New Empire vs New rebellion in the sequels: Biggest mistake?

[Eternal_Freedom]

A few follow-up thoughts to my anti-Force user backlash plot.

1. Have the person leading the movement be the antagonist, but don't have him start as evil. Give him a backstory like "x relatives died in the Clone Wars and they blame the Force users" and "father was killed on the DS1 and so blames Luke" - the DS crew was in the millions, they can't all have been outright evil buggers. They

2. Have them be non-human, so he can also work in anger at the Empire's pro-human policies and suppression of non-human species, overseen by the human Palpatine and defeated by the (almost entirely) human heroes. This lets you a) include more varied species, taking advantage of more modern CGI to help with this) and b) increase the moral dilemma by showing that this guy actually does have legitimate grievances - this may mean you need to change the "father died on the Death Star" part, but that's just an idea.

3. You can even (if you want) work a pretty good Hitler/Nazi analogy in there - talking about how this tiny minority have far more power than they should, have (in some cases literally) stabbed the galaxy in the back, have dangerous powers that can easily be abused, and how they've caused so much death and destruction no matter which side of the Jedi/Sith divide they're on. The difference of course is that this putative character would actually have some fairly good factual basis for these claims, unlike the Nazis.

4. Have the antagonist start off as just that, not evil but just opposed. Talking about how the galaxy has been under the yoke of one Force-sect or another for millenia, with all the damage that's wrought, and it's time for the ordinary citizens to decide their own fate, so you can look at pro/anti democracy angles as well.

5. Don't have the Jedi opposing this guy be a united front either. Have Luke as a Professor X figure, to borrow TRR's comments, while have Ben Solo be a Magneto-figure (like in X-Men First Class) who wants to take a more active role in opposing this.

Just a few extra ideas into the melting pot. You can have the antagonist gradually get more and more extreme, and have it building up to a full-scale New Republic schism, perhaps with some Imperial holdouts/warlords trying to capitalise on it (by offering "peace and stability" and all that), so you can have battle scenes and so on.

[Adam Reynolds]

3. You can even (if you want) work a pretty good Hitler/Nazi analogy in there - talking about how this tiny minority have far more power than they should, have (in some cases literally) stabbed the galaxy in the back, have dangerous powers that can easily be abused, and how they've caused so much death and destruction no matter which side of the Jedi/Sith divide they're on. The difference of course is that this putative character would actually have some fairly good factual basis for these claims, unlike the Nazis.

Do you not see the problem with this? Spreading this idea in fiction only helps the wrong usage of it in reality, in two divergent ways.

On one hand, you currently have billionaires arguing that they are being persecuted for their wealth, using stolen marginalization in exactly the same way you're arguing that Jedi should.

On the other hand, alt-right types would use this reasoning to support their arguments in the real world. It's the same thing that happened with an example like the show 24. If Jack Bauer tortures people, it must have some value. The fact that a minority with superpowers are being persecuted shows that my victims also have the real power.

I understand the appeal of the concept as an alternative to the simple nature of good and evil, but it causes real life problems. Given the political issues that the new Star Wars movies already have, there is no way this could work out in a positive fashion.

[Formless]

For people who don't understand the problems with the Oppressed Mages trope, Mythcreants has a good post detailing exactly what is wrong with it. Here's the main points:

It’s Hard to Oppress Mages

Before we even get into the social and political problems of this trope, there’s a practical barrier that most stories fail to overcome: How do you oppress someone who can shoot fire out of their hands?

[...]

Despite everything we’ve just covered, it is technically possible to craft a premise that overcomes the practical obstacles of oppressing mages. With enough work, you can set up a story where all the world’s governments have rallied together and made the giant robots or elite death squads that would be necessary to oppress mages. But then you get into the social and political problems, so let’s take a look at those!

Oppression Flows From Power, Not Toward It

Let’s assume you have a story where all the of the practical obstacles to oppressed mages are dealt with. Magic is really weak, or muggle countermeasures are really strong, or both. You’re all set for a story where people hate mages for being different, right? Just one problem: systemic oppression does not work that way.

Allow me to introduce the Rudolph Model. [...]

The lesson is clear: differences are punished unless they are exploitable in some way, in which case they are rewarded. There are occasional exceptions,* but the rule holds true in most cases. Magic, as it is portrayed in fiction, is almost always exploitable, usually on levels far beyond what any muggle could ever imagine. Mages would be loved and showered in accolades, not despised for their differences.

[...]

Justifying Oppression Means It’s Not Oppression

Some storytellers are wise to all the problems I’ve just laid out. They know that there’s no reason for muggles to systematically oppress mages, even if they were able to. But these storytellers still want to oppress mages, so they try to add additional context, hoping that will fix things. Spoilers: it does not fix things.

[...]If magical babies are a serious threat to the people around them, it means muggles actually have a reason to be afraid. Even if the muggles’ reaction to this danger is overly harsh, they’re still acting out of self-preservation. This is almost never the case in real-life oppression. Black people are not a threat to white people. Queer people are not a threat to straight people. Immigrants and refugees, no matter their skin tone or religion, are no threat to developed countries like the United States.

