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

[MKSheppard]

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.

Ah, the fourth mass effect 3 ending; head canon.

Mass Effect still had a LOT unexplored with the trilogy; to wit:

[Gandalf]

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?

I guess it's related to Disney's Moneyball approach to the MCU. In making the MCU, each measure of production is measured to maximise profits. RDJ gets buckets of money, because he brings more money than not having him. Terrance Howard can be recast because he's less important, and so on.

Applying this approach to SW makes sense, in that you need to transition the universe away from those central few roles in order to preserve the long term viability of the property. So pay for the original three to come back, so you can move them on and transition to cheaper actors and a more decentralised shared universe.

[Formless]

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.

Oh, come on Shep. Star Trek's canon policy has never changed. Discovery is canon regardless of how it depicts the Klingons, which by the way, is only inconsistent with the idea that they are a monoculture. And alien monocultures are shitty writing to begin with. How do Klingons mourn the dead? Multiple ways! They have never been consistent about that! One time a couple Klingons said the body is irrelevant after they die, but then Worf tells us that there is a Klingon tradition of watching a corpse to ward off predators; so much for it being irrelevant! There are 24 houses, it only makes sense that some of them have different funerary practices. As for the makeup, bluntly put, the TOS movies already fucked that up by giving them forehead ridges when they didn't have them before. ANd yes, I know about Enterprise's retcon to try and explain it, but it does not explain how Kang, Kodos, and Kor could all have smooth foreheads in TOS and forehead ridges in DS9, and frankly I'm not interested in bandaging the problem by speculating. The creators of Discovery obviously thought that if the audience could accept a blatant makeup change once, they would accept it again in the name of keeping up with the times. But some dipshits can't leave it alone, so they instead have to invest time and effort into inventing a non-existent excuse for Discovery being non-canon... which is non-negotiable. The canon is decided by the company, end of story. Besides, is the change to the Klingons any worse than the changes they made to the Ferengi? By the thinking of Discovery's detractors, it shouldn't be possible for the first two seasons of TNG to exist in the same canon as DS9 because the Ferengi culture is so extremely different. But such is how the canon works. And I would be among those who would gladly see Enterprise written off as a holodeck program sitting on Riker's shelf, but that's also not how the canon works.

And one more thing. You said that there are more franchises now in competition with Star Trek and Star Wars than during their peaks in the 90's and early 2000's. But that just isn't true. Lets make a list, shall we?

In the 90's and early 2000's the competition was:

Babylon 5 (which you listed as a modern show! WTF?)
Neo-Battlestar Galactica
The Matrix trilogy
The X-Files
Red Dwarf
Stargate
Sliders
Andromeda (*vomits*)
Firefly
Farscape
Earth: Final Conflict
Futurama
...and probably many more that you have to dig through TVTropes to find because they weren't so successful.

And that's just pulling from film and television, which are the primary competition for these two franchises. If I throw anime into the mix, that adds Gundam and Cowboy Beebop and who knows what else on the pile.

Today? Not nearly as many works:

The Expanse
The MCU
The Orville
ONE season of Red Dwarf
a brief X-Files revival (the premise just doesn't work with today's Conspiracy Theory landscape)
And maybe the Arrow-verse

Plus the Mecha genre imploded in anime, so not so many new SF works are coming out of Japan recently (mostly the studios are pumping out Iseki garbage like SAO *vomits again*). Its not nothing, but the state of SF on television and the movies is not like it was.

And if we bring video games into play... well, first , Mass Effect died with Andromeda. Sorry, its true. Management screwed the pooch on that one But setting that aside, video games are their own medium that's not really comparable. There are storytelling techniques regarding player choice and involvement that can be done in a game like Mass Effect that don't apply to TV and film. So its not a fair comparison. Even bringing games like KOTOR into canon can be problematic because they cause inherent continuity problems. Is Revan male or female? Did they rejoin the Sith or stay with the Jedi? Its up to the player, and that's a problem to a canon like Star Wars. Still, games can be an important part of the franchise, which is why Disney ought to yank EA's exclusive license already. I don't know how Trek should handle games in the future, but keeping them non-canon doesn't create continuity issue by default, and players of STO already know that what they are playing is non-canon, so they mostly temper their expectations. Indeed, I've seen people say that STO's continuity is fun, but due to how much more warlike the Federation is in it, that's not actually the direction they want the TV series to go in.

