Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More (Page 5 of 6)

Another thought on OBI-WAN. Or rather, an expansion on previous thoughts.

People have criticized OBI-WAN, not unreasonably, for having characters running on obvious courses to obvious destinations. Obviously, Darth Vader can't kill Obi-Wan Kenobi in OBI-WAN KENOBI when it's set 10 years before A NEW HOPE.

But that scene in Episode II really hits hard when Ben is horrified to discover that Anakin Skywalker is still alive. That he really screwed up back in REVENGE OF THE SITH. And Episode III really impacted me, specifically the sequence where Darth Vader storms the village and Ben cowers behind a window grate. Then Ben flees if only to draw Vader away, Vader catches up to him, ignites his red lightsaber... and General Obi-Wan Kenobi, the master-warrior-defender of Naboo invasion, the hero of the Clone Wars... he runs away in terror.

Vader catches up to him, red lightsaber ready -- and Ben triggers his own lightsaber but holds it with all the swordsmanship that a child might have when brandishing an overly heavy flashlight. Ben is so obviously not even holding the lightsaber with the intention of putting up an actual fight; he's pretty certain this his his last moment of existence and he's just trying to illuminate the darkness to see what in holy hell Anakin Skywalker has become.

The name Obi-Wan Kenobi is a name of myth and legend. It summons to mind the resolute, determined Padawan of THE PHANTOM MENACE, the forceful and measured warrior of ATTACK OF THE CLONES and REVENGE OF THE SITH, the wise sage of A NEW HOPE who faced Darth Vader and death with humour, dignity and resolve. But Obi-Wan Kenobi is nowhere to be found in Episode III of his own show; instead, we get Ben and when Ben faces Darth Vader, Ben looks like he's about to wet himself.

Ewan McGregor's acting is really very good here.

This scene really speaks to me. Nobody feels like an adult. Nobody really thinks they have their act totally together. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi has had really bad periods in his life. It was not a straight line from hypercompetent police officer to semi-retired old man who still knows how to handle a laser sword.

Nothing wrong with disliking OBI-WAN. The reviews, as I said, were average to poor. However. It's unfair to mock OBI-WAN for Ben not changing his last name. That is a plothole created by A NEW HOPE and REVENGE OF THE SITH, neither of which were OBI-WAN or produced by OBI-WAN's team.

Bringing up a 2005 complaint about a 2005 movie but turning it to a 2022 production is an odd choice in delayed targeting.

Also, A NEW HOPE was written in the pre-internet era when personal records and social media data weren't so readily available; you couldn't imagine Googling Kenobi in 1977. The internet still doesn't appear to be a thing even by the time of RISE OF SKYWALKER.

As for Darth Vader, he is is Palpatine's slave, forever plotting Palpatine's overthrow, seething with hatred. In A NEW HOPE, Vader tried to choke a subordinate to death and was constantly lashing out at the Rebel soldiers. And rather than command some fighter pilots, he got into a TIE Fighter himself to be hands on.  In EMPIRE, Vader wanted Luke to help him kill the emperor; Vader is a deeply disgruntled employee. And in EMPIRE, Vader repeatedly executes personnel in fits of rage.

Darth Vader is the antithesis of self-control. Any indication of 'control' is the suit keeping him alive, not the burn patient trapped inside it. Darth Vader is the poster child for anger management issues and is ridiculously theatrical.
Watch EMPIRE and ask yourself how much advance planning and rehearsal Vader had to do to plan the scene where Han walks into a dining room to find Vader waiting for him.

Again, there are legitimate and fair criticisms to be made of this show. I am certainly not the final arbiter of taste. I am seeing a lot of my own neuroses and insecurities in OBI-WAN, so it speaks to me. It may not speak to others.

If you think OBI-WAN looks cheap, that's not an unreasonable remark in light of Episodes 4 - 6 which use a simpler approach to Stagecraft settings (LED background, foreground 'exterior' dressing, blurriness and fog and darkness to merge the dividing lines). It's low-spectacle and low-drama and to some, it comes off as vacant, empty and dull and that's absolutely fair, just as it was absolutely fair for Slider_Quinn21 to dislike the Rey character (and I apologize for being so obnoxious about that).

But if you have a problem with Ben's alias, that's really not OBI-WAN KENOBI's fault; that problem was there long before a single page of OBI-WAN was typed and will remain long after we're all gone.

I understand why Grizzlor would note all the absurdities of the STAR WARS universe. We all have different thresholds for suspension of disbelief. However, I have to point out: STAR WARS is a fictional universe created in 1971 and released in 1977. OBI-WAN is set in this 1971-1977 derived world.

