tauntaun for warmth, but probably not to fight with.

Depending on how the canonicity of TCW and Rebels ever ends up impacting the films (probably not, besides cameos) then at the very least the Mandalorians got a couple of goes at it, since they have an archaic heirloom lightsaber that ends up getting passed around as a token of leadership (and has been part of a number of on-screen honor duels).

For me, though, the scene on Jakku where Finn breaks his conditioning just kind of screams "force sensitive" to me, so I still believe it.

Peelee

2017-04-15, 03:53 PM

I have zero interest in justifications about how this super srs and for real plotline is better than all the stories where his apprentices fell, since even those were widely mocked since Dark Empire is so contentious and Jedi Academy is forever tainted by the sun crusher.

Oh come on. Don't put all that on the Sun Crusher.

There was also Daala, the supposedly hyper-competent Admiral, who acted like a kid with tunnel vision.

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 04:11 PM

Oh come on. Don't put all that on the Sun Crusher.

There was also Daala, the supposedly hyper-competent Admiral, who acted like a kid with tunnel vision.

And you know what? I'd still take it over what we have now. You at least had a sense of actual character progression.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-15, 04:15 PM

I think the one thing I'm really hoping it's that the new film doesn't have a new superweapon that be be described as 'the Death Star but bigger' again. The Death Star was cool as a weapon of terror, and the second one worked as a trap, but at Starkiller Base it just became silly.

Maybe it's because I've recently started reading Lensman (the story of the original star war) but the weapons seem to be becoming bigger and less efficient with each iteration. SKB was just stood, sure it's essentially an awesome artillery piece, but if you have to use an entire star per shot then you've limited the total number of shots you can fire and still have a galaxy, I hope the first Order gets a better power source for the next one. At least in Lensman defences scanned up fast enough that the next big weapon seemed like it was to try and get past those rather than an attempt to up the stakes.

Cikomyr

2017-04-15, 04:47 PM

Sounds about right.

Can't say I disagree, or that I wouldn't like Finn as a normal guy, but fighting Kylo Ren with a lightsaber for a good while does point towards him being Force-sensitive.

Doesnt mean much. Kylo was already half crippled by Chewbacca's crossbow blast

Ashen Lilies

2017-04-15, 05:01 PM

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-15, 05:32 PM

After it's used up its home system star, I'm pretty sure that there's going to be an abundance of planet-less stars that can be consumed: certainly, many less than targets of value that you'd need to shoot.

I don't know, it just seems like the energy expenditure isn't worth it, especially as you'll likely have to move every shot (maybe once every three to five of you pick the right systems). Pretty much the only advantage you're getting is range. Oh, and I hope you don't have any plans for the system you for from, loss of a start will not only do planets from orbiting but those planets now also have no star of that was the last one in the system. Unless of course you use planetless stars.

Also, it's at a weird point where if there's only as many targets of value as implied (a mighty two) then the cost is insane and all you have is a massive hard to use deterrent.

That's not getting post the fact that at the Star Wars tech level you might be able to do the much cheaper option of flying a planet to the edge of the solar system and launching a decent sized slug at a significant fraction of c, get it right and you can crack a planet with a shot moving faster than a turbolaser is shown to and landing with significantly more explosive energy. I'm certain for the cost of SKB the First Order could have built 10-100 planet killers consisting of life support, engines, shields, point defences, and a really big railgun to point at the target (not a great warship, but we're really just looking for something to hyperdrive into the system, fire a shot at a planet, and hyperdrive out, it just needs enough staying power to line up it's shot. Even if they could only build about 10 of them it should be a better investment.

Avilan the Grey

2017-04-15, 05:58 PM

I felt a clear and strong "Meh" about this trailer. But then I felt the same for the first tralier for TFA. And that turned out great.

Legato Endless

2017-04-15, 06:30 PM

I like Rey as a character, and thought Daisy Ridley did a hell of a good job. If anything, I'd have rather the movie had spent more time letting the audience get to know her, but that would have conflicted with the overall reliance of the movie on Abrams' stupid 'mystery box' writing gimmick, and the metric ton of tedious witty dialog. I am getting very weary of endless witty dialog.

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
-E. Hemingway

Abrams' box is terrible. First, the writers have outright admitted they haven't planned the trilogy out, they're making this up as go. Which might be tolerable if the whole damn thing didn't revolve around further revelations. More seriously, the gamification of the mystery is awful. It's a box for the sake of itself, not to further anything else structurally. Is it really that hard to just write a story, and then work backwards and gut a few things for the artifice of suspense, like a dignified penny dreadful from last century? I don't understand how this style of stuffing half a story full of stop signs painted, "Look at the Blinking Icon! This will matter later!" became popular.

Define "stale tropes" because the prequels were about The Chosen One and a secret, tragic romance. That is about as stale as it gets.

The balance between light and dark with dark not really being evil even though it acts like a Nazi is about as played out a trope as it gets in Speculative fiction. It's not interesting. It's too shallow, too simplistic, too route. Stale does not mean ubiquitous, it means passed its prime. It's the dullest iteration of Game Theory ever.

Porthos

2017-04-15, 06:48 PM

*pokes head in thread*

Ah, once again I see the truism that "No one hates Star Wars quite as much as SW fans" holds true once more. :smallsigh:

(Also, my personal observation that when people REALLY want to bash SW, they head directly to anti-Disney propaganda is truer than ever. :smallsigh::smallsigh: It's like people aren't even listening when they are told over and over again that Disney is being EXTREMELY hands off about SW :smallannoyed:)

===

Can guarantee you one thing right now. Whatever comes out of TLJ, it AIN'T gonna be an endorsement of the "Gray Jedi" silliness. Plenty of room in SW lore to show how the Jedi became corrupted and lost their way (in fact, that's the main subtext of the PT/TCW era) and how they need to be reformed.

But "Grey Jedi"? Making them even MORE out of tune with the Light Side. Shayah, right. Ain't happening.

Anyway, I LOVED the trailer. It was evocative, it set a tone, and it has us guessing and reflecting on what it all means. Just what a SW trailer SHOULD do. IMNSHO.

Zevox

2017-04-15, 06:53 PM

Nothing about Kylo Ren is menacing after Force Awakens. The emperor as a shadowy overlord was menacing because he had Vader bowing before him, the implication was that he was that much greater than Vader himself. Kylo bowing before someone is about as impressive as C-3PO bowing before someone.
Yeah, I've got to say, Kylo bothers me more than any other major character in TFA. He's literally a whiny wannabe Darth Vader. There's probably ways you could have done him that involved him wanting desperately to live up to his Grandfather's stature but failing that would have worked, but as-is, he's only coming across as annoying and his parallels to Vader become a constant reminder that he's just a lesser version of a better villain. Particularly his failure to beat Rey and Finn at the end there - Finn's not even force-sensitive, and Rey may have potential but lacks any training, while Kylo is supposed to be thoroughly enough trained that he killed every other apprentice Luke had. By basic logic he should have curb-stomped Finn and beat Rey with less effort than it took Vader to beat Luke in Empire Strikes Back. That he failed to do so is pretty sad.

I liked TFA, unlike apparently everyone in here, but the plot really did go along the exact same lines as the first film.
To be fair, I don't especially dislike The Force Awakens, any more than I like it. Certainly I find it to be better than the prequels, easily - and I probably dislike the prequels a little less than the average Star Wars fan to begin with. What I find it to be is sadly mediocre and too much a rehash to be worthy of any particular praise. At best, should subsequent films prove good, it's one that I'll consider worth getting through because it set up better things to come. If things continue in the same vein as it, however, I don't think it will be worth my time to keep watching the sequels as they come.

The "time for the Jedi to end" thing can mean a lot of things, but it sounds promising. The Jedi Order really weren't very good at their jobs in the prequels, and something evidently went wrong again when Luke tried to revive it. Saying that he "gave up after screwing up an apprentice" strikes me as dishonest. Edgelord Supreme also known as Kylo Ren didn't just turn evil. He kind of murdered every other of Luke's apprentices and wrecked the nascent new Jedi Order.
Yes, and it will be a sad state of affairs if Luke's reaction to that isn't to do anything about it, but to give up and become a hermit.

When Yoda and Ben did that, they were going into hiding from a galactic government that wanted them dead - they couldn't fight back on their own, and the destruction of the Jedi Order and every other group that had opposed Palpatine was so thorough at that point that they basically were on their own. Even with what scant little details TFA gives about the overall state of the galaxy in its time, Luke's situation would clearly be nothing like that, with both whatever government was the target of the new Death Star's attack at the start of the movie and the Resistance around for him to work with, and his sister even being a big player in the latter. And again, a big deal was made throughout the original films about him being the last hope of the Jedi, the one would have to rebuild them - it's supposed to be literally his life's work.

And yet, at first glance, it seems like they're slapping Luke into the Yoda role here. If so, that's very disappointing.

Except that doesn't make sense because of the nature of the Sith. Argue about the values of a "balanced" view of the Force all you want, but Sith philosophy is a philosophy of manipulation and destruction for personal gain. Moderating Jedi philosophy with Sith teachings is like saying "our elitist club of self-ordained super-cops is maybe going down the wrong path. We should start trampling our foes underfoot and exterminate their children, just for balance's sake."
Agreed.

I think the one thing I'm really hoping it's that the new film doesn't have a new superweapon that be be described as 'the Death Star but bigger' again. The Death Star was cool as a weapon of terror, and the second one worked as a trap, but at Starkiller Base it just became silly.
Oh heavens yes. The Death Star was great once, and an unfinished second one made a good enough setting for the big final confrontation in Return of the Jedi, but bringing in yet another operational planet-destroying superweapon in TFA was one of the worst, dullest parts of the film. There's plenty you can do with the Star Wars universe without resorting to superweapons, so hopefully they stop with them already. We've already had one more than we should have, more are very unnecessary to say the least.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-15, 07:01 PM

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
-E. Hemingway

Abrams' box is terrible. First, the writers have outright admitted they haven't planned the trilogy out, they're making this up as go. Which might be tolerable if the whole damn thing didn't revolve around further revelations. More seriously, the gamification of the mystery is awful. It's a box for the sake of itself, not to further anything else structurally. Is it really that hard to just write a story, and then work backwards and gut a few things for the artifice of suspense, like a dignified penny dreadful from last century? I don't understand how this style of stuffing half a story full of stop signs painted, "Look at the Blinking Icon! This will matter later!" became popular.

It depends, I'm going to split this into two different areas.

In the terms of the setting, this is a story spanning a galaxy and potentially thousands of years, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney only has a vague idea of 'stuff happens, New Republic falls in Sequel Trilogy, stuff happens including Republic 3.0, bad thing, and so on', it's about what I'd expect, and as someone planning a series which literally spans a galaxy and several thousand years it's really the only way to do it at the beginning.

In the terms of the Trilogy, which is a self contained arc in the Star Wars setting story, and with this one's focus on revelations over the archetypes and stories of the OT, it's not a great idea. I suspect Lucas got away with it for the OT because the first was meant to be self-contained, the second was just intended to build upon the first, and the third was intended to wrap up the story with a tone between the two. However here the first film of the trilogy ends with more unanswered than there was in A New Hope: who's Rey's parents? Is Finn force sensitive? What's up with Luke? What's Snoke's master plan? Why did R2-D2 reactivate? Just lots of questions that I'd really want to know the answers to before introducing my audience to them.

Maybe it's because my personal planning style goes 'determine start of plot thread (e.g. MC is an engineer serving on a Martian Commonwealth battleship), determine end of plot thread (e.g. MC is captain of MCS Fluffy Kitten and has just beaten the enemy flagship), then work out how to get from one to the other' that it feels so strange to me.

The balance between light and dark with dark not really being evil even though it acts like a Nazi is about as played out a trope as it gets in Speculative fiction. It's not interesting. It's too shallow, too simplistic, too route. Stale does not mean ubiquitous, it means passed its prime. It's the dullest iteration of Game Theory ever.

True, while I don't hate dark is not evil stories I tend to get suspicious at them. I admit that I enjoyed what TFA did with the 'tempted by the light side' thing, but I honestly just don't want to see dark vs light anymore.

Porthos

2017-04-15, 07:16 PM

Doesnt mean much. Kylo was already half crippled by Chewbacca's crossbow blast

He was also dealing with the mental trauma of offing his dad.

One of the interesting things out of the Han/Ben confrontation is the notion that Ben was THIS CLOSE to walking away with his dad. But something deep inside of him snapped/refused to take that critical step toward redemption and he just wasn't prepared for the finality of it all.

Maybe it was something as simple as Ben's Weakness and seeing the sun being snuffed out caused him to give up hope on some level.

How Ben/Kylo deals with this is something I'm looking forward to. Indeed, I quite liked the fact that Ben Solo wasn't Fully Cooked in the Dark Side and we saw his falling.

(I also LOVE the idea that the Dark Side can lead to emotional instability. The idea that Evil Makes You Super Sexy Cool and Confident is one that annoys me. Play up the emotional volatility that the Dark Side is supposed to at least partially represent, I say)

warty goblin

2017-04-15, 07:34 PM

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
-E. Hemingway

Abrams' box is terrible. First, the writers have outright admitted they haven't planned the trilogy out, they're making this up as go. Which might be tolerable if the whole damn thing didn't revolve around further revelations. More seriously, the gamification of the mystery is awful. It's a box for the sake of itself, not to further anything else structurally. Is it really that hard to just write a story, and then work backwards and gut a few things for the artifice of suspense, like a dignified penny dreadful from last century? I don't understand how this style of stuffing half a story full of stop signs painted, "Look at the Blinking Icon! This will matter later!" became popular.

Hollow really nails how I felt about TFA, thanks for the quote. Not as bad as Into Darkness - a movie I have inexplicably watched three times, but which was so empty I lack any coherent thought or memory of it - but still pretty soulless. It didn't feel like a story that wanted to be told, so much as a story assembled from 1 part aping the past, 1 part whatever's hot in PG-13 action movies, and just enough connective tissue to keep the whole thing from falling totally apart.

The balance between light and dark with dark not really being evil even though it acts like a Nazi is about as played out a trope as it gets in Speculative fiction. It's not interesting. It's too shallow, too simplistic, too route. Stale does not mean ubiquitous, it means passed its prime. It's the dullest iteration of Game Theory ever.

One of the more legitimately interesting things about Lucas-era Star Wars is that a great deal of it revolves around what to do with emotion, particularly that being owned and controlled by them is very much a path to self-destruction, which then ripples out and destroys others. The Sith end up evil, not because emotion is evil, but because they wallow in self-indulgent feelings, until that controls them and they do what they feel without thought for others. Doing what you want leading to evil is very much not a trendy notion in modern American culture.

As such, I suspect this is an aspect that will very much be lost in Disney era Star Wars, if it hasn't already. I think this difference shows up if you contrast Kylo killing Han with Anakin killing the younglings. Both were motivated by gaining more power from the Dark Side, but Anakin only killed the younglings because he'd been told he had to, in order to save Padme. His inability to let go of his of fear of losing her meant Palpatine could manipulate him into atrocity. Kylo killed Han because stabbing your dad is totes evil, yo, and he wants to be totes evil, but he keeps having these urges to do good things and so is all conflicted and stuff. Evil is the goal, not the consequence, which is an incredibly shallow understanding of evil.

Lucas era Star Wars was hardly a work of great moral complexity, and I'm not gonna argue that it is. But it at least had, in a rather clumsy, retrofitted way, a theory of what caused people to be evil, and how a person could avoid that.

Cikomyr

2017-04-15, 07:35 PM

I'll just write a few thoughts part of the overall conversation.

1- I really dont care if JJ Abrams predetermined the entire trilogy ahead of time. The point of TFA was to be a proof of concept validating the entire Star Wars enterprise as a proper cash cow.
1.a - Once this is established, they can pick up whatever threads left by TFA to form the story into being more properly though out for the future. The lack of actual strong plot already in place from TFA means they can take this story wherever they want. (Kind of like ESB could take the story anywhere after ANH).
1.b. - This is Disney Corp, they own the other hottest multimedia movie franchise that actually has a cohesive storyline. They have the know-how to come up with good stories, and once they proved the franchise to be worthwhile, they will stop taking "safe" bets (like fanboy director JJ Abrams) and move into riskier territories (like Marvel did with Whedon).

2- I liked Rey. She was intriguing, and i feel we have a lot more to learn about her. The reason she is so gifted at so many things is actually part of the mystery she represents.
2.a - She has been established properly as a character presence, but as an actual plot-relevant character, she is as much of a Tabula Rasa as its possible to have. We dont know her background or desires, which makes it extremely easy to make her fit whatever storyframe the writers will decide to.
2.b. - Doesnt mean my favourite protagonist character of TFA isnt Finn.

3- I effing LOVED Kylo Ren. Man, what an oddball gusty move away from the ACTUAL Dartg Vader wannabes of "brooding, threatening and intimidating villains" that were Darth Maul, Tyranus and Grievious. Kylo Ren is a literal Wannabe, which makes him probably the most interesting and conflicted villain we have seen so far in Star Wars.
3.a. - And yet, beside his most personal motivation, we know nothing about the guy's past, his associates, etc. Who is Ren? Why did he turned to the Dark Side? Why does he seem to know more about Rey than most people?

4- Starkiller base was stupid and useless.

Peelee

2017-04-15, 07:38 PM

Porthos

2017-04-15, 07:39 PM

*whispers in tiny voice*

The secret to Disney's success with both Marvel and Star Wars is to get the hell out of the way and let the Creators Be Creators.

Disney ISN'T putting a "Disney Stamp" on SW or micromanaging it. I would have thought Rogue One would have gone a long way to dispelling those ideas, but it looks like it's gonna be a long hard slog on this front. :smallwink:

Jayngfet

2017-04-15, 08:09 PM

Proof of concept is invalid. We have speeders vs Walkers all over again. We have jedi trials in a cave all over again. There is now no such thing as a ship unrelated to something from the Original Trilogy.

Any idea that they were just playing it safe for the first one, and all those assertions the cast made that this was going to be cooler and more experimental, were lies and shouldn't be believed compared to the direct evidence of your eyes.

Zevox

2017-04-15, 08:11 PM

One of the more legitimately interesting things about Lucas-era Star Wars is that a great deal of it revolves around what to do with emotion, particularly that being owned and controlled by them is very much a path to self-destruction, which then ripples out and destroys others. The Sith end up evil, not because emotion is evil, but because they wallow in self-indulgent feelings, until that controls them and they do what they feel without thought for others. Doing what you want leading to evil is very much not a trendy notion in modern American culture.

As such, I suspect this is an aspect that will very much be lost in Disney era Star Wars, if it hasn't already. I think this difference shows up if you contrast Kylo killing Han with Anakin killing the younglings. Both were motivated by gaining more power from the Dark Side, but Anakin only killed the younglings because he'd been told he had to, in order to save Padme. His inability to let go of his of fear of losing her meant Palpatine could manipulate him into atrocity. Kylo killed Han because stabbing your dad is totes evil, yo, and he wants to be totes evil, but he keeps having these urges to do good things and so is all conflicted and stuff. Evil is the goal, not the consequence, which is an incredibly shallow understanding of evil.

Lucas era Star Wars was hardly a work of great moral complexity, and I'm not gonna argue that it is. But it at least had, in a rather clumsy, retrofitted way, a theory of what caused people to be evil, and how a person could avoid that.
That is a very good point and a good comparison, I have to say. I knew there was something about that scene between Kylo and Han that bothered me besides just that I could see what was about to happen coming almost as soon as the scene began, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Porthos

2017-04-15, 09:01 PM

Mando Knight

2017-04-15, 09:50 PM

Can guarantee you one thing right now. Whatever comes out of TLJ, it AIN'T gonna be an endorsement of the "Gray Jedi" silliness. Plenty of room in SW lore to show how the Jedi became corrupted and lost their way (in fact, that's the main subtext of the PT/TCW era) and how they need to be reformed.