[Vendetta]

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?

I guess it's related to Disney's Moneyball approach to the MCU. In making the MCU, each measure of production is measured to maximise profits. RDJ gets buckets of money, because he brings more money than not having him. Terrance Howard can be recast because he's less important, and so on.

Applying this approach to SW makes sense, in that you need to transition the universe away from those central few roles in order to preserve the long term viability of the property. So pay for the original three to come back, so you can move them on and transition to cheaper actors and a more decentralised shared universe.

Thing is though, that's not Disney. That was Marvel's approach as directed by Ike Perlmutter, notorious tightass and also somewhat racist, big friend of the current US President. Terrance Howard was recast because Don Cheadle would work for less and Perlmutter couldn't tell the difference because they're both black guys. (Notable: That decision to recast would have taken place before Disney bought Marvel)

Perlmutter being such a tightass was why Kevin Feige eventually went to Disney and threatened to quit unless Perlmutter was removed from having any control over the MCU whilst Civil War was in preproduction. (Notable: The bit he did control, the TV output, continued to be done as cheap as possible, see: Iron Fist, Inhumans.)

The problem with Disney isn't them being cheap, the problem with Disney is that they can afford to be lazy. They don't need to put any effort in any more, because they own fucking everything and everyone will go and see what they put out anyway because it's Disney.

[Gandalf]

Cheers for calling me up on that.

[chimericoncogene]

Does anyone think that going back 1,000 years instead might be an interesting direction to take the franchise? (or even 4,000 years, to the Great Hyperspace War - man George Lucas's team was good at naming things...)

I myself would like to see a full-scale Jedi-Sith religious jihad with the Republic's vast war-fleets either staying out of it or being sucked into the mess (Hey, it's the OLD REPUBLIC. The one with balls of steel and durasteel bikinis!)

The era is reasonably well-defined, filmmakers have material to draw on, and you have something completely different from the Imperial Era. Also, an ARMY OF SITH LORDS IN DURASTEEL BIKINIS! RAAAH!

The downside is that we have to sit through even more boring Jedi and Sith crap instead of seeing the thundering war-fleets of the Old Republic clash with the pirate navies of the Hutt Empire... The other downside is that is requires more saga-ish storytelling, which modern filmmakers seem to lack the stomach, temperament, and resources for.

The upside may be that a screwy movie doesn't ruin Star Wars as much, since it's more distant from the original setting.

A more Conan-the-Barbarian/Warhammer-40k-ish (vs. wild west) era IN STAR WARS would be interesting to watch.

But given marketing constraints, Disney-ness, and the limited profitability of the franchise, it'll probably never happen.

[The Romulan Republic]

No.

I don't want to go back thousands of years into the distant past (which will have to be just like the present in order to include all the familiar Star Wars gimicks and tropes). I don't want them to just endlessly mine Legends for old stories.

I want something new. I want worlds we've never seen, characters we've never met, conflicts we've never heard of, and I want the story to move forward.

Kylo had it right:

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."

[The Romulan Republic]

In somewhat related news, the Star Wars.com writer is alleging he was fired for tweeting criticisms of Rise of Skywalker on his private Twitter account:

https://thedirect.com/article/star-wars ... -skywalker

We're a little over five months past the release of the final installment of the Sequel Trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker, and our fandom is in as rough a state as ever. To say that the entire trilogy has been divisive would be a gross understatement, one that ignores the true nature of the constant back and forth we see on the daily.

