Star Wars Misc. Catch-All

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVup9dRXsAETDyB?format=jpg&name=small)

Stengah wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

More problematic for me is the inconsistency in Vader's 'force-sniffing' powers.

Spoiler:

He can sense Obi-Wan's presence (both in this series and in Episode IV). He can detect Reva's attempted deception. But he can't 'smell' his own daughter?

I'm not convinced.

Spoiler:

He doesn't know his daughter even exists so how would he recognize her "scent" as being that of his daughter? She might not have a detectable scent at all as she has never even accessed the force so far as we know.

Fundamentally, the problem is that George Lucas (made up 'Star Wars' as he went along. For example, as I understand it, Vader only become Luke's father when the script for Empire was revised around the time of filming. Before this, Luke was just a promising candidate for Sith Academy.

Disney is taking a similarly 'free jazz' approach to the property. As a result, it is incredibly difficult to construct a consistent and logical narrative thread over 50 years. Which creates interesting problems.

In 'A New Hope', we are shown Vader in conversation with Leia on several occasions, but - of course - we never see a flicker of anything approaching recognition or realisation. New-Hope-Vader never says: "Don't act to surprised Your Highness. You weren't on any mercy mission... Oh, my goodness. You're the spitting image of 20-years-dead wife, Padme. But I digress... Several transmissions were beamed aboard this ship by Rebel spies..."

But he can't say this, of course. Because New-Hope-Vader isn't Empire-Strikes-Back-Vader.

Force users, it seems, can do many extraordinary things. They can sense the presence of old former friends. They can prevent powerful spaceships from taking off. They can even transcend the death of their physical form. But they can't recognise their own kin when they're standing 3 feet away from them.

Or won't let himself recognize her because he doesn't want to face those memories. Luke he can deal with because the boy's a young version of himself. If Luke turns too then that justifies Anakin's decision to go dark. Leah has nothing to offer him except the memory of failure and loss. If she's just some random out-of-line young senator then she can't hurt him.

Spoilers for the Obi-Wan finale to follow.

Spoiler:

Hopefully the folks upset about Vader's "when I left you I was the learner" line being retconned (before the season even finished) are satisfied now. I'm sure that'll only open more complaints though.

And good lord, making the first meeting between Obi-Wan and Luke being a meme reference? Just... I dunno. Either way, I woke the whole house up laughing over it. Like, I was waiting for a "Hello there" reference at some point, but that's probably the second-worst place for it.

What's the over-under on Reva appearing in Jedi: Survivor? I liked her character, hope to see her in something. Disappointed that the Grand Inquisitor was just like "yeah, revenge, that cures a sabre to the belly". And disappointed that the other Inquisitor was only there to scowl at Reva.

Anyway, I liked this series. Didn't love it, wouldn't recommend it as essential when my children are ready to be introduced to Star Wars movies, but still, not bad. I enjoyed it more than The Mandalorian. But please, please, no more zooming in on established characters, thanks Disney. Do the old videogame thing where we'd have the same universe, but different stories.

detroit20 wrote:
Stengah wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

More problematic for me is the inconsistency in Vader's 'force-sniffing' powers.

Spoiler:

He can sense Obi-Wan's presence (both in this series and in Episode IV). He can detect Reva's attempted deception. But he can't 'smell' his own daughter?

I'm not convinced.

Spoiler:

He doesn't know his daughter even exists so how would he recognize her "scent" as being that of his daughter? She might not have a detectable scent at all as she has never even accessed the force so far as we know.

Fundamentally, the problem is that George Lucas (made up 'Star Wars' as he went along. For example, as I understand it, Vader only become Luke's father when the script for Empire was revised around the time of filming. Before this, Luke was just a promising candidate for Sith Academy.

Disney is taking a similarly 'free jazz' approach to the property. As a result, it is incredibly difficult to construct a consistent and logical narrative thread over 50 years. Which creates interesting problems.

In 'A New Hope', we are shown Vader in conversation with Leia on several occasions, but - of course - we never see a flicker of anything approaching recognition or realisation. New-Hope-Vader never says: "Don't act to surprised Your Highness. You weren't on any mercy mission... Oh, my goodness. You're the spitting image of 20-years-dead wife, Padme. But I digress... Several transmissions were beamed aboard this ship by Rebel spies..."

But he can't say this, of course. Because New-Hope-Vader isn't Empire-Strikes-Back-Vader.

Force users, it seems, can do many extraordinary things. They can sense the presence of old former friends. They can prevent powerful spaceships from taking off. They can even transcend the death of their physical form. But they can't recognise their own kin when they're standing 3 feet away from them.

He knows Luke is his kid because of the last name, not because he sensed it through the force. There shouldn't be a flicker of recognition when he's talking to Liea because he already knows who she is, daughter of his former friend and a troublesome young senator. He doesn't have any reason to suspect she's actually his daughter that he never knew existed, and as Vargen notes, any clues about that would be mixed in with his memories of him causing his wife's death.

