241 (edited by ireactions 2022-06-28 20:00:21)

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Because just having seen A New Hope, there's no indication from Leia that she's ever met Obi-Wan.

ireactions wrote:
  • Observation that Leia must have met Obi-Wan before A NEW HOPE to recognize and react to the name "Ben Kenobi"

  • Observation that it's odd that Leia would refer to Ben as having "served" in the Clone Wars instead of referring to Ben having rescued her years after the Clone Wars

  • Rationalization for subterfuge based on intergalactic politics so convoluted it takes FIVE PARAGRAPHS to explain it

While I think my explanation and the rationale of the show makes 'sense,' I would argue that in terms of quality -- it's not great that there's an apparent discrepancy between OBI-WAN KENOBI and A NEW HOPE that needs two hundred and fifty nine words from me to explain it.

I mean, who really remembers all the trivial dialogue from A NEW HOPE about Alderaan being a disarmed planet, Leia's cover story for the ROGUE ONE mission being a diplomatic mission, "Princess Leia" being a public front for her true identity as a Rebel commander, and the Emperor dissolving the Senate just after the Death Star is deployed?

Surely OBI-WAN should have built that exposition into its own scripts. ("Leia, you must be careful. Your parents' work -- his work with me -- it must be secret, even in the years to come. No one can know that your mother serves the Empire in public to enable your father to defy them in secret.") Slider_Quinn21 shouldn't need me to convince him that it works; OBI-WAN should do its own damn job.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

How does changing one's first name seemingly fool the galaxy?  Ben Kenobi.  KENOBI!!!!  A famous Jedi, the idiot never thought to change his last name?  LOL

I find this Vader to be quite lacking.  He's full of little more than rage, like the boss of a 1990's beat em up game.  The Vader of the OT is cunning, calculating, and rarely repeat RARELY has to use the Dark Side of the Force.  You mean to tell me 7 years and one spanking from Palpatine suddenly calms him down?  Come on.  The David Prowse Vader is in full command of his emotions.  Now I suppose one would argue that the mere mention of Obi-Wan turns him into Yosemite Sam, which is ridiculous.  The inquisitors in Rebels were far more cunning as well.  It's like everyone on these Disney+ Star Wars shows are total buffoons.  Granted there aren't many universities in this universe, but seriously?  Han Solo is practically Einstein compared to all of them.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Grizzlor wrote:

How does changing one's first name seemingly fool the galaxy?  Ben Kenobi.  KENOBI!!!!  A famous Jedi, the idiot never thought to change his last name?  LOL

Well, to be fair, I think there's some things you're not really thinking about.

1. I can't imagine that the Jedi are that famous outside of Coruscant.  Han Solo is well traveled and lived during the time of the Jedi during a time when he'd probably be pretty into that kind of stuff, and he's essentially never heard of them.  It's hard to tell if Luke has ever heard of them - he gets really excited when he hears "Rebellion" but doesn't bat an eye when Ben says "Jedi."  Ben has to explain who the Jedi were and what a lightsaber is.  There are Imperial officers on the Death Star that refer to the Force as an "ancient religion"

My guess is that the Jedi were really well known on Coruscant but worked essentially in secret everywhere else.  People might know the Jedi by name as some sort of galactic police force but think they're basically just new age cops who think they have magic powers.

So I'd be shocked if anyone on Tattooine knew who the Jedi were, and they certainly wouldn't know the names of specific Jedi.  We know about Obi-Wan's name and we follow his story, but I don't see how he'd be famous.

2. Tattooine is essentially the middle of nowhere, and it's a place Vader would never go.  As far as I'm aware, at least in Disney canon, he never goes back after Attack of the Clones.  He always sends someone else.  So Obi-Wan could work at the spaceport in Mos Eisley with a big sign saying "Obi-Wan Kenobi, Former Jedi" on it, and Vader would never find him.  Tattooine is a blind spot.

3. Kenobi could be a really common name.  And as ireactions said, the guy is a shell of his former self.  Even if the people of Tattooine knew who the Jedi were and even if they knew who Obi-Wan was, and even if they found out some how, some might not believe it.  It'd be like finding out that Michael Jordan lived down the street from you.  First off, you might not immediately consider that it's the same guy - plenty of guys are named Michael Jordan.  Second, if he weighed 250 pounds and rode around in a wheelchair, you might not think it was him even if you got a good look at his face.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

ireactions wrote:

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.

And this is a funny separation between Star Wars and Star Trek.  Star Trek came out even earlier, but Roddenberry at least tried to think forward in terms of technology.  Some of it was out of necessity (like the transporter), but at least there seems to be an effort made to accommodate advanced technology.  Like Disney, he hilariously undershot, but to be fair, TNG hilariously undershot again decades later.  I'm sure Discovery and Picard and Strange New Worlds and the Orville will hilariously undershoot.