He also devotes a section to how you can do it properly. You can have mages be oppressed for nationalistic reasons or for reasons tied to real world oppression, because then it isn't people being oppressed for being poweful. Interestingly, you can-- and probably should-- have mages oppress other mages. In that case, there is no power imbalance working against you as a storyteller. In fact, you can kind of see how Lucas was playing with these concepts with the conflict between Jedi and Sith: both Palpatine and Dooku were shown to come from families with wealth and political influence, thus priming us to see them as powerful figures even without their Force abilities. He then makes it clear that the Sith's claim of being oppressed is just them playing the victim game, that is, its all propaganda and bullshit. The Sith are evil, selfish bastards who swiftly turn the galaxy into a fascist state once they rise to power. We never even learn their religious beliefs in the same detail as the Jedi beliefs, because it really doesn't matter. They just want power at any means, so any ideology beyond that is meaningless. The only thing we really know is that they believe the Dark Side is the key to power in the Force and that they sincerely follow the Rule of Two-- and that makes sense, because the rule serves to consolidate power in as few hands as possible. And it makes the oppression of the Jedi by non-Sith make more sense because once that evil of the Sith is revealed, the battle cry of the Rebellion becomes "May the Force be With You," a traditional Jedi blessing. People only blame the Jedi because they believe Sith lies.

This is the level of sophistication that redeems the Prequels but is completely absent in the Sequels. If you want to fix the sequels without reintroducing the Sith, you need to present a villain with an ideology that appeals to people in-universe with power or privilege. For example, if you want a White Nationalist analogue, you have to understand that in real life these people aren't just frustrated white dipshits but a legitimately scary minority from a privileged class in western society, and make your Star Wars faction reflect that fact in-universe. The First Order fails to work because we don't know anything about them. If we did, then the "Neo-Empire VS the Neo-Rebellion" idea could have worked, but Disney didn't bother to flesh out what the First Order stood for besides "the Empire will rise again!" How did these particular people benefit under Imperial rule, and how is that benefit strong enough that they could justify the risks of militarizing to themselves? That's the question they should have answered first, but failed to ever address. Contrast that with the EU, we know that the Imperial Remnant continues to exist because the warlords, Moffs, and admirals were a powerful class of people who benefited from Imperial rule and continue to benefit, so long as the New Republic honors the peace treaty. Palpatine turned out to be a replaceable cog in their machine, so they could continue to be a threat without being Sith.

[RickDeckard2049]

I would’ve liked the New Empire vs New rebellion conflict okay if they had bothered to explore the concept or do something new with it.

Given that the Resistance suspected there would be conflicts with the First Order (which was the whole reason Leia founded it), you’d think they’d have done a better job building a network of contacts and sympathizers across the galaxy over the years leading up to TFA. Surely after the Galactic Civil War, there would be Rebel Alliance/New Republic veterans or just disaffected civilians who’d want to prevent the Empire or something like it from rising again? Heck, what about the New Republic? The government the Rebel Alliance fought so hard to establish? You’re telling me a government created by the Rebel Alliance wouldn’t be chock-full of political and military officials violently opposed to Imperial-style authoritarianism? By linking up with sympathetic planetary militias and the like, the Resistance would have laid the groundwork for a feasible strategy to oppose First Order aggression rather than rely on a small, centralized paramilitary group to fight an entire war. That way the First Order couldn’t just hunt them down in one fell swoop like they did in TLJ, but have to worry about possible Resistance cells on any planet they invaded.

It baffles me that Leia (or rather, the writers) honestly thought her tiny organization could meaningfully oppose a numerically and technologically superior foe for long, while employing the same strategies as before. The original Rebel Alliance had more ships, more personnel, and more political influence, and that was largely put together while the Empire was in total control of the galaxy. Sure, Leia talks of contacting allies in TLJ and rallying them to her cause, but she couldn’t have done that during the peaceful years before the First Order began blitzing the galaxy? Seems like that would’ve been the time to start building up your forces and contacting people: when you can actually access them.

If we couldn’t have started with a larger “New Rebellion” force from the get go, then I’d have liked to actually see Leia and the followers she does have seek out and inspire people to fight the First Order. The French Resistance lived and died by networking! This would let us see a greater scope to the conflict, introduce us to new characters, cultures and planets, and get a sense of the ramshackle nature of the Resistance. It would be a lot more satisfying to see the Resistance triumph if we actually get to see it come together little by little, from a handful of idealists to a formidable network of ragtag freedom fighters spanning the entire galaxy. There’d be more of a sense that these people struggled to put this together, and achieved victory because of that struggle, not just because they’re the “good guys” and got saved at the last minute by a fleet of civilians who suddenly cared enough to help them.

[The Romulan Republic]

Seeing Leia and company going around trying to build an undercover resistance could have been interesting, and somewhat new.

The problem is that politics is seen as "boring" by the Fan Bros who the Abrams films were made to cater to and appease. They actually had some NR Senate scenes in TFA, IIRC, but they got left on the cutting room floor, almost certainly because "WAAAH, boring politics scenes in the Prequels sucked!"

My God, just having those scenes could have made TFA a much stronger film, both by giving some more development to the galactic political situation, and making the subsequent destruction of Hosnia (which should have been Coruscant) carry more weight.

[ray245]

Seeing Leia and company going around trying to build an undercover resistance could have been interesting, and somewhat new.

The problem is that politics is seen as "boring" by the Fan Bros who the Abrams films were made to cater to and appease. They actually had some NR Senate scenes in TFA, IIRC, but they got left on the cutting room floor, almost certainly because "WAAAH, boring politics scenes in the Prequels sucked!"

