The sequel era as a setting

[Esquire]

I mean, it kind of trivially true in the sense that all the MCU stuff builds on/references/supports the rest, so it all serves as a decade of giant shiny successful advertisements for whatever the current one is. Which is fine, that's how series work, but does kind of mess with how you can evaluate members of the series against each other.

[ray245]

I mean, it kind of trivially true in the sense that all the MCU stuff builds on/references/supports the rest, so it all serves as a decade of giant shiny successful advertisements for whatever the current one is. Which is fine, that's how series work, but does kind of mess with how you can evaluate members of the series against each other.

You do so by the way you evaluate a TV episode.

[Q99]

Also, "get woke, go broke?" I guess that explains why Black Panther didn't make any money.

People were really crying that out on Captain Marvel in advance. It, uh, did not turn out how they hoped ^^

"Get woke, make all the money forever."


Yes, there are individuals from any race or group who won't like a particular thing, nothing guarantees popularity and there is no such thing as universal like, but there's a particular contingent who gets really upset when women or minority things get into what they perceive as their turf, and'll do so before the things are actually out, and there being some minorities who dislike a thing does not mean the reasons this group does so is anything but crap. It happens regularly, and some people calling it out is, needless to say, not a significant problem despite how some people try and say 'the companies are calling fans manbabies and it's hurting their sales!'. They just don't like stuff not being made for them.


I'm reminded of this research done by the Creative Artists Agency casting agency that founds films with diverse casts outperformed non-diverse ones at all budget levels. Significantly. Not only is it not a recipe to go broke, data very very strongly suggests it's still an underserved market need and we need a lot more diverse casts in films.

[Gandalf]

I mean, it kind of trivially true in the sense that all the MCU stuff builds on/references/supports the rest, so it all serves as a decade of giant shiny successful advertisements for whatever the current one is. Which is fine, that's how series work, but does kind of mess with how you can evaluate members of the series against each other.

Yeah, but Sidewinder was oddly specific about Civil War, so I'm really curious to know how Black Panther rode its coattails. Would Black Panther have been somehow less of a runaway hit had T'Challa not been set up in the previous film?

[ray245]

People were really crying that out on Captain Marvel in advance. It, uh, did not turn out how they hoped ^^

"Get woke, make all the money forever."

Yes, there are individuals from any race or group who won't like a particular thing, nothing guarantees popularity and there is no such thing as universal like, but there's a particular contingent who gets really upset when women or minority things get into what they perceive as their turf, and'll do so before the things are actually out, and there being some minorities who dislike a thing does not mean the reasons this group does so is anything but crap. It happens regularly, and some people calling it out is, needless to say, not a significant problem despite how some people try and say 'the companies are calling fans manbabies and it's hurting their sales!'. They just don't like stuff not being made for them.

I'm reminded of this research done by the Creative Artists Agency casting agency that founds films with diverse casts outperformed non-diverse ones at all budget levels. Significantly. Not only is it not a recipe to go broke, data very very strongly suggests it's still an underserved market need and we need a lot more diverse casts in films.

A movie or game will only make a loss when the overall quality of it is not good enough to appeal to new fans and viewers. Ghostbuster bombed not because it tried to "go woke", but because trying to be "woke" did not mean the overall quality of the movie is decent enough to appeal to the casual audience, especially female audience.

But this is getting off-topic now.

[Q99]

A movie or game will only make a loss when the overall quality of it is not good enough to appeal to new fans and viewers. Ghostbuster bombed not because it tried to "go woke", but because trying to be "woke" did not mean the overall quality of the movie is decent enough to appeal to the casual audience, especially female audience.

But this is getting off-topic now.

Also GB's budget was kinda ridiculous for a comedy- if it had a more reasonable 75 to 100 million dollar budget, it's $229 take would be great. My personal feeling on that was 'alright but did not need to spend near that much on ghost effects, even if they did look cool'.


And yea, we're drifting. Lesse, to bring things back around to the SW sequel setting, I kinda feel at this point people are more interested in having it fleshed out than they are stories in the OT era (as Solo kinda demonstrated). Because while people love the OT era, there is soooo much stuff in it and there's not as much market demand for it. So while belovedness may go OT > PT > ST, in terms of what people are looking for right now it's likely ST > PT > OT.

