.As part of the testing process I thought I’d kick off the traditional Star Wars thread.
The Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor has been confirmed for Disney+ to begin shooting next year.
There’s also been new footage previewed from Rise Of Skywalker, although it’s not online
https://io9.gizmodo.com/new-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-footage-featured-r-1837449069
Sounds like it could be interesting.
We all know what is needed:
Now this? This is how you design a book:
Episode X: Tokyo Drift
On Monday night, the five Project Luminous authors and Mike Siglain, creative director, at Lucasfilm, gathered at Walt Disney Studios to pull back the curtain on the cross-medium event. Siglain said he first pitched the concept of an inter-connected historical Star Wars story back in 2014. Now, after tons of creative meetings, concept art, and Kathleen Kennedy’s stamp of approval to go wild and experiment, Lucasfilm and its publishing partners have beget “The High Republic” era. Taking place in a pax romana of the Star Wars universe, The HIgh Republic stories find the Jedi serving as a kind of Knights of the Roundtable for the galaxy, and a new threat, the punk-apocalyptic Nihil, pushing them to the brink. The premise of the books and comics boils down to a simple question: “What scares the Jedi?”
In Phase 1, the stories include Soule’s novel Light of the Jedi, Ireland’s middle-grade novel A Test of Courage, Scott’s The High Republic Marvel comic, Gray’s Into the Dark novel, and Older’s IDW book The High Republic Adventures. In the future, the High Republic will add additional publishing partners including Abrams, becker&mayer!, DK, Insight Editions, Titan Publishing, and Viz Media.
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Very hard pass on “The High Republic”. ANOTHER prequel holds no interest for me.
As with other Star Wars projects supposed to be taking place far in the past, I don’t really mind it in these cases. I mean, this is so far removed from the present of the movies that it might as well be their future as their past. There really isn’t any direct connection anyway.
I’m fine with the general idea of the High Republic. It’s kind of the scenario that I expected back when I first heard about the prequels.
What about the novel is controversial?
Female characters have dialogue, I’m guessing?
What about the novel is controversial?
Female characters have dialogue, I’m guessing?
Worse – written by a female. Yes, such is the hellspawned environment of parts of Twitter.
What about the novel is controversial?
Female characters have dialogue, I’m guessing?
Worse – written by a female. Yes, such is the hellspawned environment of parts of Twitter.
Not sure if it’ll display right, but fan behavior is having an effect on the business side of Star Wars:
I wish I could tell you that the intensity of #StarWars discourse or the way some readers feel it is appropriate to treat writers hasn't had an impact on finding new authors willing to write for Star Wars.
I wish I could tell you that. I really really do.
— Tom (@DarthInternous) March 1, 2020
No it wasn’t implied he was a clone. It was stated that Snoke was a clone. The clear implication was that this was the same Palpotine from RotJ (he had battle damage and was hooked up to life support systems).
If Palpatine can live on in cloned bodies, what’s to keep him from jumping into another cloned body after dying in Rise of Skywalker?
So much for the vaunted Story Group.
After The Last Jedi, I’m really at a point where I just sadly shake my head. The people shepherding Star Wars are completely clueless about the mechanics of the Star Wars universe, basic storytelling skills, and logic.
I have no idea where it’s coming from… Iger, Horn, Kennedy, the Story Group, the individual filmmakers. It seems like they keep fumbling the ball at every turn, and when they dig themselves into a hole, they just keep digging deeper. It’s a rudderless ship with too many chefs and no captain.
It seems like they keep fumbling the ball at every turn, and when they dig themselves into a hole, they just keep digging deeper. It’s a rudderless ship with too many chefs
As a big fan of mixed metaphors this paragraph made me very happy.
I was not unhappy with the finale of the Abrams trilogy. If nothing else, I can now hope that everyone is done with the Skywalker saga, and will now turn their creative talents toward the vast but barely-explored Star Wars universe. THE MANDALORIAN was a good start, and I’m looking forward to seeing more stories on the big and small screens that continue to add to the SWU.