My God, just having those scenes could have made TFA a much stronger film, both by giving some more development to the galactic political situation, and making the subsequent destruction of Hosnia (which should have been Coruscant) carry more weight.

Yeah. Fanboy criticism of the prequels are just so badly done that they've fucked up any potential for actual world-building for the sequels. The likes of people like RLM deserve to be criticised because they were the part of the movement that Disney gave in to.

For a bunch of people who supposedly spent all their time on world-building, this weird fixation on the Star Wars is solely a story about civilisations along the fringes of the Galaxy like Tatootine and Hoth is plainly idiotic. The OT did it because of technological limitations, budget limitations and contrast that with the typical sci-fi series of the time.

[chimericoncogene]

For a bunch of people who supposedly spent all their time on world-building, this weird fixation on the Star Wars is solely a story about civilisations along the fringes of the Galaxy like Tatootine and Hoth is plainly idiotic. The OT did it because of technological limitations, budget limitations and contrast that with the typical sci-fi series of the time.

Seriously? I'd have expected worldbuilding fans to have loved (or at least to be more-or-less fine with) the Prequels.

My impression was that the segment most opposed to incorporating any element of the Prequels in the Sequels were the more casual, more mainstream, less technically/lore-oriented segment of the fanbase - especially since the most voracious arguments about the sequels seem to revolve around character portrayals (surely of less concern to the serious world-builder) rather than the actual problems of technical or worldbuilding sloppiness that plagued the sequels.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, part of the problem is that the fanbase is incredibly divided and factionalized, and a lot of fans don't really know what they want, or they want something contradictory (like a film which is simultaenously original and like the OT viewed through nostalgia goggles). Which makes trying to pander to and appease the entire fandom an exercise in futility, and will only lead to an incoherent mess like the ST.

What they needed to do was find one competent director/writer or team who was willing to commit to an entire trilogy, had a clear idea of the story they wanted to tell and the style they wanted to tell it in, and then give them the resources to make it work, while setting minimal guide rails (budget, it has to be PG or PG-13, it has to hit certain points like a New Republic/New Jedi Order, more diverse casting, it has to have a big set-piece battle per film, and the torch being passed to a younger generation heroes, etc).

[ray245]

Seriously? I'd have expected worldbuilding fans to have loved (or at least to be more-or-less fine with) the Prequels.

My impression was that the segment most opposed to incorporating any element of the Prequels in the Sequels were the more casual, more mainstream, less technically/lore-oriented segment of the fanbase - especially since the most voracious arguments about the sequels seem to revolve around character portrayals (surely of less concern to the serious world-builder) rather than the actual problems of technical or worldbuilding sloppiness that plagued the sequels.

Not if you are the dogmatic OT-only fans ( who usually don't care about the EU). It's those fans that aired their views on channels like RLM, and I won't be surprised if JJ Abrams actually watched their videos and listened to them.

Well, part of the problem is that the fanbase is incredibly divided and factionalized, and a lot of fans don't really know what they want, or they want something contradictory (like a film which is simultaenously original and like the OT viewed through nostalgia goggles). Which makes trying to pander to and appease the entire fandom an exercise in futility, and will only lead to an incoherent mess like the ST.

What they needed to do was find one competent director/writer or team who was willing to commit to an entire trilogy, had a clear idea of the story they wanted to tell and the style they wanted to tell it in, and then give them the resources to make it work, while setting minimal guide rails (budget, it has to be PG or PG-13, it has to hit certain points like a New Republic/New Jedi Order, more diverse casting, it has to have a big set-piece battle per film, and the torch being passed to a younger generation heroes, etc).

But that is not going to happen with the schedule Disney wanted. An episodic movie once every two years, and pump out movies at the rate Marvel does. Marvel managed to do it because the head of Marvel Studio, Kevin Feige is actively interested in doing the story-telling aspects of it. I've said it again and again, but Kennedy is not a storyteller. She dumped the responsibility as the head of Lucasfilm as quickly as possible, and the person she hired to manage the Story-group left the company shortly after TLJ ( this may be due to a creative fallout with JJ Abrams returning).

Lucasfilm needs a story-teller to run the company. That is the only way you can have a packed schedule and remain largely consistent in terms of storytelling and style. A good manager of directors like Feige means the chances of directors getting fired from the project is less likely to occur, because they would have communicated a very clear idea on what kind of story-telling they want the directors to tell.

Does Kennedy cares about world-building the way Lucas did? Lucas is fairly hands-off with the management of the EU, but he remains deeply invested in creating all sorts of Lore and backstories to many characters and aspects of Star Wars. Kennedy has never been a story-teller, and this is why the story in the sequels barely makes any sense. A good story-teller will know getting Abrams to come back for EP 9 is a bad idea, and you can't "fix" the reception to TLJ by getting a fanboy like Abrams to come back to the franchise.

[The Romulan Republic]

Kathleen Kennedy has a long and distinguished career as a producer. I don't recall that she's ever run a franchise with this kind of sprawling continuity before, but I think that she sometimes gets unfairly made a scapegoat for everything. Especially since I don't know how much of the big decisions were directives from the higher-ups at Disney, and how much independence they gave Kennedy. My instincts tell me that this could be basically a case of middle management getting the worst of both worlds- blame for the people under them fucking up (Abrams), and for the stuff their superiors make them do (Disney execs). Plus, of course, she gets all the hate from the misogynists for a) being a woman and b) wearing a "the Force is female" shirt once.