George Lucas wrote STAR WARS in 1971 when communication across distances was done by postal lettermail. Long distance phonecalls. Teletype machines. STAR WARS presents a spacefaring, AI-producing, laser blaster firing society that has no galaxy-wide internet, just as 1971 had no planet-wide internet.

In the STAR WARS universe, long distance communication is only in terms of wireless voice transmission and fuzzy video. This limited infrastructure doesn't allow bulk data transfer, hence Death Star plans being sent by datatape and droid. R2D2 can't wirelessly connect to computers, he has to physically plug in. This is 1971 - 1977 technical limitations scaled to a space opera scale, but the limitations still stand even if the distance covered is interstellar rather than global.

In 1971 - 1977 America, General Obi-Wan Kenobi could complete his discharge papers, leave his home town of Chicago, move to Madrid, New Mexico, change his first name to Ben, and never be found again. There'd be no decentralized, accessible-from-anywhere computer network of government ID or credit history or social media or facial recognition databases to track him. And in this 1971-conceived interstellar society, Darth Vader can send all the Obi-Wan Kenobi wanted posters he can print, but the Imperial postal service doesn't get to Tatooine. This galaxy is still operating on the galaxy equivalent of snail mail.

STAR WARS is always going to ask you to pretend that it is 1971-1984 while you watch it. And period pieces aren't for everyone.

Star Wars isn't set in our future (or any future) so it's just a matter of technology progressing differently in that distant galaxy.

It's easy to forgive Roddenberry for undershooting.  The best minds of the 60's envisioned a computer powerful enough to manage the moon landing that could fit in a single room.  The notion that the average person would be carrying one that powerful around in their pocket every day would have seemed ludicrous to even the most optimistic futurist.

In 1971, George Lucas couldn't imagine what steps would exist after the telephone, civilian band radio, and fax machines that would take us to spaceships and laser blasters. In 2022, it's hard to imagine that an interstellar civilization could have built a spacefaring, galaxy-wide Republic or Empire without wireless data transmission to coordinate construction, resources, supplies, transportation, etc.. But STAR WARS is using space opera equivalents of landlines, radio and fax.

If one had to rationalize it based on the Original Trilogy alone, the explanation might be that there was once a STAR TREK-level of technological achievement that was society wide, but then some devastating, apocalyptic war reduced everyone to using only what scraps remained of the previous generation. Perhaps that series of Clone Wars that Luke refers to. But the prequels dismissed that notion.

STAR WARS was imagined as a legally-dissimilar FLASH GORDON. It was meant to be a science fiction technological universe. But the Force, in addition to making STAR WARS safe from copyright infringement by disassociating from FLASH GORDON, repositioned STAR WARS as a mystical fantasy universe.

George Lucas was not faithful to STAR WARS as (techo)mystical fantasy, introducing midichlorians as a pseudoscientific explanation for the Force, emphasizing machines over magic. He didn't really think through the mythology of his universe; he just focused on the cool visual moment and then the next one after that. The cool visual moment was generally driven by machines (pod races, hoverboards).

But I think a lot of the oddities of STAR WARS from inconsistent technological development to droids would make a lot more sense if it were technomystical like, say, the videogame FINAL FANTASY VII.

In FF7, all the technology of FF7 draws on the "Lifestream", a river of spiritual and metaphysical energy that is the Lifeforce of the planet which people with the right talent can tap into to perform superhuman feats. The Lifestream can also be exploited by technology with FF7's machines, weapons, power plants drawing on Lifestream.

It might make sense to someday reveal that STAR WARS technology is powered by the Force. It would explain a lot. For example: why do the droids have personalities? What computer programmer would create a machine to do a task, but then give that machine fear, reluctance, hesitation and all the emotions that prevent C3PO from doing his job?

Why would a computer programmer take the time to create an artificial intelligence that can experience fear; wouldn't the task of programming a droid to translate or hack computers or fight intruders be enough work?

It could be explained that all machines in STAR WARS draw on Force energy, a living, collective entity and each droid is a unique expression of the life of the Force; droids are lifeforce in a mechanical body. The specific 'magic' of the Force could then be tailored to whatever limitations are needed to maintain a recognizable version of the STAR WARS universe.

Why isn't there galaxy-wide data transmission? Because communications tech that uses Force energy generates electromagnetic interference with engineers being blind to the Force as a psychic and telepathic power. Do people in the STAR WARS universe recognize that all their fuel and power is actually different forms of the Force and that their use of it strictly in terms of physical fuel is self-limiting?