With a high-profile franchise like Star Wars, disagreements are bound to happen. As they say, you can't please everyone. There's been a lot of talk about "toxic" fandom and questions of where to a draw a line in what should be civil discussion. By and large, voicing our opinions about the new films in a reasonable manner has little external impact for most of us, positive or negative.

A situation has arisen with one of the contributors to the main Star Wars website. Alex Kane, a writer who has provided many pieces for the official site, has been effectively fired for what he claims to be due to voicing his opinion about December's The Rise of Skywalker. Below is the tweet he posted announcing his dismissal:

Before we dig deep into the situation, it's very important to provide some context. Below is a small sampling of the tweets that Kane seems to be referring to in his announcement:

Since making the announcement, Kane temporarily turned his Twitter account to private before making it public again. Kane did not immediately respond to The Direct's request for comment.

This is an interesting situation here, particularly because it has real world consequences for the parties involved. Based on the Tweets retained, it appears that Kane's main gripe was with The Rise of Skywalker, and he certainly isn't alone in having a bone to pick with the film. As far as we can tell, there doesn't appear to be anything egregious about the way Kane offered his criticisms.

One of the primary issues at hand here is writer censorship. While employers have every right to terminate relationships with their workers, it's a bad look for Lucasfilm to do so over perfectly valid criticisms of a film. We're all fans first, and not everyone is happy with the decisions made for the Sequel Trilogy.

As writers, our most important job is to provide honest and truthful representations of topics we're covering. There's already too much irresponsible reporting happening in this world, so our priority is to share news in good faith. If Kane was blasting the film openly on the main site, Lucasfilm would be well within their rights to can him.

But he wasn't. It appears the extent of Kane's criticisms were tweets. Star Wars is a massive franchise, with countless things to write about. Even if they didn't want Kane to write pieces on Episode IX, there are endless topics he could have covered. Lucasfilm is a big company, and their products are wide-reaching. It's hardly unreasonable to assume there are some employees that aren't satisfied with the results of some of the films.

Conversely, by engaging in public criticism, Kane was immediately opening himself up to being dismissed. In this case, he lived by the lightsaber, and died by the lightsaber. While Kane may have had valid points, Lucasfilm is under no obligation to retain his services, and they're totally entitled to maintain a staff of upbeat writers.

The even greater issue that this situation factors into is the reception of criticism. As mentioned before, the entire Sequel Trilogy has been highly polarizing. The heated debates really started with Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi, but things have continually escalated since 2017 and The Rise of Skywalker added millions of gallons of gasoline to the fire.

As a famous queen-turned-senator once said, this war represents a failure to listen. For all of the bickering and debating that has occurred, it seems that neither side of the argument is truly willing to hear what the other has to say. In canning Kane for engaging in discussion about his dismay on Twitter, Lucasfilm is adopting the Ostrich approach of burying their heads in the sand - and we all know how Anakin would probably feel about that.

Kane's criticisms, at least the one's expressed in the Tweets above, were perfectly valid and shared in a respectful manner. The points made about Rey Skywalker are hardly indecent and resemble many of the arguments made by other fans unhappy with the film. To fire Kane and ignore his points here would be to ignore the same complaints made by countless other fans as well.

The Sequel Trilogy is a subject that a lot of people tend to tip-toe around. A lot of people hate them all, too. Some people enjoyed the first two, but were disappointed by the way The Rise of Skywalker ended it all. Many people hated all three. At the end of the day, we all enjoy or despise these movies for different reasons. The endless fighting stems from choosing to disregard them.

Of course, there are appropriate ways to go about levying criticisms. What Kane did, for example, was very reasonable. The vast majority of criticisms issued have been done so in a largely acceptable fashion. There are those who made nasty threats towards creators and cast members, but those are few and very far between.

We just celebrated the 40th anniversary for The Empire Strikes Back yesterday, a landmark for our franchise. If everyone can celebrate a film 40 years later, then people are more than able to criticize films that just came out. There's no time limit on how long fans are allowed to be upset about these movies, just like there's no limit for how long we can love them.

