For all the shit that Lucas gets, I have to say that his vision for Star Wars has not been replicated. And when you grow up watching those films, you become hyper-sensitive to anything that doesn’t “feel” Star Wars. I honestly believe that’s why the Sequel trilogy wasn’t received well, and why the TV shows fall flat for the most part.
I think the Jedi/no Jedi debate isn’t useful. I believe the major difference is whether or not the writing is good or not. Andor felt like the best star wars material ever written, a whole different league. Mandalorian season 1 felt like fresh, fun star wars. Season 2 felt messier and more corporate with it’s connections to the greater universe. Season 3 felt bad. Ashoka felt bad. Boba fett felt bad.
They feel worse the worse the writing gets, Jedi or not.
I agree that seeing a wider range of stories from different time periods (other than the ones Disney has already fucked up - looking at you FO and the rehash of 4-6) would be great. But that’s not what will predict the quality - well paid writers with a vision and a team around them interested in that vision is what we need.
I just want smaller scale stories where the stakes are high not because of some galactic consequence but because we become attached to the characters and their small worlds.
Andor felt tense because the world was small so smaller scale crises seem larger. I felt more when >!Kino said he couldn’t swim!< than I did when the Death Star obliterated everyone on Scarif.
The only reason why I want less Jedi in my star wars is because I want them to feel special. Star Wars has a massive Galaxy where Jedi were a rarity even before the purge so give me more of that. Don’t blow your load every 10 seconds by shoehorning lightsabers into every story.
Give me a film noir set on Nar Shaddaa or a heist set on Alderaan. I’m tired of the overuse of Jedi like I’m tired of the overuse of Tatooine. That planet is supposed to be a backwater with nothing going on hence Obi Wan choosing to hide there but instead we visit it every other Tuesday because executives think people want sand and brown doors.
I think you can do a bunch with jedi/sith, but you have to use the force for something more interesting than pushing things and jumping pretty high. The extended universe novels had all sorts of cool shit force users could do with it. They should lean in to that kind of stuff.
It helps too when they’re not over used. You have to think how genuinely frightening force users must be to the average person. They don’t need to go full-on “The Boys” levels of trope subversion, but showing the force as it might appear to your normie citizen might be interesting. I would think most people feel a mixture of awe, fear and mistrust.
We got a little bit of that when CGI Luke showed up at the end of the Mandalorian season to take away Baby Handpuppet. Seeing the mandalorians, who train to fight their whole lives, struggling so hard to get through the ship and deal with the droids, and then a Jedi shows up and just kind of breezes through them. It’s that kind of perspective that makes the jedi and sith seem impressive.
It’s a similar reason people responded so well to Darth Vader’s scene at the end of Rogue One, he just seems genuinely superhuman when seen from that kind of bottom up perspective.
I completely agree - force users should be few and far between, but if you’re going to put a Jedi Master or Sith Lord onscreen they should be goddamn impressive. It would be something you became creative with while mastering, but all we see them do is hop around and shove stuff.
that story got told, over 40 years ago, by the first three star wars films
trying to continue to tell the same story over and over—trying to continue feeding the same meat into the same grinder—is what gave us episodes 7-9, and to a lesser extent 1-3
but there's still plenty of life in the world building and universe those films created
Hey, 8 tried to tell a different story. It’s a story about how the legend of “Luke Skywalker” is overblown and doesn’t do justice to the man himself or to anyone around him. It’s a story about how war has a big negative effect on the rest of the world, even places far away from the war. It’s a story about how sometimes the world doesn’t work the way myths do, with awesome magic powers and heroic sacrifices. It’s a story about how everyone is important, and the “great man” idea of history is false. Those are stories that Star Wars hasn’t told before.
setting up a character to serve as a villain for three films then killing them off partway through the second is very clearly different than setting up a character to server as a villain for three films then killing them off at the end of the third film
by the logic you seem to be using, 9 also didn't undo anything 8 did, which is patently absurd
Snoke wasn’t set up to serve as villain for three films. He was set up to serve for two films, same as the emperor. You’re just salty that your fantheory didn’t come true.
if for some reason you believe it's impossible for a film to retcon things, why not just save us both some time by opening with that, rather than having this pointless little back and forth?
it's a really weird time to argue for death of the author when we're talking more or less specifically about directorial intent and we have the interviews from people involved
it's also kind of weird to argue for death of the author while also insisting the emperor was only established in 5, when he's mentioned multiple times in 4
It’s impossible for 8 to have undercut 7’s core themes, because 7 doesn’t have any.
