Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Yeah, my opinions are colored by own experiences as well, which is why I wanted to seek out some numbers that might give some indication of fan engagement with these things. I was slightly too young to have gone to the theater for any of the OT but in the first half of the 80s my best friend had Star Wars on laserdisc and all the action figures and I have loved the OT ever since. I'm not a superfan though when it comes to Star Wars content. I've never touched any EU material. I couldn't get into any of the animated series. After the OT, the only Star Wars things I've really loved have been Rogue One, the first 2-ish seasons of The Mandalorian and Andor. Duel of the Fates is about the only sequence in the entire prequel trilogy that I can stomach these days. The sequel trilogy was a very mixed bag for me, though TFA and TLJ have some great pieces IMO.

You've touched on a good point though, in that it's incredibly unlikely that anything today will become the seismic cultural touchstone that Star Wars was, because we are so oversaturated with entertainment options now.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

OK let's look at what happened in Empire:
- The Rebellion is struggling, hiding out in a frozen base on the run from the Empire
- Luke continues his training
- Luke is brash, impulsive, reckless, impatient
- Han & Leia's relationship deepens romantically. They see each other as more than just Pirate and Princess; they recognize each other's bravery, strength, honor, etc.
- The final betrayal. Any port in a storm dries up. Hope is obliterated
- the Luke/Vader confrontation. The revelation. The loss, both spiritual and physical, as Luke is utterly defeated and literally cast into an abyss. Ok throws himself into it. Same difference.

Let's see where the characters are at in this movie:

Luke: the hotshot hero of A New Hope and last hope of the Jedi is humbled, mutilated, and devastated about his parentage
Han: the pirate who is ready to take his money and scram ends up tortured and sacrificed to the villain, but still protective of and open to the woman he loves
Leia: the soul of the rebellion gives in to the man she loves while still struggling to hold the rebellion together and rescues Luke as she loses Han
Lando: third act guy has a mini-redemption arc
Vader: obsessed with capturing young Skywalker, to the point of turning his fleet into an asteroid field, sacrificing anything to get his prize for the Emperor. And fails.
Boba Fett: exists. And he was cool for almost 20 years.
Yoda: exiled Jedi Master guides Luke, driven by pragmatism, laments his loss, sadly looks to future
Generalissimo Francisco Obi-Wan is still dead

So I mean, pretty much all these characters have major dramatic arcs, growth, emotional dynamics, etc.

Literally all the characters at the end of TLJ are pretty much in the exact same spot as they were in the beginning of the movie. Except maybe Luke. Luke has his final redemptive sacrifice. Poe "learns an important lesson" about sacrifice and command, Finn "learns an important lesson" about fighting for those we love, or something, Rey is in the exact same spot, Kylo Ren is in the exact same spot except without Snoke, etc. etc. There's no real dramatic weight or movement or development.

I liked TLJ as a one-off but it was more like episode 7.5, instead of a meatier episode 8 the trilogy needed.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I'm a late Gen Xer (born September 1976). Something I have noticed about the prequel trilogy amongst my generation of X is that those of us who skew younger and saw the OT as children are a lot more forgiving of the PT than the older gen X-ers. A lot of people my age were initially not too fond of the PT , but we were willing to give stuff like TCW (The Clone Wars Cartoon) and other EU attempts to make the story better a chance . As a result , a lot of us have grown to appreciate the PT a little bit more in the past decade . We don’t love it , but it’s not as bad as we originally perceived. However, many of those from Gen X who were tweenagers or just starting adolescence at the time of OT are adamant in their dislike of the PT and don’t seem to want to give it a chance to improve . They also hate the ST , but to their credit, they don’t seem to hate it any more than the PT . They just hate everything that’s not OT . In fact , a lot seem to hate everything about life in general. Go figure...

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

OK, so "literally all" the characters are "pretty much" in the exact same spot, except three major characters you mention. Your argument isn't off to a great start...

Kylo Ren without Snoke is definitely not "the exact same spot." He's gone from apprentice to master, from henchman to ruler. And he's gone from a bit unsure of his place, to decidedly for being on the dark side and ruling the First Order. That's quite a change just in terms of external ranks and commands, let along the internal shift.

Rey's journey is more subtle, but she went from seeking outside validation for her place, to deciding on doing things her way. All her outside validation failed. The legendary Jedi master refuses to teach her, a potential like mind in Kylo Ren turns to the dark side, and the "secret" of her parentage reveals she has no heritage/legacy to speak of. She's on her own, so she takes the Jedi texts and goes to help her friends, forge her own path.

