I'm still agog that Disney took the message of The Last Jedi (You don't need to be special to be a hero, you just need to try) out back with a shotgun so that they could make "No, actually everyone is related and only the Skywalkers matter, super wacky no-way school style"
From a purely cynical standpoint, you want kids to feel engrossed in the universe because they'll be new fans and get their parents to buy them shit
From an idealistic standpoint, imagine being a kid and being told "Haha, get fucked, you're not special, you can't be a hero, here's a stormtroopers costume, it's $69.99", tell me you wouldn't be crushed
Yup they almost did something by showing that random kid force pulling a broom then quickly retconned it back to basically working the same way kings are appointed.
My god, they did every possible thing wrong
Like, how do you announce the villain in Fortnite and make it the complete asspull of
Somehow, the Emperor has returned?announce the villain in Fortnite
holy shit I memory holed that lmao that was so dummmmmmmmb
The New Jedi Order era was the perfect setup to tell endless stories in the Star Wars universe. Luke is hosting a new academy at the old Yavin 4 base, and you have dozens or hundreds of people coming to Jedi temple, and they're all from different cultures. They're of all ages and races and alien species. Some of them bring their own culture's force tradition with them, while others got scouted by a Jedi that met them while they were doing a regular 9-5.
Infinite variety for galactic adventure right there, it plays into the "you too can be a Jedi" fantasy, and Disney's version of the Star Wars Universe doesn't have it. Low key that's why all of their shows have been prequels, because they left the Star Wars continuity in a really closed state after the last movie. They should either retcon the whole trilogy or do a big time skip to make the Jedi a diverse and interesting organization again, since that's such a huge pillar of the Star Wars universe.
Star Wars is about big ideas and concepts like ...
Like Good vs Evil and the superiority of special-powers people!
Like imperialism and fascism arising from liberalism
Yeah, but at least it was high-effort schlock. Lucasfilm invented new filming technology and techniques to get the results they wanted. George Lucas had a story he wanted to tell and an experience he wanted to create for his audience.
Disney just wanted to dispose of the original characters as quickly and cheaply as possible so they could be replaced with new characters that they would have full control of (no established lore or fan base) and new actors that they wouldn't have to pay as much.
Lucas shopped Star Wars out to make money, but it was mostly to enable his projects and support his filming technology addiction (greed with a purpose).
Disney just wants to make money from Star Wars. They don't care about the story or the characters or the universe or the experience as long as people will keep buying it (greed with no purpose) and you can smell the low-effort coming off of their movies. You can feel it while you're sitting in the theater watching for the first time, not sure exactly what's wrong but sure that something is... even if you can't explain it in specific terms, you can feel the lack of care .
Well maybe... I certainly wasn't born rich like Harry.
But... I don't have any 'woke agenda' complaints about Disney's handling of Star Wars, and I'm not old enough to have seen the originals in theaters.
Lucas, for all his clumsiness in writing dialogue and characters, cared about what he was doing and it showed in his work. He got other people to care about it too, and they improved the work.
Disney doesn't care, and it shows. All of my complaints about 'new' Star Wars stem from the money-grubbing corporatism and short-sighted fanbase exploitation that the new owners have demonstrated.
So, I don't think I'm really like Peter in this comic... I'm not carrying that burden of nostalgia, and frankly with Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks as examples I think some 'wokeness' only improves old franchises.
so they could dispose of old characters quickly
Except that they had multiple opportunities to kill off Leia, including when the actor actually fucking died, and instead of that we got her performing space Jesus magic, only to awkwardly die the next movie
Just terrible, and terrible for no discernable reason,
Imagine making one of the most large scale planned cinematic experiences over 10 years and then just not planning your star wars trilogy for some reason
They definitely weren't out to kill the originals, they needed at least one per movie to nostalgia bait people in and were more than happy to use Carrie Fisher's ghost
Well, that's what I mean though - they only included the original characters as nostalgia bait, and then wrote them out of the plot as quickly as they felt they could get away with. They certainly had no plans to continue writing stories with the original characters, and look, they disposed of Ackbar off-screen. It was literally just for trailer scenes so they could draw people into the theaters.
Of course, with the absolutely pointless sideplot they sent Finn on in The Last Jedi, and the batshit discombobulated plot of Rise of Skywalker, it's not clear that Disney had any plans for writing stories with their new characters either.
Star Wars has been creatively bankrupt since 1983. I have not seen Andor though and I'm told that slaps.
Andor is the first time the Star Wars universe has ever been interesting to me because it's the first series to actually frame it as the North Vietnamese versus the Americans and explore imperialism. They do a good job of making it not feel like Star Wars and avoiding all the tropes that make it so boring compared to Star Trek.