My guess is there's an underlying zero point energy technology in STAR WARS that few understand, all of it copied or replicated from an original source blueprint, the origins of which are lost and long forgotten, and because all power sources in the STAR WARS universe are copies of copies of copies, the technology that makes it to remote places like Tatooine and Jakku is the bottom of the barrel.

That's my fan theory. But as for why the Jedi are government appointees known to the public in THE PHANTOM MENACE but urban legends dismissed by Han Solo in A NEW HOPE... well, I like Slider_Quinn21's theory that the Jedi were not well-known outside of the galactic capital.

I'm looking at a 4K scan of a 1977 theatrical print of STAR WARS. This was done by the fan restorationist team called team negative 1.

The print has been cleaned and run through a variety of filters to reduce the flicker and lines and flashes. Some scenes look incredibly sharp and crisp.

Some are so muddy and grainy that it goes beyond normal film grain. This looks like it's because many shots had multiple layers of film to add in special effects and composite shots which would either double or triple the amount of grain.

There's definitely a bit of work for Disney to do after scanning a theatrical print if the original negative has been destroyed, but STAR WARS from theatrical prints is a viable path to a 4K release of the unaltered versions.

Likely, an AI process can run through all this grain to render it into proper 4K detail. This 35mm image was meant to be cast through a projector, a form of theatrical presentation that softens the look of grain. On backlit displays, that grain looks like static.

I wonder if the endless cleanup of STAR WARS for blu-ray, polishing every single image to a low brightness, high contrast sheen is not helpful in this instance. STAR WARS on 4K looks too crisp for a 1977 movie, it has too many shots that look like it was filmed in 2007 and then when the limitations of 1977 arise, it's awkward.

I wonder how it'd have looked to Slider_Quinn21 if the image on Disney+ weren't so pristine but truer to the original presentation, looking like this:

The light levels aren't relentlessly refined; the grain patterns are present. It looks fine on a 4K TV, but it also looks like a product of 1977 and it doesn't raise expectations that can't be met.

My cleanup isn't going to remove the grain, just remove the sense of static being baked into the picture and make it so that the grain level is consistent throughout instead of going back and forth from thick to thin.

There's another fan reconstruction of the original trilogy: the D+77, D+80 and D+83 series. The D+ fan editor took the Disney 4K versions of the movies and also acquired 4K scans of the 35mm film (a theatrical print) with the special effects sequences. This editor removed the special edition additions and put the original footage back in place.

I didn't watch the RETURN version because the 4K83 project found such a great print of the film that it doesn't really need any more reconstruction projects. I did check out the STAR WARS and EMPIRE D+ reconstructions.

The D+ reconstruction uses the 2020 4K blu-ray so the picture quality is extremely crisp and sharp with excellent saturation throughout (but relit to be closer to the original theatrical presentation). RussianCabbieLotteryFan would approve of the colour and lighting.

But then we have the 4K scans of the 35mm film for the special effects sequences and it does not look 4K. It looks like 720p stretched to 4K because the 4K scan is made from a semi-degraded theatrical print whereas the blu-ray is a 4K scan of the master negatives. The 35mm film sequences have a muddy, flickery quality. Even if you ran this reconstruction through Topaz to get the grain consistent, the sharpness wouldn't be consistent. The grain would be normalized, but the image would persist in going from razor sharp 4K blu-ray footage to muddy or smeared 35mm print material.

When Ben and Luke speed into Mos Eisley, D+77 retains the blu-ray landspeeder footage so the shot is sharp and the original Vaseline smeared on the lens to create the hovercraft effect is absent. But we get into Mos Eisley and suddenly, the shots are fuzzier. The Millennium Falcon descends towards Cloud City looking crisp, but D+80 replaces the CG Cloud City shots with the 35mm matte paintings and practical Falcon model, and suddenly, the movie becomes flickery with large grains.

I think it is preferable to go with the 4K77 scan of a 35mm film print of the 1977 STAR WARS where. Even after AI grain-to-pixel conversion, it isn't as sharp as the D+ reconstruction, but it's consistent and you get used to it. I haven't seen the full rescan of 4K80 yet (the fan editors are still cleaning and colour correcting it), but I would expect it to, like 4K77, be consistent in its flaws where a reconstruction will always have a quality gap between the baseline footage and the footage being stitched back in.

Curiously, another path to consistency for EMPIRE is to run the 720p Despecialized version through Topaz and bring it to 1080p. The AI upscale will smooth out mismatches between the 720p and 480p-approximate footage (the scans of 35mm film with an older, lower-res scanning process). There isn't as much of a gap between mildly fuzzy 720p video and fuzzy 480p video. Topaz can make the inconsistency consistent and the Despecialized EMPIRE after Topaz AI cleanup will look... actually a lot like the 35mm print of STAR WARS after a Topaz AI cleanup.