This show is mechanically good, but poorly engineered in a lot of ways.

This episode showed some really good stuff between Vader/Anakin and Kenobi. The fight mirrors the one in Rebels between Vader vs Ashoka, but with the Vader opponents on opposite sides of the power dynamic to their former relationships (reversed between who was the Padawan).

The dynamic between Vader/Anakin and Kenobi in the whole series was handled well.

However, landing all the other characters and plots was done with mediocracy. And it had trouble staying within the logical lines of where it fit in the timeline.

I've got to think about why none of that stuff worked well for me. I think in some cases like Reva, the character actions over time just flat out didn't seem like something logical. In others with the Skywalker kids, they just made it feel like this was a slightly different universe than the films exist in. Either that, or kids suddenly forget major life events that happened to them at 10 when they turn 16 or so.

Overall, I enjoyed the show but it wasn't the "event" I was sold. Good acting almost universally, but plotting just felt like it needed a character by character review based on realistic motivations.

It was OK, which feels like a rather damning assessment of Star Wars.

I loved the first and last episode, the middle ones were OK to meh-ish.

Leia in the first and last episodes, again great, but during the middle she was just kind of there.

I like how the Reva arc ended but getting there was plodding.

But man, the Obi-Wan dealing with his PTSD/demons and the resolutions that we get in the finale, completely worked for me and had me tearing up at multiple points.

Rat Boy wrote:

It was OK, which feels like a rather damning assessment of Star Wars.

It was a lot better than Book of Fett. For all of Star War’s popularity, it’s really only ever produced 3 great films, 1 pretty good TV series, 1 moderately good Cartoon series and the rest is a whole load of mediocrity.

I rather enjoyed it to be honest. The retconning in this series actually felt like they’d thought about it a little unlike pretty much every other time they’ve messed the overarching tale from the original series. Didn’t always land for sure, but at least felt like it was trying to keep it in mind. I also thought the ‘hello there’ actually worked. Alec Guiness does say it to R2D2 as his opening words in Star Wars, it fits the loop.

I’ve never liked the inquisitors so I was always a bit ‘meh’ about them. This show did nothing to change that - ultimately they are just a bit pointless. And achieve nothing when it matters.

I have a theory that the Inquisitors and other such story elements are explicitly there to help people running Star Wars pen & paper RPGs. They're making room in the official setting for people to tell their own stories of Jedi against Empire.

Given how often the old West End Games RPG books are referenced by various Star Wars creators, that isn't so far fetched...

Sorbicol wrote:

It was a lot better than Book of Fett. For all of Star War’s popularity, it’s really only ever produced 3 great films, 1 pretty good TV series, 1 moderately good Cartoon series and the rest is a whole load of mediocrity.

ANH, ESB, Rogue One?
Mandalorian
Clone Wars or Rebels?

Trying to figure out your list.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FV6JLXnXgAIhxwO?format=jpg&name=large)

Stele wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

It was a lot better than Book of Fett. For all of Star War’s popularity, it’s really only ever produced 3 great films, 1 pretty good TV series, 1 moderately good Cartoon series and the rest is a whole load of mediocrity.

ANH, ESB, Rogue One?
Mandalorian
Clone Wars or Rebels?

Trying to figure out your list.

Let's do this. Let's rank every Star Wars movie or TV show that we've seen.

Empire Strikes Back
The Last Jedi
The Mandalorian
Return of the Jedi
A New Hope
Rogue One
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Revenge of the Sith
Solo
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Force Awakens
Book of Boba Fett
Star Wars Holiday Special
Rise of Skywalker

Note: I haven't seen any of the animated series to completion.

You left off A New Hope. But I like your RoS spot.

Empire Strikes Back
Spaceballs
Star Wars 1977
Return of the Jedi (fast-forwarding through the Ewok scenes)
The Mandalorian Season 1
---
A bunch of stuff that's not worth watching and I can't be arsed to rank exactly how not worth watching it is

Empire
A New Hope
Rogue One
Return of the Jedi
The Last Jedi
The Force Awakens
Rebels (S1 and 2 only, never watched the rest)
The Mandalorian (never finished, but enjoyed the first season and a half)
Solo
The Phantom Menace
Rise of Skywalker
Attack of the Clones
Revenge of the Sith

I'm completely checked out on the property at this point and haven't watched any of the recent shows, though I did show my 4yo A New Hope last weekend for the first time and that was fun.

Looking at that list, Solo is kinda the dividing line for me. It's not good, but it's low-stacks and throw-away in the least offensive manner and if my kids wanted to watch it, I'd be happy to sit down with them and do so. After that, though, I can pick out things I like in each of the movies, but I have no interest in ever watching any of them again.