One of the top guys in the "this is what's canon" department also hates Gray Jedi as a term (likening it to "a 'gray vegetarian' who eats meat (https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/821480675463151617?lang=en)"). Did Luke find something "in the middle" like the Bendu? Maybe, but if it's time for the Jedi to end, it's not going to be supplanted by people called "Gray Jedi", but rather something else (Knights of Rey would be amusing, but also stupid and confusing with the Knights of Ren), and Luke didn't figure it out by cribbing notes from Palpatine.

Porthos

2017-04-15, 10:12 PM

One of the top guys in the "this is what's canon" department also hates Gray Jedi as a term (likening it to "a 'gray vegetarian' who eats meat (https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/821480675463151617?lang=en)"). Did Luke find something "in the middle" like the Bendu? Maybe, but if it's time for the Jedi to end, it's not going to be supplanted by people called "Gray Jedi", but rather something else (Knights of Rey would be amusing, but also stupid and confusing with the Knights of Ren), and Luke didn't figure it out by cribbing notes from Palpatine.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say that Luke found the 'Journal of the Whills' (calling back to Old School, or should I say literally pre-historic SW) and found where (he thinks) the Jedi lost their way.

One of the neat things about both TFA and Rebels is that they have been consciously stepping away from the Jedi/Sith paradigm.

Rebels has an easier path to explore this since it has so much more time to tell its stories, of course. But even outside the Bendu, both Rebels and TCW were exploring the idea of other Lightside and Darkside users, with their own takes on things.

As a side note, if one wants to see 'experimental' SW (whatever THAT means), looking at both The Clone Wars and Rebels wouldn't be a bad idea. In both shows Dave Filoni has been letting his Freak Flag Fly on more than a couple of occasions.

My other main guess is that Luke will come to the conclusion that the Jedi became far too dogmatic and rigid and lost sight of what the Force is supposed to be about, leading them to be too easily corrupted (either falling to the dark side literally like Anakin or more metaphorically like their entire situation in the prequel days).

That's if this whole thing about the time for the Jedi to end isn't misdirection (a Force Vision of Luke instead of Luke actually saying it).

My last guess is that Luke is going to be a fairly damaged individual and one of the main threads of TLJ is him getting his head screwed back on straight. Which right then and there separates it greatly from Yoda in ESB.

Ramza00

2017-04-16, 12:32 AM

So blah I can't talk today. Star Wars the series is heavily inspired by Joseph Campbell and the hero with the 1000 faces. And the hero with the 1000 faces of Joseph Campbell is effectively retelling Carl Jung's archetypes, in fact Joseph Campbell relased a few years prior to a new hope The Portable Jung which was over 600 pages of stuff explaining Carl Jung.

So let me explain something with the living force vs the unifying force. All the jedi and all the sith make the mistake with this during part of their lives but during some aspects of their life or during when they were force ghosts they finally got it. Let me borrow a quote from Tolkein and Lord of the Rings

http://68.media.tumblr.com/bcd7ba9c62f33d3b92f691d7e129103f/tumblr_mw8jjpJrxF1snexhzo1_1280.png

This is the quote as it is in the book, a slight variant is used in the movie which is this one

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/7c/3e/38/7c3e38d50cde5001fc74e646f075efbe.jpg

Notice the differences in in perspective and tense. I wish this moment did not occur that stuff in the past were different when I had no control over the situation or I did have control but I wish I made better choices or had better insights / wisdom, etc.

And Gandalf says well no duh stupid. All people who experience emotion, regret, love, etc which they can make a better world but wishing for the power to undo the past will not undo the past. But paying attention to the moment and living with the time that still remains in us aka only the now and hoping the future gives us more nows in the future. We can only make decisions and decide what we do from here.

Aka this scene from Star Wars a Phantom Menance

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/presentationbrunellocucinellifinalversion-160530221854/95/pierfrancesco-bresolini-brunello-cucinelli-analysis-29-638.jpg?cb=1467399584

If he is not centering in the moment than he can't control the moment, he can't control the time that is given to us. If he wants to meditate do so when he is about to sleep, or some other safe space and not in the middle of a negotiation.

Wonderful scene that applies this in Qui Gon Jinn giving Anakin advice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smpe0m4RD0M

“Always Remember. Your focus determines your reality,”

And this is no better illustrated than Empire Strikes Back

Links to the youtube but you have to open it in a new browser for I can only do 1 video per post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YkbgvRMpW0

[Luke sees his X-Wing is about to sink into the bog]
Luke: Oh, no! We'll never get it out now!
Yoda: So certain, are you? Always with you, what cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?
Luke: Master, moving stones around is one thing, but this is... totally different!
Yoda: No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.
Luke: All right, I'll give it a try.
Yoda: No! Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.
[Luke tries to use the Force to levitate his X-Wing out of the bog, but fails in his attempt.]
Luke: I can't. It's too big.[/QUOTE]

The living force is the fulcrum, by centering yourself you can find where to put big stick into the ground and can move the universe in an infintie amount of ways. If you are not in the moment then you limit your ability to shove big stick into the ground to move stuff and thus you only see possible and impossible.

But once in the moment you need faith, the unifying force to make the stick longer and to apply the force onto the stick.

So back to Joseph Campbell and the 1000 Faces and the Collective Unconscious aka the Force. The force is everything and everything that was and can be and is at this present moment. It is the agent of change. You are the keyhole who then puts on a mask, puts on the force, taps into something greater than yourself and if you are a true jedi or a true sith you can put on a 1000 different faces and switch between them, that you now have infinite time to choose the right choice in that one moment you are given.

By living in the moment and not living in the illusions of the past or the illusions of the future, you are now better able to see what you need to do in the time that is given to you.

And stuff about point of view and what is lies and truth also matter not with time but also with space, what can you do. What can't you do not.

I will end this with another quote from Lord of the Rings that happens very close in the books in the door to the mines of moria. Aka coming full circle from where I started this conversation.

https://68.media.tumblr.com/f476693f0aa02c726a972c0aacb37a93/tumblr_omf05hxfXl1rrqi2zo1_500.png

Yoda, Qui Gon Jinn, Obi Wan, Anakin, and even Luke do not see the ends. Luke did not understand what it means to be a jedi until he was about to make a choice he could not undo with him against his father while the Emperor watched. So he decided in that moment to be one with the living force and then to hope. To stay a jedi and to always stay in the moment. And thus he defeated the emperor for Anakin was reminded of his own humanity via watching his own perspective and by acting like his son.

Perhaps Luke is right now Lost and does not realizing he is wandering and does not know where his center is.

Peelee

2017-04-16, 01:32 AM

http://68.media.tumblr.com/bcd7ba9c62f33d3b92f691d7e129103f/tumblr_mw8jjpJrxF1snexhzo1_1280.png

This is the quote as it is in the book, a slight variant is used in the movie which is this one

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/7c/3e/38/7c3e38d50cde5001fc74e646f075efbe.jpg

Notice the differences in in perspective and tense.

...no? Those read the exact same.

Ramza00

2017-04-16, 02:55 AM

...no? Those read the exact same.

Bah that is what you get when you have too many tabs open and you post the wrong thing. Okay this is the movie version of the quote but it does not have a pretty picture of gandal and frodo in it.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/1c/11/d2/1c11d2cca948bf68392d66ed9fff8542.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrOqnZdvI6M

Skip to 1 minute and 50 seconds to here the scene I just referenced the first time it occurs in the movie.

It then comes again as a 3 minute ending, to the first movie in this scene here where Frodo is about to cross the river and thus is going to choose to continue the path towards Mordar (the scarey city but the right destination) vs the path where your heart wants you to go but you know it will not lead to victory which is the white city of Gondor. Choosing to go south instead of crossing the river east is the choosing to not take the easy fool's gold and to take the harder path, the truer path towards what is true gold and not an illusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjAAC13al9s

Cikomyr

2017-04-16, 07:57 AM

....in the same vein as a proof of concept validating that bears **** in the woods?

Yhea. Unless you can point me to another Star Wars movie that was well received by the general public in the 20 years before TFA?

Just because nerds love something doesnt mean the general public will jump on the bandwagon. Disney needed to make Star Wars liked by the general publiv that will give it the extra 600,000,000 space bucks at the Box Office.

Sure, their marketing campaign was super prevalent and effective. But if the movie had been boring/bad, we would have remembered Disney's first Star Wars movie to a massive flop. Disney had a lot, LOT to lose with The Force Awakens.

Hopeless

2017-04-16, 08:42 AM

For me the problem is the need for secrecy.

Thirty years we waited and when it arrived they couldn't be bothered to explain what happened only that they discarded everything written between then and now and it doesn't look like they thought it through properly!

Now imagine if they revealed the First Order blew up Hosnian Prime after making sure the New Republic Senators who were First Order Loyalists wasn't present.

So the New Republic has suffered a major loss but in the wake the First Order seizes power through their loyalists and turns the tables by blaming the attack on Leia's Resistance who is going to believe them after they managed to blow up Star Killer Base?

A bunch of outdated Starfighters and members of an outlawed sect of force users linked to an ancient anarchic set responsible for the downfall of the previous Republic?

Now that's a reveal that might have made TFA much more interesting!

warty goblin

2017-04-16, 08:55 AM

Yhea. Unless you can point me to another Star Wars movie that was well received by the general public in the 20 years before TFA?

Just because nerds love something doesnt mean the general public will jump on the bandwagon. Disney needed to make Star Wars liked by the general publiv that will give it the extra 600,000,000 space bucks at the Box Office.

Sure, their marketing campaign was super prevalent and effective. But if the movie had been boring/bad, we would have remembered Disney's first Star Wars movie to a massive flop. Disney had a lot, LOT to lose with The Force Awakens.

The funny thing is that, aside from nerds, the prequels were pretty well received so far as I can tell. I mean whenever the topic comes up in actual face to face conversation, my experience is that people generally like the prequels a bit less than the OT, but are perfectly fine with them. Or they dislike them, because they can't stand the trite storylines, miserable dialog and bad acting of Star Wars as a whole.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-16, 09:21 AM

The funny thing is that, aside from nerds, the prequels were pretty well received so far as I can tell. I mean whenever the topic comes up in actual face to face conversation, my experience is that people generally like the prequels a bit less than the OT, but are perfectly fine with them. Or they dislike them, because they can't stand the trite storylines, miserable dialog and bad acting of Star Wars as a whole.

My circle of friends tend to be split into two groups, those who dislike the prequels and those who grew up with them. I personally prefer the OT, but I have a lot more respect for TPM than four TFA because even though I understand why TPM wasn't will recurved among nerds it at least tried to do something different rather than giving me ANH but with bigger explosions. Revenge of the Sith is a personal favourite for the awesome fights and Anakin actually getting to be cool for once.

Then again I liked JarJar when I was younger and still have a soft spot for Gungans (I think they look really cool, and want to play one the next time I'm in a Star Wars game).

Darth Ultron

2017-04-16, 10:15 AM

Except that doesn't make sense because of the nature of the Sith. Argue about the values of a "balanced" view of the Force all you want, but Sith philosophy is a philosophy of manipulation and destruction for personal gain.

It can make sense if Disney wants it to make sense. Just take for example anything ultra political correct Disney has done in the last decade or so. They say X is y and you can't say anything about it.

So why not have Jeith/Sidi?

So the Jeith will not be all ''monk-like'' and like ''we keep the peace, but do nothing " and they won't be all like ''Hahahah unlimited power!", but a combination of the two......

Like A Jeith can have all the personal gain they want, but they do it by helping others and not by manipulation. So instead of say blowing up planets ''for evil power'', they make planets and then the thankful people that live on the planet ''donate power'' or such.

Peelee

2017-04-16, 10:42 AM

Yhea. Unless you can point me to another Star Wars movie that was well received by the general public in the 20 years before TFA?

Just because nerds love something doesnt mean the general public will jump on the bandwagon. Disney needed to make Star Wars liked by the general publiv that will give it the extra 600,000,000 space bucks at the Box Office.

Sure, their marketing campaign was super prevalent and effective. But if the movie had been boring/bad, we would have remembered Disney's first Star Wars movie to a massive flop. Disney had a lot, LOT to lose with The Force Awakens.

Yeah, the prequels really devalued the franchise. I'm surprised that Lucas was able to get anything for it, I'd have thought he'd have to pay to offload it. Truly, they were financial failures.

Hell, if anything, the prequels proved that even crap stamped with the Star Wars name was a viable cash cow.

Cikomyr

2017-04-16, 11:03 AM

Actually, i hope they do NOT look into the "Jedi Ancient Past" and all that bullcrap. I hope its not a "going back to the roots to find the true purpose".

I am tired as heck of THOSE story. How about striving forward, admitting there are no actual easy answers buried anywhere, and trying to figure it out for yourself?

There is no need to mix Sith and Jedi teachings. Just make your goddamn own. Or maybe accept that there are no standardized set of teachings that you can create that will prevent the inevitable cycle, and instead limit yourself to a nonstandardized mentor/pupil methodology that will happen to have wide variety, and decentralize (philosophically speaking) the force users.

Since the entire weakness of the mass extermination or dark side conversion of the Jedi always occured because they enforce behavioral/moral uniformity among their members, i think Luke worries that creating a new uniform order of Force Users will just set the stage for a repeat of the Kylo Ren Massacre.

Porthos

2017-04-16, 01:35 PM

It can make sense if Disney wants it to make sense. Just take for example anything ultra political correct Disney has done in the last decade or so. They say X is y and you can't say anything about it.

You do know 'Disney' isn't writing/making these films, right? :smallconfused:

EDIT:::

Though I might see why you think that. After all nothing screams 'DISNEY' more to me than a film where every single protagonist dies and which also includes a 45 minute long set piece that channels Saving Private Ryan, and where one of the most memorable scenes of the movie wouldn't seem out of place in a 80s slasher flick.

I mean, put THAT way, it's pretty obvious that The Mouse is pulling the strings here. :smalltongue:

Jayngfet

2017-04-16, 02:23 PM

You do know 'Disney' isn't writing/making these films, right? :smallconfused:

EDIT:::

Though I might see why you think that. After all nothing screams 'DISNEY' more to me than a film where every single protagonist dies and which also includes a 45 minute long set piece that channels Saving Private Ryan, and where one of the most memorable scenes of the movie wouldn't seem out of place in a 80s slasher flick.

I mean, put THAT way, it's pretty obvious that The Mouse is pulling the strings here. :smalltongue:

...you are aware that Disney is more than one studio right? They've had Touchstone for decades and probably like fifty other venues too. The content was never the indicator, outside of it's general quality relative to decisions made.

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-16, 03:04 PM

Yhea. Unless you can point me to another Star Wars movie that was well received by the general public in the 20 years before TFA?

Just because nerds love something doesnt mean the general public will jump on the bandwagon. Disney needed to make Star Wars liked by the general publiv that will give it the extra 600,000,000 space bucks at the Box Office.

Sure, their marketing campaign was super prevalent and effective. But if the movie had been boring/bad, we would have remembered Disney's first Star Wars movie to a massive flop. Disney had a lot, LOT to lose with The Force Awakens.

Wasn't much of a risk. Even if the movie flopped, Disney ain't going under any time soon and they'd probably make it back with spinoffs and toy lines, and

The prequels were never as bad as they were made out to be.

Anyway, the last Jedi is a weird title to me. It feels almost... well, clickbaity, because it's unlikely to mean what it's meant to be seen as

Porthos

2017-04-16, 03:22 PM

...you are aware that Disney is more than one studio right? They've had Touchstone for decades and probably like fifty other venues too. The content was never the indicator, outside of it's general quality relative to decisions made.

Sure. What I ALSO know is that everyone at Lucasfilm has been saying up and down, over and over again, that Disney is extremely hands off when it comes to what stories Lucasfilm decides to tell.

While I am certain that Disney has influence, I think it is more than a stretch to say they are exercising any real control over what LFL is doing.

Not saying people have to like current Star Wars. But at least blame the right people.

For instance, the obvious drive toward equal representation? A direct mandate of the leadership of Lucasfilm (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/movies/star-wars-women-visual-effects.html), NOT Disney. Dave Filoni (head honcho of the animation division) talks about how important it is to LFL at this talk with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GKUO2JWZW8).

LFL's leadership has more women than men in it (very rare for Hollywood). The vaunted Story Group is led by a woman (Kiri Hart). LFL itself is led by Kathleen Kennedy. ILM, as the NYT article notes, has been making it a point to hire women to bring in more viewpoints.

About the only thing LFL hasn't done is hire a director who happens to be a woman for one of their flagship movies, and that's only a matter of time if the rumor mill is to be believed.

This is just one example of something that supposedly has Disney's fingerprints over it (They're trying to market SW to giirrrrrls :smallyuk:) is instead something the creators themselves very badly want to do.

===

Now what happens when/if SW starts to fade and or isn't quite as well received? How patient will Disney be? And will they start exercising a more heavy hand? Only time will tell. But for now if one wants to complain about the state of current SW might as well blame the folks responsible. And that would be Lucasfilm, NOT Disney.

Of course, if one thinks like I do, that we are in the Second Golden Age of Star Wars, the people to thank are ALSO Lucasfilm. The credit I give Disney is to be smart enough to get the hell out of the way and sit back and reap the profits. :smallwink:

Mando Knight

2017-04-16, 03:34 PM

It can make sense if Disney wants it to make sense. Just take for example anything ultra political correct Disney has done in the last decade or so. They say X is y and you can't say anything about it.

So why not have Jeith/Sidi?

So the Jeith will not be all ''monk-like'' and like ''we keep the peace, but do nothing " and they won't be all like ''Hahahah unlimited power!", but a combination of the two......

Like A Jeith can have all the personal gain they want, but they do it by helping others and not by manipulation. So instead of say blowing up planets ''for evil power'', they make planets and then the thankful people that live on the planet ''donate power'' or such.
Sith philosophy is as much about personal gain as the Death Star project was about building a 120km-diameter ball of steel. The means and the purpose are the core of the philosophy, and there's nothing of that to salvage from the Sith as presented in canon.

The prequels were never as bad as they were made out to be.
I'm glad people are finally admitting this. It was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

Cikomyr

2017-04-16, 03:39 PM

Wasn't much of a risk. Even if the movie flopped, Disney ain't going under any time soon and they'd probably make it back with spinoffs and toy lines, and

The prequels were never as bad as they were made out to be.

Anyway, the last Jedi is a weird title to me. It feels almost... well, clickbaity, because it's unlikely to mean what it's meant to be seen as

The prequels have made lot of money, but they never racked the money the merchandising and derived products should have. After two movies and lackluster worldbuilding, the brand didnt sold as well.

There wasn't THAT much merchandising occuring around Revenge of the Sith. Think of the money lost. Disney paid 4.05B$ for Star wars, they NEEDED that merchandising money and confidence in the brand on the part of publicists to make a straight-up profit.

Jayngfet

2017-04-16, 03:46 PM

Sure. What I ALSO know is that everyone at Lucasfilm has been saying up and down, over and over again, that Disney is extremely hands off when it comes to what stories Lucasfilm decides to tell.

I didn't say I thought that they were, I'm just saying that's what the argument is. I know Disney is hands off. Disney is however, a convenient scapegoat.

I'd say that that's just Disney's problem when you get down to it though, they're too hands off. Marvel's relationship with Diamond is essentially killing the brand and Disney could do the whole thing "in house", but they let the relationship continue anyway. Disney also isn't agressivly promoting or active in some aspects of Star Wars, given Rebels was languishing on extended cable until Filoni effectively had to kill his own baby.

Lucasfilms problems are Lucasfilms. However, I think they have a lot of problems and made a lot of extremely bad calls overall and especially recently. I found it hard to get excited for a single new thing out of Celebration over the entire week. The mindset people are blaming on Disney is THERE, it's just that it's something that Lucasfilm is responsible for.

My go to line to describe how bad Lucasfilm is doing right now is thus: Lucasfilm gave exclusive gaming rights to EA, their TV projects are on Disney XD, their high profile trilogy to Chuck Wendig, and their revival film to Abrams, a man known for refusing to resolve his own setup and blatantly lying about his movies.

With 8's trailer relying even more heavily on reusing iconography from the original trilogy, Rebels ending, the youtube series going over with the fandom like a case of the rickets, and Battlefront 2 getting loud boos onstage once they discuss DLC, the situation very much hasn't gotten better.

