The Star Wars thread

Now see, here's my problem with the episode (and it's been a couple days so I feel safe posting this without spoilers)

-The duel was anticlimactic. I don't mind a short duel, but give us something that could be worthy of being called a duel.
-Ezras presence was essentially useless (as usual), the entire focus should have been on Maul and Kenobi, but instead this episode wastes precious time on Ezra fumbling around in an A-Wing. Somebody care to explain to my why the crew thought it would be a good idea for the series to be formatted this way, again?
-Ezra knows Kenobi is on Tatooine, how? And how does he know where it is? This is a huge plothole. Speaking of holes, when did the rebels speak with Bail Organa about Kenobi? I feel like we missed an entire episode somewhere. This further adds to my question of why the crew insist on dinky little 22 minute episodes. This story needed a heck of a lot more than 20 minutes to be told. Show, Filoni, don't tell.
-Why was Kenobi not surprised to see Ezra? Does he make a habit of finding trained Jedi apprentices out in the desert? Does he not wonder nor care that Jedi survived, and that they're leading rebellions against the Empire? Also, does he keep his ear to the ground out there in the middle of nowhere? He seemed unphased by all of it, even the part about a major declared Rebel Alliance.
-Would it have killed them to have actually given us a close up on young Luke? I wish Disney weren't such tightwads with the budget.
-I will say that the animation and voice work with Obi-Wan were extremely well done.

A friend of mine was surprised the other day when I was ranting about Rebels. I was ranting on the Maul episode, and he's only seen season 1, but he was extremely surprised when I brought up the Rebellion as seen in the films was not officially formed until like two episodes ago. He wondered what the show has been doing for this long. My response: lots of filler.

God, I know this show isn't even about merchandise for Disney. CT, as a fellow poster at Rebelscum you are well aware of Hasbro's incompetence lately, especially the 3.75" figure lines. Rebels is getting maybe 3 or 4 figures and one vehicle a year. Meanwhile clothing, party supplies, etc., all are usually focused on the new yearly films. Besides being their TV option for Star Wars, Rebels has barely been relevant since season 1.

Truth be told, I feel like there were better episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 than there have been in Season 3, and I raged against those episodes. This show as a whole has been a huge disappointment to me, and I feel like I'm only watching it now just to make sure I keep up with the continuity.

CT-1138 wrote:

I feel like I'm only watching it now just to make sure I keep up with the continuity.

Funny, that's how I feel about the films itself now.

I've been doing some soul searching and the lowered my Disney rankings even lower. I kinda despise Rogue One with all of my heart now. Jurassic World is like Casablanca in comparison to it, with the most restraint fanservice imaginable. The only reason I cannot put it lower than Attack of the Clones is because of the utter boredom and awkwardness of that mess Lucas put together.

Empire 10/10
Star Wars 9/10
Jedi 7/10
Force 5/10
Phantom 4/10
Sith 4/10
Rogue 3/10
Clones 3/10

Ah yes, the "It's all EU now" BS.

Rogue One was better than JW by miles. No cheese, no BS, no agonizing cringe. You wanna mention fanservice, fine, but don't bring up JW if you want to criticize it, because JW was the definition of fan service.

CT-1138 wrote:

Ah yes, the "It's all EU now" BS.

Rogue One was better than JW by miles. No cheese, no BS, no agonizing cringe. You wanna mention fanservice, fine, but don't bring up JW if you want to criticize it, because JW was the definition of fan service.

What are you talking about in the first line, I honestly don't know?

And this is one of the first time ever I've compared JW positively to anything (if you didn't know I'm not exactly fan of it) and immediately I get slammed down for it

CT-1138 wrote:

because JW was the definition of fan service.

To be fair, couldn't you argue that both JW and ST7 needed all that fan service to make up for how badly they burned the fan base with the last movie, in SW case, the whole prequels?

Mistral wrote:

CT-1138 wrote:

Ah yes, the "It's all EU now" BS.

Rogue One was better than JW by miles. No cheese, no BS, no agonizing cringe. You wanna mention fanservice, fine, but don't bring up JW if you want to criticize it, because JW was the definition of fan service.

What are you talking about in the first line, I honestly don't know?

And this is one of the first time ever I've compared JW positively to anything (if you didn't know I'm not exactly fan of it) and immediately I get slammed down for it

Ah, my bad, I thought you were spouting that nonsense that just because Lucas didn't write it, it's irrelevant drivel

Rhedosaurus wrote:

CT-1138 wrote:

because JW was the definition of fan service.

To be fair, couldn't you argue that both JW and ST7 needed all that fan service to make up for how badly they burned the fan base with the last movie, in SW case, the whole prequels?

Oh, you definitely could, but there's different types of fan service. There's badly done fan service like what was JW and TFA, and then there's well integrated, not annoying, and well planned out fan service like Rogue One.

CT-1138 wrote:

Rhedosaurus wrote:

CT-1138 wrote:

because JW was the definition of fan service.

