#it is fun but also why George Lucas

[gilded-moon]

My fiancée: hey babe, can you analyse Star Wars species for me?

Me, an ecologist: yeah! It’ll be fun :)

Ten minutes later

Me: *crying* Pantorans should have blubber but they don’t because they aren’t chunky enough

[pedge-page]

I can imagine preggo wife literally talking and talking and talking in the middle of a movie and gets offended and leaves when Joel tells her to quiet down

Joel Dealing with Preggo Wife : Yapper

notes: Oh I had fun writing this! no warnings (maybe some Fugitive and Raiders spoilers), Enjoy!

- - - -

Joel’s pretty excited for movie night. It’s one of the few films the two of you don’t argue over and can pretty much watch the entire way through without disruption.

Or at least, it used to be.

Joel settles against the couch armrest with his feet propped up, knees bent slightly so you have room to sit in front. He’s got any snack you could think of within an arm reach away, and he’s got the title on pause so you can scooch your fat booty and big belly comfortably. Usually takes about 15 minutes of squirming, smacking his chest to “fluff” it up, adding a pillow at his crotch, then taking it away because you like his hard cock there instead, elbow in his groin and then his knee, then you gotta get up to pee before starting the whole process over.

“OK Im ready!” You say after 15 minutes on the dot, snuggling close to him with the back of your head rested against the crook of his neck.

He finally hits play, and the Lucasfilm logo flashes across the screen. The tropical forest and ominous music plays as the familiar font of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark fade on to the screen.

“Joel. Joel. Hey Joel.” 

“Y-yes?”

“Did you know Indiana was named after George Lucas dog? Who also was the physical inspiration for chewy?” You ask  rhetorically. 

It takes him a second to understand you’re asking him a question. “What?”

“Chewbacca! From Star Wars!”

“Oh ok neat,” he says with some enthusiasm, but quick to end it and get back to watching the movie—

“Yeah also Sean Connery is also apparently—well guess how much older he is to Harrison Ford.”

“Um—I don’t—I don’t know.” Joel says slowly, watching as Indy carefully removes the sand from the pouch and weighs it to the gold idol.

“C’mon, guess!”

“I really don’t know, can we—“

“12 years older than Harrison in Last Crusade! My mom was like ‘WHAT no way’ and I was like ‘Yes way’ and she was like ‘He's his father and he's got all that white in his hair and receding hairline’ and I was like ‘Joel's only in his late 30s and he's got white in his beard.’”

Joel can’t hear a damn thing happening on screen except the shouts about hating a pet snake named Reggie. “Wha—“

“Not that you look anything like Sean Connery in Last Crusade. Maybe in like Bond —oof he was the hottest Bond. Plus you got like a receding beard-line with all the patches, I don’t know, but my mom was like ‘Ya know Joel's got more white hair lately since you've been pregnant’ and I was like ‘Nah uh’ and she was like ‘Ya huh’ and I was like ‘Huh I wonder why that is…?’ Anyway but nope only 12 years between him and Ford—“

Joel turns to look at you with a frown, a bit confused and amazed at how you have so much to say, right now, oblivious as ever. 

It doesn’t phase your rambling one bit: “—Like damn, but you know Harrison Ford has always been handsome. But like in the bad boy kind of way, not like handsome upstanding like Christopher Reeves? When I saw The Fugitive, I was like ‘oooohhhh I'll be his wife now’ hahaha! no no I’m sorry, he’s famous and I’m not so that’s why I married you, but that's such a fall film don't you think? Minus the murder and betrayal and fucking Dr Charles Nickles like was he British or not? He was in and out of an accent the whole time? Didn't make sense to me but yeah, it's just such a fall Cozy film.”

Joel looks back at the screen and realizes Marion is already being cornered by the Nazi creep: “Ah huh—honey—“

“OH! I Love her song! It’s kind of like Leia and Han’s from Empire except the last notes are different, like it goes do doooooo instead of da dat dada daaaaaaa, That’s just John William’s for ya, but you’d never notice they were so similar!”

Joel opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out as you continue:

“—Also I know you said my mom made good apple pie but I really wanna try to make it because I want you to like mine more, so I need you to get some apples and pie crust and butter and stuff from the store, I’ll make a list so you can get it. They said we need ground cinnamon but I think ours expired like 5 years ago so don’t forget that. And then I'm gonna tell you how to slice the apples since I can't handle sharp objects and then oh I need you to get the mixer from the top shelf and then you have to mix it all together and slice the top with like little heart patterns and then put it in the oven n stuff ‘cause it's hot and I don't wanna burn OH and that reminds me—!” 

“BABE!”

“Hmm? yes?” You ask with a innocent smile. 

“Let's try to be quiet and watch the movie ok?”

He offers a gentle smile and nods, pointing towards the TV again and settling to watch it with his beautiful wife.