The prequels have made lot of money, but they never racked the money the merchandising and derived products should have. After two movies and lackluster worldbuilding, the brand didnt sold as well.

There wasn't THAT much merchandising occuring around Revenge of the Sith. Think of the money lost. Disney paid 4.05B$ for Star wars, they NEEDED that merchandising money and confidence in the brand on the part of publicists to make a straight-up profit.

Are you high? Merchandising was literally everywhere from Jar Jar lollipops to Yoda slurpee mugs. The play sets and tie in stuff was everywhere when the film came out and I could see it on every aisle even in the small towns on release week. If there's one thing you can't accuse Lucas of doing, it's under-merchandising.

Porthos

2017-04-16, 04:00 PM

Disney also isn't agressivly promoting or active in some aspects of Star Wars, given Rebels was languishing on extended cable until Filoni effectively had to kill his own baby.

Lucasfilms problems are Lucasfilms. However, I think they have a lot of problems and made a lot of extremely bad calls overall and especially recently.

Arguments about quality are one thing, but if you think SW isn't massively popular and successful right now, then I think your expectations are a wee bit out of whack.

EDIT:::

I would also add that everything I have heard about Rebels ending is that it is Dave Filoni's call. With the rumor mill leaking like a sieve that the next thing on the docket (aside from Forces of Destiny) is going to be a series set sometime in the 30 year gap between VI and VII.

To put it another way, Rebels wasn't cancelled. It ended. A very important distinction to make.

Jayngfet

2017-04-16, 04:06 PM

Arguments about quality are one thing, but if you think SW isn't massively popular and successful right now, then I think your expectations are a wee bit out of whack.

There's a difference between short term box office sales and long term popularity. Tim Burton's alice movies are probably the best example. The first one made over a billion dollars. The next one probably didn't break even. Disney was fully invested by that point and they have an Alice land at one of their parks and now nobody cares. James Cameron's Avatar was similarly big, but there's zero buzz by the time THAT Disney Park addition took place.

The last two movies were defended by the excuse of "ok they were nostalgia trips, but now that they've found their bearings we can get new stuff", but now we see the next one is another nostalgia trip.

EDIT:::

I would also add that everything I have heard about Rebels ending is that it is Dave Filoni's call. With the rumor mill leaking like a sieve that the next thing on the docket (aside from Forces of Destiny) is going to be a series set sometime in the 30 year gap between VI and VII.

To put it another way, Rebels wasn't cancelled. It ended. A very important distinction to make.

Listen to him talk about it. He said he'd rather end it on his terms than have it be like The Clone Wars where he plans for a bunch of seasons and gets caught unawares. Before yesterday the only indications we got were he had plans to go pretty far into the timeline and he had a lot of ideas, with everything else just being rumor.

Porthos

2017-04-16, 04:22 PM

Listen to him talk about it. He said he'd rather end it on his terms than have it be like The Clone Wars where he plans for a bunch of seasons and gets caught unawares. Before yesterday the only indications we got were he had plans to go pretty far into the timeline and he had a lot of ideas, with everything else just being rumor.

I did listen to him talk about it. I also listened to him being coy about continuing Rebels past ANH in previous interviews, by never wanting to be nailed down about just when in the timeline the story would end. He never once said he would continue Rebels past ANH, just that he could. And even there it was mostly to deflect comments like "Well, everyone in Rebels has to die, right, since they aren't mentioned in the OT".

Dude is very good about being evasive, after all.

In retrospect it's pretty clear to me he didn't want to set an end date in mind until he was ready. After all, he has also been quite clear that he had a beginning, middle, and end in mind for his story.

If it was up to Disney XD, I suspect they would want it to continue to at least hit the magic 100 number for syndication.

Now maybe he thought that the plug could be pulled at one point and decided to get while the getting was good. But I'm gonna need a tiny bit more than speculation from punters on the net or even speculation from cast members who aren't privy to LFL's internal discussions.

EDIT TO NOT DOUBLE POST:::

The last two movies were defended by the excuse of "ok they were nostalgia trips, but now that they've found their bearings we can get new stuff", but now we see the next one is another nostalgia trip.

If Rogue One, which was a decently radical departure from the previous SW films, is your idea of a 'nostalgia trip' then no SW movie is going to be anything more than a nostalgia trip for you, I suspect.

Cikomyr

2017-04-16, 04:23 PM

Are you high? Merchandising was literally everywhere from Jar Jar lollipops to Yoda slurpee mugs. The play sets and tie in stuff was everywhere when the film came out and I could see it on every aisle even in the small towns on release week. If there's one thing you can't accuse Lucas of doing, it's under-merchandising.

Just because it existed (especially for Phantom Menace, before everyone saw the train come crashing down so there wasnt any reason for Lucas to shell out a lot of merchandise for his doomed movie) doesnt mean it actually was well receive or that it didnt actually rack up the bucks it should have.

Compare the absolutely colossal revenues generated by Star Wars since TFA, and its easy why it was important to make Star wars viable and actual

Jayngfet

2017-04-16, 04:41 PM

If it was up to Disney XD, I suspect they would want it to continue to at least hit the magic 100 number for syndication.

Not really. If you check it's ratings the numbers having been sinking like a stone even for extended cable. I doubt unless something big changes that the best rated episode from this season will match the worst from the first one.

If the decision has any basis besides just the story, I'd bet money that they probably assumed just starting from scratch would be easier in terms of finding an audience than clawing back from worse than new.

If Rogue One, which was a decently radical departure from the previous SW films, is your idea of a 'nostalgia trip' then no SW movie is going to be anything more than a nostalgia trip for you, I suspect.

It had original designs and it's visuals didn't need to be too derivative. But if you think that a story about this thing from the previous movie that ends with the character from that movie getting the thing to stop it, while the bad guy from that movie comes out of nowhere to do a big set piece fight, isn't based on nostalgia, I have a bridge in the mojave to sell you.

Just because it existed (especially for Phantom Menace, before everyone saw the train come crashing down so there wasnt any reason for Lucas to shell out a lot of merchandise for his doomed movie) doesnt mean it actually was well receive or that it didnt actually rack up the bucks it should have.

Compare the absolutely colossal revenues generated by Star Wars since TFA, and its easy why it was important to make Star wars viable and actual

You can make your case in a couple of years when nostalgia isn't so fresh. Because again, short term profits don't indicate long term viability. Disney has a history of jumping the gun on merchandising and franchises and this wouldn't be the first, second, or even third time a franchise didn't pan out for them beyond a few years.

Porthos

2017-04-16, 04:53 PM

It had original designs and it's visuals didn't need to be too derivative. But if you think that a story about this thing from the previous movie that ends with the character from that movie getting the thing to stop it, while the bad guy from that movie comes out of nowhere to do a big set piece fight, isn't based on nostalgia, I have a bridge in the mojave to sell you.

No, I just define 'nostalgia' differently. It had a different mood, tone, and style. Themes were fairly different as well. And the way it told the story was fairly different.

That it was told in a familiar backdrop and it led into another story doesn't make it a nostalgia trip.

That's why I find the comment about 'walkers and caves' = ESB that started this all off to be a fairly facile one as well (and I'm sure that whatever romance happens to be in the movie will be claimed to be nothing more than a retread as well :smallannoyed: :smallsigh:).

But then I find the analysis out there that say that RotJ and TFA are retreads of ANH to be more than a little lacking, focusing more on superficial similarities rather than digging deeper into the actual story beats and characterization.

And even so, execution is far more important than originality. If something is good it can be the biggest retread in the world. After all the phrase "Talent Borrows, Genius Steals" resonates for a reason.

Cikomyr

2017-04-16, 05:26 PM

You can make your case in a couple of years when nostalgia isn't so fresh. Because again, short term profits don't indicate long term viability. Disney has a history of jumping the gun on merchandising and franchises and this wouldn't be the first, second, or even third time a franchise didn't pan out for them beyond a few years.

I can make my ****ing case right ****ing now. Publicists are lining up left and right to purchase Star Wars advertising exposure. The franchise has stopped being a running gag of failure and bad movies; its now the hottest (or 2nd hottest) commodity in the entertainment media at the moment.

The "take it safe" move paid off BIG time.

Peelee

2017-04-16, 07:03 PM

Just because it existed (especially for Phantom Menace, before everyone saw the train come crashing down so there wasnt any reason for Lucas to shell out a lot of merchandise for his doomed movie) doesnt mean it actually was well receive or that it didnt actually rack up the bucks it should have.

Compare the absolutely colossal revenues generated by Star Wars since TFA, and its easy why it was important to make Star wars viable and actual

Ok, here is where your point falls apart. Star Wars was never not viable. It always was a cash cow. Even assuming you're correct, and the PT didn't make as much as it should have, it was still a colossal cash cow. A significantly high percent of billions of dollars in profits is still hundred millions to billions of dollars in profits.

Porthos

2017-04-16, 07:32 PM

Ok, here is where your point falls apart. Star Wars was never not viable. It always was a cash cow. Even assuming you're correct, and the PT didn't make as much as it should have, it was still a colossal cash cow. A significantly high percent of billions of dollars in profits is still hundred millions to billions of dollars in profits.

Estimates vary, but I've seen figures of 30 to 40* billion dollars in merchandizing sales thrown around over the lifespan of SW before TFA came out.

* Ok, 37 billion. (http://https://www.wired.com/2014/11/geeks-guide-star-wars-empire/) I rounded up, and that was in 2014. :smalltongue:

Currently, Star Wars seems to be second only to Frozen in terms of merc popularity.

Where will it be in a few years? Who the hell knows. But while all things inevitably end in the long term, I ain't betting on a significant drop-off in the near future.

NOTE::::: Switching back to box office, I ain't expecting TLJ to sniff the ≈940m DOM/2.1b WW box office gross that TFA pulled for a variety of reasons, and other folks shouldn't either. But well over 650m/1.4b WW? Oh yes. Personally my over-under is around 750m DOM, right around where Avatar currently sits.

As for the rest of the spinoffs, R1 actually did a bit more than I was expecting. But even there, I think they'll settle into a nice 300m-450m range domestically, not factoring in ticket price inflation.

And I think I can safely say that if I marched to Bob Iger's office and guaranteed him that the next five or six 'standalone' SW films would average 'only' 300 to 450 million dollars domestically (in 2017 numbers) and then guaranteed him that the next five or six 'saga' films would make 'only' 600 to 700 million dollars (ditto), he'd be doing cartwheels and buying as much company stock as legally allowed. :smallamused:

===

The point of the above paragraphs is to say that even if/when SW mania cools a bit, it will probably still make money hand over fist. Some films will make more than others, for a variety of reasons.

But, to put this in perspective, the 'worst' SW film box office wise (Attack of the Clones) still rakes in over 460m dollars domestically when looked at in 2017 ticket prices.

That's.... Pretty damn good, even if it is not historic.

And, as Peelee notes, this doesn't even factor in the real moneymaking avenues.

J-H

2017-04-16, 09:29 PM

At the end of the day...it's Star Wars. I think very few of us in this thread are not going to see at least the next couple of movies, even if only via RedBox at some point. They could give to M. Night Shamalayan (whatever his name is, the guy that did the really bad ATLA movie) and it'd still score hundreds of millions in revenue.

Rogue One had some weird points (plot holes, lots of cardboard casting), but it was still a reasonably entertaining modern war movie that did a fairly decent job plugging itself in as an immediate prequel to ANH.

Side note: Two movies I really, really wish I'd seen in theater: Godzilla (2014) and Pacific Rim.

Jayngfet

2017-04-16, 10:13 PM

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-17, 06:05 AM

I saw TFA on opening night, but it took my like three weeks to work up the enthusiasm to Rogue One. I probably won't even see this one in theaters. At most if a friend rents it, or if it's on TV.

I personally haven't seen Rogue One yet, I'm just not interested, and it took me a couple of weeks to see TFA (because of my autism I wanted to go post rush). I'm likely in the same boat, unless me and a couple of friends decide to go (and actually do, unlike when we decided to see Fantastic Breasts and had sushi instead).

I hope the success of Start Wars convinces someone to pick up Lensman again, I would really like to see a proper adaption of it.

Cikomyr

2017-04-17, 07:47 AM

Estimates vary, but I've seen figures of 30 to 40* billion dollars in merchandizing sales thrown around over the lifespan of SW before TFA came out.

* Ok, 37 billion. (http://https://www.wired.com/2014/11/geeks-guide-star-wars-empire/) I rounded up, and that was in 2014. :smalltongue:

Currently, Star Wars seems to be second only to Frozen in terms of merc popularity.

And yet, Star Wars accrued 3B$ of merchandising sales in the 3 months after TFA (https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.ibtimes.co.uk/star-wars-merchandise-earned-over-3bn-disney-1542976)

Proof is, the sales of derived merchandises before TFA werent as great as they could have been, and Disney needed to turn that around. A crowdpleaser aimed at the common denominator was just what was needed to make Star wars revelant and current.

Hell. I know its weird to say, but i dont remember a single TV ad for Rogue One. The ludicrous amount of merchandising publicities (especially the Nissan "Rogue" one) kind of made theit market presence for them; there was no need to pay to advertise the movie proper.

That is right. Star Wars is so goddamn popular, they are getting paid by tier parties to advertise their brand.

Kato

2017-04-17, 08:00 AM

Cikomyr

2017-04-17, 08:27 AM

CarpeGuitarrem

2017-04-17, 08:56 AM

Peelee

2017-04-17, 09:13 AM

And yet, Star Wars accrued 3B$ of merchandising sales in the 3 months after TFA (https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.ibtimes.co.uk/star-wars-merchandise-earned-over-3bn-disney-1542976)

Proof is, the sales of derived merchandises before TFA werent as great as they could have been, and Disney needed to turn that around.

OK, so here you're changing your story. First, you said that TFA was a proof of concept of Star Wars as a proper cash cow. Now you're saying that they just needed to make it more profitable, and kind of passing by the fact that it was always a proper cash cow.

Chen

2017-04-17, 09:37 AM

Anyway, the last Jedi is a weird title to me. It feels almost... well, clickbaity, because it's unlikely to mean what it's meant to be seen as

Yeah I agree. When you first hear the last Jedi you're picturing a particular person. However the French translation uses the plural pronoun for Jedi, so it doesn't in fact mean a singlular last person. Basically like "The Last of the Mohicans" except that Jedi doesn't get an s added to it when it's plural.

Cikomyr

2017-04-17, 09:52 AM

OK, so here you're changing your story. First, you said that TFA was a proof of concept of Star Wars as a proper cash cow. Now you're saying that they just needed to make it more profitable, and kind of passing by the fact that it was always a proper cash cow.

Proof of concept for the publicists.
How do you prove it? By increasing your merchandising and derivated revenues and prove that Star wars is worth the cash.

How do you make sure of that? By having Episode VII not being a flying turd and getting everyone excited about it.

Say what you want about Abrams, but he got everyone excited about TFA.

Peelee

2017-04-17, 09:58 AM

Proof of concept for the publicists.
How do you prove it? By increasing your merchandising and derivated revenues and prove that Star wars is worth the cash.

How do you make sure of that? By having Episode VII not being a flying turd and getting everyone excited about it.

Say what you want about Abrams, but he got everyone excited about TFA.

A.) Star Wars was always worth the cash. Again, the property has gotten 40 billion dollars out of it. You are the only person I've ever encountered who has ever said, "they needed to prove Star Wars could make money."

2.) At what point was everyone not excited about a new live-action Star Wars movie?

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-17, 10:21 AM

Marketing got people excited for Star Wars 7. It was truly a brilliant marketing campaign. They can't do it again though their trying.

I bet 100% if the words "Soft Remake/ reboot" came out of anybody's mouths before the movie came out, 90% of the enthusiasm would be killed.

So instead they didn't say it, and let people be exciting for mostly nostalgia bait and repeats.

Cikomyr

2017-04-17, 10:35 AM

A.) Star Wars was always worth the cash. Again, the property has gotten 40 billion dollars out of it. You are the only person I've ever encountered who has ever said, "they needed to prove Star Wars could make money."

Maybe its my financial background talking here. Just because a property generates income doesnt mean its worth the cash you coughed out for it. You need to have a substantial direct rate of return on your investment so you can justify your cost of capital.

Peelee

2017-04-17, 10:46 AM

Maybe its my financial background talking here. Just because a property generates income doesnt mean its worth the cash you coughed out for it. You need to have a substantial direct rate of return on your investment so you can justify your cost of capital.

Yes, if only Star Wars movies - even bad ones - had some sort of track record for making large amounts of money.

Imean, yeah, I get what you're saying now, you want to make the money back in a timely manner. It's just, I think there was very little reason to doubt that it would get a good ROI on it, since both Lucasfilm and Disney are well-known for their abilities to milk product lines like there's no tomorrow. Disney wiping the canon also allowed for more novels to come out at a faster rate, in addition to other media (like Rebels), which all came out before TFA. They were actively making strides towards recouping the cost well before the movie came out (though not as fast as a new trilogy would rocket it, admittedly).

Cikomyr

2017-04-17, 10:49 AM

Yes, if only Star Wars movies - even bad ones - had some sort of track record for making large amounts of money.

Its not "making large amount of money". Its "making sufficiently large amount of money".

Its all about INCREASING the amount you should expect to rake in. This is what the bottom line is all about. If you make 250M$ of profit while you were forecasted 500M$, you get chewed up.

Peelee

2017-04-17, 10:59 AM

Its not "making large amount of money". Its "making sufficiently large amount of money".

Its all about INCREASING the amount you should expect to rake in. This is what the bottom line is all about. If you make 250M$ of profit while you were forecasted 500M$, you get chewed up.

Assuming the forecast is anywhere near accurate.

Jayngfet

2017-04-17, 01:28 PM

I personally haven't seen Rogue One yet, I'm just not interested, and it took me a couple of weeks to see TFA (because of my autism I wanted to go post rush). I'm likely in the same boat, unless me and a couple of friends decide to go (and actually do, unlike when we decided to see Fantastic Breasts and had sushi instead).

I hope the success of Start Wars convinces someone to pick up Lensman again, I would really like to see a proper adaption of it.

I think "nerds will see it anyway and just complain later so who cares" is a fallacy. It's something marketing people and apologists like to think of so they can say their pet project is going to win for sure.

Even if the movie is good and I like it, a part of me wants Last Jedi to fail just so it'll dispel the myth and every filmmaker in the future has a painful example that that isn't true.

Chen

2017-04-17, 01:48 PM

I think "nerds will see it anyway and just complain later so who cares" is a fallacy. It's something marketing people and apologists like to think of so they can say their pet project is going to win for sure.

Even if the movie is good and I like it, a part of me wants Last Jedi to fail just so it'll dispel the myth and every filmmaker in the future has a painful example that that isn't true.

How is that a fallacy? Do you have any data on that? I mean anecdotally it seems the prequels as well as TFA have a lot of so-called "nerds" panning them, yet they did extremely well financially. I mean Episode 3 did better than Episode 2 did, which means that despite Episode 2 and Episode 1 being considered "bad" people still went along and watched the third one. I'll grant it doesn't necessarily mean "nerds saw it anyways and complained later". It could just mean that the "nerd's" complaints didn't matter financially in the end.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-17, 01:59 PM

I think "nerds will see it anyway and just complain later so who cares" is a fallacy. It's something marketing people and apologists like to think of so they can say their pet project is going to win for sure.

When did I say that? I specifically said I wasn't planning to see it, but expect enough will that it'll be successful. It doesn't matter who sees it, the people I know who are definitely 100% going are nerds, but I know plenty of non nerds who are interested but don't plan their cinema more than six months in advance. I just expect TLJ to succeed because the public seemed to like TFA enough (also it's one of the few films I can expect my friends in the UK and my friends in China to have seen, so it's a useful conversation topic).

Even if the movie is good and I like it, a part of me wants Last Jedi to fail just so it'll dispel the myth and every filmmaker in the future has a painful example that that isn't true.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that most Space Opera not called 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek' (or 'Mass Effect') is relatively niche then I wouldn't care if Star Wars Episode 8: The Misleading Subtitle succeeded or failed. As it is about 70% of my current 'to read' list is Space Opera and space is one of my favourite topics, I'd love for the chance for more people to go 'I feel like reading something a bit like Star Wars' and picking up a Space Opera book.

