Star Wars: Visions - First Trailer

[GloatingSwine]

X-Wing is an interesting book example, since the main character was planned to be a Jedi from the outset. Also, characters loke Wedge, Thrawn, etc are part of the group of elite players who far outshine the small folk and ordinary people. The "ordinary people" we get are people like Han Solo, who can fly through an asteroid field unharmed and light speed jump through shields somehow. He may not be part of the Force aristocracy but he is still very much not one of the small people.

That's widening the definition into uselessness, to the point that any and all protagonists and antagonists, who by default do extraordinary things or there would be no story, would be included. Characters like Wedge, Thrawn, and Han are able to have the influence they do because of skills they have developed not because they were born special, which is the critique Brin was making.

The only people who get to be important were born that way. That wasn't as true as he made out at the time, now it is and the fans demanded it be so. (Remember how the internet kept speculating about which preexisting character Rey would turn out to be descended from? Even though none of the answers would or ever could have done anything compelling for the character or narrative?)

[Peelee]

Thrawn, Wedge, and Han are the best of the best. They are the absolute elite at what they do. Sure part of it is training and working for it, but no matter how much I practice basketball I'm never going to be as good as Michael Jordan. Jedi also have to be trained to use the Force. It's just a much more clear-cut case of being born better, and with significantly better benefits of being born better.

You know who isnt? Who's just a regular person who manages to make a difference? Jyn Erso and the entire main cast of Rogue One. That's the first time we really got to explore actual "small people", the ones who are actually able to make effective change without being turned into Jedi or ultimately being the best sniper in the galaxy or the best prison breakers in the galaxy or the best infiltrators in the galaxy.

The Force-aristocracy is absolutely a thing in Star Wars, but that doesn't preclude non-Force sensitives from being amazing to the point that it's stupid (eg Poe's shooting down something like ten TIE fighters in eight seconds in TFA) from not being "small people" in that review. Hell, whenever anyone shows competence, fan theories abound about if that character is Force sensitive. Brin has his finger on the pulse of the Star Wars universe early on, is all.

[Azuresun]

This certainly grabs me more than the "anime style" per se.

But given the Japanese influence on the original movie, I'm interested in where they take these, visually and storywise.

Spoiler

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Although I'm not sure if I need the rabbit people. I just do not get the catgirl/animal-people thing.

Rabbit people are a long and proud tradition in Star Wars!

[Aeson]

(Remember how the internet kept speculating about which preexisting character Rey would turn out to be descended from? Even though none of the answers would or ever could have done anything compelling for the character or narrative?)

Considering that the movie made something of a big mystery out of Rey's background and dug Anakin's old lightsaber out of Bespin's core to have it call out to her and trigger a vision that could at least be read as implying she was a young trainee at Luke's Jedi academy when it was destroyed, and on top of that that an actress with a passing resemblance to a young Carrie Fisher was cast in the role, I really don't think that it's fair to blame the fans for that line of speculation. This is something that Disney wanted, most likely as a cheap way to ensure people would be interested in going to see the rest of the Sequel Trilogy; it's also a large part of why The Last Jedi is criticized for Rey Nobodiesdottir, because there's no payoff in that answer to the Big Mystery that The Farce Awakens made Rey's parentage out to be.

[Fyraltari]

Considering that the movie made something of a big mystery out of Rey's background

No, it didn't. It made a big point of her needing to stop clinging to parents that would never come back. It didn't create any mystery about it. Maz Kanata even says it out loud.

[Peelee]

No, it didn't. It made a big point of her needing to stop clinging to parents that would never come back. It didn't create any mystery about it. Maz Kanata even says it out loud.

I would argue that Abrams deliberately did create mystery about who they were. Maz didn't say it didn't matter who they were she said Rey needed to let go of them. And, considering what Abrams did with Rey's heritage in Episode 9, I would imagine that view to be vindicated.

[Aeson]

No, it didn't. It made a big point of her needing to stop clinging to parents that would never come back. It didn't create any mystery about it. Maz Kanata even says it out loud.

