So... Star Wars [Spoilers]

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Wed Jan 08, 2020 6:38 pm

Ugh, the climactic confrontation between Rey and Palpatine was so fucking lame. No payoffs for anything. Two Chekov's Guns checked off the list lazily. Seriously, two lightsabers reflect Force Lightning better than one? wooooov....

And Kylo Ren gets all this development just to tossed like a chump, then crawl back, use Force Healing after the climax, and die?

That entire confrontation was like watching the joke placeholder that accidentally made it into the finished movie. Fucking hell.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:35 pm

The new movie was a total mess but I managed to enjoy it. It probably helped that Palpatine was in it (as out of nowhere as that was) since not even the prequels could ruin him and he's suitably over-the-top evil. The chemistry between Finn, Poe and Rey seemed a lot weaker than in TFA (which is a shame because that was one of that movie's strong points).

Assorted musings:
Rose is just kind of sidelined as a character, it's really weird. If I was feeling generous I'd say it was because she was in all the Leia scenes and because of Carrie Fisher's death they couldn't reshoot. Alternately Abrams could just be pissing on the character that's not from his movie, since a lot of this felt like a pissing contest between directors.
Honestly the movie feels like there's a lot of "run to point A to get item B, which leads to point C, lather, rinse, repeat". My brother described it as being like a video game and I kind of have to agree.
On that topic, the action scenes in this movie were rather uninspired.

Rey being a Palpatine was both really predictable and really dumb. Rey's parents being nobodies was one of the few points in TLJ I liked.
Also, why does the First Order need a big new fleet anyways? The Resistance fleet is like a handful of ships, and the First Order has loads of them.
Why does Kylo suddenly just agree to follow Palpatine, after his whole thing in The Last Jedi was that he wasn't going to follow anyone anymore? He had decided to destroy all relics of the past; now one is telling him he had been using him all along and he's like "lol OK I guess". Like nothing really comes out of that plot point since he's still trying to get Rey over to his side for the bulk of the movie.
Why is Han a Force Ghost?
Why are lightsabers suddenly the most important part of Jedi-ing, to the point that just holding two allows you to overpower the Big Bad?
Finn and Poe should have hooked up. It's been said before but it's worth saying again.

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:59 pm

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Alternately Abrams could just be pissing on the character that's not from his movie, since a lot of this felt like a pissing contest between directors.

Rey being a Palpatine was both really predictable and really dumb. Rey's parents being nobodies was one of the few points in TLJ I liked.
Also, why does the First Order need a big new fleet anyways? The Resistance fleet is like a handful of ships, and the First Order has loads of them.
Why does Kylo suddenly just agree to follow Palpatine, after his whole thing in The Last Jedi was that he wasn't going to follow anyone anymore? He had decided to destroy all relics of the past; now one is telling him he had been using him all along and he's like "lol OK I guess". Like nothing really comes out of that plot point since he's still trying to get Rey over to his side for the bulk of the movie.
Why is Han a Force Ghost?
Why are lightsabers suddenly the most important part of Jedi-ing, to the point that just holding two allows you to overpower the Big Bad?
Finn and Poe should have hooked up. It's been said before but it's worth saying again.

I think you answered your own questions.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Jan 29, 2020 11:35 pm

I don't think Poe even interacted with Rey before Episode 9.

Wiseman · Post by **Wiseman** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 4:31 am

They literally make a joke at the end of episode 8 about how Poe and Rey have never met.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 5:23 am

Bad wording on my part (I think I was tired when I wrote that). I should have said that the chemistry between Finn and Poe, and the chemistry between Finn and Rey, were both worse than in TFA. Rey and Poe were also lacking in chemistry but since they haven't interacted before that I can't say that's a flaw unique to this movie.

So I talked to Shrapnel about the movie today, and that brought up some more things about it I hadn't thought of prior.