I already get enough people telling me any Space Opera that isn't Star Wars (or Trek) is complete rubbish, so I'd like more of it to get recognised. I don't care about romance novels but I don't tell people to stop reading them at all, and even see the occasional romantic film because I'm just interested, why should I let people treat Space Opera as if it has nothing of value.

Jayngfet

2017-04-17, 02:27 PM

How is that a fallacy? Do you have any data on that? I mean anecdotally it seems the prequels as well as TFA have a lot of so-called "nerds" panning them, yet they did extremely well financially. I mean Episode 3 did better than Episode 2 did, which means that despite Episode 2 and Episode 1 being considered "bad" people still went along and watched the third one. I'll grant it doesn't necessarily mean "nerds saw it anyways and complained later". It could just mean that the "nerd's" complaints didn't matter financially in the end.

The difference is Episode 3 is widely considered to be a better movie and one of the best in the series. It's not an opinion I necessarily share but I see why people would believe that. It had good enough word of mouth to actually get people interested.

Zevox

2017-04-17, 07:57 PM

So... Am I the only one who wasn't overwhelmed by the new trailer? I mean, it was OK but literally nothing that made me feel "yeah, I need to watch that". I mean, I'm going to watch it, but it won't be because of the trailer..
I think you would be the first person in this thread who was overwhelmed by the new trailer if you had been. Take a read - the entire first page is mostly people saying "eh, not impressed" or worse things, followed by discussions popping up between those who liked and those who didn't like The Force Awakens. The most positive remarks about it were general speculation as to what, exactly, Luke's remarks at the end meant.

Jayngfet

2017-04-17, 09:12 PM

I think you would be the first person in this thread who was overwhelmed by the new trailer if you had been. Take a read - the entire first page is mostly people saying "eh, not impressed" or worse things, followed by discussions popping up between those who liked and those who didn't like The Force Awakens. The most positive remarks about it were general speculation as to what, exactly, Luke's remarks at the end meant.

I think they're even less impressive taken in the context of leaks we've seen and the general reaction to the previous film. And I don't mean "someone in marketing emailed this to bloggers" so much as honest to god "someone with a camera saw something they shouldn't have".

We get walkers vs speeders, jedi trials in a cave, and A-Wings and Nebulon-B rehashes. You could say that alone wouldn't mean much and they'd save the more original material for the proper trailer in the fall. But we see photos of Rey fighting a monster clearly meant to evoke the Wampa and Rancor, Snoke who now has his own knockoff royal guards, and a couple of other things of that nature.

Additionally, there've been a few trailer breakdowns that go shot for shot with the force awakens. Whatever isn't clearly lifted from the original trilogy are shots lifted almost frame for frame in timing, composition, and motion from The Force Awakens teaser.

The more people actually analyze this trailer, the more clear it becomes that the trailer is a rehash that only has a handful of completely new shots with wholly new material. This trailer has even less new than the Force Awakens initial teaser, which showed off new aliens, new droids, new vehicles, and tried to establish that this was in fact a new idea, even if the movie didn't pan out that way.

VoxRationis

2017-04-18, 08:31 AM

So, quick point: Abrams isn't helming The Last Jedi. It's Rian Johnson (who also wrote it, with the help of Carrie Fisher), who's also going to be responsible for Episode IX. Abrams was just brought in to jump-start the series.

For the curious, Rian's best-known works are The Brothers Bloom, Brick, and Looper. (He also directed a few episodes of Breaking Bad.)

Seriously? The guy who did Brick is doing Star Wars VIII? That's going to triple box-office returns (if only because everyone will need to watch the movie thrice to understand what people are saying). I actually love Brick—it's one of my favorite movies.

Wow, I missed the walkers the first several times I saw the trailer (largely because I wasn't full-screening). I assumed that was a race, given that having military vessels leave bright red smoke trails is stupid even by Star Wars standards. Where's the Rey-v.-monster thing, Jayngfet? I don't see it.

Leewei

2017-04-18, 10:33 AM

This looks a bit like The Empire Strikes Back, at least the training montages. Rather than being on Dagobah, we see a small island near Middle Zealand.

The parallels of the past movies are, I think, a very conscious move. What will make or break the current trilogy is how well these parallels are justified within the overall plot. Kylo Ren was a whiny Walmart Vader in TFA, but I got the impression this is how he was meant to be. Is Snoke's end plan galactic dominance and empire? Or is he after something more subtle? (Regardless, wiping out the population of an entire star system marks him as one hell of an evil bastard.)

The trailer didn't reveal much at all, despite featuring several seconds more of Mark Hamill dialogue than the entire previous movie.

I enjoyed TFA. I suppose the next movie will likely be fun. I look forward to the next trailer.

Jayngfet

2017-04-18, 01:17 PM

Seriously? The guy who did Brick is doing Star Wars VIII? That's going to triple box-office returns (if only because everyone will need to watch the movie thrice to understand what people are saying). I actually love Brick—it's one of my favorite movies.

Wow, I missed the walkers the first several times I saw the trailer (largely because I wasn't full-screening). I assumed that was a race, given that having military vessels leave bright red smoke trails is stupid even by Star Wars standards. Where's the Rey-v.-monster thing, Jayngfet? I don't see it.

Making Star Wars has a picture. It's from enough distance we weren't meant to see it but it's clearly a rancor type of creature.

VoxRationis

2017-04-18, 01:52 PM

Kylo Ren was a whiny Walmart Vader in TFA, but I got the impression this is how he was meant to be.

You couldn't tell it from the merchandising (which plays up Kylo Ren full-force, as best as I can tell from my time in stores), but he was definitely meant to be a whiny faux-Vader. I mean, Rey figures that out from about 30 seconds of interaction with him, and as much as calls him a failed would-be Vader.

Legato Endless

2017-04-18, 02:31 PM

Abrams was just brought in to jump-start the series.

Not quite. Abrams is still executive producer, which could mean a lot or a little involvement. I would assume though he still has a bit of influence on the creative team.

Cikomyr

2017-04-18, 03:30 PM

You couldn't tell it from the merchandising (which plays up Kylo Ren full-force, as best as I can tell from my time in stores), but he was definitely meant to be a whiny faux-Vader. I mean, Rey figures that out from about 30 seconds of interaction with him, and as much as calls him a failed would-be Vader.

I just dont understand people who think they are making a resounding Revelation when they say that Kylo Ren was a pathetic Vader wannabe.

Yhea. Thats kind of the point. Next thing, you will tell me the First Orders are the bad guys.

I personally think Kylo Ren being a pathetic Darth Vader wannabe in story was a pleasant break from the other uninentional pathetic Darth Vaders wanna be of the Prequels.

Plus, it gives the villain a Character arc that plays longer than the trilogy's final 10 minutes.

pendell

2017-04-18, 04:48 PM

I just dont understand people who think they are making a resounding Revelation when they say that Kylo Ren was a pathetic Vader wannabe.

Yhea. Thats kind of the point. Next thing, you will tell me the First Orders are the bad guys.

I personally think Kylo Ren being a pathetic Darth Vader wannabe in story was a pleasant break from the other uninentional pathetic Darth Vaders wanna be of the Prequels.

Plus, it gives the villain a Character arc that plays longer than the trilogy's final 10 minutes.

I have a nasty suspicion that Kylo Ren has an arc just as Rey has an arc.

Kylo's arc is to descend into darkness; to go from wannebe Darth Vader with some light in him to the darkness of Palpatine. To become a serious villain.

Or he might be redeemed. But I think he has to go down the dark path a ways first to be established as a serious villain. Which, right now, he's not. Killing a defenseless old man does not a credible movie villain make, even if he is your father.

Rey, I think, will face the same struggle from the other end; In her training as a Jedi, she must face the same temptations to power that Kylo does. People have commented on her Sue-ness; I think that's part of the point of her character; she is an extremely powerful force-sensitive, and the very fact that it makes things easy for her , things other people can't do with a lifetime of training, that may offer a seduction to the dark side. To embrace that power. To become drunk on it. To see non-force-sensitives as "lesser beings", and to manipulate them.

There is some ground for some really interesting storytelling going on here.

I also like the idea of non-Jedi force users and traditions. While the Jedi did an excellent job for a thousand years as keepers of the Republic, that does not necessarily mean that their view of the Force is the One, True, Way to view the Force. While other force-users will have to recognize the existence of good and evil, it doesn't follow that they will follow the same "renounce passion/embrace passion" axis of the Jedi and the Sith. They might, for example, describe "light" as love, concern for others, while "dark" is selfishness. Or they might have other words for it, like "good" and "evil".

Similar to, but not quite the same, as the Jedi. For one thing, it might allow them to marry and avoid all the complications that came in the Prequels because Jedi were not allowed to have attachments. But they might also have other problems that the Jedi have solved.

In a galaxy with billions of worlds and trillions of sentients, there is probably a force-using tradition on every planet force users have ever appeared on. The Jedi, perhaps, represent an attempt to harmonize and synthesize these traditions into one all-encompassing tradition which possesses a distillation of all the galaxy's force knowledge.

But that doesn't mean their knowledge is as comprehensive as they would wish. "If it is not in our library it doesn't exist", remember? It may be there are aspects of the Force they are blind to simply because they have contempt for the other "primitive" traditions.

And of course there's also the possibility that they deliberately try to stamp out other Force-using traditions as potential Dark Side, even if they have no record of confirmed Dark Side users. "They're all as bad as the Sith" might very well be Jedi propaganda used to justify a campaign of cultural imperialism.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

VoxRationis

2017-04-18, 05:26 PM

Cikomyr

2017-04-18, 05:39 PM

Did I say I was making a resounding revelation? I was just agreeing with the other poster's impression and stating that I had noticed a contrast between his portrayal in the movie and his portrayal in assorted surrounding merchandise.

I thought you were on my side there and i was just doubling down

90,000

2017-04-18, 05:49 PM

Not enough information to make a judgement call at this time.

pendell

2017-04-19, 08:32 AM

In related topic, a good discussion on Terrible Writing Advice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhrfhQbY0K8) on Mary Sues.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Celticbear

2017-04-19, 08:57 AM

So this is the first star wars thread I've seen in a while, so i have to ask: who else thinks that The Force Awakens is just a copy - pasted version of A New Hope

Cikomyr

2017-04-19, 09:09 AM

So this is the first star wars thread I've seen in a while, so i have to ask: who else thinks that The Force Awakens is just a copy - pasted version of A New Hope

I have to admit it. You got me running there.

For a whole 3 seconds.

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-19, 02:49 PM

Cikomyr

2017-04-19, 02:59 PM

I keep seeing people talk about how the whole Jedi code is corrupt. I'm not really seeing it. Aside from the incredible achievement of presiding over a thousand years of peace, they're not 'anti- emotion' in itself, it's 'don't be controlled by them', which isn't really objectionable? Basically any peacekeeper has to learn that.

I dont think the problem is that the Jedi Code is "corrupt". Just that it creates some fundamental flaws that cant be avoided by the nature of the Code's enforcement and existence.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-19, 04:46 PM

Yeah the prequels really messed up what its like to be a Jedi.

You get taken from birth from a Family, Given training to great access to powers that become corrupt when access to any kind of fear, and then told later on that you either can't have a family or are excommunicated from the order.

That's kinda messed up. The prequels were filled with MANY great ideas executed awfully. Like If George just had most pushback and had a editor with balls, the PT would be looked up to as one of the awesome subversive literature in our years.

Jayngfet

2017-04-19, 05:04 PM

So this is the first star wars thread I've seen in a while, so i have to ask: who else thinks that The Force Awakens is just a copy - pasted version of A New Hope

That's literally the most common argument against the films.

pendell

2017-04-19, 05:13 PM

I dont think the problem is that the Jedi Code is "corrupt". Just that it creates some fundamental flaws that cant be avoided by the nature of the Code's enforcement and existence.

Correct. The Jedi and the Jedi Code are an amazing piece of work which stood the test of time for generations.

But they are not perfect and neither is their code. If this were not so, they would not have fallen apart in the pre-Yavin years, or been taken for a ride by a Sith Lord. As Yoda and Mace both acknowledged in the prequels, the fact that they completely missed the clone army shows that their connection with the Force was ... inadequate.

After all, in the thousand years of history Palpatine was probably not the first Dark Side user to try to make mischief for the Republic. Just as diseases don't flourish in a healthy tree, so the fact that Palpatine could flourish and act unchecked showed serious deficiencies in the Republic and the Jedi Order that maintained it.

Make no mistake : The Jedi Order in-universe possess great wisdom. Part of their error, I believe, lies in mistaking "great wisdom" for "ALL conceivable wisdom, outside of which there is only darkness." Sort of like Manchu China, which up until the 19th century saw itself as the center of the world, outside of which were only unlettered barbarians.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

J-H

2017-04-19, 05:42 PM

Assuming he has screen time, Kylo may be the pivotal character for the next movie or two, as far as success or failure goes.

Does anyone watch Star Wars for Luke? He's the protagonist, but the characters that everyone remembers and discusses the heck out of are Darth Vader & Han Solo; the Skywalker twins are important, but aside from the family relationship, they could have been substantially changed and the movies would have still worked. Take away Solo and the movies lose some of their humor and charm; take away Vader and everything changes. Vader even drives the plot for ANH and ESB; it's not until ROTJ that the Skywalker twins are acting instead of reacting.

If Kylo has a good, well-developed arc (and unfortunately, this may include some books or animations between films), we might see him be the main driver of the plot and action. If so, he needs to lose some of the whiny emo, find himself, take a couple of levels in Sith Marauder, and then probably kick off a redemption or rebellion arc. Who knows, maybe he'll end up dead, or married to Rey? Surviving single, alive, and unmutilated is...well, low probability.

OTOH, the producers of the next 2 movies have a combined total of 5 hours to do it, and modern action movies are usually too ham-fisted. They need an injection of JMS (Babylon 5) or someone else with experience in long-range arc planning and character development. Londo & G'Kar were the best character development combo I think I've ever seen in a TV show.

Cikomyr

2017-04-19, 07:29 PM

Correct. The Jedi and the Jedi Code are an amazing piece of work which stood the test of time for generations.

But they are not perfect and neither is their code. If this were not so, they would not have fallen apart in the pre-Yavin years, or been taken for a ride by a Sith Lord. As Yoda and Mace both acknowledged in the prequels, the fact that they completely missed the clone army shows that their connection with the Force was ... inadequate.

After all, in the thousand years of history Palpatine was probably not the first Dark Side user to try to make mischief for the Republic. Just as diseases don't flourish in a healthy tree, so the fact that Palpatine could flourish and act unchecked showed serious deficiencies in the Republic and the Jedi Order that maintained it.

Make no mistake : The Jedi Order in-universe possess great wisdom. Part of their error, I believe, lies in mistaking "great wisdom" for "ALL conceivable wisdom, outside of which there is only darkness." Sort of like Manchu China, which up until the 19th century saw itself as the center of the world, outside of which were only unlettered barbarians.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

The way i see it, i think the Jedi's main failure is their self-belief of righteousness. Not that they aren't, in many ways, righteous. Its just that they are somewhat so certain of their own moral superiority that they fail to.. to challenge themselves on their certainties.

Basically, they are a somewhat homogenous group that strongly believe that adherence to this homogeneity is the cornerstone of their ways.

No matter how righteous and proper the philosophy is, they are vulnerable as a group to something that can influence the whole. Like.. the Clone War. Or maybe a charistmatic grandson of Darth Vader who enticed his fellow disciples to the Dark Side.

Their homogeneity is their downfall. Hence you need to destroy the whole order's philosophy of uniformity. Stop making Jedi, and start training individuals. It'll be harder, but they will be less vulnerable to wholesale corruption.

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-20, 05:22 PM

You get taken from birth from a Family, Given training to great access to powers that become corrupt when access to any kind of fear, and then told later on that you either can't have a family or are excommunicated from the order.

Not really. They become corrupt when you let that fear push you into doing stuff like slaughtering innocents. Jedi are allowed to have emotions, they just aren't meant to be controlled by them.

You don't get taken if you don't want to go or if your parents don't want you to go. And sure, you can't have a family and maintain your position, but you can leave if you want.

That's also not from the prequels, it's mentioned several times that Luke is too old, and that level of training is kind of implied by the word 'knight'.

As Yoda and Mace both acknowledged in the prequels, the fact that they completely missed the clone army shows that their connection with the Force was ... inadequate.

Wasn't that because they detect malice, and inactive Clones have no malice? It's not a fault that they can't achieve the impossible, and the only other way to find them would have been to go exploring a planet that they don't know exists.

I'm not sure that was a fault so much as Palpatine just being that good. Failure does not mean incompetence. Depends on the disease.

No matter how righteous and proper the philosophy is, they are vulnerable as a group to something that can influence the whole. Like.. the Clone War. Or maybe a charistmatic grandson of Darth Vader who enticed his fellow disciples to the Dark Side.

They were pretty much more resistant to being changed by the Clone Wars than anyone else. Disparate groups of Force Users might have had a few more survivors, but wouldn't change the overall outcome.

I'm not saying that nothing must change, or that they're perfect, but I'm getting kind of nervous of the Disney movies now. They seem to be going out of their way to undermine what came before.

Leia's life's work in rebuilding the Republic -Destroyed
Luke's life work in rebuilding the Jedi -Destroyed.
The philosophy of every other movie -no that's totally wrong.

I still have time to be proven wrong (I hope I am), but I'm not liking the signals so far.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-20, 05:33 PM

You don't get taken if you don't want to go or if your parents don't want you to go.

You put too much emphasis on commitment from children, and the Jedi don't seem to care at all about the Parents.

That's also not from the prequels, it's mentioned several times that Luke is too old, and that level of training is kind of implied by the word 'knight'.

Knights had families and felt plenty of emotions. It mostly was. Or heck why are families now allowed?

Edit: Point being you are not allowed families because they are too great emotional temptations so thats inane and insane in my mind.

Peelee

2017-04-20, 07:51 PM

You put too much emphasis on commitment from children, and the Jedi don't seem to care at all about the Parents.

...no? In fact, when C'Baoth tried to conscript kids on Outbound Flight against the parents' wishes, it was a pretty clear indication the he was no longer running on all cylinders. Not to mention that it basically said, "this is *not* how the Jedi normally operate."

Where did you get the impression that they just snatched babies?

Cikomyr

2017-04-20, 08:14 PM

They were pretty much more resistant to being changed by the Clone Wars than anyone else. Disparate groups of Force Users might have had a few more survivors, but wouldn't change the overall outcome.

I'm not saying that nothing must change, or that they're perfect, but I'm getting kind of nervous of the Disney movies now. They seem to be going out of their way to undermine what came before.

Disparate groups of force users would not have joined the war En Masse. Disparate groups of force users wouldn't have allowed the Republic to surrender its self defense into the hands of a single monastic order and soldiers who can be brainwashed with brainchips.

Yoda outright said that the Jedi got corrupted by the Dark Side during the Clone War. The struggle of war clouded the Jedi's connection with the force, and they fell as one.

They were too monolithic. Too vulnerable to being undermined and struct down with a single strike. And so were Luke's apprentices.

Jayngfet

2017-04-20, 08:14 PM

...no? In fact, when C'Baoth tried to conscript mission Outbound Flight against the parents' wishes, it was a pretty clear indication the he was no longer running on all cylinders. Not to mention that it basically said, "this is *not* how the Jedi normally operate."

Where did you get the impression that they just snatched babies?

TO BE FAIR, there was also an issue of the whole Baby Ludi case. However the jedi ask for custody seems to be largely ceremonial. Once they have the kid in question then weather or not they got permission to begin with they just go full No Take Backsies. Once they have your kid, however they get them, then there's no way you're getting it back. In fact I remember reading about a temple support worker who's kid was force sensitive. They fired the guy on the spot and told him to get out after they had his kid.

Remember that while C'Baoth was a jackass, he was already a jackass up to that point.