His very very very unhappy wife. Your eyes haven’t left his, face now downturned in such a scowl, he should be shitting his pants.

You roll your jaw at him once, teeth grinding against one another with slitted, murderous eyes. Joel gulps, too afraid to glance back at you again. His eyes are wide staring at the commotion on the television but, now in your deadly silence, he can’t seen to focus on it at all. 

Instead of saying anything, you roll polly up to your feet, arms crossed over your chest defensively as you utter a loud “Hmph!” before storming away from the living room.

He’ll have to deal with groveling tomorrow morning when you might be a little more welcoming. But on the bright side, he’s got way more room to spread out on the couch and he can hear the movie much better now! 

......... 

He switches it off and runs upstairs to get on his knees by your side of the bed, begging for your forgiveness and promises of a Clyde's milkshake to go. 

- - - -

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[david-talks-sw]

If instead of "keeping peace & justice in the Republic", the Jedi's task was "carrying a couch"...

About 1,000 years prior to The Phantom Menace, the Jedi see the Senate trying to get the couch off the ground and go:

Jedi: "Uh, need some help?" Senate: "Oh God, yes please...!" Jedi: "Cool, what's the plan?" Senate: "You carry the back end, we carry the front and lead the way. It'll go smoothly from here."

And for a solid millennium, this arrangement works and the couch moves forward without ever being dropped.

But by the time of the Prequels, the Senate has stopped carrying their end. Instead, they're sitting on the armrest, on their phone, online gambling or taking selfies for their InstaStories, they're having fun, talking with their buddies. They're being irresponsible and absolutely self-serving.

So the Jedi are in a situation where they have to PUSH the couch alone because if they don't, that's it, the couch is dropped.

And it's SUPER difficult, but hey, at least the couch is moving, right? Dunno for how much longer they can keep this up, though.

As this goes on, a Sith Lord sees this entire ordeal and decides to JUMP on the couch, speeding up the clock on the inevitable drop.

Then the Clone War happens, which is the equivalent of the Jedi needing to keep trying to push the couch using only ONE hand, while they use their other limbs to fight off the Separatists and get that Sith Lord off the couch.

Then Order 66 happens, the Jedi are dead and the couch is dropped.

Mission failed, "long live the Empire".

Now, this is just an analogy simplifying the events.

If we go by what George Lucas said on the Jedi's role in the Republic, there's quite a few differences between "carrying a couch" and the Jedi's ordeal.

For instance, it's not just the Jedi carrying the other end of the couch, there's also people like Bail and Padmé (otherwise the couch would've stood still a while ago).

Also, when you're helping someone carry a couch, you can just walk away if the other guy acts like a jerk. But in the case on the Jedi, they can't just walk away because they pledged themselves to the Republic. They made a vow and a system has been built around it, they can't just up and leave or say "no, fuck you Senate, we out". Because the principles of the Republic are worth upholding and the system works when the Senate isn't filled with douchebags, as shown by the fact that there was peace and prosperity up until the Prequels.

Finally, in the analogy, moving the couch only benefits the other guy, right? But in this case, the Jedi's role in the Republic actually helps everyone, which is why the Jedi joined in the first place. If they leave, they'd be abandoning the people of the Republic.

Point is, the Jedi are not meant to be seen as "the elite" or "the establishment" by the audience. They're the underdogs. They're pretty much the only ones still trying to do their jobs right and everyone around them has stopped giving a crap.

So saying "the Jedi failed" is redundant. Who wouldn't fail?

Which is why George Lucas never blames them, in his commentary about the Prequels. When he talks about what the Prequels are about, he never says it's about the Jedi's failure, he always blames:

the Senate for failing their duty to the Republic and giving it over to Palpatine with thunderous applause,

and Anakin, for failing to overcome his own personal flaws and giving in to his greed.

Sure, the Jedi are not perfect, but nobody ever said they were. Because while their failure is a plot element, it's not meant to be a focal point.

[jedi-enthusiast]

Coming off of this post

I literally cannot talk about Star Wars or my SW fics in the writing server I moderate because, for some reason, there are tons of those SW dudebros that are like “uh, the Jedi are evil actually and the Sith were right-” (all of which just so happen to be nationalist conservatives, but that’s another post) -and they refuse to listen to any actual reason.

Like, I genuinely think they’re all stupid and have no media literacy because this is how my conversations usually go with them:

—————

Them: The Jedi had to be genocided to restore balance to the Force, so Anakin restored balance at the end of RotS. He did as the prophecy said, it’s not his fault the Jedi assumed “bringing balance” meant killing the Sith

Me: Then why is the Force imbalanced in the OT? And why is it specifically said that it’s restored only after all of the Sith are dead and there are still living Jedi—therefore proving that the Jedi were correct in the Prequels? And why has George Lucas specifically said that the Sith are imbalance?