Hahah, that's funny.

I do wonder if we'll see more adaptations of dialogue in A New Hope to match what we know of Rogue One, Obi-Wan, and the prequels.  It probably wouldn't take much to alter Leia's message or Vader's dialogue.

I don't know if they should, but I don't know if it would be any more of a change than any of the other things George has changed.

So I think I officially hate the Star Wars sequels.

Not because of Rian Johnson or Mary Sues or black stormtroopers or Rose or Snoke or Reylo or Palpatine returning somehow or any of the main reasons people don't like the sequels.  I just think they're depressing to think about, especially as they flesh out the universe with superior content.

In the Mandalorian, things are still mostly grim.  It never seems like people are thriving.  But we've seen glimpses of hope for a better tomorrow.  The New Republic is doing its best to undo what the Empire did.  They're trying to dismantle and rehabilitate and chart a new future.  And in shows like Andor and the Clone Wars, we learn more about Mon Mothma.  And since Mon Mothma is the chancellor in the New Republic, when we meet her and learn about her, we start to cheer for her.

We are seeing a hopeful Luke starting to train new Jedi and the Force seems to be healing the world.  Force-sensitive children are allowed to live and thrive for the first time in 30 years.

But....who cares about any of that when we know it's all going to come crashing down?  The prequels are supposed to have an ominous feel to them because we know the Republic is going to fall and the Empire will rise.  But it's okay because we know how it ends.

And, yeah, the sequels have a happy ending....sort of.  And maybe it's enough that Luke and Leia get to enjoy that happy ending through the Force.  But it just feels like the Original Trilogy is a waste of time.  Everything that happens in the Original Trilogy doesn't matter.  They don't defeat the Empire (really).  They don't even defeat Palpatine.  They make things slightly better on a few planets and redeem Anakin.  That's really it.

And that just sucks.  The prequel trilogy is about the hubris of the Jedi and how democracy is delicate.  The Jedi could've stopped Palpatine easily if they hadn't gotten cocky.  The Republic should've been strong enough to resist the Empire.  But hubris is real and democracy is delicate.

What's the lesson from the original trilogy now?  It's still that even the worst man can be redeemed.  But the band of heroes fails in the end.  They all end up with fairly pointless deaths.  Leia essentially exhausts herself because she has to do everything all over.

And what sucks is that the lessons from the sequels are able to discredit the happy endings made by the sequels.  Sure, maybe Rey has learned from the failures of the Jedi, but who's to say her new path will go any better than Luke's.  Luke wasn't tainted by thousands of years of Jedi laziness.  Even with books and teaching, he was essentially charting his own path like Rey is going to.  I wouldn't think there'd be anything to stop one of Rey's new students from pulling a Kylo Ren and pulling the whole thing down.

And maybe there will be a New New Republic, but who's going to lead it?  And why would we think they'd be any more successful than Mon Mothma was?

I always wanted to see the sequels.  Yes, I wanted to see a badass Luke Skywalker at the height of his power, but it's just fun to see what things look like once the story is over.  And I think there's stories to tell when a fledgling government is starting over.  And, trust me, I think de-politicizing (and by that I mean less focus on galactic politics, not messaging) Star Wars in the sequels was a good idea.  But I don't think anyone making The Force Awakens thought about the message they were sending.  They just wanted to remake A New Hope and needed a new Empire.

The original trilogy was about the fall of Rome.  The original trilogy was about revolution.  Maybe the sequel trilogy should've been about civil war.  Maybe people in the galaxy liked certain aspects of the reign of the empire and the security it brought them.  Maybe they fight back against a young republic trying to learn how to walk.  Maybe disarming ends up weakening them and forces inside the republic start talking about re-arming and becoming more militaristic.  Maybe there begins to be talk of sending Luke's new Jedi to fight this war.

The prequels start to repeat themselves.

And maybe people like Mothma and Luke and Leia and Han show that they've learned from the mistakes of the past and start making the right decisions.  Maybe Luke learns that the Jedi can't be soldiers or special forces or even peacekeepers - maybe they need to be something else.  Maybe Mothma and Leia can find a balance between being peaceful and being strong.

And you wouldn't even need to change much about the characters.  Rey is Luke's promising young student who feels conflicted because she misses her old life and family.  Poe is a hotshot pilot who wants to protect the New Republic at any cost.  Finn is a defector of the people that don't like the chaos that the end of the Empire brought to certain places in the galaxy.

And you can still have Starkiller Base and underdog space fights and hopeless situations and lightsaber fights.  But you don't have to undermine everything that the previous movies taught us.