Keltest

2017-04-20, 08:46 PM

Disparate groups of force users would not have joined the war En Masse. Disparate groups of force users wouldn't have allowed the Republic to surrender its self defense into the hands of a single monastic order and soldiers who can be brainwashed with brainchips.

Yoda outright said that the Jedi got corrupted by the Dark Side during the Clone War. The struggle of war clouded the Jedi's connection with the force, and they fell as one.

They were too monolithic. Too vulnerable to being undermined and struct down with a single strike. And so were Luke's apprentices.

While the War did have an affect on the Jedi, it was Palpatine's use of the Dark Side that clouded their vision, which they were heavily reliant on. One of the biggest strengths of the jedi, and one of their fonts of wisdom, was their ability to fairly accurately predict the future, but Palpatine was actively blocking that as part of his scheme to take over the senate.

Peelee

2017-04-20, 08:54 PM

TO BE FAIR, there was also an issue of the whole Baby Ludi case. However the jedi ask for custody seems to be largely ceremonial. Once they have the kid in question then weather or not they got permission to begin with they just go full No Take Backsies. Once they have your kid, however they get them, then there's no way you're getting it back. In fact I remember reading about a temple support worker who's kid was force sensitive. They fired the guy on the spot and told him to get out after they had his kid.

Remember that while C'Baoth was a jackass, he was already a jackass up to that point.

I think that was the same book. C'Baoth's apprentice's family was fired from the Temple, after willingly giving up the kid (and remaining proud of her for being a Jedi), IIRC.

And yeah, he absolutely was a jackass before that, and the other Jedi masters should have reigned him in. But he was smart enough not to be overly authoritarian until he had stacked the deck sufficiently and effectively removed himself from oversight. Which kinda helps distance any of his actions from Jedi SOP; he knew they would slap him down if he overreached, so he waited until there was no one to easily slap him down.

Cikomyr

2017-04-20, 08:55 PM

While the War did have an affect on the Jedi, it was Palpatine's use of the Dark Side that clouded their vision, which they were heavily reliant on. One of the biggest strengths of the jedi, and one of their fonts of wisdom, was their ability to fairly accurately predict the future, but Palpatine was actively blocking that as part of his scheme to take over the senate.

How did they actually lose it to the level that caused their collapse? The Clone War is what crippled them the most.

Sure, maybe Palpatine managed to use some way to cloud them before the Clone War, but its nothing compare to what happened after.

Basically, KOTOR2's backstory all over again.

Peelee

2017-04-20, 08:56 PM

How did they actually lose it to the level that caused their collapse? The Clone War is what crippled them the most.

Sure, maybe Palpatine managed to use some way to cloud them before the Clone War, but its nothing compare to what happened after.

Basically, KOTOR2's backstory all over again.

No, it had more substance than KOTOR 2's backstory. Which isn't saying much. Love that game, but they tried to make it *too* mysterious.

ArlEammon

2017-04-20, 09:02 PM

How did they actually lose it to the level that caused their collapse? The Clone War is what crippled them the most.

Sure, maybe Palpatine managed to use some way to cloud them before the Clone War, but its nothing compare to what happened after.

Basically, KOTOR2's backstory all over again.

Darth Plagueis and Sidious combined their power in a Force Ritual that clouded the Galaxy with the Dark Side.

Cikomyr

2017-04-20, 09:06 PM

No, it had more substance than KOTOR 2's backstory. Which isn't saying much. Love that game, but they tried to make it *too* mysterious.

Eh?

The backstory i talk about is as clear as day in the game: the Mandalorian War traumatized the Jedi fighting so much they either died or fell to the Dark Side.

I just prefer the idea that Palpatine managed to cloud the Jedi's judgement by cleverly use the world and circumstances to disrupt the Jedi's harmony; not merely by casting Epic Darkside Force Vision Obscuring.

In fact, now that i think about it... Anakin's joining the Jedi is the moment they started losing their vision skill..

That vision just got more clouded as Anakin got stronger. Could Anakin been the Trojan horse since day 1?

Legato Endless

2017-04-20, 09:26 PM

I'm not sure that was a fault so much as Palpatine just being that good. Failure does not mean incompetence. Depends on the disease.

When a private corporation can invade a constituent member and halt intervention from the Senate by bribing another member into bogging down the proceedings with bureaucratic nonsense, something is deeply wrong with your government. The fact that treaties are binding even when delivered at gun point might also be a sign. When thousands of worlds secede from the Republic, it's clear a lot of people are unhappy with things. Basically everyone tacitly accepts the Republic has stagnated into at best a decadent greedy shadow of its former self in the Prequels. It's the foundation of everything the trilogy has to say about government, democracy, autocracy, etc.

It being a diseased husk unable to cope with a crisis is kind of the point. More importantly, the Palpatine alone interpretation is terrible artistically. It waves all of that off as filler for the real reason for the fall of the Republic being, 'A wizard did it.'

Peelee

2017-04-20, 09:36 PM

Eh?

The backstory i talk about is as clear as day in the game: the Mandalorian War traumatized the Jedi fighting so much they either died or fell to the Dark Side.

Yes, that is exactly as much backstory that they gave to Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus. If we made a Venn diagram, the Mandalorian War backstory circle and the antagonists of the game backstory circle wouldn't touch. And not just because that second circle didn't actually exist.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 01:13 AM

Where did you get the impression that they just snatched babies?

Well when it took then a bajillion years to look into what happened with Anakins mom. Like she should have been out of there and in a comfy room on Corusant within 20 minutes. And thats for the CHOSEN one. If the idea is a family gives away their child because they are poor, why not ask the parents to come along with the child? Id say 90% of parents would say yes.

What is there budget for personalized starships (That existed even pre-clone wars) but not subsadized housing for the parents whos children your taking?

And If I indoctrinate you into a cult at the age of 2, of course, your not gonna break away when your 30.

They are not baby snatchers, but they are definetly utalitarian disconnected cruel asshats even before the clone wars.

Jayngfet

2017-04-21, 02:01 AM

Of course you have to work through the ramifications of that. There are roughly ten thousand jedi at any time. Assuming that every Jedi has only two relatives, that's still twenty thousand people on average in Coruscant you would need to put up, and that's twenty thousand people in housing that's not the glorified closets Jedi put up with. You'd need to build an entire city within the city to house them. Do they keep the rights to their homes if their jedi relative dies or do they get evicted? Do they pass the rights on to their kids or do they get kicked out when their mother dies?

To subsidize every jedi relative means that in order for the jedi to function you would need an entire protected class taking on additional funding and being given space and significance within the galactic capital. Jedi Knights would become Jedi Nobility. If you decide they can take on housing and also marry, they would logically marry nearby so you'd invariably get inter family marriages.

The scenario you describe sounds like a good idea, but it's logical end point would bring the jedi up to an elite class more than they already are, and bring jedi families above outsiders coming into the order, and create additional hierarchies.

Anakins mother is a special case, given she's a slave, and should have been seen to. But the more reasonable solution would have been to just pay the cost and set her up somewhere else on the same planet.

Keltest

2017-04-21, 06:53 AM

Well when it took then a bajillion years to look into what happened with Anakins mom. Like she should have been out of there and in a comfy room on Corusant within 20 minutes. And thats for the CHOSEN one. If the idea is a family gives away their child because they are poor, why not ask the parents to come along with the child? Id say 90% of parents would say yes.

What is there budget for personalized starships (That existed even pre-clone wars) but not subsadized housing for the parents whos children your taking?

And If I indoctrinate you into a cult at the age of 2, of course, your not gonna break away when your 30.

They are not baby snatchers, but they are definetly utalitarian disconnected cruel asshats even before the clone wars.

Tattoine was not a part of the republic at that time (it was controlled by the Hutt "empire"), which is how Anakin went unnoticed for as long as he did and why things suck so badly there. The jedi alone would not have been able to clean it up to any substantial degree, they would need the support of the republic to go in and actually inflict lasting change.

Cikomyr

2017-04-21, 10:03 AM

Yes, that is exactly as much backstory that they gave to Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus. If we made a Venn diagram, the Mandalorian War backstory circle and the antagonists of the game backstory circle wouldn't touch. And not just because that second circle didn't actually exist.

But... Sion and Nihilus's backgrounds were absolutely irrelevant to the story beside their status as antagonists. KOTOR2's Sith Lords were really nothing but a driving force for the Exile, and HIS story.

And the Exile's backstory is detailed, and its the entire point of the entire game. You retrace his trauma, you discover his background. You face his demons. Because the Exile is manipulated by Kreia to believe he has no other choice in order to defeat the Sith chasing him.

Okay. Kreia's backstory is so obscure and convoluted, i will grant you THAT. There is a fantastic LP of KOTOR 2 that delves deeply into her character to figure out who she realy is. And its obfuscated as Sith.

Keltest

2017-04-21, 10:39 AM

But... Sion and Nihilus's backgrounds were absolutely irrelevant to the story beside their status as antagonists. KOTOR2's Sith Lords were really nothing but a driving force for the Exile, and HIS story.

And the Exile's backstory is detailed, and its the entire point of the entire game. You retrace his trauma, you discover his background. You face his demons. Because the Exile is manipulated by Kreia to believe he has no other choice in order to defeat the Sith chasing him.

Okay. Kreia's backstory is so obscure and convoluted, i will grant you THAT. There is a fantastic LP of KOTOR 2 that delves deeply into her character to figure out who she realy is. And its obfuscated as Sith.

given that theyre the only antagonists for 90% of the game, their backstories absolutely matter. Why do they care about the Exile? how did they get -another- sith army up and running? where were they in the last war? what do they even want? we spend the whole game running from and/or fighting them, and we know nothing about them.

Peelee

2017-04-21, 10:41 AM

But... Sion and Nihilus's backgrounds were absolutely irrelevant to the story beside their status as antagonists. KOTOR2's Sith Lords were really nothing but a driving force for the Exile, and HIS* story.

And the Exile's backstory is detailed, and its the entire point of the entire game. You retrace his trauma, you discover his background. You face his demons. Because the Exile is manipulated by Kreia to believe he has no other choice in order to defeat the Sith chasing him.

Okay. Kreia's backstory is so obscure and convoluted, i will grant you THAT. There is a fantastic LP of KOTOR 2 that delves deeply into her character to figure out who she realy is. And its obfuscated as Sith.

*Her, canonically. Well, no longer canon, but..youknowwhatimean.

What brought back the Exile's Force powers? That is a pretty big driving force of the game, since that's the reason she is able to do.... well, literally anything she does in KOTOR 2. The Exile's backstory is absolutely rich, and discovering and facing the realities of it were part of what made the game so damned enjoyable. But the plot was, "There are Sith running about threatening the entire Jedi Order, and you have to save them! We'll never say why or how, though."

You're trying to argue that the Sith Lords were largely irrelevant to the story of a game called "KOTOR II: The Sith Lords."

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 11:23 AM

Of course you have to work through the ramifications of that. There are roughly ten thousand jedi at any time. Assuming that every Jedi has only two relatives, that's still twenty thousand people on average in Coruscant you would need to put up, and that's twenty thousand people in housing that's not the glorified closets Jedi put up with. You'd need to build an entire city within the city to house them. Do they keep the rights to their homes if their jedi relative dies or do they get evicted? Do they pass the rights on to their kids or do they get kicked out when their mother dies?

Thats a legitinate point but you get a whole other set of things otherwise.

Whilst the children are infants, your STILL paying for individual caretakers (Or your paying for them to be taken care of Orphanage style? Maybe thats why the Jedi have such problems with their emotions) for YEARS at a time.

And on top of that I already mentioned that Jedi have pretty luxurious lifestyles with access to Custom ships worth hundreds of thousands of credits to make (And this isn't even going into design, maintenance, and fuel costs). But just a minor stipend is out of bounds?

Or heck not apartments but freaking anything? Like a coupon to use the phone?

The whole "Take them as children" still just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. That effectively makes them a cult like the ones from comics that Train assasin orphans.

Of course the childs not going to want to do anything else in life but be a child soldier if raised in an environment that does nothing but glorify being a soldier, and tells them to avoid contact with their parents.

Heck this is all good writing about how the best of inentions could really lead to messed up results. If the PT just COMMUNICATED this better, it could be such a neat set of movies.

Keltest

2017-04-21, 11:51 AM

Thats a legitinate point but you get a whole other set of things otherwise.

Whilst the children are infants, your STILL paying for individual caretakers (Or your paying for them to be taken care of Orphanage style? Maybe thats why the Jedi have such problems with their emotions) for YEARS at a time.

And on top of that I already mentioned that Jedi have pretty luxurious lifestyles with access to Custom ships worth hundreds of thousands of credits to make (And this isn't even going into design, maintenance, and fuel costs). But just a minor stipend is out of bounds?

Or heck not apartments but freaking anything? Like a coupon to use the phone?

The whole "Take them as children" still just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. That effectively makes them a cult like the ones from comics that Train assasin orphans.

Of course the childs not going to want to do anything else in life but be a child soldier if raised in an environment that does nothing but glorify being a soldier, and tells them to avoid contact with their parents.

Heck this is all good writing about how the best of inentions could really lead to messed up results. If the PT just COMMUNICATED this better, it could be such a neat set of movies.

Youre right, its not a great thing to think about, but Anakin is a prime example of why they don't take kids when theyre older. If you take them as a baby, they have no emotional attachments to the people they are in all likelihood never going to see again. Once they've formed those attachments, its a weakness and a burden for them, especially once someone they care about gets in trouble. When strong emotions are dangerous, creating conflicts like that is tempting fate.

Jayngfet

2017-04-21, 12:29 PM

There are attendants in the temple, and they also make droids for this kind of thing. Of course we know from the backstory of one youngling in the films even if you have a vision of your parents dying and take it up with the council, they won't let you actually tackle it. So Anakin was essentially boned if he went through official channels and knew it.

Cikomyr

2017-04-21, 02:30 PM

given that theyre the only antagonists for 90% of the game, their backstories absolutely matter. Why do they care about the Exile? how did they get -another- sith army up and running? where were they in the last war? what do they even want? we spend the whole game running from and/or fighting them, and we know nothing about them.

Actually, that is not true. The Siths are only the antagonist for.. 10 minutes on Peragus, the last 15 minutes of Korriban.. (small) part of the last stage of Onderon.

And the Endgame, but waaaay after dealing with the other villain of the game; Atris.

They are the motivating force and the antagonists you face at the end, but they are hardly central to the game's actual story. Which is, in my.opinion, KOTOR2's genius

*Her, canonically. Well, no longer canon, but..youknowwhatimean.

What brought back the Exile's Force powers? That is a pretty big driving force of the game, since that's the reason she is able to do.... well, literally anything she does in KOTOR 2. The Exile's backstory is absolutely rich, and discovering and facing the realities of it were part of what made the game so damned enjoyable. But the plot was, "There are Sith running about threatening the entire Jedi Order, and you have to save them! We'll never say why or how, though."

You're trying to argue that the Sith Lords were largely irrelevant to the story of a game called "KOTOR II: The Sith Lords."

Yes, that is exactly what i am arguing.

The most comprehensive playthrough and analysis of the game (https://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/) has a good quote (https://lparchive.org/Knights-of-the-Old-Republic-II/Update%2029) about it:

For a game called "The Sith Lords", the Sith are strangely underdeveloped. I suspect the subtitle was tacked on by the marketing people, kinda like how marketing people decided that "X2: X-Men United" would be a great movie title. If I'm being harsh, it's probably because I work in marketing and the subtitle smells like the typical stupidity.

Part of the reason for the lack of Sith in the game is that the game is an inward journey: the Exile's enemy is himself. It's not the Sith, it's not the Exchange or the Mandalorians. The conflict is between the Exile and himself. As Kreia and others explained, the Sith are just there as obstacles for the Exile to test himself on. The game was never about "The Sith Lords".

The game was never about the Sith Lords. Kind of like the Matrix is NOT about the war against the Machines. Both the Machines and the War are merely catalyst that pushes the protagonist toward a journey of self-discovery.

This is why the Matrix is such a complete movie despite never seeing the end of the war. And why the sequels are such useless tack-on. Same with KOTOR2.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 04:16 PM

"If you take them as a baby, they have no emotional attachments to the people they are in all likelihood never going to see again. Once they've formed those attachments, its a weakness and a burden for them, especially once someone they care about gets in trouble. When strong emotions are dangerous, creating conflicts like that is tempting fate."

Everything you said, if it came out of the mouth of "Master Assasin Zodergun, Slaughterer of the 13th Dynasty" would sound exactly the same.

There are attendants in the temple, and they also make droids for this kind of thing.

Reminds me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzrE1K0FGLw

Regardless this isn't a Money Issue then.

This makes it a wonder how the Jedi lasted for more then 20 years without their Kids going Crazy. The environment you mention was similar to an experiment conducted in some socialist vassal of the USSR. The kids ended up becoming great KGB members because of their inability to make friends or longterm connections.

If this is because the force is so dangerous that even having any modicum connection to things or people you like turns you crazy and evil, then the force itself is a default evil force.

This is an aspect I really dislike of the EU. They could have really ran with "The Jedi Order is wrong" aspect, but instead they worked backwards to justify the corrupt and vile nature of the jedi order.

Really the only thing keeping the Jedi order "Moral" was a core ideology, with all of its pupils being taught in such ways to be unable to empathize with others. Having loving Parents is literally one of the most important things for children to understand empathy.

pendell

2017-04-21, 05:09 PM

The prequel-era Jedi weren't noted for their exceptional empathy or compassion. This is brought out even more strongly in the novelizations then in the prequels. In the EP 3 novelization, Kenobi and Yoda have a conversation. Kenobi states, and Yoda agrees, that if Yoda saw Kenobi as a threat to the Jedi Order or fallen to the Dark Side, Yoda would kill him without hesitation.

Kenobi notes that Anakin can't do that ; he doesn't put aside friendship or the people he loves for some abstract ideology. Both Kenobi and Yoda view this as a weakness which may lead to the dark side.

I suppose it's the same sort of ideology which gives us the LAPD in the real world; the idea that you don't want police officers making friends with people, because then they would be tempted to protect their friends, bend the law, rather then enforcing the rules equally without fear or favor. Force-sensitives with families might be tempted to use their powers to protect and advance those families, rather than being a selfless servant to all the galaxy.

The downside of that, of course, is that it occasionally generates abusive police officers who have neither empathy nor compassion for the citizens they ostensibly serve. Qui-gonn doesn't seem immune to this; not how quickly he resorts to force suggestion in order to get his way with Boss Naas or with whoever-it-was who owned Anakin. Or to cheat at dice. Or in Episode 3, where Kenobi uses force suggestion to simply take a riding animal, then gets it killed.

In a way, that contempt for ordinary people isn't all that different from what the Sith Lords do. The difference between Sith and Jedi appears to me to be one of degree, not of kind.

A willingness to take the force which binds a man and a woman, parents and their children, and use it, rather than simply deny it, would serve the Jedi well. I suspect rebuilding the Jedi order along the lines of accepting love as a force for good will be central to whatever new order emerges. Love redeemed Vader, after all, when the masters of the Old order had written him off as lost.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 05:35 PM

I suspect rebuilding the Jedi order along the lines of accepting love as a force for good will be central to whatever new order emerges.

We will never know whats central to this new order nor will it matter because everybody involved will be killed and the Dark Side will rise more cruel and vile then before, with more power and everything that was ever worked for in the OT will be undone in less then a generation.

Cikomyr

2017-04-21, 05:45 PM

We will never know whats central to this new order nor will it matter because everybody involved will be killed and the Dark Side will rise more cruel and vile then before, with more power and everything that was ever worked for in the OT will be undone in less then a generation.

We will get to see this new order in the next 13 movies!! :-D

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-21, 06:16 PM

You know, I looked back at the script of TPM, and it's actually possible the Jedi Council didn't realise Shmi's situation. Qui Gon does try to take her with him, but Watto doesn't give in. Then he gets killed. Maybe he would've eventually planned to go back for her, but then he gets killed. Obi Wan never left the ship on Tattoine or met Shmi, so he doesn't know how bad her situation is, and Anakin is canonically very reticent about his past.