Like you said, Disney wanted movies churned out fast, and it looks like their overall philosophy was simply to pander to the loudest and angriest portions of the fan base. You see indications of this in the writing decisions, which scenes and characters were cut, firing a director after he said he liked Jar Jar, etc. In short, the impression I get is that there was no consistent vision in place anywhere beyond "Make Star Wars films, appease the fan base, make money". Which, sure, sounds good on paper as a business strategy (though not as a creative one), but falls apart when you realize that you're dealing with a diverse, divided, and often unpleasable fandom.

I do give Abrams credit that he probably genuinely wanted to make movies that "the fans" would like- nobody wants to blow a gig as big as directing the new Star Wars trilogy, and he's a Star Wars fan himself. But therein lies the problem- he was basically making movies for fanboys like him, and other fans (for example, people who actually liked what Rian Johnson did, or liked Rose, and yes they exist though you wouldn't know it from a casual look at the online fandom)... well, we got told to take a hike. They did put together a diverse cast, which I applaud- but then they ultimately undercut a lot of that cast or gave them stereotypical roles (trying to please everyone, again), which lead to weak characters and ultimately reinforced the Reich wing narrative that diverse casting is just "virtue signalling" done at the expense of telling good stories.

Ultimately, I don't see any indications of a real creative vision and the guts to stand by it anywhere among the major writers, directors, or producers of the new trilogy- except Rian Johnson. Whether you like what he tried to do or not (and its hard to judge because his work was undercut by the other films and his own bosses), he strikes me as the only person involved with actual ability to make major creative decisions who actually had a clear idea and the backbone to stand by it, and I respect that.

Sadly, he got pilloried for it, and made the scapegoat for the spineless hacks around him who ran the franchise into the ground. Which honestly makes me wonder why any major director or writer who actually cares about their work as anything other than a paycheque would work for Disney- because they've basically sent a huge signal that creativity is unwanted, and that they will readily throw anyone who works for them under the bus and retcon their work to appease internet trolls and bigots.

Seriously, why would anyone (other than someone desperate for a paycheque) want to work on Star Wars now? You're inviting a decade of constant harassment online for working on a film that will simultaneously define the rest of your career/life, and get retconned away by the next film. If they don't just fire you half-way through filming because you said something that might step on the fragile sensibilities of the Fan Bros.

[ray245]

Kathleen Kennedy has a long and distinguished career as a producer. I don't recall that she's ever run a franchise with this kind of sprawling continuity before, but I think that she sometimes gets unfairly made a scapegoat for everything. Especially since I don't know how much of the big decisions were directives from the higher-ups at Disney, and how much independence they gave Kennedy. My instincts tell me that this could be basically a case of middle management getting the worst of both worlds- blame for the people under them fucking up (Abrams), and for the stuff their superiors make them do (Disney execs). Plus, of course, she gets all the hate from the misogynists for a) being a woman and b) wearing a "the Force is female" shirt once.

Being a producer is not the same as a story-teller. A producer role is decidedly not on story-telling, but on all the other business side of getting a movie made. But Star Wars is a sprawling, continuity driven franchise. It's a franchise like Harry Potter, Star Trek and etc. It requires the management to have an active interest in engaging with the world-building.

It means it's important for her not to immediately create a story-group and ask them to do those a job when they have no active powers to enforce creative decisions over the directors. It means she herself needs to be part of the story-group, working with storytellers on what it means for the Star Wars universe if director X did Y in their movies. Kevin Feige embraced all those aspects of storytelling as the head of Marvel. Kennedy had the opportunity and refused to take up on it. Feige is prospered under Disney management because he did the fundamental aspect of managing the MCU right. He does not shy away from things that might seem ill-befitting of a CEO.

She is being unfairly targetted by sexists for being a woman running Star Wars, but the actual problem is she runs Star Wars like an old-school Hollywood head that isn't that interested in science-fiction. And in the long run, despite being a woman, she made Star Wars even more inaccessible to female audience by giving the fanboys an even louder voice than they had. Her management of Lucasfilm is a series of short-sighted short-term benefits in return for long-term damage.

Like you said, Disney wanted movies churned out fast, and it looks like their overall philosophy was simply to pander to the loudest and angriest portions of the fan base. You see indications of this in the writing decisions, which scenes and characters were cut, firing a director after he said he liked Jar Jar, etc. In short, the impression I get is that there was no consistent vision in place anywhere beyond "Make Star Wars films, appease the fan base, make money". Which, sure, sounds good on paper as a business strategy (though not as a creative one), but falls apart when you realize that you're dealing with a diverse, divided, and often unpleasable fandom.

And that's the job of a producer. They need to know why they are hiring certain director, certain writers in the first place. It's their job to maintain consistent vision across all the movies. It's about knowing which segment of the fanbase to ignore, and which fanbase to listen to. But that requires an active effort in understanding Star Wars. Certain people like Dave Filoni does, because he is a storyteller like Lucas. He is not perfect, but at least he shows the capacity to get invested in the minute aspects of Star Wars.