[Vympel]

Which fans did he "denounce?" Find me the quote. I've already found it, but I'd love to see you use it to back up your claim.

Latinas don't like it. Asian WOMEN don't like it. Black men don't like it. Yet these people are denounced as "white supremacists."

You didn't answer my question. Would you like me to post the quote to which you dishonestly alluded in your earlier post?

Have you not heard about Marvel Comics' sale figures dropping? Battlefield V failing to sell well? At least Black Panther had the coattails of Captain America: Civil War to ride on.

I assume that you have evidence that shows Black Panther "riding on Civil War coattails?"

Rememeber how Captain Marvel was going to bomb because all the typical toxic assholes on youtube said so? Yeah.

[Civil War Man]

And yea, we're drifting. Lesse, to bring things back around to the SW sequel setting, I kinda feel at this point people are more interested in having it fleshed out than they are stories in the OT era (as Solo kinda demonstrated). Because while people love the OT era, there is soooo much stuff in it and there's not as much market demand for it. So while belovedness may go OT > PT > ST, in terms of what people are looking for right now it's likely ST > PT > OT.

I wouldn't so far as to claim that. Rogue One did well, so Solo could have been an outlier. Attributing Solo flopping to audiences not being interested in OT stories sounds like the kind of reductive studio thinking that has them declare that audiences were no longer interested in, to include some real life examples, musicals or pirate movies, because it's easier to declare that than admit that the musical and/or pirate movie they made flopped because it wasn't any good.

I'm going to ignore the whole "Solo boycott" thing in my hypothesis, since we don't know how much it affected the movie's box office, and my general view is that if it was amazing it would have succeeded in spite of a boycott. Same with the whole idea of "Star Wars fatigue" with its release only a few months after TLJ. I attribute the bulk of Solo's poor performance to it being superfluous. As a character, Han Solo is a completely known quantity. There was nothing the movie could really add to our understanding of the character, since he was one of the protagonists in the OT, too young/not born yet in the PT, and dead in the ST. We didn't really learn anything new about the character, and much of what we did learn was pretty widely panned, answered questions absolutely no one was asking, or both (ie Solo's name being a joke from a smartass Imperial officer making a crack about him being alone). Maybe it might have been different if it came out before TFA or TLJ, since at the very least it would have introduced the dice to audience members who don't familiarize themselves with the minutiae of Star Wars sets, but as is it adds nothing relevant.

Rogue One, meanwhile, at least added some insight into events of the OT, even if some argue that they preferred not knowing the specifics of how the Rebellion got a copy of the Death Star plans. And if Solo had instead been Calrissian: A Star Wars Story I think you could have covered some of the same events while still generating more interest, since Lando is a less explored character, he has a more meaningful character arc prior to his introduction in ESB (going from scoundrel to legitimate businessman), and it's more relevant to our understanding of the ST since he's going to be in Episode IX.

[Shroom Man 777]

I personally thought that Captain Marvel would've done so much better if it actually had Carol photon blasting every male's dick off, proclaiming castration to be the cure for the disease of manhood, and using the Tessarect to burn her neutronium-ingrained bra... assuming it's a spherical mass of iron, the vaporization would be 094234XYZ gigajoules.

The man-babies... are man-babies.

Anyway I think the ST suffers from minimalism and I think the parts where it tried to follow the OT, the desert planets, the doomsday stations, are quaint. The bits in Rogue One and Solo where they showed different shit, like that bitchin' space station design we see Cassian kill people in, the nightmare cityscape of Correllia, now that's what I'm talking about. Scarif with the new configuration of shielding, the beaches and the fortifications - oh yeah! Maz' castle and Canto Bight were OK for me too, but not weird enough. My biggest gripe with The Last Jedi was that we saw normal Earth-style gambling paraphernalia in Canto Bight. They should've devised entirely novel alien ways of gambling and had all the extras and animatronic-handlers learn them and seamlessly perform them in the seconds-long scene Finn and Rose pass by! ...I'm not entirely joking though!