I just prefer the idea that Palpatine managed to cloud the Jedi's judgement by cleverly use the world and circumstances to disrupt the Jedi's harmony; not merely by casting Epic Darkside Force Vision Obscuring.

Probably both.

Disparate groups of force users would not have joined the war En Masse. Disparate groups of force users wouldn't have allowed the Republic to surrender its self defense into the hands of a single monastic order and soldiers who can be brainwashed with brainchips.]

Debateable, it really depends on what they teach. The Republic had no army of its own at all, they'd have to get it from somewhere.

When a private corporation can invade a constituent member and halt intervention from the Senate by bribing another member into bogging down the proceedings with bureaucratic nonsense, something is deeply wrong with your government. The fact that treaties are binding even when delivered at gun point might also be a sign.]

Treaties at gunpoint happen all the time, it's how surrender works. The idea is that other places might not want to go to war for the sake of somewhere already defeated.

And the senate was very quickly calling for a vote when they changed Chancellors.

The starships are absolutely a necessary possession for intergalactic peacekeepers, and they also have to be capable enough to deal with people shooting at them.

They're not taken as infants as far as I know.

I'm seeing again the idea that Jedi aren't allowed emotions, that's not true. They all do, but the phrase that comes up a lot is to 'be mindful' of them. Not 'don't have any', just be aware of the risks of letting them push you into abusing your power.

Qui-gonn doesn't seem immune to this; not how quickly he resorts to force suggestion in order to get his way with Boss Naas or with whoever-it-was who owned Anakin. Or to cheat at dice. Or in Episode 3, where Kenobi uses force suggestion to simply take a riding animal, then gets it killed.

Aww, come on those were time critical situations (except Anakin getting out of slavery), and they didn't steal anything vital.

I suspect rebuilding the Jedi order along the lines of accepting love as a force for good will be central to whatever new order emerges.

And that's fine, the new order will have different strengths and weaknesses. I just don't want to see 'everyone else in history was totally wrong!'

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 06:52 PM

You know, I looked back at the script of TPM, and it's actually possible the Jedi Council didn't realise Shmi's situation.

Then they are not callous just deeply, DEEPLY, like...Near Brain dead stupid. Like the kind of stupid you see in cartoons thats usually given to the dog.

"Durrr whats slavery? Is it a kind of.....Radish?"

Being militarized doesn't make them evil. Being aggressively callous and detached makes tem corrupt. And the "Training Children as soldiers" thing.

Jayngfet

2017-04-21, 07:04 PM

Keltest

2017-04-21, 07:59 PM

Everything you said, if it came out of the mouth of "Master Assasin Zodergun, Slaughterer of the 13th Dynasty" would sound exactly the same.

I feel like this is a "you know who also ate sugar? Hitlar!" fallacy. Of course its going to sound sinister if you only look at the what and not the why that separates the Jedi from the "Order of Dynastic Slayers". A jedi knight with a lot of emotional attachments is a ticking time bomb just waiting to get corrupted by the Dark Side. Theyre dangerous to themselves and everybody around them, all of their friends, the guys the next planet over, etc...

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 08:39 PM

I feel like this is a "you know who also ate sugar? Hitlar!" fallacy.

Thats a respectable point, mine is just that what the Jedi are doing IS sinister.

A jedi knight with a lot of emotional attachments is a ticking time bomb just waiting to get corrupted by the Dark Side. Theyre dangerous to themselves and everybody around them, all of their friends, the guys the next planet over, etc...

Well if thats the point of the series, then the force is evil and antithetical to life.
If a normal, loving, human being is more dangerous as that as opposed to a child soldier robot who only cares about his cult when force sensative, then at best what the jedi are doing is trying to minimize damage from an evil power souce, as opposed to there being a good side.

Its no different then something like Raven from teen titans who needed to keep her emotions in check because the vile evil of her powers would hurt others if not under her control.

The Dark Side is thus the default side. Making Star Wars much more like Warhammer 40K.

And the Pre-Reboot EU sure thinks so, but I think its just people working backwards to justify something that didn't make sense as opposed to working with it to subvert it. With a bit of a Re-write it could have really shown the Folly of the Jedi, and how in their attempts to try to make something pure good, they instead created a hollow cult.

Keltest

2017-04-21, 08:52 PM

Thats a respectable point, mine is just that what the Jedi are doing IS sinister.

Well if thats the point of the series, then the force is evil and antithetical to life.
If a normal, loving, human being is more dangerous as that as opposed to a child soldier robot who only cares about his cult when force sensative, then at best what the jedi are doing is trying to minimize damage from an evil power souce, as opposed to there being a good side.

Its no different then something like Raven from teen titans who needed to keep her emotions in check because the vile evil of her powers would hurt others if not under her control.

The Dark Side is thus the default side. Making Star Wars much more like Warhammer 40K.

And the Pre-Reboot EU sure thinks so, but I think its just people working backwards to justify something that didn't make sense as opposed to working with it to subvert it. With a bit of a Re-write it could have really shown the Folly of the Jedi, and how in their attempts to try to make something pure good, they instead created a hollow cult.

Its a bit more nuanced than that. Only Anger and Hate and the like actually lead to the Dark Side, and even then only if you act on them. A jedi who feels joyous is not inherently more dangerous than a jedi who is indifferent. But something that can make you happy has the power to make you sad, right? The strongest hate is against the people we used to love. Anakin is practically a textbook example of why they take the kids before they can form emotional attachments. When his mom died, he slaughtered a village of sand people. It took him all of like a minute to go from loving his wife to trying to murder her. Even former jedi who leave the order tend to be loners (in the old EU anyway).

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-21, 10:21 PM

Its a bit more nuanced than that. Only Anger and Hate and the like actually lead to the Dark Side, and even then only if you act on them. A jedi who feels joyous is not inherently more dangerous than a jedi who is indifferent. But something that can make you happy has the power to make you sad, right? The strongest hate is against the people we used to love. Anakin is practically a textbook example of why they take the kids before they can form emotional attachments. When his mom died, he slaughtered a village of sand people. It took him all of like a minute to go from loving his wife to trying to murder her. Even former jedi who leave the order tend to be loners (in the old EU anyway).

Again Nihilism. In fact there is a russian song about how if you have nothing you can loose nothing. And if your not alive, then you don't die.

You again work OFF the bad writing in the PT. Its like when people say "Well Palpatine made everybody stupid with the dark side" to explain how stupid everybody acts otherwise.

At BEST then the Jedi are Nihilistic. Seeking apathy and stoicism. The more attached you are to something the more likely you have the probability to suddenly go insane and start going on a mad murder spree.

Its just bad writing, with manufactured romeo and juliet bullcrap. But its so accidentally brilliant. Like I said, with a re-write it could be an awesome subversion.

Anonymouswizard

2017-04-22, 02:59 AM

All this Jedi talk has made me wish the title and advert are red herrings and that the film will consist of the newly elected replacement New Republic ministers sitting in a room arguing over what to do about the First Order for three hours :smallannoyed:

Maybe what Luke has raised is that being innoculated to the Dark Side is better than never having used it. He'll created a new order, the Nedi, who will focus on controlling their emotions rather than repressing them.,

Then maybe Kylo Ben will kill Snoke, create the Order of the Hith, and there will be a massive battle between the two on the planet Soth at the end of Episode 9: Give Us Money.

Keltest

2017-04-22, 06:51 AM

Again Nihilism. In fact there is a russian song about how if you have nothing you can loose nothing. And if your not alive, then you don't die.

You again work OFF the bad writing in the PT. Its like when people say "Well Palpatine made everybody stupid with the dark side" to explain how stupid everybody acts otherwise.

At BEST then the Jedi are Nihilistic. Seeking apathy and stoicism. The more attached you are to something the more likely you have the probability to suddenly go insane and start going on a mad murder spree.

Its just bad writing, with manufactured romeo and juliet bullcrap. But its so accidentally brilliant. Like I said, with a re-write it could be an awesome subversion.

...

You DO remember when Yoda was describing the Dark Side to Luke, right? In the Original Trilogy?

Theyre

A: A monastic Order
B: Knights, with all the violence that implies
and C: prone to flying off the handle if they get really angry

So I'm confused that you are at all surprised that they try to keep their emotions under control.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-22, 08:39 AM

A: A monastic Order

That was only added in the PT

B: Knights, with all the violence that implies

But that doesn't imply sociopathy, and a inability to handle family. Heck, one of the only things that can really help an unstable Vet is family.

and C: prone to flying off the handle if they get really angry

Not really mentioned at all.

So I'm confused that you are at all surprised that they try to keep their emotions under control.

Stop constructing a strawman. :smallannoyed:

Keltest

2017-04-22, 11:04 AM

That was only added in the PT

But that doesn't imply sociopathy, and a inability to handle family. Heck, one of the only things that can really help an unstable Vet is family.

Not really mentioned at all.

Stop constructing a strawman. :smallannoyed:

Its not a strawman, its what youre arguing for. Calling them sociopaths is far more of a strawman, because they were perfectly allowed to feel emotions and indeed did, all the time.

And yes, I am including information from the PT, because when discussing something about the PT, the context kind of matters.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-22, 11:12 AM

Its not a strawman, its what youre arguing for. Calling them sociopaths is far more of a strawman, because they were perfectly allowed to feel emotions and indeed did, all the time.

Alright deranged uncontrolable mad men? Is that better?

And yes, I am including information from the PT, because when discussing something about the PT, the context kind of matters.

And I call it stupid writing and bad writing.

Keltest

2017-04-22, 11:17 AM

Alright deranged uncontrolable mad men? Is that better?

And I call it stupid writing and bad writing.

The prequels had a number of flaws. The corruption of the Dark Side and the vulnerability to it that emotional attachments bring are not on that list. They didn't even originate in the prequels!

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-22, 11:52 AM

The prequels had a number of flaws. The corruption of the Dark Side and the vulnerability to it that emotional attachments bring are not on that list. They didn't even originate in the prequels!

Yes it is and yes it did.

Your arguing in circles and shifting the goalposts in order to justify an element you like even if it makes no sense.

Knight has no implicit connection to being a emotionally unstable person who can't handle loss without going on a killing spree.

The only people calling emotional connections as weaknesses where the bad guys (Wouldn't Faith in Friends being a weakness be a JEDI thing? Not something called out by a lord of evil).

It is true that loss can make a person suffer, but the solution is not to raise them in a clinical environment to be trained as child soldiers since the day they can life up a sword. Thats pretty freaking evil.

And if the Force makes a person unstable from suffering any kind of loss, then the force is evil because suffering is a normal part of the human condition.

Legato Endless

2017-04-22, 01:26 PM

Treaties at gunpoint happen all the time, it's how surrender works. The idea is that other places might not want to go to war for the sake of somewhere already defeated.

Surrender to your local Buy'N'Large, being allowed to invade and kill a sovereign people within your borders over a taxation protest. Maybe this point was too subtle, something not normally afforded to the prequels, but allowing the Galactic East India Trading Corporation to exist and do what it will points to a pretty disturbing state of affairs.

And the senate was very quickly calling for a vote when they changed Chancellors.

The Senate did nothing until the Queen intervened, then proceeded to get caught up in the giddy process of it's own restructuring the balance of the power. Not the sign of a healthy state responding to a crisis. Naboo frees itself, and the Senate does essentially nothing. Palpatine showing up and arresting the Gunray is an empty gesture. 3 years later the Trade Federation has gotten away the massacre scot-free. Even their boss is still in command, escaping justice from four supreme court trials.

Mando Knight

2017-04-22, 02:10 PM

The Senate did nothing until the Queen intervened, then proceeded to get caught up in the giddy process of it's own restructuring the balance of the power. Not the sign of a healthy state responding to a crisis. Naboo frees itself, and the Senate does essentially nothing. Palpatine showing up and arresting the Gunray is an empty gesture. 3 years later the Trade Federation has gotten away the massacre scot-free. Even their boss is still in command, escaping justice from four supreme court trials.

During the Clone Wars, the Trade Federation somehow (because Palpatine is The Senate) even managed to obfuscate their role in the Confederacy, maintaining their senator through the conflict while officially declaring Gunray's actions as those of an extremist fringe not supported by the Trade Federation at large.

J-H

2017-04-22, 04:10 PM

Who's going to get a hand cut off in TLJ?

A) Rey
B) Ben/Kylo Wren
C) Finn
D) Luke
E) Whatever new lightsaber wielder they introduce
F) More than one of the above

I put it at an 80% chance of someone losing a hand, and a 40% chance that Luke Skywalker is alive at the end of the film. If Rey loses her hand, it'll prove that she's Luke's kid and Anakin's grandkid.
Or maybe Luke's granddaughter at this point? We don't know exactly how long it's been, but Luke was around 25 in ROTJ, and he looks like he's about 40 years older...

Frozen_Feet

2017-04-22, 06:02 PM

Knight has no implicit connection to being a emotionally unstable person who can't handle loss without going on a killing spree.

A knight has the implication of being heavily armed and having both the capacity and authority to use violence on others.

Which is why knights and other similar organizations developed complex laws and codes for when using violence was appropriate, enforced by life-long training, devotion to virtue and extreme peer pressure (AKA other knights killing you for failure to adhere). It was, and still is, considered a bad idea to give power to someone who is prone to abuse it.

And that's why your argumentation comes off as backwards. It's not the Force which makes emotional people unstable. It's emotional people who make the Force unstable. The Dark side corrupts, but that's because the Dark side is effectively created by people giving in to their temptations and using the Force to realize them.

It's not the Force which is evil. It's the people. The Jedi training exist to keep people from being evil. It feels alien and off if you're used to thinking that people are good, and that natural emotions are good, but that's not necessarily the case at all. I mean, you said there's something wrong with the idea if a normal human with normal human affections is more dangerous than an emotionless robot... but that takes humans as the default.

It's not given the founding Jedi were humans, and we KNOW many profilic Jedi through the ages were NOT.

Think about that for a moment. Your argument for Force being evil, and the Dark Side being the default, is based on how mechanics of the Dark Side cast natural human emotions in a negative light, and taking human affections as the default.

But humanity isn't necessarily default for being a Jedi, nevermind the Force as a whole. We know that being extremely force sensitive is NOT default for humanity, at the very least. So it's dubious why we'd want to use what's normal for a human as a guideline for what's good for a Jedi. Pretty much all real organizations analogous to the Jedi have held their members to higher standards, even if those standards weren't always met in practice.

Mando Knight

2017-04-22, 11:42 PM

Or maybe Luke's granddaughter at this point? We don't know exactly how long it's been, but Luke was around 25 in ROTJ, and he looks like he's about 40 years older...

TFA is 30 years after RotJ. TLJ picks up pretty much exactly where TFA left off. Luke is about 53, but looks 65 because that's how old Mark Hamill is. Rey is officially 19 at the start of TFA, making it mathematically possible but extremely unlikely that she's Luke's granddaughter, since her mother would have to have given birth at a fairly young age, and whiny moisture farmer Luke (rather than Luke Skywalker, Jedi-Hero of the Rebellion) would have had to impregnate Rey's grandmother before leaving Tatooine. I think it's more likely that she's Kenobi's granddaughter than Luke's.

Incidentally, Kylo Ren was officially born about a year after Endor, and is thus 29-ish (depending on the exact dates) in TFA.

Peelee

2017-04-22, 11:51 PM

TFA is 30 years after RotJ. TLJ picks up pretty much exactly where TFA left off. Luke is about 53, but looks 65 because that's how old Mark Hamill is. Rey is officially 19 at the start of TFA, making it mathematically possible but extremely unlikely that she's Luke's granddaughter, since her mother would have to have given birth at a fairly young age, and whiny moisture farmer Luke (rather than Luke Skywalker, Jedi-Hero of the Rebellion) would have had to impregnate Rey's grandmother before leaving Tatooine. I think it's more likely that she's Kenobi's granddaughter than Luke's.

Wait, how does that math work out? If Rey is 19 at the start of TFA, and Luke is ~53, and it's 30 years after RotJ.... then Rey would have been born when Luke was ~34. Long after he left Tatooine, and was Luke Skywalker, Jedi-Hero of the Rebellion, not whiny moisture farmer.

Ohhhhh, you said granddaughter. I getcha.

Jayngfet

2017-04-23, 12:52 AM

The thing is making her a Kenobi serves no narrative purpose. That'd just be a twist for the sake of a twist.

J-H

2017-04-24, 11:39 AM

pendell

2017-04-24, 12:13 PM

Ok, thanks. I forgot that they'd specified 30 years.
Why do movie characters always have such small families? One kid and done, when you're the heir to a big legacy and have nearly unlimited resources?
(real answer: Because more kids would complicate the plot and keep characters from being so isolated)

Not just that. For every family member you add you have to model their relationships with every other family member.

Mom A Dad B . Just one relationship.
Mom A Dad B Kid C . Now we have three relationships
A-B, A-C, B-C

Add second kid D.
Mom A Dad B Kid C Kid D

A-B, A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D, C-D.

Can you say 'factorial explosion'? :smallamused:

Conservation of detail means that, more often than not, protagonists are only children if not tragically orphaned with a mysterious past.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-25, 08:11 PM

Of course in that case, what about Obi-Wan and Padme? They'd clearly be aware but not said anything. Padme hadn't seen Anakin until it was too late, so the onus is now on Obi-Wan himself to bring it up.

Obi-Wan possibly never got the full story until later, he stayed on the ship when they first met and hadn't any particular bond with Anakin until after TPM. Qui- Gon apparently had a habit of picking up random strangers like Jar Jar, he might have just assumed he was an orphan at the time.

Padme, on the other hand, has no excuses, we see her get the full story and she's the goddamned queen, she totally should have been able to send someone to get Shmi.

Re Jedi and emotion, we see most of them show emotion and attachment at various times without condemnation.

I thought the reason for the lack of relationships is one part to protect the significant others from being priority number one target for various bounty hunters/Sith/people that don't like Jedi,as well as preventing them from being used to manipulate Jedi.

Jedi are not more emotionally unstable than anyone else, but because of their power level, they do more damage if they do crack, therefore great effort is made to keep them from abusing their powers.

He'll created a new order, the Nedi, who will focus on controlling their emotions rather than repressing them.,

That's exactly what the Jedi did do, so it wouldn't be a departure.

Surrender to your local Buy'N'Large, being allowed to invade and kill a sovereign people within your borders over a taxation protest.]

The TF has a senator, they control worlds, it's more like Shinra than your local shop. And you have to remember that a galaxy is huge, it's more like the UN than a country, where most things have to be handled locally.

I am agreed that the child soldier thing is messed up, but at some point you have to stop deconstructing that if you want to have non dystopian worlds where children are allowed to do anything. Otherwise, you lose Pokemon, you lose nearly all YA fiction, you lose Final Fantasy, you lose a hell of a lot of things and end up being unrealistic besides.

Legato Endless

2017-04-25, 10:22 PM

The TF has a senator, they control worlds, it's more like Shinra than your local shop.

I covered this when I compared it to an 18th century precedent.

And you have to remember that a galaxy is huge, it's more like the UN than a country, where most things have to be handled locally.

Not really. The Republic is a Federation with a somewhat weak executive in that it lacks a military, but still wields (and presumes) all of the appropriate powers of a formalized state with outreach and intercession far exceeding the UN. It's much closer to the United States without a military on that spectrum in that while Sovereign members have some local autonomy the State still has power to intercede and regulate. The Jedi's formalized role as peace keepers and enforcers of ideology wouldn't make sense otherwise. A cursory look at the first film:

PADME- I can't believe there is still slavery in the galaxy. The Republic's anti-slavery laws...
SHMI- The Republic doesn't exist out here...we must survive on our own.

It has the power to decree and enforce within it's borders a law against slavery. Sure, it's happening in the hinterlands, but that's explicitly because Tatooine is outside the Republic's territory.

QUI-GON- I'm afraid not. Had he been born in the Republic, we would have identified him early, and he would have become Jedi, no doubt...he has the way.

It has enough centralized clout and networking to allow the Jedi to identify and conscript children on their member worlds. It intervenes in the lives of the citizens in it's territory regularly.