To be fair, couldn't you argue that both JW and ST7 needed all that fan service to make up for how badly they burned the fan base with the last movie, in SW case, the whole prequels?

Oh, you definitely could, but there's different types of fan service. There's badly done fan service like what was JW and TFA, and then there's well integrated, not annoying, and well planned out fan service like Rogue One.  

That's fair. I just think that all/most of that was needed for the fanbases.

CT-1138 wrote:

Mistral wrote:

CT-1138 wrote:

Ah yes, the "It's all EU now" BS.

Rogue One was better than JW by miles. No cheese, no BS, no agonizing cringe. You wanna mention fanservice, fine, but don't bring up JW if you want to criticize it, because JW was the definition of fan service.

What are you talking about in the first line, I honestly don't know?

And this is one of the first time ever I've compared JW positively to anything (if you didn't know I'm not exactly fan of it) and immediately I get slammed down for it

Ah, my bad, I thought you were spouting that nonsense that just because Lucas didn't write it, it's irrelevant drivel

Rhedosaurus wrote:

CT-1138 wrote:

because JW was the definition of fan service.

To be fair, couldn't you argue that both JW and ST7 needed all that fan service to make up for how badly they burned the fan base with the last movie, in SW case, the whole prequels?

Oh, you definitely could, but there's different types of fan service. There's badly done fan service like what was JW and TFA, and then there's well integrated, not annoying, and well planned out fan service like Rogue One.  

If I was defender of Lucas, I probably wouldn't give trashy ratings to the prequels I don't care if he's there or not, he's not a God. Empire featured the least of his meddling in the original trilogy and was not only the best in the franchise, but one of the best in film history.

Now. Don't hate me for saying this. Please. It's just my opinion, just as yours is what it is. But:

Obviously JW is huge in fanservice, what is something I've complained about over and over again and which is why I felt the need to bring it up here in the first place, but I feel like in comparison to R1's fanservice it's like regular star destroyer to Executor. At least in JW the fanservice for the most part seemed to have some sort of reasoning behind it, whilst Rogue One plays like fan film from start to finish, with pointless "remember this" moments thrown everywhere, and obvious studio meddling and reshoots added in. The only good parts to me were some of the action, and effects which were great (apart from horrible Tarkin+Leia).

TFA and JW are more in line with each other

I LOVED the final confrontation between Obi-Wan and Maul!

It was like an old samurai film where the master always wins quickly. Plus I love that Kenobi tricked Maul by using form 4 (Qui-Gon used that form) and Maul tried to knock him off guard with his lightsaber's hilt to kill him like he did to Qui-Gon but Obi-Wan didn't fall for it.

Absolutely loved it!

Some of the planets in the old movies could be revisited.

Darth Vader was supposed to have killed off Krennic for failure, but that was cut out since him surviving the Death Star blast was a bit of a stretch.

I'm kinda glad Krennic died on the surface of Scarif, disintegrated by the weapon he and Galen Erso created. I'm a sucker for poetic irony. Death by Darth Vader has been done a lot, and while it's not an unmemorable way to go, I prefer Vader's closing line to Krennic on Mustafar... "Be careful not to choke on your aspirations."

Disney is planning 15 more years of Star Wars material

They say 15, but what they really mean is 150. With 80 films already being in early pre-production stages

Dead2009 wrote:

Disney is planning 15 more years of Star Wars material

Yeah... even I think I could get sick of Star Wars over time, and eventually the general public as well. For now, Star Wars is still something special and despite a checkered past with the prequels people are still eager for more, but I doubt that it will last. Perhaps they should follow some Darth Vader advice and "be careful not to choke on their aspirations".

Makes me glad that Disney hasn't yet tried to buy The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros, because I can only imagine the pure unadultered rage from Middle-earth fans at that level of exploitation.

Edit: Just to clarify something, I am aware that technically Disney would have to buy the rights to the Hobbit and LOTR books before making a Middle-earth movie, and the methods of acquiring the film franchise are not as straightforward as buying Lucasfilm, especially since New Line is firmly under the WB roof. That being said, if they did buy the rights to the main Tolkien books, with the Silmarillion rights locked firmly behind the Tolkien estate, they'd pretty much have no choice but to make a whole load of crap up without any basis from the books. If they ignored The Silmarillion, it would kinda like wiping out the Star Wars EU to accommodate their new canon.

Laura Dern really likes the independent directing style of Rian Johnson.

Slightly off topic, but I have to ask. Was October Sky the last big movie she was in as a major player before this? Because, that's the only one I remember. (And I don't count JP3 since her few appearances were basically cameos.)

Been getting into the props side lately, spending a lot of time on the RPF. I recently organized my lightsaber collection:








As well as my two blasters:




Also, I feel like I'm learning more about SW through the RPF than I ever did as a member for years on any fan forum. For instance, did you know that the Luke RotJ "Hero" saber that was frequently used in most of the publicity shots and toys (the one with the brass top that Vader turns over in his hands when Luke surrenders on Endor) wasn't even used by Luke all that much in the movie? The one used in the movie was mostly chipped and stuck together with gaffers tape. It had greeblies stuck all over it, too! Basically, the true hero saber of the movie just bastardized parts from the dueling stunt saber that Obi-Wan Kenobi used in ANH.