Marvel and Fiege were smart to begin introducing non-Avengers characters in the MCU in an effort to expand potential stories beyond standard superhero/supervillain stuff. Disney/Lucasfilms/Bad Robot now have the opportunity to move beyond the Jedi/Sith stuff they’ve milked to death since 1977.
I don’t have a problem with Jedis. Ezra, Kanan and Ahsoka were good in Rebels. But I agree they need to get rid of the Skywalkers. it was a very dysfunctional family and they can rest in peace.
Looking at Eps I-IX as a whole, does anyone else find it weird that it’s referred to as the “Skywalker Saga?”
Nobody named Skywalker, or related to them, accomplished a damned thing they set out to do.
Anakin didn’t balance the force. Anakin didn’t kill the Emperor. The Rebellion, led by the Skywalker twins, didn’t defeat the Empire, it just came back under a new name. Luke didn’t reestablish the Jedi Order. Leia didn’t rebuild the Republic. Ben didn’t do much of anything except throw tantrums. What was the point of the Skywalkers?
Rey is, ultimately, the one who did everything. She killed the Emperor. She and her crew ended the First Order. She balanced the Force. She will, presumably, go on to reestablish the Jedi Order.
And she’s a Palpatine.
Shouldn’t it be called “The Palpatine Saga?”
I can’t believe how badly Disney botched this. It’s just completely baffling that they would let this happen. Disney shareholders should revolt. They destroyed Star Wars. It’s going to be a third-rate franchise like Pirates of the Caribbean in a few years.
Shouldn’t it be called “The Palpatine Saga?”
You haven’t seen the yet-to-be-scheduled Episode 0, in which it is revealed that Palpatine was Anakin’s real father. All this stuff about a virgin birth was just Shmi being coy; Palpatine sired the entire Skywalker clan.
Or not.
Why would a Palpatine clone have all the same disfigurement that the Emperor got from the fight with Mace Windu?
Brand Recognition…. =P
Why would Snoke? Maybe his DNA was corrupted by Windu’s attack or byt he dark force or some shit like that… I’m not at all into SW, but I’ve read/seen sillier shit, so I guess that didn’t even cross my mind as a problem 
You haven’t seen the yet-to-be-scheduled Episode 0, in which it is revealed that Palpatine was Anakin’s real father. All this stuff about a virgin birth was just Shmi being coy; Palpatine sired the entire Skywalker clan.
That’s been an actual theory since Phantom Menace.
Well, the name “Skywalker” always sounded like a title to me… So, what I’d do is a new story far in the future where they introduce new characters as skywalkers, but they’re not family-related, it’d be more like a group of vigilantes of the galaxy… I guess turn that name into something like the mandalorians… maybe some of them are jedis and some ain’t… I dunno… I always thought it was a cool name for a squad or something like that.
I think the danger of that is that without the Jedi/Sith stuff, Star Wars risks feeling like a fairly generic sci-fi universe.
That’s one of the reasons I loved The Last Jedi so much. It opened things up to have future Force users that weren’t Jedi, Sith or even Skywalkers.
It feels like Rise of Skywalker reeled all this back in and put a hard cap on the “Skywalker Saga” while actually making it the “Palpatine Saga”. I wouldn’t be surprised if they revealed that Palpy was actually Anakin’s dad at some point.
TLJ also took things a bit further and finally showed a non-Skywalker/lineage Force user
I find this a bit of a strange thing to say, as ever since Phantom Menace it’s been pretty clear that part of the Jedi recruitment process is identifying force-sensitive children from around the universe and bringing them into the Jedi order to help to train them and enable them to deal with their powers.
There are hundreds of Jedi running around in the prequel trilogy and no indication that we’re meant to think that all of them come from a special lineage.
Thats obviously true but the Skywalkers are special in the same way that any fucking chosen one in any fucking fantasy story is special.
The whole “prophesied to bring balance to the force” thing, which, really is anyone’s guess as to what that’s about, ties the narrative down to the Skywalkers and arguable also Rey.
If you want to speak to the idea that anyone can be a Jedi, which is obviously established cannon, then you need to move focus to those anyones being Jedis.