People maybe didn't like the character development choices, but it's baffling that people assert there wasn't any.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I was kinda on board with you until the last hyperbolic sentence.

But yeah, I figured it was pretty well known that kids that grew up with the PT love the PT. Older fans saw their flaws much earlier on and were less forgiving. Some can still enjoy them warts and all, but since they were flawed from the start and then you add in the fact that they haven't aged all that well and they're just kinda "there." I rewatched all three last year, but I don't see myself going back for a long time.

Likewise, kids that grew up with the ST enjoy them and that will be their Star Wars. And again, older fans see the flaws and are less forgiving.

I will posit that fans disappointed in the PT were more forgiving of the ST knowing that they were going to be flawed from the start and we're never getting another OT. I have nothing to base this on other than my own feelings though. Despite the loftier goals of the PT, I find the ST immensely more entertaining. They don't look like video game cut scenes and it's not filled with actors trying to act their way out of a wet paper bag*. I think the PT would be held in higher esteem and the flaws brushed aside if the acting was above par. Since nearly every actor in all three flicks is beyond terrible, it brings the entire trilogy down. And unfortunately that all comes down the the director who was more focused on the video game cut scene feel of the films than the actors.

*except for Benicio del Toro and whatever the fuck performance he thought he was bringing to the table

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

FWIW, I think Disney really screwed up when they decided to make the ST a direct follow up to the OT. I was hoping it would take place hundreds of years in the future and well into whatever New Republic or government had been established. Have a new order of Jedi established and have Luke be the only OG cast member to appear in the form of either a spirit of hologram to give guidance when needed.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

My point was that Luke had his arc, but Poe and Finn did not whatsoever. They learned "little life lessons". Nothing wrong with that, but it's dramatically insert for the second movie of a trilogy.
Ren is still commanding the Empire (First Order, whatever) essentially in the same role as before. Still trying to eradicate the Jedi or the Rebellion/Resistence or whatever. Rey is back with her pals in the same spot as well.
Never said they didn't have any, just that what they had wasn't weighty or compelling enough for an Act II.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Yeah the whole ESB didn't advance the story is a baffling argument to me. Star Wars is Star Wars because of the advances in the story that happened in ESB. Vader because Vader, we get the Emperor, Han and Leia become real fleshed out character, Yoda is introduced, Luke discovers he knows nothing about the Force and gets his ass handed to him after not taking his training seriously, Lando arrives with hints of Han's past and promptly betrays his former friend. The movie is literally full of character and story advances.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

It's just your personal opinion that those life lessons are too "little" to count though. And it's arguable whether each and every character needs a significant life lesson in each film. Han, as a character, doesn't really grow in ESB.

No, he wasn't commanding the First Order before. He was like Vader, a henchman for the leader, their master. The big development was him deciding to embrace the Dark Side and kill his master to assume the role of master and leader.

Luke was back with his pals at the end of ESB, that's just logistically "the same spot" though.

So, when you wrote this:
You didn't actually mean "literally" or "exact" then?

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

It's full of character advances, but the story "advances" are fairly inert, if you're looking at the sort of "big picture" level people apply to TLJ to criticize it.

So ESB introduces new characters. TLJ introduces new characters.

Luke learns about The Force. Rey learns about the force.

Han and Leia introduce a love triangle. Rose introduces a love triangle.

ESB shows the Emperor (already mentioned in the original film). TLJ kills off Snoke. That's arguably a far bigger story advance.

Luke learns about his parentage, and is shocked and rattled. Rey learns about her parentage, and is rattled.

There's story advances in TLJ, but people dismiss them as "not enough," even though they're on par with what happened in ESB, if not often direct parallels.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

This makes a very good argument for anyone who says the ST is basically a carbon copy of the OT , just with different characters. TROS pulls the same schtick as ROTJ with Kylo Ren rejecting the dark side. Hell, they couldn't even come up with a better big bad so they brought back the emperor again. The final battle was a rip off of Endgame, and I am guessing since Disney owns both the MCU and SW, no legal action could be taken amongst the writers.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Of course it's my opinion. Who else's would it be?
Other than he was ready to quit the entire show at the start of the flick and take off with his cash to pay off Jabba and live his life, except he ended up dedicating himself to protecting Leia and even sacrificing himself for her. I'd hardly call that "no growth". It's not a particularly deep arc, but it's a strong one.
Sure he got a job promotion but he's fundamentally the same guy at the end, doing the same posturing, hating the same people, etc.
Mutilated, humbled, paying off hubris at a karmically accelerated rate. Rey didn't advance (or devolve) at all. Her needle barely budged.
You left out the pretty much part of that quote.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Han doesn't really grow through the whole trilogy. It's the whole reason Ford wanted out.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I mean he seems to come around at the end of Jedi? (Of course completely reversed later on) Was that from the Rinzler 'making of' books by chance? I need to read through those again. Along with the Taschen Archives...phenomenal books.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I dunno, he was practically a big softie by the end of ROTJ. All sensitive and a bit whiny. I don't know what that means in terms of "character growth" but he certainly wasn't the same guy from ANH.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

