I live my life a quarter parsec at a time.
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Is the Mandalorian Boba Fett?
Seems strange that you’d have that armour there and it not being Boba Fett. It also seemed as if they were being a little too cagey around the character of the Mandalorian himself.
The Mandalorians themselves are historically a warrior people. During the Clone Wars the ruling party skewed toward Pacifism to try to maintain neutrality. Darth Maul got involved and I don’t have time to get into all that. Jango Fett wasn’t a Mandalorian, he stole his armor or something.
It seems to me that they took the lessons they learned with Marvel and applied it to Stars Wars, but I’ve found that to have been a terrible mistake. An epic like Star Wars doesn’t need every emotional/impactful moment ruined by being immediately followed by a dumbass one liner, it doesn’t need half the movie taken up by ~references~, and it doesn’t need the most boring cliche and safe direction on the planet Earth. However I do think those things actually work pretty well for the Star Wars Stories, as opposed to the trilogy they are actually fully trying to be Marvel movies instead of being caught between them and a completely different style of movie. I’m actually kinda bummed no one gave Solo a chance after Last Jedi left such a sour taste.
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I have enjoyed Starwars movies since Disney took over. I share the same sentiment of bloodlines being gross, tired and lazy. I enjoy the skywalker being a new faction of Jedi, which will hopefully be the direction they go.
Also make Star Wars more weird and queer.
It’s so easy to think of a better Starwars story when you don’t try to appeal to the masses.
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I’m way into the new canon expanded universe stuff. The newest novel, Master & Apprentice, just came out, and I’ve been listening to the audiobook. I’m excited for more information on Qui-Gon Jinn. As far as the new canon goes, there’s virtually no information on him other than episode 1, and the various other times they mention him in the films. He always seemed like such an intriguing character.
Anyone else into the novels/comics?
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I think a lot of the new canon has been pretty good. Especially the comics.
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I actually still haven’t got around to Bloodline, but it’s written by Claudia Gray, who also wrote Master & Apprentice, and this one is great so far. From what I remember, the new canon podcast I listen to, Star Wars New Canon Book Club, really enjoyed it.
As well, from my experience, if you want some good EU stuff, you can never go wrong with the comics.
I’d caution against reading too much into Episode 9’s title. Abrams just loves to pull this “Mystery Box” marketing gimmick to work people up into a tizzy over things we have no context for. Given Abram’s respect for TLJ, and the work both him and Rian Johnson did to bridge TFA to TLJ, I don’t think there’s one should worry too hard about important story beats.
Besides, even if we know Rey’s parentage, the idea they weren’t galactic heroes matters in that movie and in those scenes. Even if it isn’t actually the case. The Last Jedi is still going to be the best Star Wars movie even if Rise of Skywalker sucks.
With this coming, though, I’m getting ready to get all fucked up on Star Wars this year. After TLJ, all I wanted to do was run a Star Wars RPG. Right now, did y’all know that there are tons of Star Wars miniatures out there, just waiting to be painted up??? I’m very tempted to pick up an Ashoka mini or a Princess Leia, and just go to town on cool cool space miniatures.
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Star Wars Imperial Assault is probably my favorite strategy board game of all time, and that game has me drowning in high quality miniatures. Love to paint those bad boys.
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I played a campaign once and REALLY enjoyed it. It’s a cool board game that has a great feel, even if I think we didn’t get a varied sample of missions. I’m thinking of maybe picking up a copy myself, because it’s just so neat.
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I think those are all good points but the issue with JJ is that he isn’t known for paying off mystery boxes. He launches franchises, he doesn’t end them, at least typically. Plus, is introducing new mystery boxes for your final installment a good idea?
For as much as people claimed there was no story left for IX to tell, I thought the path forward was pretty clear. Kylo consolidates his power, the Resistance recruits new allies with Finn and Poe’s new leadership skills, and Rey reinvents the Jedi order into something new with the class liberated force. Bringing back Palpatine and centering the Skywalker name aren’t what I would choose to market the film with, if the story were going the way I want it to go, but I guess they get people talking.
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It feels like Palpatine was really brought in from a lot of the new EU books, and how much time is spent with his post-death plans in things like Battlefront 2. But, I will admit, I’m not really expecting an actual conclusion. All four of the main cast are young and talented, and Disney is sitting on a massive sum of money. I suspect that a lot of the conclusions in the movie, lead to new movies or tv shows staring these characters.
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Ah, the Skywalker lineage, the super important bloodline that shapes many events in the SW universe…
Despite only going as far back as Luke’s dad and only existing because Anakin is basically a Force golem accidentally conceieved by Plagueis and/or Sidious. It’s definitely a good thing that the final chapter of this trilogy looks be hinging on it. Yep.