It makes me sad for an stories that are coming on Star Wars TV.  And it makes me feel hopeless about Episodes 10-12 making the same mistakes.

That's a pretty good summary.

I think one of the themes of Star Wars is survival against the odds.  It's more exciting when David beats Goliath so to have a ragtag group of rebels beat an overwhelming Empire is fun and impressive.  We like an underdog story.  And even the title "A New Hope" is an inspirational message against something that seems invincible.

And even in the prequels, Lucas does this.  The Jedi and the Republic have all the numbers, but even then, Lucas is able to paint the situation as hopeless.  Palpatine is in charge of the Senate and is ten steps ahead of the Jedi.  Because we know the end, the story still feels grim.  And even though the Republic falls and the Jedi are wiped out, Obi-Wan and Yoda saving themselves and the twins feels like a win against insurmountable odds.

And then JJ Abrams gets the ability to make a new Star Wars movie.  But he doesn't want to make a movie about a fledgling Republic and a new enemy.  He wants the Rebellion vs the Empire.  And not only that, he wants the stakes to be increase significantly.  There is no Luke.  The Republic can't help because it's destroyed without fanfare.  But all the other faces are the same - the stormtroopers and ships and weapons are all basically the same.  They even have a new more powerful Darth Vader and Death Star.

The problem is that there's no growth in that story.  It's not a sequel, it's a reboot.

And besides being lazy, it does a disservice to the stories that came before.  It's a 90s sitcom where they have a Very Special Episode about pill use or suicide and the next week everyone's going to get frosty chocolate milkshakes as if nothing happened.

I think there were ways to do the kinds of stories that Abrams wanted to tell without dismantling all the thematic progress the stories had made.  Maybe the remnants of the Empire escaped to the far reaches of the galaxy.  Maybe they licked their wounds and combined with a greater threat, and they come back.  Maybe Jakku is the furthest planet out in the New Republic and this new threat attacks there first.  That would certainly feel hopeless.  The Jedi and the New Republic are too far out to come, and First Order has Empire ships and loads of stormtroopers.

Maybe they continue this story with the First Order being welcomed on places like Jakku which are too far away to get the protection of the New Republic and are now struggling to survive without the support the Empire used to provide.  That would feel hopeless.

I don't know.  Thinking about it just bums me out.  I don't think the movies are terrible, and I think they have a lot of good parts.  I think they get Star Wars (1977).  I just wish they understood Star Wars (the overall universe that evolved significantly since 1977).

I love Avatar and Korra so I get your references.

And I don't so much want to stop seeing stories about war.  I think you can tell action stories without undermining the stories that came before it.  And I have just started to love what I'm seeing in the Star Wars universe with a New Republic trying to find its place.  I think it's exciting to see them trying to fix the wrongs and even when they make mistakes (dismantling Star Destroyers instead of using them to protect themselves), it's for the "right" reason.

There's probably something to be said about a society that wins a war and makes too much of an effort to focus on peace (when there's always someone out there that wants to ruin that peace).  But I don't think JJ Abrams thought about that.  They just wanted to retell Star Wars on a bigger scale with new characters.  And so we lose out on original stories because the new creator didn't care.

And that just sucks.

But, yes, Korra told an entirely different story and thought was put into how that world would've evolved.  I don't think any thought was put into how Star Wars' world would've evolved.

Three new STAR WARS movies coming: https://www.starwars.com/news/swce-2023 … wars-films

Daisy Ridley will return. I'm interested in that, but I haven't watched much of THE MANDALORIAN (aside from the Luke scenes). I liked OBI-WAN. However... I think I am just tired of war and I'm currently revisiting all the syndicated HERCULES and XENA episodes that I didn't get around to watching back in my childhood.

Mandalorian has become a total trainwreck.  Hope the pay off is a good one, because between that show and Boba-Fett, it's just a mess.  Obi-Wan was awful.

Andor was magnificent, one of the best series I've ever witnessed.  The other stuff is boring beyond belief and I am not one of these loons who fantasizes over light saber battles. 

The Ahsoka series has my attention because I was a HUGE Rebels fan and will get to see more of that story in live action now.

The movies are mehhh, will they even get made?  I like Daisy Ridley and Rey is easily the ONLY sequel introduced character worthy of continuance.

Do I need to watch CLONE WARS and REBELS to understand AHSOKA? I'm very intrigued by the recent buzz around AHSOKA. I don't object to watching CLONE WARS and REBELS, but I don't know how long it would take me to get through them.