[Civil War Man]

My biggest gripe with The Last Jedi was that we saw normal Earth-style gambling paraphernalia in Canto Bight. They should've devised entirely novel alien ways of gambling and had all the extras and animatronic-handlers learn them and seamlessly perform them in the seconds-long scene Finn and Rose pass by! ...I'm not entirely joking though!

That is a common complaint I've heard about the Canto Bight scenes. Pretty much every other melting pot we see in the movies, from the cantina is Mos Eisley to Jabba's palace to the opera in Revenge of the Sith, has a wide variety of different aliens in different costumes. Canto Bight had the variety of aliens, but all of them were dressed like extras from The Great Gatsby, so even with all the weird aliens everyone kind of looked the same.

[Batman]

I rhink he's talking about the dice, tables, cards and so on looking way too much like what you'd find in a Vegas casino

[Shroom Man 777]

I rhink he's talking about the dice, tables, cards and so on looking way too much like what you'd find in a Vegas casino

CWM is correct too... yeah the costumes, the games AND the table arrangements all looked too familiar and real-life-like.

[Elfdart]

I think the ST is basically the OT but bigger and flashier. I don't think it feels smaller- I think it feels big, but lacking detail/depth. It feels slapped together quickly, at times, contrived as opposed to having the more "natural" feel that the best of the OT and PT did. This is in part due to the fact that world-building for the sake of world-building is probably not something that the average viewer (as opposed to die-hard fans) or the average Hollywood writer or director cares that much about, and partly because the PT got (undeserved) flak for having "boring" political scenes.

That said, the ST arguably does not need to world-build as much, because while the OT had to create the setting, we already know the setting, and can infer a lot of what's going on in the background without it being shown (at least theoretically).

The ships are "bigger", but the scale of the conflict feels smaller, with the resistance being a mere squadron of fighters and a few empty ships.

The OT and PT didn't exactly world-build for the sake of world-building, but what we do see on the screen has a life of its own. We get a sense of how society functions in SW.

ST needs to world-build because there's a long gap between the OT and the ST. There's too much stuff that's left unsaid.

The problems with Disney's galaxy far, far away are the inevitable result of replacing a visionary artist with several jobbers. They can shoot X-wings, lightsabers and hyperspace jumps; they can show plucky rebels against an evil empire, but the rest is an empty shell. It's like all the filmmakers who steal from The Searchers. They get the superficial parts right (sunsets, bleak desert landscapes, seething racists) but they miss so much of the rest that made that movie great. At least The Missing wasn't passed off as a sequel to John Ford's classic.

That's why they had to hit the reset button and turn the victorious Rebellion into the clownshoes Resistance and nuke the Republic in the process. The message I got from the ST is that General Leia was completely inept. Compare the state of her Resistance at the end of TLJ to that of the Rebellion at the end of TESB and keep in mind that the First Order had only just conquered much of the galaxy, while the Empire had ruled the galaxy for 20 years. Watching these hapless bad guys square off against those hopeless heroes is like watching a bum fight or worse still, a football game between the Jets and Browns.

You seem to be under the delusion fans don't matter.

Disney and Lucasfilm are BUSINESSES. They make movies to make money, NOT to satisfy some fuckwit's (Rian Johnson's) "artistic vision." Disrespect the fans- the people SPENDING THE MOST MONEY ON MERCHANDISE- and what happens? "Get woke, go broke."

You should watch the videos here, and see how much damage Lucasfilm did to itself when it denounced its own customers as "manbabies."

While these sequels aren't as profitable as the PT (and neither the ST nor PT is as profitable as the OT), they are hugely successful. Pretending otherwise makes you look like a schmuck.

I think the problem is mostly to do with a president that isn't too interested in storytelling. Whatever Kennedy's strength is a a president of the company, she is not someone who takes control of the storytelling the same way Kevin Feige does. Passing that responsibility to the story-telling group is a big mistake, because the story-group does seem quite unwilling to establish a particular vision for the directors.

The fact that multiple directors have been hired and fired because of creative differences goes to show instructions from the top isn't very clear. Running SW and MCU are an entirely different kind of responsibility from traditional movie studio presidents. You need to be more like a showrunner of a long-running sci-fi/fantasy TV series, establishing what is the overall direction you want to set for the directors.