Them: (summarized) Lucas is wrong

—————

Them: The Jedi are evil because they fought in a war

Me: So they should've just let the Sith conquer and enslave the rest of the galaxy?

Them: but they fought in a war!

—————

Them: The Jedi are evil because they served the Republic and the Republic made them *something or other*

Me: Ok, where would they have gone otherwise? where would they get the funding to live? how would they protect their place of worship/religious artifacts/etc. if they were either supposed to leave it there unprotected or carry it around until they found a place to stay? how would they help the galaxy at large when they had no resources?

Them: They should've just figured it out

—————

Me: Genocide is bad, no matter the circumstances

Them: nuh-uh

—————

Like I literally cannot stand it anymore!

I want to go back to the days before all these dudebros joined the server and I literally had a 4 hour long discussion with one of my friends on how Palpatine was a moron who got screwed in the OT because he put all of his eggs in one basket and was also cheap as hell!

(and no, I'm not even joking, it was 4 hours long and we were getting really into it--it was a lot of fun)

But I can't have those discussions because SW dudebros have ruined it for me and I can no longer stand even hearing about SW in the server

In conclusion: the Jedi are great and anyone who thinks they're "the bad guys" or "deserved to get genocided" or whatever can get fucked.

[padawanlost]

just saw a text post about how leia killing a slave master when anakin was a slave himself is cool but i find it interesting how ppl can find rational things to point out for stuff like that but when its anakin disliking a sandy planet like its ridiculous thing for him to say? but made so much sense cause you know... he's been enslaved there with his mom as a kid. idk i guess im still bitter of hayden/anakins treatment of his character

I get it but I believe the key here is to understand this weird moment we are a living right now (suddenly the prequels are cool and *everyone* had always loved them) by separating the old negative crap we were used to, from the genuine takes coming from the new found love the prequels are getting.

What I’m trying to say is the people who are excited by the prequels, who are discovering the value of the movies for the first time or just rediscovering it after so long, are not necessarily the same people who trashed the movies and made fun of Anakin’s “sand issues” or Hayden’s performance. So, to me at least, there’re two different issues here:

1 – for the longest time PT fans and Anakin fans had to deal with unfair amount of criticism, hate, mockery and even attacks. These behaviors came from part of the fandom and the media because for the longest time hating on the prequels made you cool and a “real star wars fan”.

2 – we have a bunch of new fans (literal new fans but also old fans who didn’t like or didn’t want to be seen liking the prequels) who are now vocal about the PT-Era, who want to talk about it, to engage, to discuss and, you know, just share their appreciation for the movies.

I try not to mix the two, especially in this particular case. From my own experience with this fandom, the people who trashed Anakin for not liking sand didn’t understand his character enough to get the impact slavery had on the Skywalker family.

I’ve talked about the “sand issue” here before:

But, to sum it up, the meaning behind the “I hate sand” is pretty obvious once you look beyond “Anakin is whiny/The prequels suck/George Lucas ruined my life”.

“When I was in Level Three, we used to come here for school retreat,” she said. She pointed out across the way, to another island. “See that island? We used to swim there every day. I love the water.” “I do, too. I guess it comes from growing up on a desert planet.” He was staring at her again, his eyes soaking in her beauty. He could tell that Padmé sensed his stare, but she pointedly continued to look out over the water. “We used to lie on the sand and let the sun dry us … and try to guess the names of the birds singing.” “I don’t like the sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere.” Padmé turned to look back at him “Not here,” Anakin went on. “It’s like that on Tatooine—everything’s like that on Tatooine. But here, everything’s soft, and smooth.” As he finished, hardly even aware of the motion, he reached out and stroked Padmé’s arm. [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

It’s about childhood trauma, privilege and systemic injustice and inequality. The sand physically represents everything Anakin loathes about his home planet, specially when compared to Padmé’s own childhood and home planet:

“This is Anakin. Anakin, this is Ryoo and Pooja!” The blush on the pair as they shyly said hello brought a burst of laughter from Padmé and a smile to Anakin’s face, though he was equally ill at ease as the two children. The girls’ shyness lasted only as long as it took for them to notice the little droid rolling behind Anakin, trying to catch up. “Artoo!” they shouted in unison. Breaking away from Padmé, they rushed to the droid, leaping upon him, hugging him cheek to dome. And R2-D2 seemed equally thrilled, beeping and whistling as happily as Anakin had ever heard. Anakin couldn’t help but be touched by the scene, a view of innocence that he had never known. Well, not never, he had to admit. There were times when Shmi had found some way to produce such moments of joy amid the drudgery that was life as a slave on Tatooine. In their own way, in that dusty, dirty, hot, and smelly place, Anakin and his mother had carved out a few instants of innocent beauty. Here, though, such moments seemed so much more the norm than the memorable exception. [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

[Ahsoka] was hyperalert again, all her instincts firing. One of these millennia she’d make a pretty good Jedi, probably. Provided he could smooth the rough edges off her. “Yes, Master,” she said. “You can trust me.” He frowned down at her. Was I ever this young? Was this how I used to look to Obi-Wan? He doubted it. Slaves lost their innocence while they were still in the cradle. [Karen Miller. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space]

Of course, because it became a meme used to “expose” George Lucas inability to write, direct or even understand what Star Wars is all about (eyeroll), that’s what most casual viewer think about when someone says “I hate sand”. But, on a more hopeful note, I do believe we’re doing good work claiming it back, by talking about it and even making memes about it in a way that’s not offensive to the characters, actors or fans. There are healthy, fun ways to laugh at Star wars  without diminishing the experiences and feelings of others.