8 didn’t do any retcons. A retcon would be “actually Snoke isn’t the main villain, he’s just a clone created by Palpatine.” 8 was perfectly happy to play nice with all the facts established in 7, and then have Ben kill Snoke as the first dramatic climax of the movie. 8 gets to have two dramatic climaxes because Rian Johnson is a brilliant filmmaker.
I don't disagree that there should be more non-jedi focused stories... but I do have a problem with this:
that story got told, over 40 years ago, by the first three star wars films
A story was told. That doesn't mean every story that could involve jedi has been told. Just the same one rehashed multiple times. Different stories, focusing on different aspects of that same mythos without retreading the same ground (again), can still be told. It just requires more risk, which is why it hasn't been tried as much.
It doesn't help that, because of forty years of history, people are attached to these characters and stories. They want to explore more of that. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing... unfortunately there is a lack of focused direction that has made it difficult to continue it with any kind of stable quality.
It just requires more risk, which is why it hasn't been tried as much.
"tell more stories about the jedi without retreading the same ground" is the same request as "tell more stories about the star wars universe without retreading the same ground" just with less risk, and in turn with less potential for truly interesting and unique ideas
Rogue One at times feels more like Star Wars than the original trilogy, and doesn’t have a single Jedi in it.
I guess I’ve just seen more movies than you, because it didn’t feel like a Star Wars story, it seemed like a spy movie trying to escape with plans to a weapon. 🤷♂️
Your measurement for what counts as “Star Wars” seems pretty arbitrary.
I’m pretty sure that the most iconic type of thing in the storytelling for Star Wars, the most recognize and beloved, would be Force wielders.
That the Force, and how it manifests itself in the storytelling, is what makes Star Wars, Star Wars.
And that most would agree with my opinion on the matter. It’s been in the news and stories and magazines etc etc etc long enough prove that point.
I guess you just don’t really understand Star Wars as well as you think you do 🤷♂️
You really don’t have to keep attacking me you know? We could just discuss the points instead.
it’s an aesthetic and a setting
So is Traveller TTRPG, or Babylon Five, Warhammer 40K, etc., etc.
But none of them are Star Wars.
if you define it as a narrative you can’t step outside the first three films
I’m not, you keep assuming I am, but I’m not.
I’m talking the unique points of the world building/lore. You can have different narratives in story telling for the same world (or in this case, galaxies).
but there’s still plenty of life in the world building and universe those films created
The flip side of that though is just you end up with detective shows and spy shows and soap operas, in space, with a splash of sci-fi paint thrown over them. Been there, done that.
Jedi and Sith are a unique storytelling point, and there hasn’t been enough about their conflict with each other, and by that I mean whole organization versus whole organization wise, and them manipulating the larger politics of the various systems and so forth to their cause, etc. Not just the singular Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker fight kind of conflict.
The Sith as a large organization hasn’t been seen in movies or tv, only in games.
The flip side of that though is just you end up with detective shows and spy shows and soap operas, in space, with a splash of sci-fi paint thrown over them.
jedi are literally samurai with a splash of sci-fi paint
Jedi and Sith are a unique storytelling point, and there hasn’t been enough about their conflict with each other, and by that I mean whole organization versus whole organization wise, and them manipulating the larger politics of the various systems and so forth to their cause, etc.
you're describing the overarching plot of the prequels
The Sith as a large organization hasn’t been seen in movies or tv, only in games.
Just because you declare it as arbitrary doesn’t mean it’s actually arbitrary.
either you’re defining star wars by the films, or you’re picking and choosing what really “counts”
you’re doing the latter
No, I’ve watched pretty much everything at this point, and have read the EU books to boot (really enjoy some of them).