To be fair, Kennedy has never been part of the creative team on the movies she produced. That's because it's usually NOT the producer's job to make creative decisions unless they are also writing, directing or in some cases, acting in the movie. Now she's head of the production company, which means she has even less say in creative matters. I think this might be why she hired Weiss & Benioff from Game of Thrones.

I rhink he's talking about the dice, tables, cards and so on looking way too much like what you'd find in a Vegas casino

CWM is correct too... yeah the costumes, the games AND the table arrangements all looked too familiar and real-life-like.

The ST reminds me of Edmund Wilson's most cutting remark in his review of LOTR ("Ooh Those Awful Orcs!") about how there was "a poverty of invention" in Tolkien's book -in other words, there wasn't much creativity aside from the talking tree creatures.

[Jub]

[O]r worse still, a football game between the Jets and Browns.

I think it was worse than that and more like watching AAF football. Dropped Ball. Fumble. Sack. Missed Pass. Run. Fumble... It's technically the same game just executed with significantly less skill carried out by has-beens and never-wases.

[Zor]

It's overly conservative and it was rushed. It's trying to recreate the Original Trilogy instead of doing it's own thing. The only people it actively offends are A: Reactionary Idiots and B: People who have grievances about Luke fucking up (this is actually understandable, though I will say that Mark did sell the hell out of that particular take on things), but that ultimately stems from the fact that in The Sequel films they decided to go back to having one old Jedi Knight left after the order fell...again (IE recreating the situation in the Original Trilogy).

Also Operation Cinder can go straight to hell for being Totally Fucking Stupid. Legends managed to handle the Collapse of the Empire a million times better.

Zor

[Jub]

Yeah, when mediocre Legends-EU novels are better than the last two main series movies the bar has been set pretty low.

[KraytKing]

Maybe a bit off topic, but my view on the Legends EU is that it's best taken from far away. The scenarios they set up or imply can be interesting when you sort of forget about the specifics, like R2 destroying a new Death Star with a new Executor on his own. The sequel trilogy isn't interesting in this way. There isn't a world out there, a world of politickin and violence and soldiers and people. There's just these few.

I also agree that the Rebellion felt big. I always got the feeling that the Rebellion existed everywhere and was constantly fighting insurgencies far from the big battles we saw in the movies. In the ST, it's outright stated that the battles we see are the only ones there are.

[MarxII]

Maybe a bit off topic, but my view on the Legends EU is that it's best taken from far away. The scenarios they set up or imply can be interesting when you sort of forget about the specifics, like R2 destroying a new Death Star with a new Executor on his own. The sequel trilogy isn't interesting in this way. There isn't a world out there, a world of politickin and violence and soldiers and people. There's just these few.

I also agree that the Rebellion felt big. I always got the feeling that the Rebellion existed everywhere and was constantly fighting insurgencies far from the big battles we saw in the movies. In the ST, it's outright stated that the battles we see are the only ones there are.

I'd like to second this idea. It may well be that my (qualified) positive opinion on (at least a good chunk of) the Legends EU is made higher for how much of it I haven't seen, read, et cetera.

[The Romulan Republic]

Disagree, at least partially.

The old EU got real monotonous after a while. Rebellion/New Republic wins. New Imperial warlord comes along, rebuilds the Empire, nearly destroys the Rebellion/Republic (usually with some gimmicky new super weapon), then gets defeated at the last moment. Rinse and repeat. For over twenty fucking years, both in and out of universe. Frankly, it felt creatively empty, repetitive, anti-climactic, and cynical, undercutting ROTJ's optimistic ending and failing to really ever let the status quo change.

I also feel like a lot of people have short memories about how small the scope of the old EU could get. I remember the day when there was endless complaining on this board about EU "minimalism". Everyone no doubt remembers the three million clones debacle, but how about some other highlights, like the construction of the Executor almost bankrupting the Empire that built multiple Death Stars in the films? Hell, even the beloved Thrawn Trilogy had 200 small, decades-old "Dreadnoughts" (which were unworthy of the name, being nothing more than glorified frigates) being potentially decisive in a galactic war. And Thrawn supplying his whole empire with Clone troops from a single base on a single backwater world.