PALPATINE- Our best choice would be to push for the election of a stronger Supreme Chancellor. One who will take control of the bureaucrats, enforces the laws, and give us justice. You could call for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum.

This plan doesn't work if it's as lost within the vastness of the Galaxy as you're claiming.

Amidala-The Naboo system has been invaded by force. Invaded...against all the laws of the Republic by the Droid Armies of the Trade...

The Queen fully expects the Republic can intervene and stop the invasion. Unless she (and the Jedi, and her supportive staff) are totally mistaken about how the Republic is supposed to work. Palpatine then explains that yeah, the Republic could do this...if it hadn't become corrupt and under the clout of the 'Bureaucrats.' The entire conversation presupposes the Republic can and should intervene locally, but can't because it's a husk of it's former self.

PALPATINE- A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. I promise, Your Majesty, if I am elected, I will bring democracy back to the Republic. I will put an end to corruption. The Trade Fedreation will lose its influence over the bureaucrats, and our people will be freed.

See above.

There are two interpretations here. First, the Republic, a sprawling legal body with considerable formal influence in the Galaxy grew corrupt, elected an autocrat, and then transitioned into a military dictatorship. The Dark Side is powerful, but the Emperor didn't wave a wand and create an Empire out of thin air.

"The Empire is the Republic." -George Lucas

The Republic and it's constituent elements were coopted by Palpatine. He skillfully exploited the situation to assume absolute power. The alternative requires too many leaps of Palpatine somehow magicking up everything out of the ether. Which is less compelling and kind of cartoonish.

Peelee

2017-04-26, 12:17 AM

It has enough centralized clout and networking to allow the Jedi to identify and conscript children on their member worlds.

Still not seeing where they conscript children.

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-26, 12:22 AM

Still not seeing where they conscript children.

If an orphanage in our modern world started teaching children how to fire guns at a young age and teaching them an ideology that they are needed fight to enforce peace, we would call that so deeply depraved that it would make most of us livid with anger.

Rakaydos

2017-04-26, 12:26 AM

Scowling Dragon

2017-04-26, 12:30 AM

That sounds like the Militia Movement, to me.

Thats why when a character says "He is too old" you know off like 2 years. Or 3.

Not at the freaking baby age.

Keltest

2017-04-26, 06:34 AM

If an orphanage in our modern world started teaching children how to fire guns at a young age and teaching them an ideology that they are needed fight to enforce peace, we would call that so deeply depraved that it would make most of us livid with anger.

see again: Knight. Training to become a knight in the real world could start at an incredibly early age. For the nobility, it would basically be assumed that's what they were going to do, and children were raised under that assumption. Plus, the jedi aren't "an orphanage", if you agree to give your child over to the Jedi, you know pretty much exactly what theyre going to do with them.

Peelee

2017-04-26, 06:45 AM

hamishspence

2017-04-26, 06:49 AM

....ok? But I asked about any evidence of conscription.

Stay on target.

The closest to that is The Jedi Path (a Legends guide to the Jedi) that mentions that midi-chlorian testing at birth is mandatory, and Jedi are the legal custodians of all Force-Sensitives within the Republic (and that some Jedi Masters see "being born Force-sensitive" as "consent to join the Order".

That said, nearly every other source emphasises that the parents make the choice about the child joining or not.

There's no "you hand the kid over or you lose Republic citizenship" here.

Peelee

2017-04-26, 11:46 AM

The closest to that is The Jedi Path (a Legends guide to the Jedi) that mentions that.... Jedi are the legal custodians of all Force-Sensitives within the Republic

I am amused by the unintended implication that the Jedi are the legal custodians of the Sith.

hamishspence

2017-04-26, 11:50 AM

I am amused by the unintended implication that the Jedi are the legal custodians of the Sith.

It's quite possibly intended - allowing the Jedi who successfully capture weak Sith to jail them, punish them, etc, without going through the Republic legal system.

Legato Endless

2017-04-26, 08:50 PM

Still not seeing where they conscript children.

That was intended to be tongue in cheek as I'm feeling a bit sarcastic explaining a base assumption of the setting. The whole child morality argument didn't interest me.

Sapphire Guard

2017-04-30, 07:22 PM

I was wrong to call the republic like the UN, but it's not the US either, it's somewhere between the two, because space is big. Even if it had a proper army, we know that the Star Wars Universe is full of pirates and bounty hunters, especially on the Outer Rim(where Naboo is), and even a large army couldn't escort every single merchant ship, so the Trade Federation, or something like it is kind of inevitable as a private security company that protects its associates from all those pirates (and probably sells droids to supplement planetary security forces and large traders (which would initially give it a little bit of deniability in the Senate 'we sell those droids by the truckload, they could belong to anyone'.)

The Senate is big and unwieldy and takes time to get things done. Yes, it's not perfect, but it is plausible (I can't cite historical examples without going into politics). The Planets all have their own system of rule, which is largely left alone, and maintain their own planetary security.

It is not impossible for the Republic to intervene, but it is difficult, because they'd have to get an army from somewhere, and pay and supply it etc. That kind of thing takes time. Naboo is nowhere important, in a republic with thousands of worlds, many senators might not have even heard of the place. What Padme may be expecting for the moment is a threat of action or enough worlds to put together an armada, something which would also take time. The TF might well back down in the face of a decree from the Senate, with the promise of eventual action unless they leave Naboo now.,

The point of the surrender isn't to make the invasion legitimate so much as make senators with no stake in the fate of Naboo go ' they've already lost, do we really want to go to the effort of recapturing the planet rather than just negotiating.' The very fact that the Queen can sign a treaty without senate approval means that the planets get a fair degree of autonomy in how they are ruled.

Palpatine did create an empire out of the republic, but in order to take control he needed to use an elaborate scheme to force the Republic to create a previously non existent strong military arm which he could co-opt and use to enforce his will.

Legato Endless

2017-05-01, 11:49 PM

I was wrong to call the republic like the UN, but it's not the US either, it's somewhere between the two, because space is big.

Yes, I said closer on the spectrum, certainly not precisely the US. As for size, ehhh. It's more the way it works because Lucas had some specific ideas in mind with his political allegory. Star Wars defies certain other harder science fiction conceits for various reasons, which leaves me leery of assuming a naturalistic reason for anything on the macro side of things. The Republic lacks a military so Lucas can expound on his views of militarization.

Even if it had a proper army, we know that the Star Wars Universe is full of pirates and bounty hunters, especially on the Outer Rim(where Naboo is), and even a large army couldn't escort every single merchant ship, so the Trade Federation, or something like it is kind of inevitable as a private security company that protects its associates from all those pirates.

No large army/navy/coast guard/whatever protects every single merchant vessel in the real world because they don't need to. Effective policing doesn't mean armed escorts with every transport. Furthermore, the Empire does seem to be able to manage policing parts of the galaxy on it's own with some efficacy, because even crime lords living in the Outer Rim still hire dedicated smugglers to evade taxation/contraband/illicit dealings. If security were so tenuous across the void of space, Jabba wouldn't need Solo to begin with. The Republic certainly didn't hold as much sway as it's successor, but I don't see how security firms are inevitable.

Furthermore, the Trade Federation in background materials isn't portrayed as some naturalistic necessity, it's read as a large organization now trying to artificially tighten routes by monopolizing them and pushing out the smaller competitors. Smaller businesses and nations that were surviving despite the big scary brigands hiding behind this or that nebula. It's potential death teased at the end of Episode I is portrayed as a very good thing for the galaxy.

The Senate is big and unwieldy and takes time to get things done. Yes, it's not perfect, but it is plausible.

Oh I'd fully agree it's perfectly plausible. The original contention was whether or not it was corrupt outside of Palpatine. Something which I'd back, partially because basically everyone in the PT regurgitates that sentiment when they comment on it.

(I can't cite historical examples without going into politics).

Yeah, that's irksome.

The very fact that the Queen can sign a treaty without senate approval means that the planets get a fair degree of autonomy in how they are ruled.

She can sign, but the Senate approval is required to determine whether or not it's officially binding.

The Naboo and the Federation will forge a treaty that will
legitimize our occupation here. I've been assured it will be ratified by
the Senate. -Nute Gunray

ArlEammon

2017-05-01, 11:54 PM

What if Snoke is a pureblood Sith. Not a "Sith", but a racial Sith?

Mando Knight

2017-05-02, 12:43 AM

What if Snoke is a pureblood Sith. Not a "Sith", but a racial Sith?

Given the recanonization pattern that Disney's followed so far, I don't think it's likely, as Snoke doesn't resemble the Sith species much at all beyond typical humanoid traits.

pendell

2017-05-02, 04:28 PM

ArlEammon

2017-05-02, 04:35 PM

I'm sure Palpatine and Plaguis had a force ritual to blind the Jedi Masters -- but I'm equally sure that isn't the first time someone had tried something like that. For it to have been effective at all, the Jedi had to be asleep at the switch at the first place.

It would be like the Nazis getting into power in America, instead of Germany, in the 2024 election.

Sapphire Guard

2017-05-02, 04:54 PM

Yes, I said closer on the spectrum, certainly not precisely the US. As for size, ehhh. It's more the way it works because Lucas had some specific ideas in mind with his political allegory. Star Wars defies certain other harder science fiction conceits for various reasons, which leaves me leery of assuming a naturalistic reason for anything on the macro side of things. The Republic lacks a military so Lucas can expound on his views of militarization.

No large army/navy/coast guard/whatever protects every single merchant vessel in the real world because they don't need to. Effective policing doesn't mean armed escorts with every transport. Furthermore, the Empire does seem to be able to manage policing parts of the galaxy on it's own with some efficacy, because even crime lords living in the Outer Rim still hire dedicated smugglers to evade taxation/contraband/illicit dealings. If security were so tenuous across the void of space, Jabba wouldn't need Solo to begin with. The Republic certainly didn't hold as much sway as it's successor, but I don't see how security firms are inevitable.

Furthermore, the Trade Federation in background materials isn't portrayed as some naturalistic necessity, it's read as a large organization now trying to artificially tighten routes by monopolizing them and pushing out the smaller competitors. Smaller businesses and nations that were surviving despite the big scary brigands hiding behind this or that nebula. It's potential death teased at the end of Episode I is portrayed as a very good thing for the galaxy.

Oh I'd fully agree it's perfectly plausible. The original contention was whether or not it was corrupt outside of Palpatine. Something which I'd back, partially because basically everyone in the PT regurgitates that sentiment when they comment on it.

Yeah, that's irksome.

She can sign, but the Senate approval is required to determine whether or not it's officially binding.

The Naboo and the Federation will forge a treaty that will
legitimize our occupation here. I've been assured it will be ratified by
the Senate. -Nute Gunray

Of course it's corrupt, every legislative body is corrupt to some degree. What I question is whether is was truly so corrupt that it 'deserved to fall' so to speak. On the whole, I considered the Jedi, while having flaws (of course), also doing a phenomenal job in very difficult circumstances.

The Senate also has flaws (of course), but it also delivered a thousand years of peace ( that probably means only large scale intergalactic conflict, but that is still a phenomenal achievement, especially when you compare it with the New Republic's destruction after barely thirty years.) And governing an entire galaxy to any degree at all is going to be extremely difficult in general. They're not perfect, by a long way, but I don't see it the same way some of the fandom as a something worthless or something that deserved to be destroyed for its failures.

Which means I have some concerns about the new movies potentially actively rejecting everything that came before it. I'd much rather 'grey Jedi' as a body justified by 'the old ways don't work for me' or ' we need to try a different system with different strengths and weaknesses' rather than 'EVERYTHING EVERYONE ELSE HAS DONE FOR THE PAST THOUSAND YEARS IS WRONG, NYAH NYAH'
which is a direction I think they may be moving in the new Star Wars. I could be wrong. I hope so.

No large army/navy/coast guard/whatever protects every single merchant vessel in the real world because they don't need to.]

Well, real world circumstances don't really apply when your dealing with a galaxy, but if we go back to the days when piracy was more widespread because the world was less explored, shipping was dangerous game, because it was easier to attack and disappear. Freighters tend to be armed or have escorts in the Star Wars universe, because attacks on shipping are a real danger.

because even crime lords living in the Outer Rim still hire dedicated smugglers to evade taxation/contraband/illicit dealings. If security were so tenuous across the void of space, Jabba wouldn't need Solo to begin with.

Huh? You still need ships to transport things, you still hire people for that. And if you're trying to sell illegal things on Core worlds, you still need to get them past customs. Doesn't mean much in relation to pirate attacks in deep space.

Smaller businesses and nations that were surviving despite the big scary brigands hiding behind this or that nebula. It's potential death teased at the end of Episode I is portrayed as a very good thing for the galaxy. ]

Of course it is, having security be considered necessary doesn't mean it's good that corporation invade and enslave planets. But in a world where pirate attacks are a thing, there's going to be a market for private security to protect transports. The trade federation couldn't exist if nobody thought they needed battle droids.

Legato Endless

2017-05-03, 01:45 PM

I get the distinct impression that the blockade of Naboo was a direct response to Republic taxation of trade routes, but neither it nor the TF is well explained.

Definitely given how often this crops up.

Ten years ago there was a serious problem with pirates off of Somali waters, and private security companies did indeed form to meet the gap in capability left by the local navies. Even AEGIS cruisers have difficulties with dozens or hundreds of speedboats, many of which are not pirates at all.

The companies didn't build their own ships, of course. Instead they would rent out security detachments onto merchant traffic. Pirates prefer prey that doesn't fight back; the mere presence of such a detachment would deter raiders.

I don't think that was the entire solution but the issue has faded from the headlines.

2016 reportedly was a record low for maritime piracy after it peaked in 2011, but the conditions are still ripe for a repeat. But it's good to remember where the piracy ran particularly rampant, in a region littered with political instability and little power projection. The security firms are a bandaid for the real issues. It's also notable it started to decline the instant people with the time and money to meaningfully respond started getting ripped off.

I don't believe Palpatine could ever have got as far as he did if it weren't for the corruption of the Republic and the arrogance of the Jedi. There may have only been two Sith, but I find it hard to believe that there were no dark side users of note at all over the thousand years of peace preceding Palpatine. It's just that they probably didn't get very far. The Jedi Masters foresaw them and moved Jedi knights to the location of the outbreak. The Knights mobilized local assistance and put out the brushfire while it was still a spark.

I'm sure Palpatine and Plaguis had a force ritual to blind the Jedi Masters -- but I'm equally sure that isn't the first time someone had tried something like that. For it to have been effective at all, the Jedi had to be asleep at the switch at the first place.

Completely agreed. It's too easy a justification to lay all the blame on one person to whitewash everyone else.

Of course it's corrupt, every legislative body is corrupt to some degree. What I question is whether is was truly so corrupt that it 'deserved to fall' so to speak.

I'm not sure how to read this. Either that's a moral equivalency argument involving a weird form of whataboutism for a fictional entity. Or, you're arguing that it's not 'really' a big deal that the government was bribed into ignoring the forced subjugation of people. The first is a fallacy and a good indicator of Star Wars being taken way too seriously. The second is a moral dissonance I'd starkly disagree with. If that last one is the case, then, I'm not sure what short of genocide predicates any ruling body to lose some form of legitimacy. Anything involving that kind of peace doesn't look particularly meaningful to me.

The Senate also has flaws (of course), but it also delivered a thousand years of peace ( that probably means only large scale intergalactic conflict, but that is still a phenomenal achievement, especially when you compare it with the New Republic's destruction after barely thirty years.)

Implied backstories for fictional governments with dazzlingly unrealistically long tenures of stability are too numerous to enumerate. Especially in cases more extreme than this where it's unclear how on earth the government wouldn't immediately fall apart thanks to the writer's lack of knowledge of civics, logistics, etc. The New Republic fell because it had the misfortune to exist during the time of a sequel.

And governing an entire galaxy to any degree at all is going to be extremely difficult in general. They're not perfect, by a long way, but I don't see it the same way some of the fandom as a something worthless or something that deserved to be destroyed for its failures.

'Deserved to fail' is a moral-consequentialist judgement call I'm not particularly inclined to. But there's a big spectrum between a ruling body having the occasionally kickbacks and being so riddled with self interested avarice it ceases to effectively function. The Republic is more the latter than the former. Furthermore, any government that willingly finances a caste system of expendable people born, bred and conditioned to fight it's wars for them while they lavish in comfort is certainly deserving of condemnation and is pretty sick on some levels. That's still a form of slavery in all but name; a very different animal than forced conscription in emergency times.

Which means I have some concerns about the new movies potentially actively rejecting everything that came before it. I'd much rather 'grey Jedi' as a body justified by 'the old ways don't work for me' or ' we need to try a different system with different strengths and weaknesses' rather than 'EVERYTHING EVERYONE ELSE HAS DONE FOR THE PAST THOUSAND YEARS IS WRONG, NYAH NYAH'
which is a direction I think they may be moving in the new Star Wars. I could be wrong. I hope so.

Yeah the artistic vision is pretty nebulous currently. I think we'll have a much better view of things once Last Jedi finally hits.

Well, real world circumstances don't really apply when your dealing with a galaxy, but if we go back to the days when piracy was more widespread because the world was less explored, shipping was dangerous game, because it was easier to attack and disappear. Freighters tend to be armed or have escorts in the Star Wars universe, because attacks on shipping are a real danger.

Broadly speaking, Piracy has very little to do with exploration itself and is more fundamentally economic. It's really an occupation that demands the map be filled in because there's little incentive for it as opposed to general raiding without set trade routes in place. While local geography offers points of advantage for ambush and escape, piracy occurs because nations encouraged it against their rivals, or they lacked the inclination and economic/military stability to stop it. Said instability leading to a ready reserve of people willing to partake in it.

Good naval power projection, economic certainty and intolerance of locals and courts ended the Golden Age of Piracy. For a land based comparison, the English Highwayman didn't vanish into the mists of history because no one knew what was beyond that hill, he fell because the police got organized and toll roads became a reality. (Also because robbing trains became more lucrative, but that too ended eventually) Unemployment and lack of legal prosecution are factors as relevant today as they were in the past. Protecting your freighters is a decent method of guarding supply, but systemically lowering demand is a historically proven better option.

pendell

2017-05-03, 03:58 PM

2016 reportedly was a record low for maritime piracy after it peaked in 2011, but the conditions are still ripe for a repeat. But it's good to remember where the piracy ran particularly rampant, in a region littered with political instability and little power projection. The security firms are a bandaid for the real issues. It's also notable it started to decline the instant people with the time and money to meaningfully respond started getting ripped off.

Agreed, but in the Star Wars universe there is no Republic Navy to keep the peace and disperse pirates, so it falls to the local powers to build their own navies instead. Which is what the Trade Federation did, and presumably one of the major reason it exists in the first place.

In Star Wars: Starfighter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Starfighter) one of the viewpoint characters is a pirate who hijacks Trade Federation vessels for a living; you fly one of these missions in the pre-Naboo era, hitting a Trade Federation convoy and dragging as much of their cargo back to base as booty.

It doesn't end well for him at all, which is why he finds himself in the resistance at the time of Naboo.

In the real world, private security companies are a band-aid to take the place of real navies and law courts, just as you say. But the Republic in the Star Wars time frame doesn't actually offer either of those things. So in the absence of a real cure the "band-aids" become permanent entities with real political and military power.

I suspect this is an oversight by the writers of Star Wars; in the real world, the US was able to do without a large permanent standing army right up until 1917, but it needed a permanent navy within thirty years of our independence; bad things happened to American-flagged vessels when the Royal Navy stopped protecting them. The Republic may not have an army but it should have a force capable of maintaining peace in interstellar space, to prevent just such issues from arising.

Of course, if that had been written in Lucas could not have told the story of the Trade Federation's blockade , since a Republic Navy would have broken or prevented it. Not that it made much more sense as it finally saw the screen.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Keltest

2017-05-03, 08:01 PM

Agreed, but in the Star Wars universe there is no Republic Navy to keep the peace and disperse pirates, so it falls to the local powers to build their own navies instead. Which is what the Trade Federation did, and presumably one of the major reason it exists in the first place.

