Okay. Thats just like...your opinion man...but why?
Why dost thou thinketh in this manner??
I think it's the most interesting SW movies since Empire and a fascinating deconstruction the 'genre' that is Star Wars. Plus I really dig Luke's arc in that movie. It has it's problems for sure. I hate the whole forced Rose/Finn thing. But at the end of the day I just respect it for doing it's own thing. I also really like how the No One thing really democratizes the Force. Which the subsequently walked back.
It's really funny though how this space seems mostly anti TLJ where as along of the other Film centric spaces are into it. It's an interesting Rorschach test.
But it's also I movie I try my best not to talk about online.
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Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
Ok, so we have this enormous super laser tube, and it shoots a planet crushing laser up it right.
Yup
And you have this two footwide platform right in there with no hand rails and the guys standing there don't get any sunglasses.
Yup
I think the only handrails in the whole Empire were in the emperors bed room and they surround an open hole that leads right down to a reactor.
Which Vader picked him up and threw him over anyways.
Imperial Occupational Health and Safety must have just been:
"Welp. Didn't see that coming. But there was a railing!"
I always think to when Obi-Wan has to turn off the Tractor Beam. Could you imagine being the poor bastard that has to perform regular maintenance on that panel??
"This is some bulls###!!!"
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I think its become this great running joke now. In every Star Wars game there's mechanics where you can merely fling enemies off of the platforms to their death. I remember the simple joy in the Jedi Knight series where you would fling hundreds of StormTroopers to their death with force pushes or explosives.
Even in the SWTOR nearly every fight with a boss is on a platform with no hand rails and the Boss has a massive push ability.
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I think its become this great running joke now. In every Star Wars game there's mechanics where you can merely fling enemies off of the platforms to their death. I remember the simple joy in the Jedi Knight series where you would fling hundreds of StormTroopers to their death with force pushes or explosives.
Even in the SWTOR nearly every fight with a boss is on a platform with no hand rails and the Boss has a massive push ability.
Its Tractor Beam Panel Maintenance Day!!
"Aw f### me! Can I at least get a harness or something? Fall protection? Have you ever tried to move your head in these helmets? It'll knock you off the comically under-sized catwalk! Come on!"
No. Now....get out there.
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This Post Has Been Distilled for the Eradication of Seemingly Incurable Sadness.
If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a Fire Exit. - Mitch Hedberg
You know out of all the story telling elements in TLJ, the one I had the least problem with was Luke's story. Its the only thing that really wasn't shoddily written, and it would make sense that Luke would finally realize what the Jedi learned in the PT. That they hadn't evolved, that they were arrogant, that they were a big reason why the Galaxy willingly fell under the sway of Palpatine.
I think at one point during the speculation around the Last Jedi, I wrote here that I wanted to see Luke follow his father down the dark side and be a big part of a rising of the Sith, and that Snoke was just a hologram and it was Luke who had taken over the First Order in his attempt to bring peace to the Galaxy.
It was the rest of TLJ storys that were just really really terrible, they took a pretty credible enemy in the first order in the first movie and basically made it blunderingly incompetent. They took a pretty good space nazi in Hux and made him the butt of knock knock jokes. Kylo Ren became an even more emotionally unstable flat villian though Driver acted the crap out of it. The Rose, Finn story was just not only boring but silly and went nowhere. They made Phasma even more worthless. And I think to the surprise of Abrahms and everyone else they made Smith look like the Iron Mike Sharpe of the Star Wars Galaxy and killed him off so they could do a couple of funny lines, and it forced them to bring back Palpatine, I was convinced that was not supposed to happen.
The Phantom Menance was a good but pretty much retelling of ANH with a Death Star that could shoot Death Stars out of its mouth. But they did a decent job of establishing new characters, and had a decent shock moment of it.
But TLJ was like dynamite on the rails and blew the trilogy train clear off of the track to the point, that The Rise of Skywalker was an even bigger mess with a bunch of fan service thrown into it. The sad thing was that the script and story for TROS was so bad that you could literally see the actors were just done with it, and trying to get to the end of filming. And the usually imaginative special effects and modelling teams were pretty much checked out for the most part which lead to the awkwardly stretched Star Destroyer effects.
The problem with the Luke stuff was none of it was earned. Such substantial character development (/degradation) off-screen is lazy. How did we get there? A flashback to a hut scene of him being on the verge of hacking down his nephew on a hunch and the remorse for that doesn't seem like enough to dismantle the old Luke. Him getting to a place of such paranoia would require a change in the character alone. Luke was steadfast in upholding the light side at the end of RoTJ, enough not to be swayed into anger/hate/temptation. I haven't read whatever comics and backstory they cobbled together around the sequels (who has the time or the desire..) but the heel turn required a much more fleshed out explanation to convince any one fresh out of watching the OT.
The "training" Rey underwent was half baked too. Luke promised 3 trials she would have to pass, and we were shown 2 (apparently the 3rd left on the editing room floor). Not that she needed help with how ridiculously overpowered she was anyways.
Luke dressed in exquisite robes only to toss his own lightsaber in comedic fashion like that is something you'd never see in an alternative Lucas-written sequel either.
Sounds like the other upcoming live action series Skeleton Crew has also been pushed back to Nov/Dec 2024 I think, due to a number of factors, including possible re-shoots, etc… And who knows when or if we’ll ever get Mando season 4.
This is probably a good thing in the long run. Star Wars needs to go away for a while and give us a chance to miss it again. Other than Andor and the first two seasons of Mandalorian, the overall quality of recent SW projects has been pretty bad.