Hmm. I recall actually seeing the CLONE WARS movie 2008 in a movie theatre when it first released. I remember thinking at the time that the character and prop designs looked like wooden marionettes rendered in computer graphics but with all the immobility and rigidity of wood and little of the versatility and motion of animation.

I remember finding that while the writing benefitted from not being written by George Lucas and his robotic dialogue, the pacing was dull and tedious and like watching four TV episodes spliced into a film reel and even then, it would still have been tiresome halfway in.

I remember thinking Ahsoka had a lot of potential as a character, but was shallowly defined. I remember thinking that James Arnold Taylor's Obi-Wan voice was an impersonation of Ewan McGregor's Alec Guinness impression and was like a photocopy of a photocopy. I remember thinking that Matt Lanter's voice of Anakin was significantly less whiny than Hayden Christensen and therefore 200 percent more tolerable, and wondering if we might get a more convincing portrait of Anakin's fall to the dark side from Lanter.

I remember thinking that this was all so boring in a 100 minute movie and deciding not to bother with the TV show.

I rewatched it just now and had exactly the same opinion except if Slider_Quinn21 thinks CLONE WARS is good, I'll watch at least the first season.

Now, regarding the AHSOKA spoiler...

Slider_Quinn21, I was wondering: do you find it an issue that the Ahsoka and Anakin who are meeting again in the live action series are not Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter but instead Rosario Dawson and Hayden Christensen? Is there any issue with the actors who first built this relationship being absent, and two actors who are onscreen strangers to each other being the ones who get 'reunited' with each other? I don't know if there would or wouldn't be, I'm just interested.

Lucas remarked in 2008 that he didn't rehire the original actors for CLONE WARS because they were all filming projects in different parts of the world and too difficult to schedule for recording. He also remarked that hiring big name actors for animation was paying more for celebrity promotion than performance. He probably could have just said the first part and kept the second part to himself. ;-)

Spoilers for AHSOKA

Well, there is one thing that stands out to me: Dawson and Christensen are playing an Ahsoka and Anakin after the fall of the Empire. Ahsoka is an adult now; Anakin has been through the Dark Side and returned to the light. In a sense, these characters are meeting for the first time at this new stage of their lives. (I recall reading about Ahsoka fighting Darth Vader in REBELS but don't remember how old she was.)

I do think that it would be more consistent if Dawson and Christensen had voiced the characters in CLONE WARS. Except... Dawson, even in her younger years, had this assured authority in her voice that I don't really associate with the inexperienced, frantic Ahsoka I'm currently seeing in Season 1 of CLONE WARS. And Christensen is a good actor (not that you'd know it from the prequels), but he is an actor who acts with his whole body and his face, and Christensen's voice has a certain narrow monotone to it. I'm not sure he'd come off too well as a voice actor for an animated show.

Maybe Ashley Eckstein playing Ahsoka and Matt Lanter playing Anakin in the animated shows was really for the best.

I really couldn't say. I assumed that it wouldn't be dramatically satisfying to have an actor reprise a role that isn't the most recent version of his character, but I'm not going to get to AHSOKA until I finish CLONE WARS and REBELS, so it'll take awhile for me. I hope you'll tell us all what's what in this thread when the episodes air.

Well, beginning with THE LAST JEDI, Yoda was able to strike Luke with his walking stick and summon Force lightning. How consistent was CLONE WARS with Force ghosts?

I would rate Ahsoka as a C+ to a B-, although that grade may change over time (assuming) future seasons better guide where the story is going.  Didn't work out for The Mandalorian, where an A first season meant little when the show later went off the rails.  I LOVED this cast, despite not being that enamored with Rosario, who I felt was far too cerebral and lacked the bravado of the animated version.  Natasha Liu Bordizzo, I'm in love with.  Even the guy playing Ezra, looked and felt the part, which I thought would be the toughest.  The production design and CGI artwork were extraordinary, award-worthy. 

Sadly, that's about where my praise ends.  The story, on its whole, is very compelling.  The problem is, as has become standard with Disney+ Star Wars, is that the story is stretched out like pizza dough, and the interludes are incredibly boring and pointless.  The action was great, but intermixed with so many pauses and drawn out silence, you have to ask WTH?!?!  These are not bad directors, someone is making them do this, and it's putrid.  The dialogue is beyond wretched, I wish there were an option to turn it off but keep the great musical score only!!!  Filoni tried to push themes from his animated shows, in particular, Rebels, which was my favorite.  It fell flat HARD.  Even I was often thoroughly confused what was being referenced, visually, and watched that show intently. 