Anakin represents so much different things to so many different fans it’s impossible to put everything in one single answer, but I hope you know I do understand exactly how you feel. I’m also very protective of Anakin, flaws and all. And it does annoy me to see people dismiss him and Hayden’s work in ways that can be very…cruel. But, Prequel/Anakin’s fans are awesome and now we’ve reclaimed the prequels proper place in history as peak star wars, we are unstoppable!! So let them come!

They just can’t accept how incredible Anakin’s story is, and that’s their loss.  

“Anakin had always hated sand. It was one of the many things about his Padawan that Obi-Wan understood better now that Anakin was dead. That was the horror of losing someone: Understanding came too late.” [Obi-wan Kenobi in Jude Watson’s The Last One Standing]

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I think there's probably NUMEROUS reasons fans have for disliking the Jedi.

I think some people might dislike them because before the Prequels came out there was this alternate perception of what the Jedi were/had been that was primarily dictated by Legends which seemingly based them far more on European Knights than anything else, something which clearly appealed to a lot of people and was familiar and fun as an archetype. People became, ironically, attached to this version of the Jedi that they'd grown up with and so when the Prequels came out and they were NOT in fact European Knights with laser swords and magic powers but Buddhist Monks with laser swords and magic powers, it was jarring. So I hear, at least. I had no concept of Legends and I saw the Prequels first anyway, but I'm told this was apparently jarring for people. So it's just a lot of "Well these aren't MY Jedi from my childhood" going on.

And adding to that, I think some people just disliked the Prequels as a whole and so one way to sort-of reinterpret the Prequels in such a way that they felt they could enjoy them more was to decide that their dislike of the Jedi was the intended reading of the film. It's not that they were misinterpreting it or that Lucas had somehow done it wrong, but that the Jedi being unlikable was the whole point. And this is the ONLY way they can see the Prequel films as enjoyable or worthwhile, so they're not going to accept any other explanation. Either the Jedi are supposed to be the bad guys and the films did exactly what they were meant to do, or the Jedi are supposed to be the good guys and the films failed because they didn't get that across TO THESE FANS.

And when you dislike something that much, it's VERY VERY DIFFICULT to turn that opinion around, even after you see other people make arguments on its behalf. As someone who has pretty strong negative opinions about things, I can speak to that from experience. I know people liked the Ahsoka show and even thought it was genuinely well-written and well-acted, I've seen some of their arguments for why they believe that. But none of those arguments are ever going to mean anything to me because my experience of it was so negative that I don't particularly WANT to like it or have my opinion changed. To me, it's just bad. I can't just force myself to understand it differently than I do at this point, even though I recognize other people don't share my opinion.

So some of those people who just had really negative experiences of the Prequel films and the way they depicted the Jedi might just be in a similar position. No amount of knowing other people interpreted it differently, no amount of arguments in defense of the Prequels and the Jedi, no amount of quotes by George Lucas, is every going to take away from the fact that these fans had a really negative experience with these films that will likely always color their opinions of them.

Some other arguments I've seen about why they dislike the Jedi in particular seem to stem primarily from their feelings about Anakin and the way his relationship with the Jedi was depicted in the films. Some of it might come from people having the hots for Anakin and so they just... don't care about anybody BUT him, but some seems to come more from how young Anakin is in TPM and the way it really changed their perspective on this character who had only ever been a villain prior to that film.

I think people saw the Council scene with this fairly small child in the middle of a room full of adults whose job it is to decide his future and really related to his fear and nervousness and defensiveness far more than they related to the Council being put into a difficult position and trying their best to be objective but not unkind. And while you are SUPPOSED to relate to Anakin here to some extent, you're also supposed to be able to recognize that just because Anakin's fears are valid doesn't mean the Council are wrong to see that he's not prepared for this life and that being a Jedi is likely not going to be the right path for him. That second part seems to elude a lot of people because all they see is a scared little boy and so they insist in the same breath that the Jedi stole Anakin away from his loving mother AND that they should've just let him join the Order no matter what. And so when Anakin starts making bad decisions and killing people and being arrogant, they don't blame Anakin for it, they don't trace it back to Anakin's mistrust and dishonesty, they just decide it was the Council's fault for not giving him everything he wanted immediately and causing him irreparable trauma as a result.