I have only seen 1 - 3 and 7 - 9 once each, which isn't enough to rank them properly, but I also don't want to watch them again, so they're all roughly the same rank for me.

Kenobi ranks very high on my list. All the acting was great, a lot of the story informs events outside of the series, as usual the sets were great even the ones that had zero practical and were just filmed in the LED wall space.

I wish we could get a Leia series with the actress - "The Junior Senator Adventures of Leia Organa and Lola".

I tried ranking them but kept changing my mind on the specifics, so I'll just say generally what I think.

Empire, A New Hope is obvious 1 and 2. Rogue One and The Last Jedi probably 3 and 4, but could easily switch them around. The Canto Bight sequence probably puts TLJ a bit behind, maybe. But there's also a few things that irk me about Rogue One too. Obviously not deal-breaking stuff though.

Return of the Jedi is pretty bad. Not prequel-bad, but not that far off. If it weren't for the fact that it's part of the OT, I think people would hate on it more. Like, imagine a world where RotJ didn't feature Ewoks, but instead they put cute little killer teddies in one of the prequels/sequels. Can you imagine the reaction?

Mandalorian season 1 would be relatively high, season 2 not so much. I'm not interested in season 3. Didn't watch Boba Fett, as far as I'm concerned he's still being digested in the sarlacc pit.

Force Awakens is a hard one to place. Like yeah, it's better than Obi-Wan's worst episodes, but it's not even close to Obi-Wans best. I guess that's the problem of comparing just over 2 hours of a film to 4.5 hours of an episodic show. FA had a fantastic soundtrack though, which none of the tv shows can claim, let alone Obi-Wan

Rise of Skywalker easily the worst. Like, I almost want to commend Disney on somehow making Attack of the Clones seem good.

karmajay wrote:

I wish we could get a Leia series with the actress - "The Junior Senator Adventures of Leia Organa and Lola".

That would probably work best as an animated show. Actor hours, budget, etc. But I could see it.

karmajay wrote:

I wish we could get a Leia series with the actress - "The Junior Senator Adventures of Leia Organa and Lola".

If they don't have plans for a whole teenage Leia as dystopian young-adult protagonist subfranchise then they're leaving so much money on the table...

I have a bad feeling about this.

Knights of the Old Republic (VG)
The Empire Strikes Back (M)
Rogue One (M)
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (VG)
The Mandalorian: Season 1 (D+)
The Last Jedi (M)
Rebels (C)
Obi-Wan Kenobi (D+)
Return of the Jedi (M)
Jedi: Fallen Order (VG)
The Force Awakens (M)
A New Hope (M)
The Bad Batch (CD+)
Revenge of the Sith (M)
The Clone Wars (C)
The Mandalorian: Season 2 (D+)
Solo (M)
The Phantom Menace (M)
The Force Unleashed (VG)
Book of Boba Fett (D+)
Attack of the Clones (M)
Rise of the Skywalker (M)
The Force Unleashed 2 (VG)

I am not including books or comic books because the list would be too effing long. And I am sure I am missing something.

I really need to finish KOTOR, don't I?

I finally watched the Obi-Wan finale and loved it. I really enjoyed this series, it was pretty much what I’d hoped it would be. Hope they make more.

What is it with people and Star Wars threads and ranking things?

Sorbicol wrote:

What is it with people and Star Wars threads and ranking things?

Large overlap with Final Fantasy players.

Mixolyde wrote:

I really need to finish KOTOR, don't I?

It really was what made me love Star Wars. I had seen the movies, but this was the thing that really hooked me.

halfwaywrong wrote:

Return of the Jedi is pretty bad. Not prequel-bad, but not that far off. If it weren't for the fact that it's part of the OT, I think people would hate on it more. Like, imagine a world where RotJ didn't feature Ewoks, but instead they put cute little killer teddies in one of the prequels/sequels. Can you imagine the reaction?

Star Wars fans reacting badly to things?! Never!

I think Jedi is saved by the fact that the last half of the movie cuts between the space battle, Luke v Vader, and the ground battle. Sure, the ground battle sections contain ewoks, but they really don't bother me much. Like Solo, they're eye-rolley at worst and blandly inoffensive at best.

If the ewoks had been wookies as originally conceived it would have been a much better movie.

How so? I feel like taller teddy bears doesn't really make much of a difference in a movie that has plenty of other problems. Like, maybe you lose some of Lucas' eye-roll-inducing attempts at slapstick via the ewoks, but I'm pretty confident that he'd have found a way to do something similar with Wookies.

For me, Jedi's bigger problems are almost all on the human side -- Lucas' meddling with things in the more modern editions, Hamill's acting, McDiarmid's over-the-top performance as the emperor, Ford being checked out, etc. Ewoks are way down the list for me.

Edit: Wait -- maybe we have an example of this. Don't the wookies participate in a battle in one of the prequels? How'd Lucas handle them there?