But it doesn't seem like Lucas even tried.  Because you're right, it's just the 70s with spaceships and laser weapons.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Well, Trek itself is the reason for some of the undershooting.  Whether it's a flip phone communicator or a PADD / iPad, we've used Trek as an inspiration.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I was rewatching STAR WARS Despecialized on my 55 inch 4K TV. The TV was big when I bought it, now it's average. The Despecialized Edition by Petr Harmacek was great when first released in 2011, removing all the special edition changes, but it doesn't work as well on bigger, higher resolutions. The video quality keeps jumping back and forth from strong 720p quality to poor 480p quality that's been stretched to 720p.

The issue: Harmacek started with the HD blu-rays and the below-SD DVDs. The sub-SD-DVDs are unaltered, but they were released in a resolution that's only 640x480, so the video actually exists in 640x270 pixels instead of the full 720x480 of a DVD.

Harmacek rebuilt a cut of the original version with the blu-ray versions and reversed the odd colour alterations made to it, using a 16mm film scan as reference. Harmacek then intricately transferred the unaltered effect shots from the DVD version onto the blu-ray version. This means that entire shots or rotoscoped portions of shots are stretched, sub-standard definition effects on top of the HD shot.

Over time, Harmacek made a lot of improvements: he and other fan collectors and restorationists located scans of the original matte paintings as well as original 16mm, 35mm and 70mm negative prints of the original films. Harmacek was able to a good chunk of the DVD-sourced SD effects with HD scans.

However, these scans, done on second generation film prints that weren't well stored, are only a small upgrade from the fuzzy subSD-DVD effects; they're still not entirely matched to the underlying blu-ray quality.

Watched on a 1080p TV in the 32 - 40 inch range, the despecialized STAR WARS looked fantastic to me. The mismatches weren't really very glaring and if you're caught up in the film, it doesn't matter. But watching it on a bigger and higher-resolution TV, the despecialized versions are really distracting in how the film quality jumps from sharp blu-ray to fuzzier digital scans of old film.

I think the despecialized fan restorationist stuff was great from 2011 - 2021, but now, it's time Disney did its job and released the unaltered original trilogy. I suspect that George Lucas destroyed the original film masters that would allow Disney to rescan and rebuild each shot and each scene in a true remastering; I've read that the only master film negatives available with all the complete effects is the SPECIAL EDITIONS.

However, Disney has plenty of options: they can AI-upscale the unaltered, low-res DVD release of 2006. They can secure a theatrical print of the film, clean it up physically, scan it at 8K, and then subject it to AI-cleanup for dirt and lines and scanning issues. Given their resources, this shouldn't take more than a week for an AI-upscale of the 2006 DVDs or a year for a new scan.

Footnote: The blu-ray/special edition of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is fine. The additions were so minimal. The light level conversion isn't great, but given the 1080p detail, it's acceptable.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

https://i.ibb.co/DYtmQVs/death-star-1.jpg

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.

https://i.ibb.co/7yMhzJd/obi-wan-1.jpg

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I am running the scan of this 35mm theatrical print from team negative 1 through Topaz. I did, however, reduce the 4K video to 1080p so that my computer could handle it. I set Topaz it to mine all the noise for detail; it doesn't blur, but it will smooth. To avoid the waxy look, I have Topaz adding a modest amount of post-upscale grain. The computer says it'll need five days to finish the job.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I watched A New Hope for the first time in a long time this weekend.  It really holds up.

But since I'm also watching Obi-Wan, I was struck by how he acted.  Other than using the Jedi Mind Trick, Obi-Wan almost never uses the force.  Heck, almost no one uses the Force in the way we think about it now.  It's funny how much the Force evolved from what it is in Episode IV.

And I still think the lightsaber fight between Vader and Obi-Wan is just so awkward.  Alec Guinness looks so scared and defenseless.  I don't know if it needs to look like the refilmed version that a fan did not too long ago, but it would be nice for the fight to not look like two old men hacking at each other.  I know that most of the lightsaber fights in the Original Trilogy look like that, but Episode IV is especially bad.

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:

https://i.ibb.co/RNfmSZ1/ben1.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/48gh9rb/darth2.jpg

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Watching digital scans of 35mm film prints of STAR WARS and EMPIRE. It's interesting. These true-to-1977 and 1980 versions of STAR WARS and EMPIRE generally look quite good and nicely saturated with lifelike, natural colour as opposed to overenriched, Michael Bay style colour.

However, the Tatooine desert scenes in STAR WARS and the Cloud City scenes with bright light in EMPIRE all look a little washed out and overexposed at times.

It doesn't seem to be an 'error'; this is how the movies looked in the theatre. It seems to reflect how a film camera in the late 70s was not equipped to fully film desert sunlight and the desert scenes are constantly on the verge of overexposure with a chemical process dimming the image and therefore turning brown sand into faded yellow.

It reflects how STAR WARS was an exercise in desperation: an unsupportive studio, a budget that struggled against technological limits, four different kinds of film used throughout (which explains why the graininess jumps from thick to thin from shot to shot). It looks like a 1977 film.

EMPIRE benefitted from some modest advances in colour and film processing. But there are a few borderline overexposed shots now and then. When Leia and Han are Cloud City, the windows behind them are almost completely blown out in whites.