Edit: Much like I said about Holdo's leadership, the worst you can really say about the new canon is that it missed an opportunity to turn things around. The bad situation was already there before Disney took over.

Or to put it simply: Meet the new EU, same as the old EU. Heck, even the films were never immune to minimalist shit- yeah, we quibbled about what "200,000 units" of clones meant, but we all know the intent was probably 200,000 individual clones for the entire GAR.

[KraytKing]

Well, I can agree with your take on the EU. My version of EU has been the occasional original book or comic and mostly Essential Guide to Warfare. That gives me a view less stylized, more of an actual war: the New Republic gradually conquers territory with occasional setbacks. I missed or ignored most superweapons, excluding the Thrawn Trilogy, as that was one of the few I did read. So yes, individually the EU materials sucked, but woven together and with some editing they had worthwhile stuff.

I also agree with the minimalism critique, but that one is a bit harder to take. In ROTJ, the massive Rebel fleet was a few dozen warships at most. It felt big in the setting, but if you look closely it makes no sense. That's because nobody wants to read about a battle with fifty thousand warships on each side, even if that's what makes sense. Maybe two hundred Dreadnaughts (note the spelling -- distinct from dreadnoughts) is a little small, but it feels big in the setting when the most Star Destroyers you see until the end is six. So it's all about the storytelling and how you use those small numbers of ships to still feel big without being overwhelming.

The clones thing I've actually come around on. Three million seems awful small, but these are men that have gone through intensive combat training since before they could walk, every day of their (albit shortened) lives. They have to be so much more skilled than any movie or comic gives them credit for. In my headcanon, I imagine them as special forces that use high mobility and heavy armor concentrations to seize strategic planetary objectives and decapitate the enemy before allowing militias and other, cheaper troops to mop up and do most of the droid killing. Never get involved in a big set piece, and rarely deploy more than a couple hundred men to a planet.

Anyway, that's off topic. My point is, they use small numbers to tell a story that feels big, and that's what matters in the end.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I can agree with your take on the EU. My version of EU has been the occasional original book or comic and mostly Essential Guide to Warfare. That gives me a view less stylized, more of an actual war: the New Republic gradually conquers territory with occasional setbacks. I missed or ignored most superweapons, excluding the Thrawn Trilogy, as that was one of the few I did read. So yes, individually the EU materials sucked, but woven together and with some editing they had worthwhile stuff.

My reading was somewhat spotty as well, so some of my criticisms are based on second-hand reporting (mostly on this board). Highlights for me were original KotOR, Dark Lord, and the Thrawn Trilogy, plus the RotS novelization and both Clone Wars cartoons. But there was also a lot of stuff (Jedi Academy, Dark Empire off the top of my head) that I could take or leave. And idiocy like I mentioned above, or the Mon Cal cruisers being converted cruise ships (which Disney actually reintroduced to canon for God knows what reason after it was purged with the rest of the old EU).

I also agree with the minimalism critique, but that one is a bit harder to take. In ROTJ, the massive Rebel fleet was a few dozen warships at most. It felt big in the setting, but if you look closely it makes no sense. That's because nobody wants to read about a battle with fifty thousand warships on each side, even if that's what makes sense. Maybe two hundred Dreadnaughts (note the spelling -- distinct from dreadnoughts) is a little small, but it feels big in the setting when the most Star Destroyers you see until the end is six. So it's all about the storytelling and how you use those small numbers of ships to still feel big without being overwhelming.

Honestly, I feel like most of the time its just as well not to give hard numbers. They're not needed most of the time, they may be a distraction, and they're going to be either small for a galactic civilization, or sound wanky to a typical real-world audience. Focus on wherever the heroes are, make it look big (in a visual medium), and drop the odd allusion to events going on elsewhere (RotS did this very well, with the montage of Order 66, and Obi-wan's offhand references to Cato Neimoidea and the Outer Rim sieges).

The clones thing I've actually come around on. Three million seems awful small, but these are men that have gone through intensive combat training since before they could walk, every day of their (albit shortened) lives. They have to be so much more skilled than any movie or comic gives them credit for. In my headcanon, I imagine them as special forces that use high mobility and heavy armor concentrations to seize strategic planetary objectives and decapitate the enemy before allowing militias and other, cheaper troops to mop up and do most of the droid killing. Never get involved in a big set piece, and rarely deploy more than a couple hundred men to a planet.