-I was expecting the people riding the space warthog-horses to be inspired by Finn. Initially from his and Rose's Excellent Adventure on Planet Capitalism Canto Bight where they freed a bunch of space horses space horses. Hence why they were raggedy looking people riding space horses. Of course that would involve actually building off of a plot point from the previous movie rather than pretend the whole movie didn't exist, so of course they didn't. Then when they revealed they were former Stormtroopers I thought it was going to lead into a thing where his defection and becoming a Resistance war hero were going to have been what inspired them to revolt, and then they'd spark a wider Stormtrooper rebellion that would help turn the tides against the Giant Fleet out of Nowhere Final Order. But no, they're just kind of there; I think a few of them showed up as part of the allied reinforcements during the climax but otherwise nothing really comes from it.
-The whole "find the MacGuffins" section of the movie feels completely unnecessary and I don't get why it wasn't cut in a movie that was obviously heavily reworked and repeatedly edited.
-The Knights of Ren do nothing. I have literally no idea why they were even in the movie. Well, other than the obvious.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 1:05 pm

Spoilers about Finn and episode 9 related to what Darth just said:

I do feel like the entire concept of Finn was let down. Like how do you have the first movie open with a stormtrooper defecting and not end the third movie with them leading a storm trooper rebellion.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Fri Jan 31, 2020 8:39 pm

A thing the entire new series (and the prequels) fundamentally lack is the concept of character development. No character changes over time in any movie. Sometimes they kind of become technically different things by gaining group affiliations or powers but as humans and characters everyone is exactly the same. The way Finn behaves when you first see his face is how he'll behave 10 seconds from the end of the trilogy. Any time he's onscreen Finn will be a character who's out of his element and struggling for competence and connection until the film stops. I am also not attacking the actor, the character wasn't written to grow or change. When Darth Vader threw the Emperor off it was because you saw a series of moments of weakness come together over the last 2 films to allow him a change of heart. You know he'd be a different person after and in his last moments he's a completely changed man, ashamed for his history but filled with love and pride for his son. He didn't just chuck the Emperor off and for the rest of the movie act as a devotedly loyal enforcer for Luke who threatens Rebels with violence if they disappoint him. It's what makes Leia's big speeches, or Kylo Ren's teamkilling, or Luke's taking Rey into his tutelage all feel blandly meaningless. Because the characters are frozen in amber regardless of what occurs.

Han changes, Luke changes, Darth changes. Rose can't change because I don't know what Rose wanted or what she thinks about the world or if she succeeded or failed in her personal quest. I only know she's "devoted" because that's the one word written next to her name in the scriptwriters notes and is the prism through which every single line will be delivered.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Feb 01, 2020 12:43 am

Finn is the worst part of the sequels for me and I maintained that opinion from tfa all the way to the last movie. Not just because he's another black comedic relief character but because nothing of interest was done with him. You get a Storm Trooper to be a main character. Great. Then make him an incompetent ex janitor. He doesn't reflect on his time as a Storm Trooper. Doesn't care that thousands of kidnapped children like him are being murdered during his adventures. Everything he does could've easily been done without him his character. He's set up as being a rival or opposed to Captain Phasma (another wasted character) but nothing of substance was done with that.

All three of these movies share this issue. Actually 8 is probably the worst case with every action Finn took not only being doable without him but all of them from beginning to end just didn't matter at all (not just Narratively but to anyone's character including his own). For all the hype they built up around having a diverse cast no-one decided to do anything of interest with them.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:00 am

I saw an interesting Twitter thread about Mandalorian yesterday:
https://twitter.com/YesYoureRacist/stat ... 4434633739

It got me wondering: are there writers or artists, anywhere in the EU whether Canon or Legends, that depicts both the New AND Old Republic as a failure in emancipatory politics? Not just the Empire era, which we can all agree is worse, but even when the universe was running on all cylinders that both Republics were dystopian nightmares? I think only KOTOR2 and SW3 even approached that idea.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Mon Dec 07, 2020 6:30 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:It got me wondering: are there writers or artists, anywhere in the EU whether Canon or Legends, that depicts both the New AND Old Republic as a failure in emancipatory politics? Not just the Empire era, which we can all agree is worse, but even when the universe was running on all cylinders that both Republics were dystopian nightmares? I think only KOTOR2 and SW3 even approached that idea.

On the Legends side, there aren't any that I'm aware of because in Legends neither Republic was a dystopian nightmare.