These shots are actually effective in establishing that these films were made under the limitations of the era. And when the lightsaber fights aren't acrobatic exercises, when the spaceships look like repurposed model kits of battleships from toy stores, when matte paintings look more like ink than steel and concrete, when aliens look more like costumes than flesh and fur, when matte lines are visible -- it's fine when surrounded by other era-specific limitations.

I think it's worth it to remaster movies for presentation on backlit TVs instead of cathode ray tubes or projectors aimed at screens, but ever since 1997, George Lucas was trying to make late 70s and early 80s movies look like they were shot on digital cameras. And it didn't work because while the image might look more modern and have CGI pressed on top of it, the content was ultimately restricted by what was possible in 1977 and 1980.

Slider_Quinn21, quite reasonably, criticizes STAR TREK for being stuck in the past of the 23rd century. STAR WARS seemed to get stuck for a long time too in endless re-releases and with fan editors now trying to put everything back the it was in 1977 and 1980.

(There was an unfaded theatrical print of RETURN OF THE JEDI that Team Negative 1 located and scanned, and aside from their usual work in cleaning and reducing accumulated grain, they didn't have to do very much restoration to get it looking bright and sharp.)

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wondered why Leia in A NEW HOPE didn't mention her adventures with Ben Kenobi in OBI-WAN KENOBI. Why does Leia's message to Ben say, "Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars"? Why doesn't her message instead say something more relevant to herself and Ben, something like, "Years ago, you saved me when I was kidnapped by Imperial Inquisitors?" I offered a long, convoluted explanation about the geopolitical alliances and covert conflicts of the STAR WARS universe that I nearly fell asleep writing.

But recently, I found a simpler explanation. Apparently, A NEW HOPE has a deleted and extended scene of Leia recording her voicemail for Ben.

Deleted Leia Dialogue from STAR WARS 1977:

Ben Kenobi. Years ago, I was kidnapped by Imperial Inquisitors and you mounted a haphazard rescue that nearly got me killed on seven separate occasions because you could barely use your Force powers and shit your pants at the sight of Darth Vader.

Then you sent me home on a freighter while you abandoned ship for a suicide mission that you survived through what I can only assume was luck.

After which you visited me on my planet and instructed me to never describe your catastrophic ineptitude to anyone.

I suspect your competence has only diminished in the decade since.

However, I have vital intelligence for the war effort. And my ship has been attacked while passing your wasteland planet.

I need this astromech droid delivered to my father on Alderaan and you are, to my dismay, the only person I know within a light year.

Given your abysmal performance before, I think it likely you'll die failing in this mission. You are not my first choice. And yet, I must ask you to help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You are my last hope. Also my only hope, there is literally no one else, I couldn't find Jar-Jar Binks' comm number and I think he moved.

R2D2, erase message. I'm taking a breath, I'm taking a breath, I'll speak to his glory days. R2D2, record second draft:

General Kenobi. Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars...

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

On the subject of changes... can Disney release the Original Trilogy in 4K without all the Special Edition changes? Is it physically possible at this point? It unfortunately won't be as simple as rescanning the masters.

I just finished some upscaling work on STAR WARS (fan-made 4K77 version) and EMPIRE (fan-made Despecialized version). The 4K77 version of STAR WARS was a 4K scan of a 35mm film print meant for theatre projection. It definitely didn't have 4K-level detail because a projection print is at least two generations removed from the original master negatives and the original is covered in mismatched levels of grain that change from shot to shot due to the mutiple layers of film to create effects.

After downscaling it to 1080p and running it through Topaz AI's grain-to-pixel algorithm, the film now has consistent grain across all shots and within that 4K scan was a 1080p level of detail. Some of the more heavily grainy scenes, after the cleanup, have a slight flickery quality. It looks like a well-presented 1977 film in 1080p.

The Despecialized EMPIRE was a 720p project combining 1080p blu-ray content with 35mm film scans for the original effects footage that looked grainy and blurry amidst the sharp blu-ray footage. But with Topaz AI upscaling it to 1080p, the sharpness and grain levels have all been levelled out; the film no longer looks mismatched. There will be a 4K80 fan release of a scanned 35mm theatrical print eventually and I imagine it'll look a little sharper than what I have here, and be a 1080p level release in a 4K file.

RETURN OF THE JEDI has a 4K scan of a 35mm release print that was fade-free and only needed to be cleaned of dirt and scratches after the scan. However, some scratches and dirt remain (although it isn't distracting). It doesn't look like a 4K level of detail to me; still it's 1080p quality.

I think Disney could get a 1080p release through scanning theatrical release prints for cleanup, but not 4K. They could definitely do a better job than fans at cleaning up scratches and dirt since they have entire facilities for that.

I suspect that George Lucas destroyed any master negatives of the Original Trilogy that contain the theatrical releases, meaning Disney can't simply rescan those in 4K.