I do give Abrams credit that he probably genuinely wanted to make movies that "the fans" would like- nobody wants to blow a gig as big as directing the new Star Wars trilogy, and he's a Star Wars fan himself. But therein lies the problem- he was basically making movies for fanboys like him, and other fans (for example, people who actually liked what Rian Johnson did, or liked Rose, and yes they exist though you wouldn't know it from a casual look at the online fandom)... well, we got told to take a hike. They did put together a diverse cast, which I applaud- but then they ultimately undercut a lot of that cast or gave them stereotypical roles (trying to please everyone, again), which lead to weak characters and ultimately reinforced the Reich wing narrative that diverse casting is just "virtue signalling" done at the expense of telling good stories.

Ultimately, I don't see any indications of a real creative vision and the guts to stand by it anywhere among the major writers, directors, or producers of the new trilogy- except Rian Johnson. Whether you like what he tried to do or not (and its hard to judge because his work was undercut by the other films and his own bosses), he strikes me as the only person involved with actual ability to make major creative decisions who actually had a clear idea and the backbone to stand by it, and I respect that.

As a Producer of Star Wars,it's your job to know hiring someone like JJ Abrams is a bad idea. A random Internet user like me can tell it's a big problem to hire JJ Abrams from the very beginning. Surely someone who extensive Hollywood experience like Kennedy ought to know better? She repeatedly asked JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars, even after he turn it down the first time. Jj Abrams won't get to where he is today without the Hollywood connection and nepotism that got him the job in the first place.

Sadly, he got pilloried for it, and made the scapegoat for the spineless hacks around him who ran the franchise into the ground. Which honestly makes me wonder why any major director or writer who actually cares about their work as anything other than a paycheque would work for Disney- because they've basically sent a huge signal that creativity is unwanted, and that they will readily throw anyone who works for them under the bus and retcon their work to appease internet trolls and bigots.

Seriously, why would anyone (other than someone desperate for a paycheque) want to work on Star Wars now? You're inviting a decade of constant harassment online for working on a film that will simultaneously define the rest of your career/life, and get retconned away by the next film. If they don't just fire you half-way through filming because you said something that might step on the fragile sensibilities of the Fan Bros.

Because Rian Johnson is mismanaged by the upper management. A good CEO of Lucasfilm will know that you use a talent like Rian Johnson to set up the new trilogy like EP 7, rather than throw him to continue a half-assed start like EP 7.

[MKSheppard]

But that is not going to happen with the schedule Disney wanted. An episodic movie once every two years, and pump out movies at the rate Marvel does. Marvel managed to do it because the head of Marvel Studio, Kevin Feige is actively interested in doing the story-telling aspects of it.

Also, Marvel has almost sixty years (1960 to present) of comic plotlines they can steal be inspired by.

SW has this to a lesser extent; but most of their comic plotlines for 20 years under Dark Horse were shit to be fair.

[Batman]

Also for Marvel the comics were at the core of the franchise. Who but us gave a damn about the Wars EU? Or even knew about it?

[Gandalf]

It probably also hurts that SW is tied to some iconic (and old) actors. Casting while building the MCU was easy because they could cast a wide net, and find just the right person for the right price. In a boardroom setting, trying to recast the original actors may have seemed just too much.

[Batman]

It probably also hurts that SW is tied to some iconic (and old) actors. Casting while building the MCU was easy because they could cast a wide net, and find just the right person for the right price. In a boardroom setting, trying to recast the original actors may have seemed just too much.

So very much that. The Sequels weren't all that well received, and mostly deservedly so, but how well would they have done if they had recast Han, Luke and Leia?

[chimericoncogene]

Also, Marvel has almost sixty years (1960 to present) of comic plotlines they can steal be inspired by.

SW has this to a lesser extent; but most of their comic plotlines for 20 years under Dark Horse were shit to be fair.

I doubt a lot of the original marvel comics were substantially better to begin with, though. And they did eventually end up ripping off dark empire. Poorly.

SW had two decades of books and comics to draw on. At least steal properly from those and let us see an armada of Eclipses onscreen! Grab a few ship designs and settings! Give the fans Byss? World Devastators? Dac? Sun Crushers? Supernova inducers (a bit silly, but if you want a superweapon...)? The Maw?

Even if the story turned out crappy, we'd get to console ourselves by gawking over the Eclipse.

There was no need to completely ignore the EU, especially since there were many some bright spots worth stealing. I mean, at least the setting and organizations seem to have made more sense than what they came up with.

[ray245]

Also, Marvel has almost sixty years (1960 to present) of comic plotlines they can steal be inspired by.

SW has this to a lesser extent; but most of their comic plotlines for 20 years under Dark Horse were shit to be fair.

So were most Marvel stories. Civil War had an interesting idea, but it seems most people find that it devolved into a mess. On the other hand, popular storylines like the Dark Pheonix saga was botched despite 2 different attempts at adapting it.

What makes an adaptation good is the person adapting it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah.

Being "faithful to the source material" doesn't guarantee quality. Neither does hiring a fanboy to direct or write (if anything, they tend to do worse, in my experience, perhaps because they come in with a lot of baggage and preconceptions about the work).

In my opinion, one thing and one thing only will lead to good results: hiring competent professionals who care about their work and have a clear idea of what they want to do, and then giving them just enough resources to do it with a minimum of outside interference. And for God's sake, don't listen overmuch to the fandom.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmmm...on reflection I realised that my "anti Force user backlash leading to civil war" idea was basically the plotline of the EU "Fate of the Jedi" books (after Jedi going bad caused yet another galaxy-wide conflict). So scrap that.