Problem is, we do see them engage in big set-piece battles, so they're pretty clearly more than just special forces.

While three million is still pushing it, in my opinion, I figure that the GAR was mostly a rapid response/strike force, utilizing the speed of hyperspace to strike wherever it was needed at the moment, while planetary security forces handled most of the defensive garrison and logistical support duties. This nicely explains why we see the same few protagonist Jedi at nearly ever major battle of the war, as well.

Jedi can be a hell of a force multiplier, too.

But again, that's not really stated on-screen- at best its a plausible inference. The audience still has to take the time to fill the gaps in. You can do that for the ST too, but most people seem to prefer to just condemn it for not filling those holes in itself and making the audience do it instead.

Anyway, that's off topic. My point is, they use small numbers to tell a story that feels big, and that's what matters in the end.

I'd agree with that, for the most part.

Minor edit to elaborate on the role of the GAR.

[Gandalf]

Also, for special forces style guys, they do a lot of running at their opponents across big open spaces.

[Jub]

Disagree, at least partially.

The old EU got real monotonous after a while. Rebellion/New Republic wins. New Imperial warlord comes along, rebuilds the Empire, nearly destroys the Rebellion/Republic (usually with some gimmicky new super weapon), then gets defeated at the last moment. Rinse and repeat. For over twenty fucking years, both in and out of universe. Frankly, it felt creatively empty, repetitive, anti-climactic, and cynical, undercutting ROTJ's optimistic ending and failing to really ever let the status quo change.

That's like saying the real-life squabbles of the Balkans or the Middle East are lazy. Plus, the Empire wasn't rolled up like Nazi Germany was, they were decapitated and lost a major fleet but after that, they had thousands of Ships Destroyer sized and up, let alone things like Frigates and Corvettes left. It makes sense that they hung on for decades both in and out of canon.

I also feel like a lot of people have short memories about how small the scope of the old EU could get. I remember the day when there was endless complaining on this board about EU "minimalism". Everyone no doubt remembers the three million clones debacle, but how about some other highlights, like the construction of the Executor almost bankrupting the Empire that built multiple Death Stars in the films? Hell, even the beloved Thrawn Trilogy had 200 small, decades-old "Dreadnoughts" (which were unworthy of the name, being nothing more than glorified frigates) being potentially decisive in a galactic war. And Thrawn supplying his whole empire with Clone troops from a single base on a single backwater world.

Yeah, the old EU had some dumb shit but most of it could be ignored or justified away due to how it clashed with what we actually saw on screen. The 200 Dreadnaughts can actually turn the tide locally if the two sides are evenly matched or if 200 ships just suddenly showed up out of nowhere while the main fleet draws enemy forces to it. As for a single world supplying an empire's worth of clone soldiers if it's getting enough raw biomass in and clones grow fast enough it could easily crank out billions of clones in a couple of years. That's more than enough to do the job of an army in a universe where winning in space is 90% of the battle.

Or to put it simply: Meet the new EU, same as the old EU. Heck, even the films were never immune to minimalist shit- yeah, we quibbled about what "200,000 units" of clones meant, but we all know the intent was probably 200,000 individual clones for the entire GAR.

Nobody refers to soldiers as units, they refer to units which can be anything from an entire army group to a sub-squad-sized group of 4 or 5 soldiers. Its biggest sin is being a vague term for a batch of soldiers which one could uncharitably use as an example of minimalism.

[KraytKing]

Well, I can agree with your take on the EU. My version of EU has been the occasional original book or comic and mostly Essential Guide to Warfare. That gives me a view less stylized, more of an actual war: the New Republic gradually conquers territory with occasional setbacks. I missed or ignored most superweapons, excluding the Thrawn Trilogy, as that was one of the few I did read. So yes, individually the EU materials sucked, but woven together and with some editing they had worthwhile stuff.