People also I think ended up relating a lot more to ADULT Anakin than they do to the Jedi because Anakin is INTENDED to be relatable, he's got all of the character flaws that are causing the entire story to happen, while the Jedi are primarily side characters who have completed their own character journeys and are now there just to guide others. They're the moral compass of the films, delivering many of their themes and messages, but they're not the HEART of the story the way Anakin is. I think this led to a lot of protagonist bias in some ways where they like Anakin and so they just proceeded to come up with every excuse under the sun for why he was right instead of understanding that even though Anakin was the main character and the heart of the story doesn't mean he's not also a cautionary tale of what NOT to do. That's truly it. It's a very long, very complicated fable for children about the consequences of selfishness and greed.

But people these days OFTEN feel like if they enjoy a character then they cannot also be problematic or do problematic things, so if they enjoy Anakin, despite all of the objectively horrific things that he does, then Anakin just cannot be the one at fault for it. It MUST be someone else's fault. And of course the opposite also ends up true where if someone dislikes a character, then they must come up with a reason for why they're problematic to explain it. And thus we also get the Jedi then becoming the scapegoat for Anakin's choices. They didn't like the Jedi, but they liked Anakin, so of course then Anakin was right and the Jedi wrong all along.

And more and more people who see the Prequels this way are the ones creating new Star Wars content, so we keep seeing more stories that emphasize this idea that the Jedi were wrong and Anakin was right. It's obviously in the Ahsoka show, it's in Rebels, it's in Tales of the Jedi, it's in the Cal Kestis video games, it's in the High Republic novels, it's definitely come up in several of the other Star Wars novels, it was (to some degree) in the Sequel Trilogy, and we know it's going to be in The Acolyte. And of course it's just VERY popular in the Star Wars fandom in general. Most fans aren't going to be looking up George Lucas quotes or watching his audio commentaries and researching what he meant by attachment, so they're just going to consume the content that's available and that content at this point is pretty consistently sending the message that the Jedi were wrong and Anakin was right. It's almost entirely inescapable these days. So I don't necessarily even blame most fans for being Jedi critical, I just personally can't stand it anymore.

[fleshadept]

fun fact a huge reason why editing, despite being one of the most important jobs in filmmaking next to writing, directing, and cinematography, is largely ignored and unrecognized is because it was seen as women’s work for a long time. people learn about kubrick and hitchcock and spielberg and scorsese, but do you know thelma schoonmaker, who was scorsese’s editor for over 50 years?

the term “film editor” was first used to describe margaret booth, who worked in the film industry between 1915 and 1987. because of the low value of the position and her ultimate high level position at MGM, it’s estimated that there’s hundreds of films out there she worked on uncredited. she shaped the craft.

jaws was going to be a terrible movie until spielberg’s editor, verna fields, showed him what it could feel like if they avoided showing the shark itself and instead focused on reactions and POVs. she had her own editing lab at home, which if you don’t know what editing labs looked like before digital editing, was insane. she pioneered the fucking natural wipe transition that’s used in pretty much every movie today. she tutored george and marcia lucas! also her nickname was the “mother cutter” which is just badass

marcia lucas, by the way, was george lucas’s story and film editor. it’s pretty well known by now that most of the parts that made star wars strong came from her. the problem with attribution between them eventually led to their divorce, as george lucas kept getting credit for her ideas and skill.

when people think of filmmakers, they think of writers and directors and actors, but there are three phases to making a movie: pre-production, production, and post production, and by and large the reason post production is forgotten i because it was a women’s job for a long time—made easier because they could put the women in a dark room where they didn’t have to see them. but without editors movies would just be a bunch of separate, out of order video and audio clips in a huge folder. in the same way you can’t have a movie without a script or actors or a camera, you cannot have a movie without editors. and they should not be forgotten to time in favor of the male auteurs who took or received most of the credit

[animentality]

Have you seen Oppenheimer, and if so, should I see it? I, knowing nothing about the movie, just sorta assumed it was either history-related or historical fiction and never learned anything about it or mustered up the give-a-damn to give it a shot (I am not a history buff).

You know...

I saw it...and I generally liked it...but I honestly think that it was kind of messy.

Like here's the thing about historical fiction...most people are not atomic bomb/Oppenheimer experts.

So they don't know most of this stuff by heart.

They remember shit like the Manhatten project and they know jfk and they know truman. They know America dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

But oppenheimer the movie like...throws so much shit at you, without even bothering to give you the context?

Like I say this as someone who has a decent knowledge of American history...there were some parts that were so obscure historically and politically that I honestly didn't know why the fuck I should care.