I still think though that you shouldn't have Sith/Dark Side users at all. The Sith/Jedi conflict is done by ROTJ. Palpatine is dead, Vader is redeemed (and dead) and the Jedi are triumphant. If you keep bringing them back they become like the Daleks for the first few seasons after the Time War - "ok, how did the little bastards survive extinction THIS time?" It gets boring.

[MKSheppard]

For people who don't understand the problems with the Oppressed Mages trope, Mythcreants has a good post detailing exactly what is wrong with it. Here's the main points:

It’s Hard to Oppress Mages

Before we even get into the social and political problems of this trope, there’s a practical barrier that most stories fail to overcome: How do you oppress someone who can shoot fire out of their hands?

You create a order of warrior monks who can shoot fire out of their hands!

[MKSheppard]

Also for Marvel the comics were at the core of the franchise. Who but us gave a damn about the Wars EU? Or even knew about it?

I really hate having to point what I'm about to say over and over.

So the biggest gun board on the internet is the last place I'd expect to see a moderator of that board there talking about how Disney screwed up the Star Wars canon; comparing the "post-war" states of:

Old EU:
Empire slowly splintering over years from various warlords following Palpatine's death, allowing the New Republic to spread and take over.

Disney SW:
The Empire being defeated at the pyrric battle of Jakku and collapsing almost instantly; yet somehow the secretive First Order somehow grows to "take over galaxy" status without anyone noticing?

This was followed by posters on that board mentioning things like:

Vong
Thrawn
Karen Traviss (yes she has a reputation there as well)
Suncrusher
Various other EU stuff
How the Holdo Manouver broke SW, because why do you need a Death Star, when you can put hyperdrives onto asteroids and hit planets with swarms of them?

Etc.

Basically, NEEEEERRD stuff.

It also refutes the concept that "nobody read the old EU", when random people are mentioning it in the last places you'd expect it to be mentioned.

As was pointed out to me by a friend, the EU was basically what SW was during the hibernation period of 1987 to the 1997 Special Editions.

Basically, if you wanted new Star Wars during that decade; you had to read the EU novels or look at the stuff considered part of the EU (such as games like TIE Fighter or the WEG RPG sourcebooks).

This is where a lot of the problems are arising from, and it all goes back to the unprecedented decision in 1990 that Lucasfilm made:

1.) The new novel trilogy that they'd contracted Timothy Zahn to write would be considered "canon", as in the official continuation of the Star Wars story.

2.) They sent Zahn a box full of WEG RPG material and told him to use that where possible.

Before that, spin off novels and role playing games were considered kind of "licensed fanfiction" -- you had scores of novels, comics and games for all sorts of sci fi shows, from Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica, but they had no real effect on each other, everyone (including the writers of other books) ignored each other.

Case in point, the Star Trek licensed boardgame -- "Star Fleet Battles" -- outside the SFB universe, all the stuff in there doesn't exist. Same with FASA's Trek RPG.

Against this, LucasFilm's "SW-EU" was something new -- it was one of the first shared universes -- you could jump from novel series or to the comics or even video games -- and they'd try to respect each other and co-exist; making the stories feel like they COUNTED, instead of being disposable cash grabs for nerd dollars (Trek novels anyone?)

And it was popular too!

NYT Bestseller lists

Heir to the Empire:

26 May 1991 -- #11
02 June 1991 -- #6
09 June 1991 -- #5
16 June 1991 -- #2
23 June 1991 -- #2
30 June 1991 -- #1
07 July 1991 -- #2
14 July 1991 -- #3
23 July 1991 -- #3
28 July 1991 -- #3
4 August 1991 - #4
11 August 1991 - #3
18 August 1991 - #5
25 August 1991 - #6
01 September 1991 - #6
08 September 1991 - #7
15 September 1991 - #6
22 September 1991 - #8
29 September 1991 - #13

19 weeks in the list.

Dark Force Rising:

7 June 1992 -- #3
14 June 1992 -- #3
21 June 1992 -- #2
28-Jun-92 -- #4
5-Jul-92 -- #5
12-Jul-92 -- #4
19-Jul-92 -- #5
26-Jul-92 -- #5
2-Aug-92 -- #7
9-Aug-92 -- #9
16-Aug-92 -- #9
23-Aug-92 -- #7
30-Aug-92 -- #11
6-Sep-92 -- #15
13-Sep-92 -- #15

15 weeks in the list

Last Command:

25-Apr-93 -- #3
2-May-93 -- #3
9-May-93 -- #3
16-May-93 -- #4
23-May-93 -- #6
30-May-93 -- #7
6-Jun-93 -- #9
13-Jun-93 -- #9
20-Jun-93 -- #9
27-Jun-93 -- #10
4-Jul-93 -- #12
11-Jul-93 -- #13

11 weeks in the list

It's interesting to note that looking back, I ran across another book; showing how much different things were back then:

Imzadi by Peter David was actually on the bestseller list the same time Dark Force Rising was. Trek had a chance to become a shared universe back then, but they blew it with their "lol officially licensed fanfic" views towards multimedia (Comics, books, video games).

Basically lots of people liked having a shared universe that felt like it counted.