I would like to think that Disney has all the original film elements, however, meaning that all the composite shots (locations, effects, lightsabers) could be recreated from the raw film recordings and then reassembled into a matching cut. They could scan the Special Edition masters, remove the CG scenes, and replace them with recompiled versions of the original effects footage made from the raw elements.

Alternatively, they could take any of the missing effects footage 35mm release prints, clean up the film stock, scan it and then perform AI upscaling to get it closer to a 4K presentation (although it'll still look less than 4K, just without the blocky blurriness of a stretched-to-4K image). As effects footage in motion, it might be close enough to not be distracting.

I suppose Disney could do what fan editors have done: scan 35mm prints in 4K, choose the best video quality shots and scenes from each of them (the prints are all of differing quality), reassemble the theatrical cuts, do cleanup of scratches and dirt, do colour correction based on 16mm fade-free prints and then use AI upscaling to clean up and sharpen the 4K resolution image to have a 4K-approximating level of clarity. It still won't be 4K detail, but it won't have the mild blurriness of a 1080p image being displayed at double its true size.

Disney might even pay the fan editors for their fan-created digital scans of release prints. Disney could then do AI upscaling on those scans to get them closer to 4K. Disney would have more time and graphics processing power to spend on each scene. It could pass for 4K.

Passing for 4K without being entirely there might be a good option, however. If the image quality is too modern, then the 1977 limitations of the image content can seem incongruous. If the image is always slightly less sharp than a movie that was released last week, then it's clear throughout that is a piece of art from a bygone era.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I think Slider_Quinn21 has seized on one of the primary peculiarities of STAR WARS: it almost never thinks about how depressing it is. Lucas conceived STAR WARS as a fun rollercoaster ride of space opera adventure, a movie that didn't require too much thought, just the excitement he felt when dragracing as a young man.

Naturally, he set his joyride movie in a fascist-ruled dystopian empire with his heroes being the perpetually-losing revolutionaries rebelling against a system that would keep coming back.

And of course, Lucas reduced Luke's aunt and uncle to skeletons, nuked a planet, killed pretty much everyone in Rogue Squadron, and then had Luke triumphant and happy at the end of a movie where his family had been incinerated and most of his new friends had either been blown up or suffocated in the icy vacuum of space.

Who is more traumatized? Luke Skywalker or Rembrandt Brown? Certainly, they'd have a lot to discuss in a support group.

I don't know if JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson and the people making all these other shows and animated serieses have thought about how depressing STAR WARS is, but if they're following Lucas' formula -- high adventure and excitement in battling against fascism -- then they're re-enacting and deepening an element (a flaw?) in the original source material that they won't overturn. The Empire/First Order/alt-right/whatever keeps winning so that these shows and movies can justify more action sequences against the villains.

It's possible that STAR WARS needs to be done with the Empire and find a new villain if it wants to break what Slider_Quinn21 notes is a deeply saddening cycle of the Empire winning and the Rebels scoring points and winning battles but always surviving on the losing end of this eternal war.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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).

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I have two avenues of thought on this. The first path: maybe, Slider_Quinn21, you have reached a moment of enlightenment. A personal revelation from arriving at a stage in life that most Americans in Texas never achieve: you have become tired of war.

STAR WARS is fundamentally about deadly armed conflict with mass deaths. It's in the title. And you have become weary of how STAR WARS' wars go on and on and the seemingly decisive battles turn out to be just minor events in one war or the next war. War erodes all victories and deepens all defeats; war grinds away at human beings until they are but cogs in the boundless conflict; war breaks every heroic spirit into a shattered wreck with a mountain of mutilated or lifeless bodies.

That is the nature of war. STAR WARS will always be about wars.

And you have lived out far too many lifetimes of war among the stars whether it's the original trilogy or the prequels or the sequels or the cartoons or the comic books. And you are ready to become a man of peace.

The second line of thinking I have on this is AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, a series about a small group of ragtag rebels (little children) with superpowers (the ability to 'bend' fire, air, water or earth) travelling across a fascist dystopian empire, trying to find some way to topple the brutal regime. The third and final season ends with a definitive victory for the rebels.

The sequel, THE LEGEND OF KORRA, is set 70 years after AIRBENDER, in a time of sustained peace after the triumph of the original series -- except in the first season, those without bending powers have started to accuse benders of being a regime of genetic supremacists just like the people the benders defeated. The second season delves into how all bending powers could conceivably be combined to unleash an eldritch abomination of evil from the dawn of time. The third season is about a new antagonist seeking to destroy bending powers. The fourth season is about a new threat with an enemy now using technology that can overpower bending abilities.

AIRBENDER was about rebels against a ruling regime; KORRA takes place where the rebels have become the rulers but people are starting to see the rulers as no different from the ones they replaced. AIRBENDER and KORRA and STAR WARS are about people with special abilities that may be used for good or evil with benders/Force users alternatively revered or hated.

AIRBENDER told a war story; KORRA shifted to being about keeping the peace. STAR WARS... has stuck to the war stories.

I get the feeling that Slider_Quinn21 might have preferred it if STAR WARS sequels had gone the LEGEND OF KORRA route.