Yeah I don’t understand why people got so excited with the kid at the end of TLJ… we had a whole trilogy full of random jedis running around… The initial problem was making Rey’s parentage a mystery… they should’ve just added a line saying “oh my parents got killed in a xxx accident” or whatever, and that would’ve been that… Rey would’ve been just another random jedi like Samuel L Jackson.
hinting that Rey and Kylo could forge a third option.
Pass me the barf bag.
The whole “prophesied to bring balance to the force” thing, which, really is anyone’s guess as to what that’s about
And they’re never going to explain what it was either. That whole concept went and wrecked Legends, it’s currently doing an encore act now.
I find this a bit of a strange thing to say, as ever since Phantom Menace it’s been pretty clear that part of the Jedi recruitment process is identifying force-sensitive children from around the universe and bringing them into the Jedi order to help to train them and enable them to deal with their powers. There are hundreds of Jedi running around in the prequel trilogy and no indication that we’re meant to think that all of them come from a special lineage.
Which is why I find so much of TLJ’s claim dubious, this isn’t new material even at the film level. It wasn’t Jedi lineage that set Rey apart in TFA, it was her being in the lead position as a character which hadn’t been done before. Of course, after that? They fucked it up.
What’s uncanny is the same sort of stuff that TLJ did with Rey has now cropped up with Whittaker’s Who. The thinking seems to be that gender in itself is character, so having a lead woman in the story is enough.
Star Wars is really kind of monarchist propaganda. You aren’t special if you’re not from these bloodlines.
The later Legends material has its fans but a lot of critics because this is the direction it went in. Not a Jedi bro? Get the fuck out of here. You a Skywalker Jedi? Fuck, that’s God-level dude., all those extra midis mean you can bench press 500Ib… It didn’t work for a lot of people.
Changing tack, I remain ambivalent on the High Republic idea, I find myself caught at the point of whether I should financially reward the same company that thought the sequels were so brilliant. Which is a shame because it’s the kind of concept I have liked most in SW material – new era, new takes, new ideas perhaps. It’ll make enough money with or without me but I think the success will be modest and nowhere near whatever Disney expects.
If you want to speak to the idea that anyone can be a Jedi, which is obviously established cannon, then you need to move focus to those anyones being Jedis.
Obi-Wan is a key Jedi character in the original trilogy, the main point of reference for light-side Force users alongside Yoda, basically the main light-side-Force-dude of all time. Neither of them are Skywalkers.
In the prequel trilogy we had Qui-Gon Jinn as a very prominent light-side Jedi, then the whole Jedi council (with a few more prominent light-side Jedi with fairly major roles, like Mace Windu) and then all the background Jedi we see, none of whom are Skywalkers either.
Obviously the Skywalker family are very prominent in the story because they’re the main characters, but that’s very different from the story suggesting that only Skywalkers can be Force-sensitive or important Jedi.
I don’t think anyone has ever felt that Star Wars has implied that only the Skywalkers can be prominent force-users, until The Last Jedi where suddenly everyone suggested the film was being incredibly bold by saying that anyone could potentially be in touch with the force. Well, yeah, we already knew that, it just wasn’t the focus of the Skywalker family saga.
I get the complaint, but it feels like a complaint that could be made about any fantasy story that suggests its central character is extra-special and different even to other special characters. Like complaining that the Harry Potter series suggests that only his family can be magical, which would obviously be nonsense.
Those are all fair points, but it’s a bit like Tim says. I mean, this examples –
I get the complaint, but it feels like a complaint that could be made about any fantasy story that suggests its central character is extra-special and different even to other special characters. Like complaining that the Harry Potter series suggests that only his family can be magical, which would obviously be nonsense.
– is that the equivalent would be that in more than half the Harry Potter books, the only people using any magic at all would be the ones related to Harry – and Voldemort (who is potentially Harry’s grandfather).
That’d be a very small magic universe. And I feel the same with these movies – why are they limiting this to the Skywalkers? It’s so much less fun. It was a different thing in the OT, because there the setting was all about a galaxy that had lost its magic, but the new movies should’ve gone a different way because they should’ve been about re-establishing that magic.