And I remember the decades of TV news/videos and publication stories/articles about what makes Star Wars, Star Wars.
I’d feel confident if you put it up to a vote, that the Force and/or Jedi/Sith is the primary response to the question “What is Star Wars to you?”. Everything else is just copying other stuff and slapping a sci-fi paint on it. Traveller TTRPG like.
Why not just watch one of the many other options without Jedi?
The rule of two is hardly integral, anyways. There were 3 for most of the prequel trilogy time frame and Vader took on several apprentices between ep 3 and 4. It was 2 as far as I know during the OT but then the sequels brought it back to 3.
And Sideous adopted the rule of one (where he can train whoever he wants but not with the intent of replacing him because he planned on living forever using force ghost and clones so he’d always have a body) from the end of ep 1 onwards.
I just speak for myself, but star wars without force users just isn’t that interesting to me.
Andor had one heist arc, amid a broader story about radicalization and the creep of authoritarian power. It’s a damned ambitious show. I’m so glad it exists.
They should leave the Skywalker saga. There’s thousands of years & a whole galaxy to fill with stories, and they keep dancing in the same 100 years & the same planets.
Man if I see Saw Garrera appear in some obscure corner of the galaxy with a band of proto-rebels again I’m going to be mad, Cad Bane too, fun for a bit but how do we keep running into the same characters in a whole galaxy? I’m sure there were more but I always noticed how they kept appearing.
Let me go against the grain here: I see a lot of people saying “we need a show like this, we need more of that”, but we don’t really need more Star Wars. We need good Star Wars, not more Star Wars.
Most people want the occasional movie and show about the central Star Wars story, not a multitude of spin-offs about not-Star Wars which happen to be set in the Star Wars universe. They should develop more original stories and settings. “Go out and make your own Star Wars” in the words of George Lucas.
The only problem is the central movies have turned out to be absolute dogshit under Disney.
Yeah, hard agree. “Andor was great because it wasn’t about Jedi” is the wrong lesson to take.
Andor was great because it was made by people who were deeply passionate about what they were doing. They took the set dressing and the context that Star Wars offered and they used it to tell an incredibly powerful story of resistance against fascist oppression, everything that means and entails and what it costs. They created something powerful and vital that deserves and needs to exist.
We need more media that was created out of passion. We need artists to be set free to make art, not shackled to producing whatever a studio thinks is popular. That doesn’t mean it all has to be high minded, subtle or complex; John Wick was a work of artistic passion and it shows. The art is “Look how cool it is when Keanu Reeves shoots people”, but that can be art too. Subtle, complex morality plays or guns and explosions, or Jedi having lightsaber duels. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that people creating it really, really give a shit about what they’re making, and are allowed to make it the way they want to.
And funnily enough, AI powered tools will help with this. It’ll allow more singular or low number group creatives to take on works that would have required full studio teams (and the money to back said teams) in the past
What Disney should do is focus away from the ~100 years that take place during the Skywalker saga. Theyre coming out with an old republic show, finally, after owning the property for over 10 years now. Its a big ass galaxy, fill it with something.
I’ve been saying this forever, the games and expanded universe figured this out decades ago. It let’s you do whatever you want because you don’t have to deal with accidentally retconning something or making sure it fits the existing timeline.
I actually don’t want any more Star Wars content. I’m seriously bored now. Perhaps if any of it was good it would be different but so much of it is so bad.
I watched “the bad batch” cartoons because I liked clone wars some millennia ago. It was ok, ::: spoiler and luckily the protagonist is not secretly a jedi :::
Yeah, I’m sick of everything being connected to what came before. It feels pretty eugenicsy when everyone who is powerful and of note seems to be descended from someone who was powerful. Something something midichlorians.
It’s important to remember that the vast majority of the galactic population has never seen a Jedi in real life, and doesn’t even know anyone who has. The Jedi are nearly mythical figures, surrounded by rumor, speculation, and misinformation.
George Lucas created the Star Wars movies after R2D2 and C-3PO crash landed in an escape pod in his backyard, and they told him the story of the Empire, the rebels, and the Jedi. Earth is the only planet that has Star Wars because it’s where R2 and Threepio ended up.
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