PS: It was reported that due to the strike, LucasFilm is only releasing TWO series in 2024, The Acolyte and Skeleton Crew.  Obviously I am so furious, because Andor will be delayed until 2025, and it's the only show they've done which is top notch.  I guess hopes will be pinned on Jude Law, who until now, has been one of my favorite actors.  Truly hope, like the miserable Obi-Wan, we aren't given another stellar performance by an English actor trapped in the Garbage Level of the Death Star.

I feel this song perfectly encapsulates why STAR WARS will always let down its fans.

https://youtu.be/7Tm9hFpcO7o?si=te88ccQAB6owMilt

Even as I share it, though, I know I am going to wake up tomorrow and write a lengthy diatribe about why STAR WARS will always disappoint its fans.

Even as I shared an anti-war song, I knew that I was not making a clear argument because I was tired and ill.

The point I was trying to make: the original STAR WARS film is, at its core, a story that glorifies war and presents it as a fun time of action and adventure. As a diverting trip to the cinema, that is okay because it is not meant to be taken seriously.

However, when STAR WARS went from being a single film to a continuing saga over decades, it became necessary to engage with war, violence, loss, trauma, and the sociological and psychological impacts of war in a more detailed manner because more runtime means more detail.

The end result: the majority of STAR WARS stories contradict themselves on a fundamental level. Nearly every STAR WARS story since the original film has been about the futility, destruction and misery of war; nearly every STAR WARS story since RETURN OF THE JEDI has also been about the sheer pointlessness of war as any results achieved are temporary or non-existent.

This has not been intentional, yet it's the message that the stories have delivered.

The prequel trilogy reveals that Darth Sidious was already ruling the galaxy covertly and the Clone Wars just made his rule overt. The Disney trilogy reveals that the Rebel-Empire war accomplished nothing; Darth Sidious was still running the galaxy at a distance. No matter how many victories the Republic/Rebels/Resistance score, the galaxy is always going to be dominated by a fascist dictatorship battled by a group of ragtag group of underdogs.

The STAR WARS formula is designed to enable the action-adventure thrills of a STAR WARS story. Paradoxically, the more this formula is used, the more the stories reflect a distinctly anti-war philosophy ("War not make one great.") because the nature of a STAR WARS hero is to seek peace, not war.

STAR WARS is always disjointed: it appeals to the audience because it offers action-adventure excitement that comes from a landscape of war, while simultaneously telling stories that are against the concept of war. This paradoxical contradiction is tolerable in one movie, passable in two or three, but when sustained for nine movies, it creates all sorts of problems.

The audience feels that the heroes' missions are futile and pointless because the series insists on sustaining a war while either implicitly or deliberately calling war out as bleak and hellish. The result is stories that, no matter how lighthearted they may ever be, make the audience feel bad for seeking entertainment from them, and argue for such stories to no longer be told at all.

"War is hell" and "War is fun" are fundamentally opposing statements, and ever since the first STAR WARS movie, the series has been saying that war is hell while trying to make war fun. STAR WARS is incoherent.

The solution? I'd say STAR WARS needs to resolve the whole Rebel/Empire/Resistance/Order conflict entirely. I think, for at least the next 10 - 20 years, there should be a period of 'present' day STAR WARS stories set after the war where the emphasis is on post-war rebuilding, post-war fallout, post-war conflict. STAR WARS stories can still technically be *about* war, but they're about the impact left by a *concluded* war rather than a present and ongoing war.

STAR WARS has been at war since 1979. I think telling post-war stories about keeping the peace would remove the depressing nature of most STAR WARS stories, address the inherent contradiction of the franchise, and give it some space to grow. STAR WARS has been telling an interstellar version of World War II and Vietnam; I think it's used up all the allegories and metaphors by now. A peacekeeping tone would be welcome; there's also the option STAR WARS becoming about Cold War style espionage to prevent war. This would be a better match to how STAR WARS stories are ultimately anti-war stories.

My favourite episode of STAR TREK is "A Taste of Armageddon" where the Enterprise encounters two warring planets, Eminiar and Vendikar, that have turned war into an interplanetary computer game where citizens report to death chambers if the simulation computers says they were casualties. Eminiar informs the Enterprise that Vendikar marked them as casualties and tries to kidnap the crew to the death chambers. Captain Kirk is outraged, breaks out, and severs the war computer connection between two planets, which violates the simulation agreement and calls for real, non-simulated war to resume between two planets.

My favourite episodes of DOCTOR WHO are "The Zygon Invasion" and "The Zygon Inversion", two episodes of seething outrage against war. The Zygon refugees on Earth are angry at their concealment and decide to go to war over planet Earth. Earth declares war on the Zygons. The climax of the story is the Doctor in a war room with Kate Stewart (commander of the Earth forces) and Bonnie (commander of the Zygon forces), both standing over boxes, each box controlling mass destruction machines that will target Zygons or humans.