PS: I'm just kidding about Americans in Texas and I've (over)simplified some of KORRA's plots for readability. May the Avatar forgive me.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

It's interesting: there is an action-adventure war series of books called ANIMORPHS, about high school kids who can transform into animals and discover that their planet is slowly being invaded by aliens. They become child soldiers in the war against invasion. The 64 book series was shepherded by Katherine Alice Applegate and a legion of ghostwriters working off her outlines. The series finale ended with a beloved character killed off, one fan favourite mutilated and transformed into an enemy soldier, every survivor traumatized, the villains defeated but surviving, and the end of the war only leading into another war and a cliffhanger ending.

The teenaged readership rioted, furious that Applegate had turned all the characters into psychologically shattered wrecks and ended with the villains not wholly defeated and the beginning of another war. Applegate responded in an open letter, saying:

K.A. Applegate:
Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.

Here’s what doesn’t happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don’t do a lot of celebrating. There’s very little chanting of ‘we’re number one’ among people who’ve personally experienced war.

I’ve spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I’ve written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I’m a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I’d wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.

So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like that one war simply led to another?

Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

I think STAR WARS is doing something similar, except that STAR WARS is different from ANIMORPHS in a key area: STAR WARS is completely unaware of how it has effectively become an anti-war parable about the futility and endlessness of war.

ANAMORPHS was deliberately showing war is a relentlessly consuming force of savagery and horror without end by deliberately having no ending; STAR WARS's endless wars are because JJ Abrams was mimicking the formula original STAR WARS war movie and offering a new iteration of the original film and the original war with the repetition being inadvertently depressing. The anti-war implications of the sequel trilogy are completely accidental.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I'm interested.  But I'm mostly interested in seeing what kind of response this ends up being because I think most of Star Wars is a studio reaction to what came before.

George Lucas did his prequels, and they were, especially at the time, ridiculed.  Some of that might have been because George Lucas (and team) thought that people liked Star Wars because of the lightsaber fights.  The prequels ended up being a overly complicated political drama in the Star Wars universe with a lot of lightsaber fights.  Although sentiment has flipped a bit since then, the main thought ended up being prequels=bad and Lucas=finished.

So Disney got their hands on Star Wars and decided to make a new Star Wars film.  Since prequels=bad and Lucas=finished, they got new blood in and went as far away from the prequels as possible.  Instead of trying something new, they redid the original movie.  They leaned on established characters and imagery and got as far away from politics as possible.

And while the Force Awakens was a big hit, people didn't like the fact that it was so close to A New Hope.  So Rian Johnson went with the most non-Star Wars film yet.  Johnson tried to defy expectations and made a movie where the great Luke Skywalker doesn't do much and doesn't believe in the Jedi.  Reception was very mixed and the fanbase was split.

In the meantime, Star Wars had a fun little story with a prequel set during the original trilogy.  Maybe the fans don't love the sequel trilogy but they could create tons of spinoffs.  So they banked pretty heavy on Solo, which they shot twice, and it wasn't warmly received.  Reaction: no more spinoffs.

Then came Rise of Skywalker which went back to the Original Trilogy mold.  Brought back the Emperor and Lando and Darth Vader's helmet and tried to undo and redo as much of Rian Johnson's movie as possible.  And even though people hated The Last Jedi, they really hated Rise of Skywalker.

Then came the Mandalorian.  Again, someone tried to do something new - A Star Wars TV show!  There were things that people liked (Mandalorian armor!  Yoda creature!) but not many lightsabers or Star Wars.  It was a western in the Star Wars universe.  And it was a big hit!  And they brought back Yoda and Boba Fett and a lot of fun stuff.  Reaction - movies are bad.  TV is the future.

So where does Star Wars go from here?  They haven't made a Star Wars movie since Rise of Skywalker, cancelling project after project.  Do they go back to the Original Trilogy well?  Do they try to do something original?  Do they make it like the Mandalorian?  If the first movie does well, will they do more like it?  Keep trying new stuff?  If it does poorly, does it become a one-off?  How much of Rise of Skywalker do they try and undo or ignore?

It will all be very interesting.

*****

From a narrative place, I wonder how they will do it.  We won't be far enough in the future that characters from the Mandalorian will be too old to show up.  If the Mandalorian is the new gold standard for Star Wars, will we see Rey added to those stories?  Will we see Ahsoka?  Ezra Bridger?  Din?  Thrawn?

*****

And like I was saying before, why would Rey's next Jedi school work out any better than Luke's?  Did Luke's school fail because Luke was too devout to the old ways of the Jedi?  Luke implies this but....how?  Was Kylo turned to the dark side because he wasn't allowed to love?  I don't think so.  Kylo had the biggest expectations in the history of the galaxy with a darkness inside him that no one was able to reign in.  It was bad but I don't think the old ways of the Jedi are to blame.  Luke probably should've learned that lesson but he didn't and passed it on to Rey.