That’d be a very small magic universe. And I feel the same with these movies – why are they limiting this to the Skywalkers?
Because that’s the way the nine-film saga set itself up forty years ago?
ESB and ROTJ pretty much set up the nine-film saga to be a generational family epic focusing on the Skywalker family.
The upcoming prequel trilogy would be about Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the Dark Side set against the backdrop of the Republic becoming the Empire.
The original trilogy was about Luke Skywalker, Anakin’s son, becoming a Jedi Knight set against the backdrop of the Rebellion defeating the Empire.
The sequel trilogy was more open, but story logic would dictate that it would follow the third generation of Skywalkers, the children of Luke, and Leia & Han, rebuilding the Jedi Order as the New Republic established itself. (Which is what the old EU did.)
But then Disney gave us a muddled mess of a sequel trilogy that does nothing but rehash the story of the original trilogy. The Disney trilogy was essentially a soft reboot, where it took away everything that was accomplished in the first six films so they could retell the OT with their own new group of characters instead of moving the story forward to a proper conclusion.
And I wholly agree with Dave that it’s just bizarre that people can watch the first six Star Wars movies and come away thinking that only Skywalkers could be Jedi Knights. That sounds like something one of my cousins who can’t tell the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars would say.
That’s one of the reasons I loved The Last Jedi so much. It opened things up to have future Force users that weren’t Jedi, Sith or even Skywalkers.
Rogue One did it first, and better, with Chirrut Îmwe.
The “bring balance to the force” thing is Anakin dying in the process of killing Palpatine, right? That’s why Lucas made a point in the prequels to establish that the Sith are always just two people.
Until the ST there wasn’t a “light side” of the force, there was the force and there was the dark side–using the connective power of the force for personal gain. With the dark side users gone the force was in balance again.
why are they limiting this to the Skywalkers? It’s so much less fun
And I get that complaint, but I think (like Jason said) that this complaint is more about Disney’s era dropping the ball and not coming up with a very good Skywalker story for the sequel trilogy, compared to the strong arcs that underpinned the OT and PT (whatever you think of the PT, there was a solid arc for Anakin underneath it, even if it was mishandled).
Until the sequel trilogy “it’s just all about the Skywalkers” wasn’t a complaint anyone voiced, because, well, they were telling decent stories about the Skywalkers!
Ironically, if Johnson had gone more conventional and revealed Rey to be Luke’s daughter (as was heavily suggested by TFA) it might have made for a stronger Skywalker storyline for the sequel trilogy, albeit a more predictable one.
Anyway, none of this is really about Force powers being limited to one dynasty, which I think has always been a bit of a red herring argument (albeit one that’s obviously going to gain traction easily today, given our greater sensitivity to and awareness of issues around privilege in general).
And the Skywalker family is hardly a dynasty. It was a father and two kids. It’s not exactly the Targaryen family tree, y’know. (Though there might be some near-incest involved.)
And the Skywalker family is hardly a dynasty. It was a father and two kids
Poor Shmi, always getting the shitty end of the stick.
The “bring balance to the force” thing is Anakin dying in the process of killing Palpatine, right? That’s why Lucas made a point in the prequels to establish that the Sith are always just two people.
Yeah, kind of.
It’s difficult to analyze this stuff because George Lucas is so mercurial, but it’s stated in the prequels, albeit in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fashion, that the existence of the Sith are what is imbalancing the Force. The idea is that a “Chosen One” will come along and destroy the Sith once and for all, thus restoring balance to the Force.
It is in these lines of dialog:
“With all due respect, Master, is he not the Chosen One? Is he not to destroy the Sith and bring balance to the Force?” (Obi-Wan Kenobi in conversation with Yoda and Mace Windu, ROTS)
“You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!” (Obi-Wan to Anakin in ROTS)
The Sith seem to represent a disharmony within the Force that needs to be eliminated to restore balance. Though most people’s takeaway seems to be that the Jedi and the Sith need to exist in some kind of harmony, which does not seem to be the intent here.