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I’m gonna say two things I say a lot, so apologies if I’ve brought them up here before. I would also like to preface this by saying that neither of these things takes away from the enjoyment that others, and I myself have taken away from things in the past. You can thoroughly enjoy something with glaring flaws, and I frequently do. I love a lot of Star Wars, but I also acknowledge it’s many problems.
First, Star Wars currently is, and always was, incredibly stupid. The people complaining about the lack of thematic or plot consistency in the new trilogy are glossing over how the even the first three movies were rife with inconsistencies and nonsense. Darth Vader goes from being openly and hostilely questioned by some middle management toady in a meeting to essentially being second in command of the entire empire with no explanation. A giant space worm manages to exist in the vacuum of space and somehow ingests enough calories simply by eating whatever spaceships happen to decide to land inside of it. Luke’s plan to rescue Han involves no less than four waves of captives being taken, an inside man, and being able to casually link back up with all of them publicly in a place with no roof. Star Wars has never made sense, stop dying on the hill that somehow this new trilogy is blasphemy compared to the razor-sharp plotting you imagine the series to have.
Second, JJ Abrams isn’t capable of outsmarting a dimwitted ferret on quaaludes. He doesn’t subvert anything, because pretty much everything he makes is incredibly pretty, but as deep as an oil slick. The Force Awakens was basically “what if New Hope, but again?” and now this movie for all intents and purposes looks like “what if Return of the Jedi, but again?” TFA goes out of its way to let you know that you should have sympathy for stormtroopers like Finn because a lot of them are enslaved war orphans, then 60 minutes later expects you to cheer when they successfully blow up an entire planet full of them. Everything JJ Abrams touches is a fun distraction that crumbles like it’s been Thanos snapped the moment you look it for more than a second. I don’t see any reason to believe Skywalker will buck that trend.
I think Skywalker will be a gorgeous, relatively empty affair that leaves you feeling good as long as you don’t analyze it. I also think Star Wars has become such a behemoth and such an ingrained part of people’s identity for one reason or another that it’s a fool’s errand to ever try to make something to satisfy everyone. I was interested to see where they went after TLJ because it at least dared to try something different, but it looks like they’re pulling a hard uturn on that, so who knows?
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My enjoyment of Star Wars is at least 70% aesthetics, so my enjoyment of any individual Star Wars related thing is basically proportional to how good an excuse it is to see more cool spaceships, robots and armors.
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Hi, the Force Awakens Defender has Logged On.
Well, at least, I don’t think you give the film enough credit for it’s theming. TFA does a lot with young people and finding themselves in old conflicts. Rey and Finn grow up to find themselves in an eerily similar conflict to what was fought, and who’s agency is basically defined by the actions of people who came before them. For me, The Force Awakens is 100% a movie about finding one’s place in a world that demands a script from you.
Also, I’d argue that the film really does work to make the fascists fash, and the idea that Finn realized what he didn’t belong there is more than enough selling to me to see the Giant Fascist Gun Explode.
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I like Force Awakens a lot too, it rehashes a ton of things from A New Hope but also has its cake and eats it too with how it plays around with them. The Last Jedi is really cool too, though I think the extent to which it does things differently or whatever is greatly exaggerated. I don’t know, I think Attack of the Clones is the only Star Wars movie I’d say is straight up bad, and even then it at least is really well shot even if the effects hold up the worst of the prequel trilogy.
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Lately I’ve been listening to some of the earliest Blank Check (with Griffin and David) podcasts from back when they still talked about The Phantom Menace Trilogy in excruciating detail. It’s a far better critique of those movies than Red Letter Media ever was, and much funnier. Anyway, they absolutely hated Attack of the Clones but their guest JD Amato did an episode explaining the ins and outs of the digital filmmaking in it and it was actually totally fascinating. I nearly went back and watched the movie again afterwards… Of course I didn’t because that film is hot garbage, but I thought about it.
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I don’t hate or even dislike TFA. I think it’s a very entertaining, fun movie just like most of Star Wars movies.
I don’t really agree with you on the theme element though, not because those themes aren’t there, but because the movie undercuts those themes constantly. I would be far more interested in the story of Finn and Rey as people finding themselves if their roles weren’t quite literally shoved upon them with no choice. A stormtrooper recruit falling for the stories of the new order only to find out they’re lies is an interesting story to tell. A captured child raised to be a soldier against his will who isn’t even given a name thinking that maybe this new order shit is for the birds is… less interesting.
Also, why must these be old conflicts? When given the chance to play in the Star Wars playground, why must everything be played for the maximum of nostalgia? Was anyone out there really clamoring for a THIRD death star? My biggest problem with the larger storytelling of Star Wars over time is that it manages to take what should be a sprawling mythos and cram it into a very tiny box. The only thing that really, truly matters in this entire galaxy is the actions of maybe a dozen people.
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