Alex Kane's situation is unfortunate. His firing is the result of several years' worth of fandom in-fighting. Lucasfilm is well aware of the criticism the new trilogy has received. Frankly, the only way to demand improved content is to convey unhappiness with the current material.

These films will be around forever, we all have to live with them. Many will happily do so, and others will never accept them as a continuation of George Lucas' story. Everyone can do better. Those that hate the films can let others love them, and those that love them can let the dissenters express valid points and engage in constructive discussion.

For all we know, there could be several other elements that led to Kane's dismissal that weren't disclosed to the public. If his account is true, it's a shame that he was canned for sharing his opinions. That's the nature of social media in the modern world. This situation can serve as a lesson for everyone to be more receptive of opposing views. We're all on the same team here.

Looks like Disney is staying the course, and firing people to silence dissent and appease the Fan Bros.

As an aside, this article can go fuck itself for essentially taking a both-sides approach to the racist, misogynistic trolls who harassed Kelly Tran off social media and other critics of the films, but there aren't a lot of news outlets that have picked up on this story yet, so the pickings were slim.

[chimericoncogene]

No.

I don't want to go back thousands of years into the distant past (which will have to be just like the present in order to include all the familiar Star Wars gimicks and tropes). I don't want them to just endlessly mine Legends for old stories.

I want something new. I want worlds we've never seen, characters we've never met, conflicts we've never heard of, and I want the story to move forward.

Kylo had it right:

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."

To be honest, I just want to see a good film.

How well do you know legends? How well do you know the original marvel comics? I barely know them from outlines on Wookieepedia.

New or old, original, modified or kept-as, what is important is whether or not the movie is good, and whether or not the movie reasonably conforms to the setting, and for me only, a few extra criteria like scientific accuracy, scientific creativity, imagination, galacto-political-economic consistency etc.

I'd be happy to see them turn Darth Plageius into a good political thriller (modifying the novel or something), or have them reuse elements, wider galactopolitical settings, characters or general storylines from Legends - because many of those were at least acceptable, and a few were even good.

We only have a sketch of what happens: the Jedi splinter, the Sith raise an Army, the Jedi raise an army of Jedi warlords, they fight, Sith and warrior Jedi all die in a big kaboom. Darth Bane survives to found the Rule of Two. The Republic Rises and disbands its standing armies. The rest - and more importantly, how to frame and tell the story - is pretty much up to the storyteller.

Until the writers and Lucasfilm gained our trust that they can indeed move the story forward, I think sticking close to Legends and testing the waters slowly would have been a good option - but Disney wanted return on investment, fast. At this point, with a need to rebuild trust, a rush back to safety is reasonable before heading back out - and it's where the entire thing appears to be headed, with things like the Mandalorian sticking close to the Battle of Endor and bringing people back from the Clone Wars cartoon.

Until you're sure you can walk properly, trying to run is unwise. If you stumble, revise how to walk, then start running again.
If you can't do a movie set in a reasonably defined setting right consistently, don't try to push the greater setting forward.

[The Romulan Republic]

No.

I don't want to go back thousands of years into the distant past (which will have to be just like the present in order to include all the familiar Star Wars gimicks and tropes). I don't want them to just endlessly mine Legends for old stories.

I want something new. I want worlds we've never seen, characters we've never met, conflicts we've never heard of, and I want the story to move forward.

Kylo had it right:

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."

To be honest, I just want to see a good film.

How well do you know legends? How well do you know the original marvel comics? I barely know them from outlines on Wookieepedia.

Moderately familiar. I haven't read every book.

New or old, original, modified or kept-as, what is important is whether or not the movie is good, and whether or not the movie reasonably conforms to the setting, and for me only, a few extra criteria like scientific accuracy, scientific creativity, imagination, galacto-political-economic consistency etc.

"scientific accuracy"? In a Star Wars film?

I'd be happy to see them turn Darth Plageius into a good political thriller (modifying the novel or something), or have them reuse elements, wider galactopolitical settings, characters or general storylines from Legends - because many of those were at least acceptable, and a few were even good.