Until the ST there wasn’t a “light side” of the force, there was the force and there was the dark side–using the connective power of the force for personal gain. With the dark side users gone the force was in balance again.
That’s always been my takeaway way back from the OT. That the “Light Side” and the “Dark Side” aren’t actual things, but have to do with the intent of the people channeling and using the Force. The Force is just an energy field, neutral like gravity or magnetism. When it is used altruistically, it is the “light side.” When the user uses it for personal gain or the acquisition of power, they can be said to be tapping into the “dark side,” though it is the same thing.
The force itself is pretty neutral, just a lifeforce/energy/universal connection kind of thing.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. It’s a neutral world soul type idea. The “light side” the ST introduced takes the Force away from its Eastern (Buddhist/Taoist) origins. The force is universal connection, using that connection to sway people’s emotions and build personal power corrupts it. The Jedi weren’t tapping into a “light side” of the force, they were more like caretakers of the force in its natural state. They had institutional problems but never perverted the force.
The dark side of the force is better understood as the temptation force sensitive people feel to abuse that limitless power and connection.
Ok, got it. Yeah, with you.
why are they limiting this to the Skywalkers?
I think they decided to follow Lucas, who around the time ROTS came out, was spinning the 6-films as Anakin’s story. That was met with quite a bit of resistance too. The two trilogies work far better as two linked stories, one is Anakin’s the other is Luke’s.
The “bring balance to the force” thing is Anakin dying in the process of killing Palpatine, right? That’s why Lucas made a point in the prequels to establish that the Sith are always just two people.
Anakin Skywalker, he had one job and he couldn’t even do that right.
Certainly I felt that the prequels contained some implicit criticism of the way the Jedi behaved, that they were cold and arrogant and not as clever as they thought, and that there was an element of negligence in letting the dark rise
To me, TLJ goes that one step too far in going too close to the idea that the Jedi deserved to be killed. The other objection is the idea they could have out-played their adversary – the whole point of the PT is that the game is stacked against the Jedi to lose, whichever way they go. The Clone Wars were, in part, to destroy and diminish the Jedi and they do so. “Allow” makes the claim that there’s a SW out there where the Empire and the Death Stars didn’t happen. Then again the same film likes to go to the idea of unreliable narration and characters lying to themselves and the audience that it’s hard to know how much credit to assign to anything anyone says in it.
Or, conversely, he was the oldest (and only) recruit left at that point.
Okay. Let me correct: into the garbage chute ya buncha scruffy nerd herfers.
Disney Princess “Im Mary Poppins Y’all” Leia.
She rescued herself and saved the clueless manverse a lot. Still should’ve given poor Chewie his medal tho
Okay let me correct: Luke was just the youngest (and only) recruit left at that point…
The way I always took it was that Obi-Wan and Yoda were weaponizing Luke against Darth Vader. Anakin and Palpatine were always particularly strong with the Force, and Luke, being Anakin’s offspring, would be at that level as well. And that Force-wielders at that level were exceptionally rare, so they were kind of stuck with the twins.
Yoda says he’s too old, and the prequels make the same point about Anakin.
Jedi’s are trained from an early age.
Which is weird, right? Some space wizard turns up, tells you how your toddler can do all sorts of special things and takes your kid away to love with him and his fellow space wizards in isolation to learn the ways of their cult.
They’d be as well calling them Moonwalkers.
Rey would’ve been just another random jedi like Samuel L Jackson.
There ain’t nobody like Samuel L Jackson.
Still should’ve given poor Chewie his medal tho
That was part of the “Internet Complaints to Rectify” checklist in Rise of Skywalker.
Still should’ve given poor Chewie his medal tho
That was part of the “Internet Complaints to Rectify” checklist in Rise of Skywalker.
Not seen Rise of Skywalker.
Forget algorithms, I’m certain every future film will make a gajillionbillion eurodollars if they focus solely on rectifying internet complaints.
That’s about right. I don’t think a film with that size of audience can ever be called a ‘flop’ but it can be disappointing in the context of what they could expect.