They would shout out names nonstop, referring to real life people, but these names have no context. Then they'd continue to expound upon the politics of these names...but why would we know who Patton George Lucas and Terry Yasolfis Mayweather and Gary Frederick Friedman are, especially if they were not presidents, senators, or governors?

Like these are random ass administrative assholes and forgotten military figures and obscure political jackals, who weren't well known because they never achieved high offices...

And they were from fifty fucking years ago?

Why would the average film watcher know them unless they fucking studied up?

See I like historical fiction, but it has to make me care!! Give me context!!! Tell me who these people are and show me through drama!!! That's why we're watching a MOVIE and not a documentary or reading a Wikipedia article.

And the main problem is that the movie is 3 hours long and absolutely NOWHERE in it does it EVER give us a fucking year, a location, or even a damn university.

It just throws you at Oppenheimer and says this asshole is sad and he has a lot of sex and he's inventing a bomb.

And it's like...I did enjoy it, when I understood it...but it doesn't let you breathe much.

Like the parts that are great are the parts where you can figure out what's happening.

Oh look they're blowing shit up in the desert.

Or the endless cheating subplots. Or the politics of the classroom and the socialist tendencies right at the height of the McCarthy era.

That stuff was fun.

But the parts that are bad are like...Cillian Murphy talking very quickly about a military prick that he hates while the board that's reviewing his security clearance is talking about people that we never see on screen, who are literally just floating names to memorize.

It was like a pop quiz movie sometimes, and I found that off-putting.

It also flashes between time periods quickly and without easy transitions, just hard cuts, which can be really confusing and odd.

So I would recommend you not see it in theaters if you're not a history buff. Or specifically, a fan of world war 2 and Oppenheimer and know everything about atomic bombs.

Watch it at home so you can Google who Heisenberg is.

[marvelstars]

super bold of that anon to accuse someone of being a harasser, while actively harassing you 🙄

Anywho, not all takes on a media have to be the most excellent, fact-based take. Interpretations can differ, good LORDT

Thank you :D

Yes it´s very ironic "Lest talk about how evil harassment is while I harass you in your own blog" if it wasn´t real it could be a joke.

Of course, media has facts and it also has subjects open to interpretation unless they have been told or show openly. I personally try to be objective in my take on media, especially a favorite fandom like SW even if I have a personal oppinion, that´s why I often take quotes from movies, novels, cartoons and TV Series and it is fun for me to get together the puzzle. I like to see what the author tried to picture and compare it with the finished material.

For star wars my main canon are the movies, then Clone Wars, then disney canon, then George Lucas and Dave Filoni interviews and later other novels, comics and other cartoons.

Part of the reason star wars can be hard to discuss is the fact it has the OT, the PT, ST, legends and disney canon,not all fans know all of what happened but I can for example talk about facts:

Anakin and Padme married in secret, in novels with fake names, because marriage isn´t allowed for Jedi.

Anakin and Shmi didn´t talk for 10 years when he was taken from her. In novels Shmi was banned from talking to her Son.

Shmi was freed by Cliegg Lars.

This is information taken from the main sources themselves and no amount of fanfic or headcanons will convince me of the contrary.

But this is just me, I understand other fans like to change, reinterpret the sources and make their own stories, there is great fanfic from this series but we must be careful not to mix the real story with fanfic.

[devondeal]

For the weird Star Wars ask, questions 1,4,7,8,10,11,14,17,18 and 20 😌😘 Have fun

Oooo good ones. Also hard ones 🤣

1. Qui Gon Jinn. Love or hate? Discuss.

I love Qui Gon Jinn. I love how calm he is and how contemplative he is. This doesn't mean I can't see his flaws though. Regardless he is a one of the coolest Jedi the prequels have introduced, I just wish fans wouldn't put him on a pedestal. Let characters be flawed and wrong sometimes, it's ok I swear y'all.

4. Do you prefer the prequel, original, or sequel trilogy, and why?

God this is a hard one. Original is more nostalgic for me, like I watch them for comfort since I watched them when I was a kid all cozy with hot cocoa and blankets and just adoring the characters and twists. But the prequels are just so meaty and entertaining with the flashy visuals and meme humor.

It hurts to choose but I guess I'll go with prequels cuz I do engage with them more in fandom given how juicy they are. That's not to say the OG isnt juicy but the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker is kinda hard to beat there.

7. Dumbest Star Wars moment

God so many to choose from 🤣 but yeah Jar Jar stepping on shit then immediately getting electrocuted. I may have the order wrong on those sequence of events but either way... dumb.

Honorable mention: Jabba's CGI band with Roach and Miss Lips Close up. Just thinking abt it makes me laugh. Like George what were you on? 🤣

8. If you could ask George Lucas one question, what would it be?

I would ask him how he would continue Leia's story after the OG trilogy. I just always felt she deserved more in depth character exploration and I'd want to know his POV on that.

10. If you could pull a George Lucas and sneak into Disney Plus to edit any Star Wars scene, what changes would you make?