To one line that Kanata says when trying to push Rey to answer the call rather than going home and burying her head in the sand, I give you:
- One of the first questions BB-8 appears to have asked Rey upon meeting her.
- Kylo Ren's response to being informed that a girl was also there when his forces failed to capture a deserter, an escapee, and a droid.
- Maz Kanata, asking Han Solo "who's the girl?" - right before the movie hides Han's response by changing scenes to, if I recall correctly, Rey's vision sequence.
- Rey's vision sequence, which if taken literally implies that she was at Luke's academy as a child when it was destroyed and that Kylo Ren or someone who dressed like him declined to kill her then and probably dumped her on Jakku, and just happens to have been triggered by, of all things, a lightsaber that by rights should be lost in the depths of Bespin which famously has a direct connection to a certain father-and-son pair.
- Kylo Ren, settling for capturing Rey and later justifying it on the dubious grounds that she'd seen the map and therefore capturing her was equivalent to obtaining the map.

The movie was saying that there is something special about Rey, and it was dropping hints that the special thing about Rey was in some way related to her past.

[Peelee]

- Rey's vision sequence, which if taken literally implies that she was at Luke's academy as a child when it was destroyed and that Kylo Ren or someone who dressed like him declined to kill her then and probably dumped her on Jakku, and just happens to have been triggered by, of all things, a lightsaber that by rights should be lost in the depths of Bespin which famously has a direct connection to a certain father-and-son pair.

Also, which never happened with Luke, Kenobi, or Vader, despite all of them having an actual connection to the lightsaber.

[Clertar]

I hope that, in the next Star Wars Visions, when they rescue the armourer he will add to his colour-coded lightsaber design a feature that displays the biological parents of the wielder.

[Fyraltari]

I would argue that Abrams deliberately did create mystery about who they were. Maz didn't say it didn't matter who they were she said Rey needed to let go of them. And, considering what Abrams did with Rey's heritage in Episode 9, I would imagine that view to be vindicated.

I just don't think Abrams planned that far ahead. Or at all, really.

To one line that Kanata says when trying to push Rey to answer the call rather than going home and burying her head in the sand, I give you:
- One of the first questions BB-8 appears to have asked Rey upon meeting her.

You mean when she says "Classified? Me too. Big secret." ? Because, that's a joke.

- Kylo Ren's response to being informed that a girl was also there when his forces failed to capture a deserter, an escapee, and a droid.

What of it?

- Maz Kanata, asking Han Solo "who's the girl?" - right before the movie hides Han's response by changing scenes to, if I recall correctly, Rey's vision sequence.

I don't recall.

- Rey's vision sequence, which if taken literally implies that she was at Luke's academy as a child when it was destroyed and that Kylo Ren or someone who dressed like him declined to kill her then and probably dumped her on Jakku, and just happens to have been triggered by, of all things, a lightsaber that by rights should be lost in the depths of Bespin which famously has a direct connection to a certain father-and-son pair.

I know Force Visions are always kind of ****ty, but the notion that someone would have a vision of a thing that already happened to them has to be a new low. Or was she, in this theory, supposed to have forgotten being in the middle of a massacre?
(Edit: also if that massacre was supposed to have taken place before her abandonment of Jakku, that'd put it a decade after RotJ at most, meaning Kylo Ren couldn't be responsible and I think TFA already established he was.)

- Kylo Ren, settling for capturing Rey and later justifying it on the dubious grounds that she'd seen the map and therefore capturing her was equivalent to obtaining the map.

That makes way more sense than him abandonning his mission because of her since at this point, even if she were somehow important to the First Order, they can't have learned it yet.

The movie was saying that there is something special about Rey, and it was dropping hints that the special thing about Rey was in some way related to her past.

That really sounds more like people wanting it for there to be something special about her and interpreting the movie so. Like, ultimately they decided to indeed have her be related to somebody and it doesn't line up with anything you mentionned at all.

I hope that, in the next Star Wars Visions, when they rescue the armourer he will add to his colour-coded lightsaber design a feature that displays the biological parents of the wielder.

"From now on, your lightsaber color is the color-midpoint of your biological parents'."

[GloatingSwine]

I would argue that Abrams deliberately did create mystery about who they were..

Oh yes. But of course it's Abrams so the only point to the mystery was getting people to speculate about it on the internet. A satisfying answer was not his problem, he wasn't going to direct the other two.

Abrams is a bad storyteller.

[Peelee]

I just don't think Abrams planned that far ahead. Or at all, really.

Oh, I agree completely. Which, of course, does not preclude that he set it up as a mystery nonetheless. That's his whole thing, after all.

Oh yes. But of course it's Abrams so the only point to the mystery was getting people to speculate about it on the internet. A satisfying answer was not his problem, he wasn't going to direct the other two.

Abrams is a bad storyteller.

It's rare that I wholeheartedly agree with every single word someone says. This is one of those times.