We only have a sketch of what happens: the Jedi splinter, the Sith raise an Army, the Jedi raise an army of Jedi warlords, they fight, Sith and warrior Jedi all die in a big kaboom. Darth Bane survives to found the Rule of Two. The Republic Rises and disbands its standing armies. The rest - and more importantly, how to frame and tell the story - is pretty much up to the storyteller.

Until the writers and Lucasfilm gained our trust that they can indeed move the story forward, I think sticking close to Legends and testing the waters slowly would have been a good option - but Disney wanted return on investment, fast.

This is exactly the same mistake they made with the ST: sticking close to old material to "gain the trust" of the fans. They did a "safe" Star Wars movie with TFA, and then tried to follow it up with something new with TLJ. But TLJ was met with a massive backlash regardless, and they quickly backpeddled to incoherent fanservice.

At this point, with a need to rebuild trust, a rush back to safety is reasonable before heading back out - and it's where the entire thing appears to be headed, with things like the Mandalorian sticking close to the Battle of Endor and bringing people back from the Clone Wars cartoon.

Until you're sure you can walk properly, trying to run is unwise. If you stumble, revise how to walk, then start running again.
If you can't do a movie set in a reasonably defined setting right consistently, don't try to push the greater setting forward.

In short: Disney has been thoroughly cowed by the toxic part of the fandom, and has learned never to try to do anything too creative again. From now on, it'll just be same-old-same-old, and playing it safe.

[chimericoncogene]

Moderately familiar. I haven't read every book.

Precisely. Some stories haven't been told, or haven't been told well. They can be retold on the big screen, or elements used and kept. If done creatively, the film can be much better than - and different from - the original comic while keeping the best bits.

TFA was far too ambitious in all the wrong ways. In storytelling, it was idiotically conservative. In setting, it went insanely off-track while not giving us anything new. By "new" I mean galacto-political-economic-setting-wise, not story-wise. Stories can be as wild as they want within setting constraints, the more imaginative the better. We're on the same side on this part.

"scientific accuracy"? In a Star Wars film?

Of course. There's never enough "Star" in Star Wars. A desert planet in a binary star system, a few gas giants, ocean worlds, and ringed planets are interesting and reveal a nice understanding of basic astronomy, but the galaxy has far more to offer than boring old main sequence stars and habitable-zone planets!

Neutron stars glowing in x-ray, blasted apart by vast mining complexes for superheavy element production! Jet-black carbon planets made of tar, metal carbides and diamond, overflowing with naturally occuring plutonium and covered in strip mines, rich in the dark side of the Force!
Black holes with time dilation and inescapable Imperial prisons just beyond the event horizon, accessible only by long sublight trips!
Red dwarfs, surrounded by the ruins of ancient civilizations nearly as old as time itself, perfect for Indiana Jones to root through!
Rogue planets covered in plains of solid nitrogen, AT-ATs raising clouds of mist with every footfall!
Titan analogs, Europa analogs, hot Jupiters, super-earths, exotic ices, circumstellar discs rich in minerals, protoplanetary systems in various stages of formation...
White dwarfs, supernovae, red giants, blue giants...
And don't forget supernova remnants, filled with billions of tonnes of glowing radioisotopes and heavy elements, just waiting to be scooped up by lead-lined droid mining ships!

The possibilities are limitless! Which was why we fell in love with Star Wars in the first place!

Sword and sorcery, Wild Wild West, and High Fantasy amongst the stars is only fun if it is indeed happening AMONGST THE STARS!

[The Romulan Republic]

Moderately familiar. I haven't read every book.

Precisely. Some stories haven't been told, or haven't been told well. They can be retold on the big screen, or elements used and kept. If done creatively, the film can be much better than - and different from - the original comic while keeping the best bits.