I'd take a away the "No... NOOO" from the Vader scene in Return of the Jedi. Just takes away from the suspence of if he will save Luke and ruins it for me. That's really it. Not much of an edit since it wasn't there to begin with. So an un-edit?

Next, I would edit some squeaking noises for C3PO during the Luke and Leia kiss, maybe an "oh my" even though he wouldnt be sure why he didn't like it 🤣 maybe some background dialogue for him and and R2 abt it.

11. Who would you want as your Jedi Master? (Why)

Luke Skywalker. I feel like he would really help with my confidence issues with his tendency for positive reinforcement. And he's nice and calm so he wouldn't trigger my anxiety. But still enough discipline so that I stay sharp and on it which I also need as a scatterbrain. I feel like because he started as a scatterbrain himself, he'd know where I was coming from.

14. BESIDES THE ROTS NOVELIZATION, what is your favorite Star Wars book?

The Approaching Storm is just a chock full of Jedi fun. It gives you an idea of what Jedi are meant to do and you get to see familiar characters in a more relaxed (for Jedi that is) setting.

17. Pick one Star Wars line to describe your life, what would it be?

"All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing."

This Yoda line about Luke very much described me for a very long time. I've always felt and sometimes still do. I tend to live in my head and struggle with being present. I guess Qui Gon's line about being in the present applies too.

18. What is your favorite piece of Star Wars merchandise that you own?

Oof I can't narrow that down to one. So it's gonna be the Ahsoka doll you gave me 😘 also the Savi's lightsaber I made. My Lego collection is huge but I have a soft spot for the Tie Fighter and Luke's Landspeeder cuz they were what got me back into Lego since my childhood.

Literally any Lego clone minifigure.

20. Please describe in as much detail as possible the signature scent of Ewan McGregor and/or Obi-Wan. (Are they different? Probably)

Omg, really making me think like a straight woman eh? 🤣 Idk or care what Ewan smells like even though cool dude. Obi Wan... hmmm....

Tea leaves and really faint raspberry. Why? Cuz the nerd eats them off the Jedi Temple gardens. Just seems like a raspberry guy to me. His robes are always clean so probably fresh laundry. His hair smells like puppy breath idk.

[ooops-i-arted]

idk if this is an unwelcome rant or anything but I saw your anti ahs0ka posts from july and I’m just….so frustrated. I don’t want to sound like a dudebro but as someone whose favorite SW character is Luke I just can’t stand Star Wars anymore. I personally didn’t like him in tlj, but I could accept it—but then they just sort of kept chipping at him through every new piece of media. He’s strange in mando/tbobf, no one will join his temple despite apparently all of these older force sensitives surviving rotj, even obi-wan is retconned to know leia more. now this shit w this show, where #she is the self-insert in thrawn stuff. also you don’t even have to be FS anymore, etc etc. the “important Jedi lineage” is now obi-wan-anakin-ahs0ka, bc who even cares about luke amirite. it just sucks because I did genuinely used to like her, but with every new thing it could not be more clear that narratively she should have died bc now the whole gffa’s story is hers

I'd love to say I'm above petty rant but I am SO not, your rant is most welcome. If you don't have anything nice to say about Ahsoka, come sit by me. 😉 (Honestly I'm just happy to see other people acknowledging what a poorly written character she is when I've been saying this since the Rebels season 2 finale. I definitely felt like the only one back then.)

More seriously.... yeah, I do get the feeling of everything you loved about Star Wars being chipped away. I hope those who do enjoy it have fun and all, I don't begrudge anyone that, but I can't lie, I do kinda feel the same way. Like it's all being rewritten Filoni-style. And George Lucas he is not, no matter how much he thinks he is. Also I don't presume to know Timothy Zahn's feelings but I still think it's shitty and disrespectful as hell to carve a big hole out of the wonderful, iconic Thrawn trilogy and plop Ahsoka in. It's becoming REAL obvious that Filoni isn't the creative genius he's hailed as, he strip mines Legends for ideas and then gets the credit.

At this point I almost rather they leave Luke alone. Han is my BOY and they already did him so dirty (left Leia, returned to smuggling invalidating all his character development in the OT, gets a crappy death from his shitty incel son - I did like Solo but it was too little to late) so I 100% get your feelings there. It's like Disney doesn't even care how important these characters are so many people in their rush to replace them with their new, safely copyrighted and controlled characters. And ofc Filoni props his TCW OCs over all. Just look at how Mando S3 had Din and Grogu's story trashed so Girlboss Barbie Bo could feature instead. I'm not sure why they're so resistant to paying writers, they clearly need some new ones.