But I'm unsure on why I should believe this next school will be better than the last.  Or why anyone in the galaxy should buy into a New New Republic considering what happened to the last two.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I'm not usually one to get overly surprised by anything on TV but man the ending to Ahsoka episode 4 blew my mind just  a bit.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I think watching it would definitely upgrade your experience.  I think the show does a good job of explaining who the characters are at a high level, but you're obviously not going to get a lot of the context if you've never watched Clone Wars or Rebels.  So Ahsoka talks about how she's not a Jedi, but there isn't really any explanation for why she'd say that.  It talks about how she was Anakin's apprentice, but there's no sense for how long / how that relationship developed / where it landed.  So it might be a little like watching A New Hope without watching the prequels (you know Obi Wan was a great Jedi knight, but you don't really know what that means) or even watching The Last Jedi without seeing the original trilogy (you know Luke was great but not what he did to be great).

There are also a couple main Rebels characters (so far) that have appeared.  They're more or less archetypal characters who don't need a ton of explanation.  Hera's a former rebel and a pilot.  Sabine is a Mandalorian with a connection to Ahsoka.  And there's also how Rebels ended - the first two episodes are a retelling of the epilogue of Rebels from Ahsoka's perspective.  So without Rebels knowledge, you're not going to understand who Ezra is or why he was important, you're not going to know who Thrawn is or why he's dangerous, and you aren't going to know how they ended up where they are.

All that to say, I think the show is constructed to be watched by someone who has never seen any of Rebels before with story and character beats that are probably best for people who have been along the entire journey.  And I'm interesting to see how they try to explain (SPOILER) to a general audience without being handwavey or way too involved.

That being said, if you want to get some of that context without watching hundreds of episodes of two cartoons, I've seen lists that will either:

- Cut down Clone Wars and Rebels to only the key arc episodes.  This way you can experience the full feel of both shows without some of the filler or kiddie or irrelevant episodes.

- Cut down Clone Wars and Rebels to just the episodes that are relevant to Ahsoka/Sabine/Hera/Ezra/Thrawn.  Ahsoka isn't in every episode (or even every arc) of Clone Wars, and she's in much less of Rebels.  People have determined which handful of episodes from each show are give you the gist of these characters' journeys without any of the stuff that won't be relevant to Ahsoka.

So depending on your time commitment, you could do either of those.  But honestly, you could also probably watch Ahsoka first and get the context later.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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. ;-)

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I think the Clone Wars movie is terrible and had the same thought.  I think the first part with the battle scenes is fine?  The kidnapping plot was boring and I was very uninterested.  I think if you look at some of those condensed lists, the movie is either left off entirely, you're told to only watch a certain amount of it, or they include it simply because of character setup.  I don't think anyone in the Clone Wars fandom thinks its good.

And there is a lot of filler episodes, but I never found myself bored or annoyed by the show the way I was bored by the movie.

Regarding your spoiler

S
P
O
I
L
E
R

I think it's interesting.  I really like James Gunn's DCU approach.  If a character is going to be in a DCU property (be it animation, live action, or video game), he or she will be voiced by the same actor.  It adds a level of consistency that I appreciate.

That being said, when I watch something that's supposed to be the same thing, I usually defer to the original performer.  So Matt Lanter is an animated Hayden Christensen.  Rosario Dawson is a live-action Ashley Eckstein.  I guess on some level, it's weird that a relationship that started animated with two different actors is now being presented in live action with two different actors, but I guess it'd be the same thing with Ezra and Hera.

I've softened on my whole canon ideology, and since these are both explicitly canon, I think I'm just going to merge it all together in my head.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

SPOILERS FOR AHSOKA

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

Is it confirmed that the Anakin we see at the end of episode 4 is post-Vader?  Where they are is in the World Between Worlds so past, present, and future are happening at the same time.  The Vader/Ahsoka fight that you referenced is actually a big part of that because Ezra is able to look at the fight as its happening (even though it happened much earlier) and rescue Ahsoka from the fight.  She gets pulled into the future.  That's how the fight ends.

So this Anakin could hypothetically be pre-Order 66, post-Vader, or maybe even some sort of parallel version of Anakin that never went to the Dark Side.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Ahsoka Episode 5 spoilers

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

So I don't know enough about Star Wars lore, but Anakin seems to be Force Ghost Anakin in physical form.  So he's definitely post-Vader but different than Force ghosts we've seen before (in that he physically interacts with Ahsoka).  The World Between Worlds hasn't been fleshed out that much so it could be anything.  Anakin is both calm and angry, and he sorta takes Ahsoka to the past (or a vision of the past - it's vague).

What's interesting based on our last conversation is that we actually see young Ahsoka for a decent chunk of the episode.  So Clone Wars Ahsoka.  And here's where I missed Ashley Eckstein the most, but unless they had a child actor mime the dialogue and used Eckstein's voice, I don't know what they could've done.  The voice wasn't exactly right but I thought she did a good job.  This was essentially live action Clone Wars which was cool.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Ahsoka Episode 5 spoilers

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

So I don't know enough about Star Wars lore, but Anakin seems to be Force Ghost Anakin in physical form.  So he's definitely post-Vader but different than Force ghosts we've seen before (in that he physically interacts with Ahsoka).  The World Between Worlds hasn't been fleshed out that much so it could be anything.  Anakin is both calm and angry, and he sorta takes Ahsoka to the past (or a vision of the past - it's vague).