WHO KNEW *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

The current major shared universe, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is raking in cash for two reasons:

A.) It works because it locks down the back stories of Marvel characters to have a definite beginning, middle and end, like Captain America's story from 2011 to 2019. This isn't the case in the mainline comics; where it's always "Captain America was revived ten years ago" using a constantly sliding logarthmic scale of time where Peter Parker is only a few years out of college, etc.

B.) They've kept it tight -- it's mostly the movies (for now). That's a big reason Agents of SHIELD and the Netflix Marvel shows failed -- because they didn't count -- they were just disposable trashfic like the old licensed Star Trek novels.

Disney's big mistake with decanonizing the old EU was that even though it had become a bloated mess of itself, they failed to realize how dangerous decanonizing it was.

While it's one thing to say "this thing never existed" and strike it....the fandom will forgive you if what you struck was genuinely that bad.

Case in point Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster -- that book was decanonized under the old LFL regime in 1991-1992, while at the same time they canonized the old Brian Daley novels (Han Solo at Stars End, etc).

A non-Star Wars example would be Galactica 1980. If you declared that G1980 never existed, and that your new Battlestar Galactica was to be a creative continuation of the first series, nobody would blame you for that.

Disney, I don't think realized how much people had become emotionally invested into certain EU characters and events:

Mara Jade
Talon Karrde
Grand Admiral Thrawn
Captain Pellaeon
Aaron Allston's "X-Wing Series" was full of minor characters, and such like Corran Horn (though it was a bit over the top for Horn to have Jedi lineage).

Hell, even Borsk Fey'la and his Bothans were nice to have around as scheming assholes.

But what really did in Disney was....

They took their own sweet time to bring characters and such back into the new continuity after going straight to global thermonuclear war on 25 April 2014 and nuking the entire EU, all 25+ years of it.

It took two whole years before Thrawn was reintroduced, and this time in a Children's TV show (Rebels Season 3 in 2016), and three years for Thrawn to get a serious book (Thrawn by Zahn in 2017).

When you do something like what Disney did, the fandom will never trust you again, and will be gun shy about emotionally (and financially/timewise) investing into the fandom again.

This is a dangerous move today, as Star Wars is in the 'mature' phase of it's life cycle -- in 1990, there really weren't a lot of options for sci fi franchises, you had Star Wars, Star Trek, and maybe Doctor Who.

Today, there's a franchise for EVERYTHING:

Halo (Video Gaming)
Mass Effect (Video Gaming)
Babylon 5 (TV/Movie Franchise)
The Expanse (TV)
Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Basically, today's preteen and teenager have more choices to choose; and Disney's own Marvel franchise is cannibalizing Star Wars' potential installed base in children as well.

Which means that the core Star Wars demographic right now is the Gen X and Early Millennial market in their 30s and 40s. This makes splintering the Fandom EXTREMELY dangerous.

Another example of splintering is over in Star Trek:

Right now we have three different timelines to follow in Trek:

Kelvinverse
Discoveryverse
Original Timeline with the PICARD Series and maybe the Star Trek Online game which has acted as a continuation of the original timeline since 2010.

ST: Online has had TEN years of backstory built up in the universe through missions and other stuff that even casual fans have played the game for; if nothing else but to see what happened 30 years after Nemesis.

ST:O had Denise Crosby reprise her role as Tasha Yar's daughter I believe back in 2013, players got to see Captain Harry Kim in command of his own ship, and an attempt to bring closure to the Temporal Cold War, with Walter Koenig and Michael Doohan's son voicing their characters in a time plot; along with trying to incorporate the Kelvinverse somehow.

It's an ambitious attempt to try and answer some questions the fans have, and if they throw that out (and probably will) with PICARD, it will annoy a lot of the ST:O fans and fragment the Original timeline fanbase AGAIN.

Pissing the fans off like this is never a good idea.

Why?

When you have a good (mostly) coherent universe running on all cylinders; the fandoms will make excuses and explanations for your goofs.

Case in point, Khan's "I never forget a face" to Chekov in WRATH OF KHAN, but Chekov didn't join the crew until Season 2 (Space Seed was Season One).

Most of Trekdom's explanation for that mistake is to postulate that Chekov was on the Enterprise in Season 1, but as a lower ranked non-bridge crew officer (offscreen), before being promoted between Season 1 and Season 2.

When you alienate them, they won't even bother to fix your mistakes for you -- case in point the new Disney Sequel Trilogy (TFA/TLJ/ROS) -- nobody really wants to expend mental energies to "fix" boo-boos anymore, particularly not after Rise of Skywalker.

A big reason for not wanting to expend mental energies is TIME.

A heavy chunk of the SW fandom isn't young anymore -- we don't have 20-30 hours a week of obligatory activity (school or part time jobs); with long idle breaks (summer break, spring break, etc). We're now pushing 40+ hours a week, with the weekends and maybe a few holidays a year off.

So we're more sensitive to the "invested time" of our youth; and if you want to force us to watch your "new" canon to get caught up (the Dave Filoni shows), we'll just shrug our shoulders and move on to the latest thing on Netflix (Justified, Longmire, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul).

All the more so when Disney EU quickly fell into the old bad habits:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Phasma%27s_armor

Phasma had the armor polished in chromium, which had been salvaged from a Naboo yacht that had once belonged to Emperor Palpatine of the Galactic Empire, the First Order's precursor

Just look at Phasma's entry:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Phasma

It's the equivalent of a fat man having liposuction and bariatric surgery, only to keep eating a cake every night, and it makes me NOT want to invest time in keeping up with whatever unholy mess Disney has cooked up.