So after trying to read the Disney EU books and finding them pretty much unsatisfying, I decided to dive back into the Legacy EU and read series that I hadn't read before. I few month back I read the Killick War series, and it was ok with some good moments, but stumbled around unsatisfying villains and weird character interactions, including a very horny Jaina Solo. I decided to jump into the New Jedi Order series. I hadn't read it before because a 19 book series seemed to be pretty intimidating. But I dove into into a couple of months ago and I'm into the 11th book.
I understand after reading reviews that this was a pretty contraversial book series with Star Wars fans, there's no middle ground, people either love it and will defend it with their lives, or hate it and will attack it like a 5 year old looking at a plate of steamed brussel sprouts.
The series is built around an invasion of the GFFA away by a intergalactic species known as the Yuuzhan Vong. The Vong are a ultra religious species that worship multiple gods based on their sects. These sects are broken into Warriors, Priests, Shapers, Intendants and shamed ones. The whole species worships pain and mutilation to show their veneration of their gods, they hate technology instead relying on biotechnology and genetic engineering, and as a species they live outside of the Force, which means the Jedi can't sense them or attack them directly.
From a villain species the Vong at times flutter between interesting but unoriginal. They seem to go over the top with the obsession with pain, and mutilation, and sometimes come across as deliberately edgy yet generic villains because they are villains.
The other key point that comes out of this book series is a similar message to Disney EU that the New Republic was probably a worse choice of government then the Empire. In this book, the government is endlessly corrupt, decide to abandon most of the galaxy to the horrors of the Vong to protect the core worlds, and once again the government was all too eager to betray the Jedi, declare them enemies of the republic and willingly turn them over to the Vong in exchange for a ceasefire.
When you read about the galactic government, you get a sense that the writers saw them as the collaborative French Government that ruled over Nazi conquered France during World War 2.
In terms of the characters, the key focus beyond the Vong leadership is around the next generation of Jedi Knights. Sure Luke, Mara, Han and Leia have key roles, but they're more like plot accelerators them anything else. No the key focus is around the children of Han and Leia. Jacen, Jaina and Anakin Solo. Jacen who was ripped off by Disney when they created Kylo Ren as he turned to the Sith in the final series in the Legends EU is portrayed as a young man that is unsure of the role of Jedi Knights in the Force. He believes that any offensive action is tainted in the Dark Side and wants to be like a Monk meditating on the Force. Jaina is the warrior the crack pilot who briefly turns to the dark side after Anakin is killed off. Anakin is the youngest son, and is seen as the future of the Jedi Knights until he nobly sacrifices himself leading a strike team of young Jedi in taking out a Vong anti-jedi modified life force that hunted Jedi.
But death isn't unusual in this series of books, in the first book Chewbacca basically has a moon thrown at him, later Anakin dies, Leia and Mark nearly dive, and I'm sure more death is to come.
Overall its a well written series, James Lucerno, Michael Stackpole Troy Denning and Mathew Stover are all well destablished Legends EU writers and they're solid in this series.
That isn't to say that there aren't issues. A 19 book series with roughly 300 pages per book can become a slog, and some of the books are just slow. But the best of the book series are really really good. But I can see the problems with this series.
The main villains are made all pain inducing and outright villains to the point that it feels like they did it to create a edgy and different type of villain. But it makes them predictable. There are cool concepts, a race flying around in living spaceships while using organic weapons and technologies is quite a change. The problem being that it directly attacks the Ben Kenobi understanding of the Force as a living energy field that binds all life together, which means that a species that lives outside of the force shouldn't be possible.
Some of the minor villains, a treacherous senator that betrays the Republic was well written, as well there was a group of collaborators, that act as a background threat that pop up once in a while is interesting.
The progression of background characters like Wedge, and Kyp Durran, and other Jedi was interesting and well done as well. The split philosophy in the Jedi order between Knights who see themselves as all victory at all costs and flirting with the Dark Side versus Jedi like Luke was don't want to fight offensively is an interesting debate.
At times this series just seems to do things to be edgy and outside of StarWars. Also sometimes there are so many plot lines that are disconnected happening at the same time that things get confusing.
There's also a link to the Star Wars movies, that's a bit awkward as the remains of the Empire for the most part come across as heroic and far less corrupt and fractured then the New Republic, but the writers do cross the line as they hint that Palpatine's reason for seizing power was that he saw the invasion in a vision and thus heroically tried to save the galaxy by getting rid of the Jedi and building an Empire that could fight the Vong.
Overall its good with segments verging on great, but at times its draggy iand inconsistent, but for Star Wars fans and especially those that like the EU and maybe were intimidated by a 19 book series, I believe its worth a read.
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I struggled to get into the New Jedi Order series, mostly because it really changed the Star Wars universe as we knew it. They way this new species was doing what the were doing without technology... I struggled to follow and believe but I kept on reading. Probably a few books into the series I realized that I didn't really hate the series and I kept on going and enjoyed the series more as I went along.
I'm still going to finish all the legends eu books before I try the new canon. I'm currently working through The Old Republic books and I'm enjoying reading Star Wars without Skywalker and I'm not really tired of Skywalker it's just nice to have something fresh in that universe.
I think I have 10-12 Legends EU books to read before I'm all done with that. I bought every single last one of them and as I see the size of the current canon collection I don't think I'll bother to buy many and rely on the library instead.
The Mandalorian and Grogu are embarking on a newadventure — to movie theaters.
Directed by Jon Favreau, and produced by Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, and Dave Filoni, The Mandalorian & Grogu will go into production in 2024.
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