What's interesting based on our last conversation is that we actually see young Ahsoka for a decent chunk of the episode.  So Clone Wars Ahsoka.  And here's where I missed Ashley Eckstein the most, but unless they had a child actor mime the dialogue and used Eckstein's voice, I don't know what they could've done.  The voice wasn't exactly right but I thought she did a good job.  This was essentially live action Clone Wars which was cool.

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?

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

In the Clone Wars, the only Force "ghost" that appears is Qui-Gon, and I don't think he was capable of anything but a voice.  He seems to have figured out how to do it by the time of the Obi-Wan show.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Part of my enthusiasm for what Filoni is doing is marred by the fact that the sequel trilogy has yet to be played out.  I know there's a story to be told about how fascism must be watched at all times, even when you think it's been snuffed out.  And that good people must always been on guard for the actions of bad people.  The New Republic has good intentions and is working hard to make things better, but it's doomed to fail.  The Empire, even if has a dumb new name, is primed to come back.

And it's just frustrating.  The whole "history repeats itself" story of the sequels is just a bummer of a story, even when the good guys won.  It makes any victory hollow because the bad guys are never really defeated and the galaxy will never know peace.

I'm not one to say that the sequels should be erased and replaced with what Filoni is doing, but I would probably feel better about these "midquel" stories if I didn't know what was coming next.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

The whole "history repeats itself" story of the sequels is just a bummer of a story, even when the good guys won.  It makes any victory hollow because the bad guys are never really defeated and the galaxy will never know peace.

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

I disagree.  The fans are let down by "fan service," which the franchise has been drowning in thanks to Disney.  When you do not allow filmmakers to produce art which THEY want to see, you will let everyone down, each time.  It's a continued strangling of creativity, and it is not the fault of the fans nor the Star Wars mythos either.  It's the owners of the content.  Seriously, what was the last creatively praised Disney product released theatrically?  They don't care, just the $.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Kirk to Eminiar:
Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided.
You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it. And you've had it for five hundred years.

I'm going to end it for you, one way or another. I've given you back the horrors of war.

The Vendikans now assume that you've broken your agreement and that you're preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They'll want do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than count up numbers in a computer.

They'll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You of course will want to retaliate. If I were you, I'd start making bombs. You have a real war on your hands.

You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative.

Put an end to it. Make peace.

We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes. Knowing that we won't kill today.

Contact Vendikar. I think you'll find that they're just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they'll do anything to avoid the alternative I've given you.

Actual war is a very messy business. A very, very messy business. They would do anything to avoid it, even talk peace.

Peace or utter destruction. It's up to you.

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.

THE DOCTOR
You just want cruelty to beget cruelty. You're not superior to people who were cruel to you. You're just a whole bunch of new cruel people. A whole bunch of new cruel people, being cruel to some other people, who'll end up being cruel to you. The only way anyone can live in peace is if they're prepared to forgive. Why don't you break the cycle?

BONNIE
Why should we?

THE DOCTOR
What is it that you actually want?

BONNIE
War.

THE DOCTOR
Ah. And when this war is over, when -- when you have the homeland free from humans, what do you think it's going to be like? Do you know? Have you thought about it? Have you given it any consideration? Because you're very close to getting what you want. What's it going to be like?

When you've killed all the bad guys, and it's all perfect and just and fair, when you have finally got it exactly the way you want it, what are you going to do with the people like you? The troublemakers. How are you going to protect your glorious revolution from the next one?

BONNIE
We'll win.

THE DOCTOR
Oh, will you? Well maybe -- maybe you will win. But nobody wins for long. The wheel just keepts turning. So, come on. Break the cycle.

BONNIE
Then why are you still talking?

THE DOCTOR
Because I'm trying to get you to see. And I'm almost there.

BONNIE
Do you know what I see, Doctor? A box. A box with everything I need. A fifty percent chance.

KATE
For us, too.

THE DOCTOR
And we're off! Fingers on buzzers! Are you feeling lucky? Are you ready to play the game? Who's going to be quickest? Who's going to be the luckiest?

KATE
This is not a game!

THE DOCTOR
No, it's not a game, sweetheart, and I mean that most sincerely.

BONNIE
Why are you doing this?

KATE
Yes, I'd like to know that too. You set this up -- why?

THE DOCTOR
Because it's not a game, Kate. This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought right there in front of you.
Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die.

You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning -- sit down and talk!

I just want you to think.

Do you know what thinking is? It's just a fancy word for changing your mind.

BONNIE
I will not change my mind.

THE DOCTOR
Then you will die stupid.

Alternatively, you could step away from that box.

BONNIE
No, I'm not stopping this, Doctor. You think they'll let me go after what I've done?