For most of its history the Galactic Republic was a hands-off devolved government that left things in the hands of the individual member systems and mostly existed to provide unified trade laws and a shared military for its constituents, and even in the farthest fringes of the Republic things were pretty good for Republic citizens. There were certainly times where individual planets or systems were subject to tyrannical governments, large-scale poverty, and similar, but those were a result of wars with the Sith or the Republic Dark Age period from 2000 to 1000 BBY when the Republic basically ceased to exist outside the Core Worlds, so that's dystopia due to an absence of the Republic rather than a dystopic Republic. Even in the Golden Age between the Ruusan Reformation in 1000 BBY and the fall of the Republic, while the central government was bureacratic, ineffectual, and largely focused on the galactic interior, it was hardly a dystopia; again, all the shittiness going on in the Outer Rim was due to the Republic no longer maintaining a presence there after disbanding most of its military and ceding territory after the Dark Age tribulations, not due to the Republic itself.

KotOR 2 takes place during the Dark Wars and so falls under the "everything's shitty because of the Sith and a weakened/receding Republic" scenario. RotS and the EU material set around and during the same time don't actually have any dystopia going on in the Republic; that happens on Separatist planets and later on Imperial planets, but the actual Republic planets are portrayed as being basically fine (socially and culturally, though of course economically and militarily they're suffering from the war).

The New Republic was basically in the same position--a democratic voluntary government that didn't impose any sort of dystopic regulation top-down on its member systems--with the added factor that it didn't even retake Coruscant as its seat of government until 3 years after the Battle of Endor and it was dealing with the Imperial Remnant for another 12 years after that until the Pellaeon-Gavrisom Treaty was signed, so there was plenty of dystopia going on in the New Republic era but it was happening on Remnant worlds that were becoming more and more fascist and tyrannical to prevent worlds from leaving it for the New Republic. The New Republic itself was going out of its way to undo as much of the old Imperial oppressive systems as it could, from freeing all the slaves from prison planets like Kessel to boycotting the Corporate Sector Authority's businesses for its abuse of Corporate Sector citizens.

On the Disney Canon side, the whole abortive attempt to form a new Republic was a cascade of stupidity, incompetence, and failure to justify the existence and dominance of the First Order, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a book or comic somewhere showing the Disney!Republic turning into a dystopia, but I could barely get through the book series leading up to TFA and none of the later stuff is worth reading, so who knows.

The Adventurer's Almanac · Tue Dec 08, 2020 3:41 am

Hey is that Bill fucking Burr? In Star Wars?
This is like Simon Pegg in Star Trek all over again.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Dec 08, 2020 11:38 am

I think emerald has it. I can't recall any real commentary on the actual republic's politics in KOTOR or KOTOR 2. It very likely may be a result of how long its been since I've played it but the most I can remember that had to do explicitly with how the entire galaxy was run and not just local authorities was that if you 'thought' about it, it clearly is shitty. Maybe that's just the nature of how the Republic works. It serves as a kind of background, established force that can be deposed by whatever big villain/force arises but on the ground the presence (and therefore commentary) is a lot more muted. If you think about how the planets under the direct influence of the republic still has a lot of shitty things going on you can probably just figure out that the republic is just a corrupt, bureaucratic war machine. Otherwise the Galaxy is just under attack from time to time. The KOTORs had a LOT to more say about the force and what people do under its influence. There's a speech given by one of the older characters about how wars just keep happening and everyone always treats the new one as the 'worst' one but he doesn't blame any particular institution for it. They give me the sense that the whole galaxy is just a stage for the light and dark to puppeteer battles within.

I have not played the MMO. Chances are there's commentary on it in somewhere but considering how all the big events seem to just be about Sith of various stripes wanting to take over I doubt if too much time is spent dwelling on it. Could be wrong though.

I think it comes up in Clone Wars. My memory is even hazier on that front since I've played KOTOR more recently than I've watched that show but I remember Ahsoka and Anakin in different episodes complaining about how the Republic does business.