I was so happy when I finished all of Andor and realized I hadn't heard a single lightsaber noise
When we saw stormtroopers for the first time and it actually felt like a threat I was so excited
Even now rewatching Maarva's speech hits hard. Watching Brasso kick some cop in the chest and hit another one with a brick is just
I should watch the rest of Andor.. the lightsaber Jedi stuff was never what it was about for me as a kid, I was all about the space battles, starfighters, and regular people fighting back against an evil empire. But I watched Return of the Jedi first in VHS so that might have something to do with it, lol
Andor is so far above even the OT in writing quality that I would hesitate to call it a Star Wars show, it's an excellent show that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe.
There's usually at least some neat idea in Star Wars stuff, it's just that the overall execution is usually lacking. The prequels are a classic example -- some decent bones in there, but a lot of recycled stuff (another big spaceship on guy can blow up on his own??) and some real goofy missteps.
Yeah, I had trouble getting into it first time around but it's great. Every IP should have a but what if we did heists to fund the revolution spinoff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ke6UfrosT0 This fan trailer goes pretty hard
I have legit never understood this. Aside from not having any fucking nostalgia at all for being a child (zero agency, things decided for you, school is worse than most jobs) I grew up with George Lucas' dumb fuckin scifi property. I still have the DVDs we got to replace the old videotapes, the Silver ones with the laserdisc rips. I played a bunch of the games, had a few of the Dark Horse comics, and the end result is... The original trilogy are fun 70s scifi with some cool themes and reallly impressive effects work. I'll never not keep rips of 4K77, 4K80 and 4K83 or the Despecialised versions around, but that's about it. No harsh to classic EU stuff, I'm sure the Thrawn trilogy and stuff are cool, but I do not understand the relentless brand loyalty combined with "everything was better when I was ten years old" that these people experience.
I think the experience of reading the old EU content was really in keeping with the Star Wars spirit. Star Wars was all about capturing the feeling of old sci fi serials like Flash Gordon, with a splash of westerns and samurai films, and the golden era of Star Wars novels and games were pulpy and schlocky and fun in all the same ways as Star Wars' inspirations were - but without the annoying self awareness of many modern takes on the genre (including most of Disney's films and shows, which can't have a single camp moment without someone looking straight at the camera and mugging like an idiot). I don't particularly feel that relentless brand loyalty either, but its undeniably something I've spent a lot of my life doing and that I have a lot to say about.
It's still there, it's just called Legends, which is kinda neat.
As much as I give Disney flak for a lot of what they’ve done with Star Wars, the Legends treatment of the EU is something I’ll give them credit for. They couldn’t excise the entirety of the EU without pissing off fans, but it’s also unavoidable that Lucas exercised little control of the EU so while there’s great stuff in there, there’s also a lot of slop and, more importantly, contradictory stories. So they couldn’t make it canon without a god awful mess to clean up.
Legends was the only way to square the circle: it’s not canon, but it’s not necessarily not canon, and (unless overwritten by something we make), it could become canon down the line.
oh so they're continuing Jaina solo's story?
I want new slop building on the old slop, not to re-read that stuff a 4th time
Unfortunately no, the only "new" Legends content in the past decade were stories that were mid stride being finished, and the only one currently in production is the ongoing storyline of the MMO The Old Republic.
I thought that was an interesting challenge for the characters. certainly better than the The Family crap that started getting into the books just before the buyout.
It's more fun to think about Star Wars than it is to consume it. The world has a lot to captue in the imagination, but most of the stories told in it are derivative.
Kinda like 40k.
I "stopped being a fan" in 2008 when the 3D movie came out, but before then I had read so many damn books set in that universe...
Yeah, Star Wars is a lot more interesting in theory than in practice.
Yep, the Jedi, Sith, cool planets and vistas, all seem ripe for storytelling that just isn't there because the backdrop is often just vibes.
I've mentioned this before but one of the funniest things I saw about star wars was one of these nerd malcontents posting "the success of the new Dune movie proves that there could be star wars aimed at an adult audience."
Like bro you are so close to understanding that it's Sci fi slop for children. So fucking close.
Didn't those people already get Rogue One? What are they complaining about?
I was going about, living my life, and then I remember that someone on hexbear implied that the new Acolyte show didn't contain very much magical martial arts? Like what's the fucking point????? If it's not that then nobody cares about the fucking Jedi. Just hit each other!
I love the chuds losing their shit and blaming Kathleen Kennedy for 'ruining Star Wars!'. She's been involved with LucasFilm/SW since 1983. You'd think that forty years would be ample time to kill a fucking film franchise, even for C-Suite level talent.
There's a whole ecosystem of youtube critics who complain about the degrading quality of..... spongebob episodes.
You would think after 40 years the trend of "you like the media that came out when you were the target audience for it and dislike it once you outgrow that age and their target audience is someone else" would be pretty obvious
star wars has never been anything other than dog shit for children 👍
Death to America