TFA was far too ambitious in all the wrong ways. In storytelling, it was idiotically conservative. In setting, it went insanely off-track while not giving us anything new. By "new" I mean galacto-political-economic-setting-wise, not story-wise. Stories can be as wild as they want within setting constraints, the more imaginative the better. We're on the same side on this part.

If anything, the Legends EU tended to be painfully small in scope.

Of course. There's never enough "Star" in Star Wars. A desert planet in a binary star system, a few gas giants, ocean worlds, and ringed planets are interesting and reveal a nice understanding of basic astronomy, but the galaxy has far more to offer than boring old main sequence stars and habitable-zone planets!

Neutron stars glowing in x-ray, blasted apart by vast mining complexes for superheavy element production! Jet-black carbon planets made of tar, metal carbides and diamond, overflowing with naturally occuring plutonium and covered in strip mines, rich in the dark side of the Force!
Black holes with time dilation and inescapable Imperial prisons just beyond the event horizon, accessible only by long sublight trips!
Red dwarfs, surrounded by the ruins of ancient civilizations nearly as old as time itself, perfect for Indiana Jones to root through!
Rogue planets covered in plains of solid nitrogen, AT-ATs raising clouds of mist with every footfall!
Titan analogs, Europa analogs, hot Jupiters, super-earths, exotic ices, circumstellar discs rich in minerals, protoplanetary systems in various stages of formation...
White dwarfs, supernovae, red giants, blue giants...
And don't forget supernova remnants, filled with billions of tonnes of glowing radioisotopes and heavy elements, just waiting to be scooped up by lead-lined droid mining ships!

The possibilities are limitless! Which was why we fell in love with Star Wars in the first place!

Sword and sorcery, Wild Wild West, and High Fantasy amongst the stars is only fun if it is indeed happening AMONGST THE STARS!

Well, some more variety of settings certainly couldn't hurt, but it doesn't get to the root of the issue for me, which is the lack of a coherent story which follows logically from what came before while still progressing to something new.

Honestly, when I think about what Disney and Abrams did to the Sequel trilogy, it makes me sick. I think I finally sort of get what all the Prequel bashers saying the new movies raped their childhoods meant, now. I still think that they're twits, but I get how they felt. The world waited thirty years for a sequel trilogy, and they failed to stick the landing. They had so much money and technology and talent at their disposal, and they fucking wasted it on this shitty disjointed fanfic script. Now Rise of Skywalker is the official end of the Skywalker Saga, and also Carrie Fisher's last film appearance, and that's so fucking sad. And even if the will was there to remake it, they can't. Not the way it should have been. Carrie Fisher's dead, and Harrison Ford is ancient, and the fandom is toxic and divided and despised, and this is it, this is what we'll be stuck with. Forever.

Its almost enough to make me give up on the whole franchise, though I'd probably settle for RoS being stripped from canon and leaving TLJ as the official end of the ST. Still shitty and disappointing, but slightly more tolerable.

At this point I'm so disillusioned that I'd probably be down for killing the film franchise for ten or twenty years and then hard rebooting. Except even that wouldn't fix the problem, which is a fear of the new. Problem is, I'm not sure you can go forward to something I'd be interested in watching that builds on what we have with RoS, so I do kind of get the appeal of going back to old material in earlier eras. I don't know how you can have a Star Wars continuity which includes RoS and is still something I want to watch. Its flaws aren't minor. They are fundamental, and they damage not only the film itself but the entire Star Wars saga.

Palpatine's back. Great, Anakin's sacrifice is undercut, there was no Chosen One, no bringing balance to the Force.

The Skywalker family is dead. But we've going to call it the Rise of Skywalker and have a random nostalgia shot at the end, so that makes it okay. What a great note to end the saga on!

So we've got an emerging Rey/Finn/Rose love triangle? Okay, let's just ignore that plot thread, nothing to see here.

Rey is a Palpatine, but she's going to randomly call herself a Skywalker for no real reason. Oh, and she loves Kylo again now, never mind her decision to turn away from him at the end of TLJ. Forget any character growth, forget her having to create her own identity after finding out she's "no one", that was all a lie. We're left with an incoherent jumble of a character with no real arc or journey.