I haven't read many of the books but I am sure that none of them talked about the Republic being a failure.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Wed Dec 09, 2020 6:57 am

MGuy wrote:I think it comes up in Clone Wars. My memory is even hazier on that front since I've played KOTOR more recently than I've watched that show but I remember Ahsoka and Anakin in different episodes complaining about how the Republic does business.

I haven't seen Clone Wars in a while either, but as I recall Anakin's complaint with the Republic was always "The Republic is huge and rich, why isn't it doing more to help people?" and when Ahsoka's issues came up at all they were more like "The Republic and the Jedi Order aren't actually as bright and shiny as I thought they were." None of the characters ever portrayed the Republic as being inherently bad in any particular aspect, just not as good as it could be.

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Fri Dec 11, 2020 2:13 pm

In the prequels, the Dooku was a disaffected jedi. Same with most of the separatists in the clone wars. Dooku bailed and got corrupted to the dark side immediately, but he was open to it because he had the same realizations as Ahsoka (who notably also left the order and went wandering in search of a better path).

The Separatists are the bad guys, because they are "The other team" but ultimately, they were right. This is why anytime you actually meet Separatist armies or people, the series show them as very sympathetic. They have bad leaders, but the Republic was led by literally the same guy, with his hood down.

None of the characters ever portrayed the Republic as being inherently bad in any particular aspect, just not as good as it could be.

No, none of the good characters are going to declare the Republic the bad guy. That's because the framework of The Clone Wars is "A collection of stories during the last days of the Republic". It follows a ton of protagonists, if someone gets disillusioned and leaves the Republic, they stop being a protagonist, and focusing on them is outside the scope of the show (or they join the antagonists).

Just like how Ventress quits working for the bad guys, and then wanders off and we don't see her again. She is no longer an Antagonist or Ally.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:07 am

Krusk wrote:In the prequels, the Dooku was a disaffected jedi. Same with most of the separatists in the clone wars. Dooku bailed and got corrupted to the dark side immediately, but he was open to it because he had the same realizations as Ahsoka (who notably also left the order and went wandering in search of a better path).

[...]

No, none of the good characters are going to declare the Republic the bad guy. That's because the framework of The Clone Wars is "A collection of stories during the last days of the Republic". It follows a ton of protagonists, if someone gets disillusioned and leaves the Republic, they stop being a protagonist, and focusing on them is outside the scope of the show (or they join the antagonists).

There are plenty of characters who were disillusioned with the Republic in the prequels and in Clone Wars but stayed on-screen, both main characters like Padmé and Dooku and side characters like Bail Organa, and none of them thought that the Republic was the "bad guys."

Dooku left the Jedi Order because he felt that the Jedi working for the Senate was effectively doing the politicians' dirty work and was a betrayal of their ideals and supposed neutrality. He didn't think the Republic or the Senate was especially corrupt (before becoming Darth Tyranus and working to overthrow it, anyway), he just didn't trust politicians in general.

Padmé didn't think the Republic or the Senate were corrupt either. She defended it and its methods of government in her conversation with Anakin in AotC and showed in several scenes in the movies and the Clone Wars that she believed in its rule and the rule of law and so forth. The only time she felt it was the "bad guy" was when it was in the process of turning into the Empire.

When Ahsoka left the Order, it wasn't because she thought they were corrupt or evil or supporting a corrupt or evil Republic, it was because of uncertainty with herself and her future as a Jedi: "The Council didn't trust me, so how could I trust myself?...I can't stay here any longer...I have to sort this out on my own, without the Council, and without [Anakin]." And when she came back on-screen in Rebels, she still didn't hold anything against the Republic or the Order and was happy to work alongside the Jedi against Maul.

Contrast those views to Luke's opinion on the Empire: "It's not that I like the Empire. I hate it! But there's nothing I can do about it right now. It's such a long way from here." He doesn't attempt to downplay it, or say all the badness with the Empire is due to some corruption and the rest is fine, or have mixed feelings because he doesn't have to deal with the Empire directly, he flat-out hates it. And this from the guy who was hoping to go to the Imperial Academy to get away from Tatooine and so would have every reason to "Well, actually..."-away any problems with it to avoid getting involved.