[Adam Reynolds]

The other problem is that personally I feel like other newer franchises have almost done a better job at being inspired by the classics and taking things in an interesting direction than any of the official franchise continuations. If you want something like the fantasy elements of Star Wars, Avatar The Last Airbender has similar martial arts based on awesome magic, in a way that is more compatible with real Eastern religions than The Force(notably it gets the idea of balance right). If you want awesome space battles, the semi-realistic physics of The Expanse gives you the battle of Thoth Station which somehow had more tension than any battle I've seen in Trek or Wars in a long time. If you want the big sprawling universe, as Shep noted the MCU has this covered.

Then there is the franchise that has usurped Star Wars for me in terms of being the default one I use for tabletop RPGs, Mass Effect. Mass Effect somehow captures the best elements of both Star Wars and Star Trek and somehow made it into a generally more coherent universe.

Like Star Wars, it has the feeling of an epic universe that feels like people actually live there, as well as drawing on enough diverse stories that it feels like just about anyone could fit into the universe. As part of a bet, I once featured characters inspired by Toph and Motoko Kusanagi in an ME tabletop RPG and it generally felt consistent enough. I'm not exaggerating when I say just about any character could fit into Mass Effect. The same is largely true for stories, it can play genre roulette just as well as Clone Wars did. Unlike Star Wars, it is a generally more consistent universe that draws upon science fiction primarily, meaning it doesn't have the odd genre hybrids that Star Wars does as well as allowing a scientist character to work much more cleanly.

Like Star Trek, it has the heroic spaceship crew on behalf of a united humanity who are exploring the universe and building alliances with a variety of diverse alien races. Unlike Star Trek, the enemies of the Mass Effect universe are a proper threat that is never undercut by lazy storytelling. I also find it amusing that Star Trek Picard basically borrowed The Reapers.

Possibly because it is already an RPG in which it feels like nothing is set in stone, it also feels like it is easier to just ignore the ending to Mass Effect 3 and rewrite a new one as desired. I generally go with a take on the rejected Dark Energy plot that makes a great deal more sense.

Basically, NEEEEERRD stuff.

Gun nerds are still nerds.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, Marvel has almost sixty years (1960 to present) of comic plotlines they can steal be inspired by.

SW has this to a lesser extent; but most of their comic plotlines for 20 years under Dark Horse were shit to be fair.

I doubt a lot of the original marvel comics were substantially better to begin with, though. And they did eventually end up ripping off dark empire. Poorly.

SW had two decades of books and comics to draw on. At least steal properly from those and let us see an armada of Eclipses onscreen! Grab a few ship designs and settings! Give the fans Byss? World Devastators? Dac? Sun Crushers? Supernova inducers (a bit silly, but if you want a superweapon...)? The Maw?

Even if the story turned out crappy, we'd get to console ourselves by gawking over the Eclipse.

There was no need to completely ignore the EU, especially since there were many some bright spots worth stealing. I mean, at least the setting and organizations seem to have made more sense than what they came up with.

They didn't completely ignore the EU, though. Disney continuity has taken stuff from it, albeit more in the animated shows than in the live action films.

And to me, just rehashing a bunch of EU concepts wouldn't have been terribly satisfying.

That said, I do wish we'd gotten Mara Jade. I'd also like to see Kuat's shipyards on the big screen, myself.

[Formless]

Another example of splintering is over in Star Trek:

Right now we have three different timelines to follow in Trek:

Kelvinverse
Discoveryverse
Original Timeline with the PICARD Series and maybe the Star Trek Online game which has acted as a continuation of the original timeline since 2010.

But that's a fan invention. There is only two timelines, the Kelvinverse (which is basically abandoned now) and the original timline. Like it or not, the MMO was never canon to begin with and Discovery is officially retconned into the original timeline. However, it is telling that fans have so much emotionally invested into Star Trek and Discovery's place in it that they would invent a whole conspiracy theory of it being a different timeline when the owners of the franchise can casually state that it isn't (and have done), and the way Trek canon rules work fans categorically have no rebuttal to that. The Star Wars fans are unwilling to chuck canon to the wind when they preferred the old EU, in whole or in part (and at least one guy in the story group has encouraged them to do so if that's their preference!); whereas Star Trek fans are willing to throw canon rules to the curb when they don't like the new stories that are being told, although they like to make up conspiracy theories to justify it.

[MKSheppard]

But that's a fan invention. There is only two timelines, the Kelvinverse (which is basically abandoned now) and the original timline. Like it or not, the MMO was never canon to begin with and Discovery is officially retconned into the original timeline. However, it is telling that fans have so much emotionally invested into Star Trek and Discovery's place in it that they would invent a whole conspiracy theory of it being a different timeline

Commentary:

1.) ST:O was pretty much the only game in town if you were an original timeline fan from 2010 to 2020 (when Picard came out). Throwing that out will have some consequences; as I've said before; you can only get people emotionally invested and then pull the rug out from under them so many times before they become gun shy.

2.) Wait what? Conspiracy theory over Discovery? It's clearly not part of the original timeline; the Klingons from the first 45 minutes of Discoveryverse prove that they're not in the original timeline; but I digress; I kind of stopped watching Discovery after the first episode. I might resume it later.