In Star Wars, smuggler whose sole motivation is money

In Empire, smuggler whose motivation is still money and also, getting laid

In Jedi, he goes from Jabba's prisoner to the Ewok's prisoner until the final act where he leads a team to take the shield generator base (so he can get laid?).

I love Han, but Ford isn't wrong on this one, he's a pretty one dimensional character.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

This just popped up on my YouTube feed:

​​​​​​

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Was about to post a link to this video myself. Interesting how several elements from Lucas' original treatment were kept.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

But also rather pathetic that after they jettisoned his treatment for 7, 8, and 9, they formed a writer's room that couldn't even iron out one script. It's sad that no one could stop and say, "let's just build and what Lucas gave us rather than try to go our own way". And, yeah, all to then cannibalize what Lucas wrote into many different projects. It seems even his Star Wars: Underworld series ended up in Solo, Andor​​​​​​, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I suppose an argument could be made that he was suffering from PTSD from being frozen in carbonite and left temporarily blind.

In the original plan for Ep VI, Han was to have been killed in the final battle, so he would have gone out in a blaze of glory and self-sacrifice, which would have been an appropriate end to his arc -- at least on paper -- but one that I don't think the audience would have wanted to see. He already had a tragic end in ESB, and spending the first act of the next movie rescuing him only to kill him off in the third act would have been a bit too much.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I won't argue with you on those points as I think they are accurate. I just find it interesting in the sense that Kennedy once made a statement about there "not being any source material" for new stuff when most of what they've done with recent projects is present butchered versions of ideas from both Lucas and the EU.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

If true that's a damn cop out considering Lucas provided them with a treatment for the sequels and even if that wasn't where they wanted to go, they had 25 years of EU material they could have mined for ideas.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Yes, so you're admitting your argument started out muddled, and went downhill from there. You went from stating that no character advances to quibbling about the degree of the character advances. There's plenty of character advancement in TLJ, but it's all internal, and physical scars aren't the only form of a character changing.

I do think one thing that maybe causes this viewpoint of TLJ is a major flaw in the trilogy itself, and that is the wasted potential of TLJ and all its character arcs, that TRoS either ignores or outright reverses. Kylo Ren is a good example. TLJ sets him up as the new master of the Dark Side and leader of the First Order by the end of the movie. What does TRoS do with that? Completely undermine and reverse it immediately by bringing back Palpatine, setting up a new Master/Apprentice dynamic, and bringing in Richard E. Grant to play a new character that acts as de facto leader of the First Order army. So the potential of what TLJ set up is wasted, making it seem like nothing in TLJ had any impact on the story, when it's TRoS that made that true. Same thing with the Rey-Finn-Rose potential love triangle/dynamic, which is just straight up ignored, like it never happened. TLJ lead characters in new, interesting directions, and set them up for new arcs, and TRoS just reset stuff to the status quo to deliver an uninspired, warmed-over ROTJ retread.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2019/...hleen-kennedy/

"Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack," Kathleen Kennedy revealed to Rolling Stone about developing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. "There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything other than passionate storytellers who get together and talk about what the next iteration might be. We go through a really normal development process that everybody else does. You start by talking to filmmakers who you think exhibit the sensibilities that you’re looking for."

She's talking about the difference in adapting from an existing story vs. coming up with a new story. They weren't adapting the Harry Potter novels, or putting The Infinity Saga on the screen. The EU was largely not something that could easily be mined for the sequel trilogy as it was set 30 years after the OT, and the EU was primarily set within those 30 years. It's why The Mandalorian and other shows set right after the OT can sometimes mine the EU for stuff, but the time period they wanted to set the ST in, so the original cast could come back and play age-appropriate versions of their characters, was uncharted territory.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Sure, but the vast majority of movies aren't adaptations. What's the excuse for not being able to come up with a coherent original script?