So we introduced a new character with Rose. Who's also our first ever notable character played by an Asian actor. What's that, racist and misogynists are upset? Because of course they are? Well, we can't have that. Quick, minimize her role. Who cares that we're basically spitting in the face of everyone who isn't a white man, and telling them they're expendable, and also signalling that we will throw our own employees under the bus if you harass them. Oh, and let's throw in a gratuitous reference to how our Latino character used to be a drug smuggler too. Got to keep the Trumpers happy!


God I want to kick JJ Abrams in the balls right now. Just, WHY? Who the fuck green-lit any of this shit, never mind gave it a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars?

[The Romulan Republic]

And you know, what really eats at me is that, for a saga so self-consciously concerned with fan service (if only toward certain groups of fans), they missed the single biggest, most obvious fan service moment, starting with TFA. The easiest thing in the world to understand, the thing that I guarantee you practically every life-long Star Wars fan most wanted when they went into that theatre, was to see the Big Three reunited on the big screen. Han, Luke, and Leia together again. And they couldn't even manage that. So not only did we get a "safe", gutless pandering fan service trilogy, but they couldn't even manage the most basic fan service, right out of the fucking gate.

I just... how do you fuck that up? I have never run a major corporation, I have never written or directed a blockbuster film, but I'm pretty sure that if someone had put that script on my desk, I would have asked for a rewrite, or at least a very good explanation for why, in a film obsessed with playing it safe, they went out of their way to torpedo the single most obvious, uncontroversial piece of fan service they could have offered.

[bilateralrope]

Does anyone think that going back 1,000 years instead might be an interesting direction to take the franchise? (or even 4,000 years, to the Great Hyperspace War - man George Lucas's team was good at naming things...)

I think a better idea might be to have films, or TV series, that don't involve a threat to the entire galaxy. Maybe just a sector, a planet, or just a few people. Give the writers the freedom to play around with small events.

Part of the reason I like The Mandalorian is because it doesn't look like it's escalating to a major event to the galaxy.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Does anyone think that going back 1,000 years instead might be an interesting direction to take the franchise? (or even 4,000 years, to the Great Hyperspace War - man George Lucas's team was good at naming things...)

I think a better idea might be to have films, or TV series, that don't involve a threat to the entire galaxy. Maybe just a sector, a planet, or just a few people. Give the writers the freedom to play around with small events.

Part of the reason I like The Mandalorian is because it doesn't look like it's escalating to a major event to the galaxy.

Isn't that more-or-less what they tried with Solo? There was no major galactic events in that, and that film was...less than well-received.

[ray245]

Isn't that more-or-less what they tried with Solo? There was no major galactic events in that, and that film was...less than well-received.

The issue with Solo is audience apathy towards a Han Solo movie. But many people did fall heads over heel over the Mandalorian.

[Coop D'etat]

The issue with Solo is that it wasn't very good. Meanwhile the Mandalorian is good. The problem is rarely basic ideas, its skill of execution.

[The Romulan Republic]

The issue with Solo is that it wasn't very good. Meanwhile the Mandalorian is good. The problem is rarely basic ideas, its skill of execution.

This is often true.

Rise of Skywalker being the exception. "Palpatine is suddenly back" is very much an intrinsically shit idea, as is "Let's throw people of colour under the bus". I'd argue Reylo was also a shitty idea, though I know that's a divisive one.

But yeah, most of the Disney eras' concepts weren't awful, even if they weren't great. Making the first film a "safe" by the numbers film before moving on to riskier ideas isn't a bad idea, on paper. Diversity in casting certainly isn't. Exploring Luke's loss and restoration of faith isn't a terrible idea. Deconstructing "both sides" cynicism, or subverting the idea of the lone vigilante hero vs corrupt authority figure, aren't terrible ideas. Rey Nobody isn't a terrible idea. I will even grudgingly acknowledge that Rey Palpatine could have been good, with proper set-up from the start. Any and all of those could have worked.