THE DOCTOR
You're all the same, you screaming kids, you know that? "Look at me, I'm unforgivable." Well here's the unforeseeable, I forgive you. After all you've done. I forgive you.

BONNIE
You don't understand.

THE DOCTOR
I don't understand? Are you kidding? Me? Of course I understand. I mean, do you call this a war, this funny little thing?

This is not a war. I fought in a bigger war than you will ever know.

I did worse things than you could ever imagine, and when I close my eyes... I hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count.

And do you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it?

You hold it tight... Til it burns your hand. And you say this -- no one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will ever have to feel this pain.

Kate steps away from her mass destruction box.

THE DOCTOR
Thank you. Thank you.

KATE
I'm sorry.

BONNIE
It's empty, isn't it? Both boxes -- there's nothing in them. Just buttons.

THE DOCTOR
Of course.

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Well WAR is in the title!  My continued beef has been the ineptitude of the film making process.  They don't allow them to just make the stuff, it's sanitized and controlled, ironically, like the Empire, by Disney overseers.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

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.

Yes, well the point is to WIN the war at the conclusion of whatever heroic story you're telling.  Star Wars now is just wedging stories all over the place, in a war that was already "won."  In any event, that is all really secondary to the awful production of these series.  The stories could be about jilted lovers or Christmas, doesn't explain why they are so badly devised. 

BTW, has anyone seen Netflix's Rebel Moon (Zack Snyder's purported Star Wars pitch)?  I watched Part One last night, I thought it was okay for what it was.  Not the normal over the top, in your face, Snyder stuff.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Grizzlor wrote:

Yes, well the point is to WIN the war at the conclusion of whatever heroic story you're telling.  Star Wars now is just wedging stories all over the place, in a war that was already "won."

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"

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

War never ends.  It's Star Wars, plural, because it goes right from one to the next one.  They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:
Grizzlor wrote:

Yes, well the point is to WIN the war at the conclusion of whatever heroic story you're telling.  Star Wars now is just wedging stories all over the place, in a war that was already "won."

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

The Last Jedi is great.  I'd rate it slightly ahead of The Empire Strikes Back as the second best film in the franchise.  Rise of Skywalker is a disaster largely because it tries to undo that film (and Return Of The Jedi) rather than try to further break out of the creative rut symbolized by The Force Awakens.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

pilight wrote:

War never ends.  It's Star Wars, plural, because it goes right from one to the next one.  They blow you up today, you blow them up tomorrow.

Sure, but you can essentially erase the original trilogy from existence and it no longer matters.  If someone was in a coma when Rogue One happened and stayed for 15-20 years, he'd wake up in a galaxy that was basically the same with only minor differences.  They blew up a couple Death Stars, sure, but they didn't even kill the Emperor.  They made the Empire go into hiding/hibernation, but they definitely didn't beat it.  It just makes, at least, to me, the main trilogy seem pointless.

I don't think they needed to get rid of the "Wars" - no one would want to watch a sequel trilogy about Luke doing a peaceful Jedi academy with no conflict.  But the Expanded Universe did a bunch of different stories without just re-doing A New Hope again.  Do something new.  Or at least sell the idea that they're now stuck in a never-ending Groundhog Day of fighting the same enemy (slightly renamed) over and over again.

Say what you will about the prequels, but at least it was a new story.  The sequels (and I'm including all three in this) don't break any new ground.  And, worse, they essentially make most of the original trilogy pointless.  That's what sucks (to me).

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

It doesn't have to be devoid of conflict, but I just didn't like that instead of being a new conflict, it was essentially the same conflict again.  Instead of Endor being the end of one war, it was a footnote in a much larger war.  That's what was frustrating.

If there are sequels to the sequels, they would obviously still be about war, but it should be a new war that looks different.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

"The Jedi are in disarray"

I'm curious what this even means.  In the Rise of Skywalker, there are no Jedi.  So does that mean the Jedi were rebuilt and then went into disarray?  Or are they just still in disarray from Revenge of the Sith?

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

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.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Yeah, I assume so too.  But if they're in disarray, that means it failed again.  Which would be frustrating.  I'd like a time period where the good guys are able to do something without it immediately falling apart.

Re: Star Wars: Movies and Shows on Disney+ and More

Okay I had a thought that I wanted to throw out.  This probably could've been its own thing but I'll put it here.

One of the big things in the Disney era of Star Wars is the idea that the Jedi weren't that great.  And I'm trying to understand what George Lucas would say to that.  And I'm interested to know what people think about this.  Is the galaxy better off without the Jedi?  Or is it okay to have the Jedi just as long as they allow the Jedi to feel love?

Are the Jedi better off being Vulcans (who have no emotions but can know love)?  Or is the right metaphor for the Jedi the police?  Because in all the pre-Vader media, it seems like the Jedi were trying to wear too many hats?  If the Jedi stayed in their lane (peacekeeping), would they have been better?

Did the Jedi deserve to be destroyed?  Were they a symptom of something that was destroying the entire republic?  Should they be built back just the way they were?  What is the lesson I'm supposed to get from Star Wars on what the Jedi were and what they should be?