For reference, these are the Luke RotJ lightsaber props everybody *thinks* are the hero:


I've also recently been able to recover a little bit of my childhood... in RotJ it was planned for Luke's new lightsaber to have once again been blue, but it was changed in post production to green because the blue didn't show up well against the bright blue desert sky. Growing up, my school library had a copy of the RotJ Storybook, and I swore to this day that Luke's lightsaber was blue (which confused 7yo me because the lightsaber in the movie was green). I've been searching for the version with the blue lightsaber for YEARS and I've finally found proof that I'm not crazy. I think it's possible that the publisher, RandomHouse, was sent the blue lightsaber imagery prior to Lucas making the change seeing as Lucas had already put out a trailer using the old "Revenge of the Jedi" title which included the blue lightsaber effect.




And finally, here's my replica Luke RotJ:

The late Carrie Fisher will appear in final Star Wars movie, says brother Todd Fisher
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/late-carrie-fisher-final-star-wars-movie-article-1.3030154

Dead2009 wrote:

The late Carrie Fisher will appear in final Star Wars movie, says brother Todd Fisher
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/late-carrie-fisher-final-star-wars-movie-article-1.3030154

This means that they might do what they did in Rouge One and have a CGI Leia mixed with some other actress. I remember they did that with Terminator: Salvation with Arnie's face with another man's body.

It'd a fake trailer guys.

New details revealed about Snoke in SW8.

By the looks of it, it sounds like he's going to be portrayed like a Roman Emperor.

Roman emperors actually didn't start wearing fancy clothes & crowns and acting like gods until emperor Diocletian came to power, 300 years after the Republic fall apart. Until that, even in the hands of some of the more unstable rulers, their outlook was fairly modest, and they didn't require people to act like second hand slaves underneath them. So in the Western Empire, the realm of stereotypical god-like Emperors actually lasted very little time comparatively, less than 200 years. And in fact much less than that given that most of the Emperors in Western Rome in the 5th century were mere puppets put in the power by Germanic barbarians, not real emperors anymore.

/ today's pointless history trivia

Mistral wrote:

Roman emperors actually didn't start wearing fancy clothes & crowns and acting like gods until emperor Diocletian came to power, 300 years after the Republic fall apart. Until that, even in the hands of some of the more unstable rulers, their outlook was fairly modest, and they didn't require people to act like second hand slaves underneath them. So in the Western Empire, the realm of stereotypical god-like Emperors actually lasted very little time comparatively, less than 200 years. And in fact much less than that given that most of the Emperors in Western Rome in the 5th century were mere puppets put in the power by Germanic barbarians, not real emperors anymore.

/ today's pointless history trivia

I always thought that Caligulia started that considering how much of a narcissist he was.

Rhedosaurus wrote:

Mistral wrote:

Roman emperors actually didn't start wearing fancy clothes & crowns and acting like gods until emperor Diocletian came to power, 300 years after the Republic fall apart. Until that, even in the hands of some of the more unstable rulers, their outlook was fairly modest, and they didn't require people to act like second hand slaves underneath them. So in the Western Empire, the realm of stereotypical god-like Emperors actually lasted very little time comparatively, less than 200 years. And in fact much less than that given that most of the Emperors in Western Rome in the 5th century were mere puppets put in the power by Germanic barbarians, not real emperors anymore.

/ today's pointless history trivia

I always thought that Caligulia started that considering how much of a narcissist he was.

He was insane (or became mentally ill somehow), but the Praetorians and others got tired of it quickly. Most importantly it didn't start a norm, and he didn't make widespread changes to how everything was run. Yes some of the emperors afterwards were still unstable and abused power, and obviously the 3rd century power chaos nearly run the state to the ground, but generally they still weren't treating themselves as grander than life itself.

They dressed up in modest clothes and even the senate technically still had the pretense of power, although obviously that was just a big fat lie. They called themselves 'princeps', first person. Not emperor. Not until Diocletian, who declared himself above others.

So only after Diocletian they started to become more like medieval rulers, and this imago was only strengthened later when Constantine essentially single handedly transformed it into Christian empire. When the Western Empire finally collapsed, well actually even before that, the Eastern Emperors at Constantinople obviously were already pretty much like medieval omnipotent kings.

The only real power problem they had was the church, which they couldn't order around alone. In pagan times emperors controlled the religious matters too.

Disney Announces New Star Wars Forces of Destiny Animated Shorts

The Last Jedi Trailer will premiere tomorrow at SW Celebration in Orlando apparently, very excited to see it!

We're not going to see Lando in 'The Last Jedi'.

Unused footage would have explained how Boba Fett's helmet got the iconic dent.