In Star Wars: Starfighter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Starfighter) one of the viewpoint characters is a pirate who hijacks Trade Federation vessels for a living; you fly one of these missions in the pre-Naboo era, hitting a Trade Federation convoy and dragging as much of their cargo back to base as booty.

It doesn't end well for him at all, which is why he finds himself in the resistance at the time of Naboo.

In the real world, private security companies are a band-aid to take the place of real navies and law courts, just as you say. But the Republic in the Star Wars time frame doesn't actually offer either of those things. So in the absence of a real cure the "band-aids" become permanent entities with real political and military power.

I suspect this is an oversight by the writers of Star Wars; in the real world, the US was able to do without a large permanent standing army right up until 1917, but it needed a permanent navy within thirty years of our independence; bad things happened to American-flagged vessels when the Royal Navy stopped protecting them. The Republic may not have an army but it should have a force capable of maintaining peace in interstellar space, to prevent just such issues from arising.

Of course, if that had been written in Lucas could not have told the story of the Trade Federation's blockade , since a Republic Navy would have broken or prevented it. Not that it made much more sense as it finally saw the screen.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

While I could be mistaken, I believe the Republic did have a navy. The Grand Army of the Republic was a curveball, but the Kaminoans weren't in a position to make any of the ships the republic used during the Clone Wars, and they couldn't have produced an entire fleet fast enough to fight the separatists unless one had already been started a long time ago.

I believe the bigger problem is that the Senate was just so corrupt and ineffectual that they couldn't agree that the Trade Federation's blockade needed to be broken in the first place.

pendell

2017-05-03, 08:55 PM

While I could be mistaken, I believe the Republic did have a navy. The Grand Army of the Republic was a curveball, but the Kaminoans weren't in a position to make any of the ships the republic used during the Clone Wars, and they couldn't have produced an entire fleet fast enough to fight the separatists unless one had already been started a long time ago.

While I could also be mistaken, I believe that the Republic had no navy prior to Palpatine's accession as chancellor. While Kamino was not able to produce Assault ships, for example, I believe that they were not the only defense firm approached by "Jedi" or other shadowy contacts and given large, lucrative, veery secret Republic defense contracts. That's probably where the clone troopers got their armor, gunships, and blasters as well. The Kaminoans produced clones; they were not a military / industrial power in their own right.

In fact, I believe at least two of these forms were Kuat Drive Yards and Siener Fleet Systems, makers of fine ships who would leap at the chance to churn our very large orders on a galactic scale.

I believe the bigger problem is that the Senate was just so corrupt and ineffectual that they couldn't agree that the Trade Federation's blockade needed to be broken in the first place.

On this I will agree; While the Senate could not dispatch a Navy directly, they could marshal a combination of several navies (Mon Cal, Corellians, who knows whoever else) under the leadership of a Jedi general to break the TF blockade. That's in addition to slapping on a crippling trade embargo. While the TF could survive in the Outer Rim, if the markets of the Core are closed to them it will really rip up their bottom line even without military action. A "Trade Federation" without trade is rather pointless!

... Actually, when you think about it, the Rebel Alliance was a Republic-style military force. While there were no all-Alliance military and naval forces, they formed a conglomerate of allied factions which proved quite effective at, say, the battle of Endor.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 01:20 AM

The republic HAD a Navy, it just wasn't terribly big and it's ships weren't that impressive. Dreadnoughts, IPV-1's and Carrack cruisers with no fighter escort were essentially the upper scale of what was there and the official explanation is that we don't see them much in clone wars related stuff because they were staffed by non clones and put on rear duty. In real life this is because Dreadnoughts and Carracks predate the prequels but weren't actually in them but that's neither here nor there. It's not that the republic LACKED a navy, it's that it was overly small, painfully outdated even with refits, and the vessels themselves were incredibly puny and incapable of doing much in a real war.

This is also why officially a number of other ships used by seperatists and rebels like the Dreadnoughts and Assault Frigates share an identical skeleton to the ships used in the republic navy but rarely resemble it. Getting it up to par enough to even think about deploying as a capital ship requires so much work it may as well be a whole new model.

pendell

2017-05-04, 07:09 AM

The republic HAD a Navy, it just wasn't terribly big and it's ships weren't that impressive.

Source? That may be EU-canon (and be a part of the TIE Fighter game franchise) but I don't believe it was film-canon.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

hamishspence

2017-05-04, 09:53 AM

Source? That may be EU-canon (and be a part of the TIE Fighter game franchise) but I don't believe it was film-canon.

In TCW, Yularen:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wullf_Yularen

Wullf Yularen was a human male born on the planet Coruscant.[1] Prior to the start of the Clone Wars, Yularen served as an officer in the Republic Navy. He participated in the Battle of Malastare Narrows, a conflict in which a fleet organized by the Corporate Alliance blockaded the planet Malastare. Despite his best efforts, the enemy fleet, lead by the brilliant Harch tactician Admiral Trench, proved impossible to break, and Yularen lost many of his own forces. Eventually, a dispatched Jedi task force turned the tide of the battle, defeating the Corporate fleet, vaporizing Trench's flagship, and seemingly killing him in the process. Despite the victory, Yularen left the battle with a lasting fear of the Admiral's tactical capabilities.[9]

is someone who served in the Republic Navy "prior to the start of the Clone Wars".

It was probably a very limited Navy at that time. We see a red painted "Consular class cruiser" in TPM used by the Jedi for diplomatic missions, and grey-and-red armed ones in TCW. Presumably before TCW, those grey-and-red ones were part of the "ordinary" Republic Navy peacekeeping forces.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 11:14 AM

In TCW, Yularen:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wullf_Yularen

is someone who served in the Republic Navy "prior to the start of the Clone Wars".

It was probably a very limited Navy at that time. We see a red painted "Consular class cruiser" in TPM used by the Jedi for diplomatic missions, and grey-and-red armed ones in TCW. Presumably before TCW, those grey-and-red ones were part of the "ordinary" Republic Navy peacekeeping forces.

Huh. There appears to be a discrepency here.

The Republic Navy was the naval branch of the Grand Army of the Republic, a military force created to fight for the Galactic Republic against the Confederacy of Independent Systems in the Clone Wars. (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Republic_Navy)

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 01:55 PM

Huh. There appears to be a discrepency here.

The Republic Navy was the naval branch of the Grand Army of the Republic, a military force created to fight for the Galactic Republic against the Confederacy of Independent Systems in the Clone Wars. (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Republic_Navy)

Which is irrelevant. The other article goes into detail and that detail is supported by other articles.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 02:11 PM

Which is irrelevant. The other article goes into detail and that detail is supported by other articles.

It's quite relevant, because the Republic Navy is listed as being established 22BBY, the same date as the start of the Clone War, despite also being established as predating the Clone War. That's pretty clearly a discrepancy.

I don't see how you can say "if X contradicts Y, then X is irrelevant," when the entire point is that X contradicts Y.

Keltest

2017-05-04, 02:21 PM

It's quite relevant, because the Republic Navy is listed as being established 22BBY, the same date as the start of the Clone War, despite also being established as predating the Clone War. That's pretty clearly a discrepancy.

As near as I can tell, there isn't actually a source attached to the claim that the Navy was established for the Clone Wars. Somebody probably just made (gasp) an assumption that was later contradicted.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 02:27 PM

As near as I can tell, there isn't actually a source attached to the claim that the Navy was established for the Clone Wars. Somebody probably just made (gasp) an assumption that was later contradicted.

Most likely. With the contradiction still standing.

Keltest

2017-05-04, 02:31 PM

Most likely. With the contradiction still standing.

Theres a difference between "theres a contradiction" and "the article was wrong and nobody noticed."

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 02:41 PM

Most likely. With the contradiction still standing.

Not it doesn't. The wiki doesn't decide what's canon, it transcribes it from other sources. If a wiki makes an unsourced or bad claim it doesn't make that claim canon.

Aeson

2017-05-04, 02:51 PM

TCW doesn't constitute "film canon," unless you're talking about the animated movie rather than either of the animated TV series, and even then I'd tend to regard "film canon" as consisting only of the things seen in or directly supportable from the live-action films.

As far as film canon goes, then, I'd be inclined to say that the existence or nonexistence of a Republic Navy is ambiguous.

Things which could be used as circumstantial evidence for the existence of a Republic Navy:
- The Trade Federation bothering with the pretense that its blockade and invasion of Naboo were legal. Clearly they're afraid of provoking some kind of retaliation from either the Republic or its citizens, and the choice of fig leaf seems better suited to stalling governmental response than keeping the public image shiny, at least to me. However, even if force were the only form of retaliation that the Trade Federation might fear from the Republic, the Republic having access to enough naval to challenge the Trade Federation militarily does not guarantee the existence of a Republic Navy, especially in light of the known existence of the Naboo Royal Security Force.
- The Delta-7 Aethersprite light interceptor used by Kenobi to visit Kamino and Geonosis in Attack of the Clones had markings and coloration which were similar to those of the Consular-class cruiser seen in The Phantom Menace (which appears to have been an official Republic diplomatic transport) and to some of the Republic military vehicles at the end of Attack of the Clones and in Revenge of the Sith, which suggests that the starfighter is a Republic-owned vessel which the Jedi Order was permitted to use. However, exact ownership of the starfighter is not stated within the movies and similarity of markings does not conclusively prove ownership, and moreover while the Jedi mission to Naboo was given passage on what appears to have been an official Republic diplomatic transport, that mission was at least quasi-officially sanctioned by the Republic government and the Jedi were acting as the Supreme Chancellor's personal envoys, whereas it isn't clear that anyone outside of the Jedi Order was aware of Kenobi's trips to Kamino and Geonosis until he was already well on his way or already there and so it isn't clear that Kenobi could legally have used an official Republic vessel (granted, Jedi association with the Republic government seems to have been sufficiently strong that Jedi business is, for all intents and purposes, official Republic business).
- The existence of large capital ships even prior to and at the beginning of the Clone Wars. Large capital ships are typically relatively expensive, which makes it difficult or even impossible for smaller states to build, operate, and maintain them in any significant number and tends to restrict said smaller states' ability to afford adequate numbers of the lighter warships which tend to be better suited to customs duties and the suppression of piracy and smuggling. On the other hand, the only large capital ships seen in the movies prior to the Clone Wars are the Trade Federation's "battleships," which are apparently conversions of large freighters into armed starfighter and troop carriers, and then there's the Republic's Acclamator-class assault ships at the start of the Clone Wars which might be less capital ships than military transports.
- It'd be difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to form a space navy sufficiently large for a galaxy-spanning conflict with the as nearly completely standardized equipment seen in the Republic fleets in Revenge of the Sith from nothing, especially since it seems unlikely that most member states' navies (assuming they had such) would have included large capital ships, and it'd be even more unlikely that they'd all use the same type of large capital ship. Production times for large capital ships would exacerbate this, particularly if they're anything like what they are in the real world.

Circumstantial evidence for the nonexistence of a Republic Navy prior to the Clone Wars:
- It's never mentioned or shown until the Clone Wars start.
- The nonexistence of the Republic Navy prior to the Clone Wars and its creation from the nationalized naval assets of the various member states would help explain the much heavier starfighter presence in Revenge of the Sith's fleet battles compared to what you'd expect given the apparent Imperial naval doctrine in the Original Trilogy and the sparse in-movie evidence for the effectiveness of starfighter-level weaponry against heavy warships. Large, heavy warships are in general more expensive to produce, maintain, and operate than their smaller, lighter counterparts, which means that subnational navies would be less likely to have them, particularly in any great number, than a national-level navy, and would instead focus on the lighter warships and the starfighters which they can produce, operate, and maintain in sufficient numbers for customs duties and the suppression of piracy and smuggling, especially in the absence of a significant external threat which would require them to build larger, more powerful warships to deal with said external threat's heavy warships. However, as the Republic as a whole seems not to have faced a significant external threat and as a result the Republic Navy, if it existed, would likely also have focused on customs duties and the suppression of piracy and smuggling, and as assigning heavy warships to such duties is likely an inefficient use of resources, a hypothetical Republic Navy prior to the start of the Clone Wars might not look so different anyways.

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 02:56 PM

It doesn't matter what you consider film canon. Disney put them on equal levels. Before that Lucas put it literally one rung below the films and firmly above everything else. If TCW says there was a republic navy, then there was a navy.

pendell

2017-05-04, 03:22 PM

It doesn't matter what you consider film canon. Disney put them on equal levels. Before that Lucas put it literally one rung below the films and firmly above everything else.

Source?

ETA: My recollection is that what Lucas actually said is that the EU was a parallel universe to the film 'verse. In the film verse, for example, there was never a Grand Admiral Thrawn while he existed in the EU.

So far as I know, Disney has first blown away the entire EU as any kind of canon, established One Canon To Rule Them All, and has been adding in the best bits of the EU since then, re-canonizing such things as Grand Admiral Thrawn while leaving the more nonsensical stuff in limbo where it belongs.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 03:36 PM

Theres a difference between "theres a contradiction" and "the article was wrong and nobody noticed."

It doesn't matter what you consider film canon. Disney put them on equal levels. Before that Lucas put it literally one rung below the films and firmly above everything else. If TCW says there was a republic navy, then there was a navy.

Looking back over everything, I'll restate: find me a canon source referring explicitly to a Republic Navy before the Clone War. I see one reference only to a pre-CW battle, and no mention of the factions/armed services involved. Get a clip or book that confirms "Republic Navy," and I'll admit y'all are right.

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 03:38 PM

Looking back over everything, I'll restate: find me a canon source referring explicitly to a Republic Navy before the Clone War. I see one reference only to a pre-CW battle, and no mention of the factions/armed services involved. Get a clip or book that confirms "Republic Navy," and I'll admit y'all are right.

The source is right on Yularen's article. I'm not going to play games with you if you can't even read what was already linked.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 03:41 PM

The source is right on Yularen's article. I'm not going to play games with you if you can't even read what was already linked.

The words are on Yularen's article, with no source. You claim there's a source, feel free to link it.

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 03:43 PM

The words are on Yularen's article, with no source. You claim there's a source, feel free to link it.

It's literally right there numbered and itemized. If your reading comprehension is that bad there's no point in showing you anything else.

Peelee

2017-05-04, 03:51 PM

It's literally right there numbered and itemized. If your reading comprehension is that bad there's no point in showing you anything else.

Ok, I'm going to assume you're operating under ignorance rather than incompetence or malice.

The only citation I see is to the Battle of Malastare Narrows. I have questioned that specific citation as not referring to a Republic Navy.

Now, one of two things is happening. Either I'm missing another citation, which I have asked to be provided, or you are referring to the same citation, which is circular reasoning.

Either way, you're not helping your argument by saying "it exists" over and over.

danzibr

2017-05-04, 04:37 PM

Grim Portent

2017-05-04, 04:49 PM

Ok, I'm going to assume you're operating under ignorance rather than incompetence or malice.

The only citation I see is to the Battle of Malastare Narrows. I have questioned that specific citation as not referring to a Republic Navy.

Now, one of two things is happening. Either I'm missing another citation, which I have asked to be provided, or you are referring to the same citation, which is circular reasoning.

Either way, you're not helping your argument by saying "it exists" over and over.

Lucasfilm had it in the script for Cat & Mouse as having been a battle between a Republic task force led by a Jedi and Yularen against Trench's forces.

It was originally going to be mentioned in the episode of the TV show, but was cut for some reason. Probably because the statement mostly existed to name the Jedi in question, rather than add any actually useful information.

The relevant link is the StarWars.com trivia gallery cited on the page for the Battle of Malastere Narrows (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Malastare_Narrows).

Keltest

2017-05-04, 04:52 PM

Ok, I'm going to assume you're operating under ignorance rather than incompetence or malice.

The only citation I see is to the Battle of Malastare Narrows. I have questioned that specific citation as not referring to a Republic Navy.

Now, one of two things is happening. Either I'm missing another citation, which I have asked to be provided, or you are referring to the same citation, which is circular reasoning.

Either way, you're not helping your argument by saying "it exists" over and over.

In an episode of TCW, the good admiral explicitly mentions fighting a battle as part of the republic navy against the separatist admiral they are currently fighting, who was at the time part of a planetary militia. The episode in question is "cat and mouse". The citation in question is listed item 9, which happens to be the episode in question.

Grim Portent

2017-05-04, 05:00 PM

In an episode of TCW, the good admiral explicitly mentions fighting a battle as part of the republic navy against the separatist admiral they are currently fighting, who was at the time part of a planetary militia. The episode in question is "cat and mouse". The citation in question is listed item 9, which happens to be the episode in question.

I don't think Yularen ever explicitly refers to the fleet he was part of as a Republic one.

Given the context of course it's fairly obvious the fleet was a Republic one though. He doesn't mention any other factions, and the Jedi got involved with a Republic task force, which presumably had to be a naval one, so by extension there must have been a Republic Navy which Yularen was presumably a part of.

pendell

2017-05-04, 05:17 PM

I don't think Yularen ever explicitly refers to the fleet he was part of as a Republic one.

Given the context of course it's fairly obvious the fleet was a Republic one though. He doesn't mention any other factions, and the Jedi got involved with a Republic task force, which presumably had to be a naval one, so by extension there must have been a Republic Navy which Yularen was presumably a part of.

Doesn't necessarily mean the fleets were built and maintained by the Republic, though.

Consider the American civil war: In that war, regiments were outfitted and trained by the states, then called into federal service. It then became the federal army. The actual "US army" was quite small, only numbering a few thousand regular soldiers.

It could be the same thing here. "Republic fleet" might actually mean "A fleet made up of several factions called into Republic service", not "a fleet bought, maintained, trained, and operated by the Republic". That, I suspect, is a Palpatine innovation. One that the Rebel alliance utterly rejected.

As I said, consider the 'rebel fleet' at Endor. It was actually a fleet of Mon cal ships, Sullustan ships, Corellian ships provided by their respective nations, which were then placed under Rebel command.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Jayngfet

2017-05-04, 05:20 PM

Regarding the Luke giving up thing, we still don't know exactly what happened. I know next to nothing about the EU (or whatever it's called now), but if say his wife and children and relatives and friends and others were murdered, I could see him running away from that, becoming bitter, losing faith, whatever.

That's the problem. We've seen Luke's girlfriends and then wife and his students murdered and him have his faith questioned so many times a lot of us just plain have zero interest in reliving the same arc for what is literally the fourth or fifth time. He did it in old Marvel Comics, which was almost it's own thing. He did it in Dark Empire again. Hell the Jedi Academy books were billed as "he doesn't totally give up and shut down this time". The justification popped up in maybe a half a dozen other sources literally whenever some hot young new character showed up and wanted to be a jedi and he said no. It's old news. Hell, even after he died Legacy dragged him back as a ghost for another jedi purge and crappy knockoff sith empire.

Luke Skywalker literally spends about half his stories being standoffish and running around to random ruins as his students die and he refuses to take some new hotshot from the outer rim. I have literally zero faith in the idea that the exact same setup will turn out any different.

Grim Portent

2017-05-04, 05:36 PM

Doesn't necessarily mean the fleets were built and maintained by the Republic, though.

Consider the American civil war: In that war, regiments were outfitted and trained by the states, then called into federal service. It then became the federal army. The actual "US army" was quite small, only numbering a few thousand regular soldiers.

It could be the same thing here. "Republic fleet" might actually mean "A fleet made up of several factions called into Republic service", not "a fleet bought, maintained, trained, and operated by the Republic". That, I suspect, is a Palpatine innovation. One that the Rebel alliance utterly rejected.

As I said, consider the 'rebel fleet' at Endor. It was actually a fleet of Mon cal ships, Sullustan ships, Corellian ships provided by their respective nations, which were then placed under Rebel command.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Turns out it would have been a Judicial Forces fleet.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Judicial_Department

Essentially the Republic's police force, which possessed a navy and whose members became the non-Jedi non-clone military leaders of the Grand Army of the Republic. They would have been involved in breaking a blockade as part of their peace keeping duties, and it seems likely that Yularen served with them prior to being transferred to the newly formed military navy during the Clone Wars.