The problem isn't with the basic concepts, for the most part (at least until you hit the steaming pile of shit that is Rise of Skywalker). Its that they didn't actually stick with any of these concepts, didn't develop them, didn't see them through, but kept changing their plan half-way through to appease whoever whinged loudest about the last film (usually fandom gatekeepers and Reich-wing trolls).

Much as I despise him, having JJ Abrams direct all three films would probably have been better than what we got. Having Rian Johnson direct all three certainly would have been. Having almost anybody direct all three probably would have been. Because maybe, just maybe, we would have got some fucking coherency, instead of this jumbled mess.

The problem wasn't the plan. It was the utter lack of one.

[MKSheppard]

Carrie Fisher's dead, and Harrison Ford is ancient, and the fandom is toxic and divided and despised, and this is it, this is what we'll be stuck with. Forever.

You can do a lot of things with deep fakes nowadays. Give it another ten years (2030) and it will be affordable to pull off.

Rogue one nailed Princess Leia, while Tarkin was a bit...off.

[The Romulan Republic]

Carrie Fisher's dead, and Harrison Ford is ancient, and the fandom is toxic and divided and despised, and this is it, this is what we'll be stuck with. Forever.

You can do a lot of things with deep fakes nowadays. Give it another ten years (2030) and it will be affordable to pull off.

Rogue one nailed Princess Leia, while Tarkin was a bit...off.

Which raises questions about whether it is ethical to use a deceased actor's likeness without their permission (I assume it would be up to their estate, unless they've been dead for a very long time), about the fan backlash, and about the automation of jobs and how new actors will ever find work if studios can just cast the same few dozen dead stars forever.

But yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if in twenty years or so someone remakes Star Wars with deepfake Hamill, Fisher, and Ford.

[Vendetta]

Carrie Fisher's dead, and Harrison Ford is ancient, and the fandom is toxic and divided and despised, and this is it, this is what we'll be stuck with. Forever.

You can do a lot of things with deep fakes nowadays. Give it another ten years (2030) and it will be affordable to pull off.

And Star Wars will probably be unimaginative enough to try.


One of the reasons The Mandalorian is the best piece of Star Wars since 1983 is that it's a whole new story with new characters that are definitively and explicitly not related to any of the old characters.

Imagine that! Star Wars being a universe where more than seven people exist!

(JJ Abrams couldn't imagine it, after all).

[Gandalf]

And Star Wars will probably be unimaginative enough to try.

One of the reasons The Mandalorian is the best piece of Star Wars since 1983 is that it's a whole new story with new characters that are definitively and explicitly not related to any of the old characters.

Imagine that! Star Wars being a universe where more than seven people exist!

(JJ Abrams couldn't imagine it, after all).

It's also one of the places where Rogue One went horrifically wrong. Cut out all of the Tarkin/Vader appearances, and it might not have looked like the fanboy targeted piece of shit that it was.

[Darth Yan]

The sad thing is more that it didn't try anything NEW. For all it's flaws the old EU was willing to tackle different eras in time and built upon unexplored stuff (Even if it was light and dark it was that time when the Jedi were guardians of peace and justice). The Clone Wars, despite having the Sith, REALLY felt like a shitty war that was ultimately pointless.

Personally I think having the Empire as neo fascist terrorists would have been more interesting. Rather than having miraculously regained control they're basically the reactionaries trying so desperately to regain their power and fuck everyone else. Like if the SS werewolves actually put more effort into regaining power. You can have Evil force users in that they're using the organization. At least one fan version has the Son of Mortis as the power behind the throne of the first order

[Gandalf]

Why should they try new things? Films cost too much (relative to a lot of other merch) to experiment with a bunch of new ideas and properties.

[ray245]

Why should they try new things? Films cost too much (relative to a lot of other merch) to experiment with a bunch of new ideas and properties.

Because it eats into their long-term profits if people get bored of a franchise.