That's my ideal model for STAR WARS: adopt some of that STAR TREK/DOCTOR WHO spirit and make STAR WARS a wholly anti-war series.

STAR WARS is currently anti-war content in a war-glorifying container, telling stories to extend and maintain the war. I'd suggest making it anti-war and post war, telling stories about moving past war and preventing war.

As someone who reads a lot of comic books, I know that any shift in the formula can be sustained but is ultimately temporary. The X-Men can move to San Francisco, start an island nation on Krakoa, but will inevitably revert to running a school in New York State. Batman can expand Batman Incorporated into a global operation, but will inevitably return to focusing on Gotham City. Dr. Octopus might take over as Spider-Man for awhile, but Peter Parker will be back. Superman might reveal his secret identity to the world, but the secret will go back in the bottle sooner or later.

STAR WARS, even if it moves to keeping the peace, will inevitably go back to war. But does the inevitable need to be the immediate?

I think it would be a fascinating creative challenge for STAR WARS to fully embrace its accidental, inherent nature as an anti-war parable, as a series that opposes and defies war and the military industrial complex. A few anti-war STAR WARS movies could see us awaken in a vastly better world.

I get that it has to be about a war, but if the wars are endless and repetitive, then no action done by anyone has any impact.  It makes winning any particular battle (or even war) meaningless if the cycle just repeats a few years later.

Is it won?  The Empire technically has superiority at the end of 2/3 of the trilogies (and the third isn't even all that definitive).  At the end of the prequels, obviously the Empire wins.  At the end of the original trilogy, the Empire appears to have lost, but all their victories are wiped away within 30 years.  To the point where, at the end of episode 8, the Rebellion/New Republic/Resistance is entirely on one ship.  It's implied during the sequel trilogy (and the Filoni stuff) that the Empire was still infecting the New Republic and biding its time. 

And the Empire is able to essentially convert into the First Order and take over every bit of what the Empire held (I think, it's really unclear on how much they control).  By the end of episode 9, the heroes have reformed some sort of new rebel alliance and they defeat Palpatine, but I can't even remember if they do anything about the actual First Order.  I assume they still have tons of territory and ships and might actually have competent leadership from whoever is next in line.

That's what souring about all Star Wars with me.  In three trilogies, they have a couple of wins (episodes 4, 6, and 9), but for the most part, the theme seems to be "keep fighting but the bad guys will always come back bigger and stronger"

I think it's clear to the viewer that the Empire has lost and the Rebellion victorious at the conclusion of Return of the Jedi.  That's the conclusion of George Lucas's "Skywalker" timeline/narrative.  What's come after then, as we all know, is more war, because that's literally the premise of the franchise.  It was never conceived as an ongoing anthology or continuation like Star Trek of a variety of adventures and stories.  The sequel trilogy was a colossal windfall for Disney, but a progressively disliked by fans.  I figured it would be, when Mark Hamill basically crapped on Abrams and Johnson for writing trash.  The movies are well made and outstanding "first watches," but they don't captivate like the originals, and the Rise of Skywalker is an utter disaster.

TLJ was decent enough, I didn't have a big issue with it.  Though old Leia turning into Superwoman was farcical.  I certainly wouldn't rate it above any of the OT, good grief no way.  They should have just allowed Johnson to direct the last one, but J.J. was brought back in.  In typical Abrams fashion he had a great premise but couldn't get it to the finish line. 

I personally like most fans, lament the extinguishing of Luke, Han, and ultimately Leia.  They were never given a grand reunion on screen, and a LOT of older fans are angry at how they turned them into old hasbeens, most especially Luke, into a caricature of Yoda.  Looking back, I also lament that George Lucas was basically lied to, and J.J. Abrams tossed whatever concepts he'd supplied for the evolution of the characters into the trash. 

Now we've had Dave Filoni on this drunken journey to re-establish the Lucas-verse, if you will, over the franchise.  They've canceled more projects than Amtrak.

STAR WARS could shift to a cold war instead of a hot war and still be about war.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/shar … 235859572/

While the right naturally have assailed the director's comments about "making men feel uncomfortable" and expecting an overly "woke" Rey film, I have other concerns.  Such as, what experience or vision does this woman have in directing a film of this scale, in this genre?  Will she eschew the CGI for a character piece?  This might be a complete disaster, or a Logan-esque hit.

Is there a singular form of "Jedi" in English?  Could mean a single Jedi.  HA HA HA.  Seriously though, I suspect maybe Rey will now follow the journey Luke was intending to do, but failed at.