My reading was somewhat spotty as well, so some of my criticisms are based on second-hand reporting (mostly on this board). Highlights for me were original KotOR, Dark Lord, and the Thrawn Trilogy, plus the RotS novelization and both Clone Wars cartoons. But there was also a lot of stuff (Jedi Academy, Dark Empire off the top of my head) that I could take or leave. And idiocy like I mentioned above, or the Mon Cal cruisers being converted cruise ships (which Disney actually reintroduced to canon for God knows what reason after it was purged with the rest of the old EU).

Oh, I liked the Mon Cal cruisers thing. My interpretation (influenced heavily by WEG) was that they were cruise ships that had been built with the ultimate intent of becoming warships. They aren't as good as purpose-built warships, as they had to masquerade as pleasure liners, but much better than just a cruise ship alone would have been. It fits with the version of Mon Cal history initially given, and makes the Rebellion seem appropriately ragtag and desperate.

I also agree with the minimalism critique, but that one is a bit harder to take. In ROTJ, the massive Rebel fleet was a few dozen warships at most. It felt big in the setting, but if you look closely it makes no sense. That's because nobody wants to read about a battle with fifty thousand warships on each side, even if that's what makes sense. Maybe two hundred Dreadnaughts (note the spelling -- distinct from dreadnoughts) is a little small, but it feels big in the setting when the most Star Destroyers you see until the end is six. So it's all about the storytelling and how you use those small numbers of ships to still feel big without being overwhelming.

Honestly, I feel like most of the time its just as well not to give hard numbers. They're not needed most of the time, they may be a distraction, and they're going to be either small for a galactic civilization, or sound wanky to a typical real-world audience. Focus on wherever the heroes are, make it look big (in a visual medium), and drop the odd allusion to events going on elsewhere (RotS did this very well, with the montage of Order 66, and Obi-wan's offhand references to Cato Neimoidea and the Outer Rim sieges).

I agree completely. Whatever flaws that movie had, it did make it seem like there was a galactic war going on. I had this realization a few years ago when looking for numbers on how many Star Destroyers there were. The number generally agreed on pissed me off because it made for shitty stories.

The clones thing I've actually come around on. Three million seems awful small, but these are men that have gone through intensive combat training since before they could walk, every day of their (albit shortened) lives. They have to be so much more skilled than any movie or comic gives them credit for. In my headcanon, I imagine them as special forces that use high mobility and heavy armor concentrations to seize strategic planetary objectives and decapitate the enemy before allowing militias and other, cheaper troops to mop up and do most of the droid killing. Never get involved in a big set piece, and rarely deploy more than a couple hundred men to a planet.

Problem is, we do see them engage in big set-piece battles, so they're pretty clearly more than just special forces.

While three million is still pushing it, in my opinion, I figure that the GAR was mostly a rapid response/strike force, utilizing the speed of hyperspace to strike wherever it was needed at the moment, while planetary security forces handled most of the defensive garrison and logistical support duties. This nicely explains why we see the same few protagonist Jedi at nearly ever major battle of the war, as well.

Jedi can be a hell of a force multiplier, too.

That's basically what I meant, just my version is taken to an extreme. And yeah, I know it doesn't fit with just about anything that is canon or ever was, it just makes sense to me. I don't mean that the clones never kill droids, just that they strike where they have the advantage and surprise, and only for specific objectives. Kill ratios of fifty or a hundred to one, except when the droids are able to pin down the troopers and bring in lots of infantry. Doesn't make for a good war of attrition, though.

I disagree on Jedi force multiplier factor. Jedi are individually good at killing, yes, but as we see on Geonosis and with Order 66, they can be overwhelmed. So they aren't going to have much overall effect in a battle with a hundred thousand men to each side, but they would be a huge advantage in my scenario where the enemy is perhaps a few thousand, all spread out and most of it tight urban warfare. I don't think Jedi should be good at leading men, in and out of universe. In, they don't have experience. Out, it gives clones a reason to hate them and obey Order 66 without question. I fucking hate the brain chips story arc.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Jedi monk peacekeeper mystics not being optimal military officers and fighters, not so well suited to conventional warfighting but entering that role due to their revered status and unique abilities (of arguable relevance to the task at hand), makes sense due to the idiosyncracies of the setting wherein ancient ass practices and establishments result in people doing things and getting into situations that are a bit strange, if not bizarre and impractical yet true to the themes and ideas of the 'verse.