[go-see-a-starwar]

I just saw you gifset with Natalie and Hayden on why their character love each other and did I dream it or Natalie also said something about " woah and suddenly Anakin has grown into this handsome Hayden christensen "so now she is interested ? I remember watching the bonus and thinking she def though Hayden was hot because she was saying it in all her dvd featurette one way or another lol

Ha! No, your memory is correct. In the Episode II: Love Featurette Natalie says pretty much that at about 2m30s (and she’s not the only one, George Lucas and even Samuel L Jackson mention Anakin/Hayden being a total babe 😆).

Also it should be mentioned I did edit that gifset for humor, Natalie goes on to say that Anakin lets Padme be less serious and have fun and that also contributes to her attraction, it’s not only his good looks (just mostly 😉)

[david-talks-sw]

No, George Lucas is not a "traitor"

You may have seen angry tweets and thumbnails such as these, in the last few days.

Context - Disney is going through a proxy battle, and George Lucas sent out a statement that read as follows:

So immediately, all the grifting influencers who based their entire platform around the narrative that "Kathleen Kennedy & Disney betrayed Lucas' legacy" banded together and agreed that the new line was:

"Fuck George Lucas, he betrayed us and betrayed himself. Lucas sided with his own abusers!"

Here's why this line of thought is absolutely childish and uninformed.

1- Get real, he's a shareholder, of course he'll say this.

I don't need to expand on this, do I?

He owns stock. Someone threatens your money, you defend the money. The question becomes: why does he think that sticking with Disney CEO Bob Iger will result in more profit than siding with?

Variety theorizes that it may be because Nelson Peltz has admitted that he has no media experience. 

And if that's the case? I'm not surprised at all, because...

2- George has always hated amateur studio execs

The following is me simplifying a lot... but George's relationship with studios has never been a good one.

When he was working at American Zoetrope, with Francis Ford Coppola, they were commissioned to adapt George's short film into a feature, THX-1138. The studio execs didn't like it and forced Francis to refund them the money (which is why he agreed to direct The Godfather, to get out of debt).

Moving on to American Graffiti (1973). When George writes Graffiti, he shops it around to studios and they all essentially told him to go fuck himself.

"American Graffiti went around to every single studio twice and they all said, "It's not a movie, there's no story, and there are no movie stars in it." And Star Wars— it was, "What in the world is this? Wookiees and robots? I don't get it." [...] It'd be hard to make a movie [like American Graffiti or Star Wars] today in the system because all these middle management people get in there and interfere in the process. I think that's much worse for filmmakers than it's ever been in the past." - Star Wars Insider #43, 1999

Except Universal. But throughout the process they're being irritants.

They object to the title because they don't know what it means.

The president is convinced it's a bad movie to a point where when he sees audiences cheer for it in test screenings, he argues they're paid actors.

They force Lucas to trim 5 minutes out of the film. Why? Just because.

This approach the studio execs were taking comes from the fact that none of them were artists. At this point in time, studios had been and were being bought by corporations who thought they could make a quick buck in the movie business.

Eg: Warner Bros wasn't run by the Warner brothers anymore. Paramount was now a subsidiary of Gulf+Western.

So when he's receiving notes, they're coming from - you guessed it - amateurs who think they know what they're talking about, but in reality have no clue. They did market research and think they know everything.

This subject is covered in The Offer (2022), a series about the making of The Godfather (reeeeally good show, I watched it twice).

In this scene, for example, you have a studio exec with no artistic sense whatsoever trying to tell Coppola which poster he should go with, and you get the idea of what I mean.

(Fun fact, a young George Lucas even makes a cameo in the pilot episode, in Coppola's office.)

George also went into this subject during his 2015 interview with Charlie Rose.

It's a 4-minute clip, so here's the relevant bit:

"[Big corporations are] known for being risk averse. And movies are not risk averse. Every single movie is a risk, a big risk, like... The movie business is exactly like professional gambling... except you hire the gambler. You use some crazy kid with long hair, you give him $100 million and you say "go to the tables and come back with $500 million." That is a risk! Now, the studios have been going to think of it that way, they say: "well, maybe if we told him that he couldn't bet on red, maybe if we told him because we did market research and we've realized that red wasn't" -- so they tried minimize their risk. [...] They're basically corporate types. They think-- some of the worst things happens when they think they know how to do it, then they start making decisions that ensure it's not going to work. " - Charlie Rose, CBS This Morning, 2015

Now, ironically, this is the same interview in which he compared Disney to "white slavers", but clearly he was still smarting from his own ideas for the Sequels having been ignored.

But considering how little a fuck he gave about those Star Wars films once they came out and how often he visits the now visits sets of like Ahsoka and The Mandalorian, I think he's over it.

Again, this doesn't align with some Star Wars influencers' narrative that "he's fuming, he hates these movies, he feels betrayed and angry!" But if you ask me, he likely couldn't care less, and dubbing Disney his "abusers" is giving them waaay too much credit.

He made his movies, told the story he needed to tell and is now probably just enjoying his retirement, raising his daughter and putting together his museum, part of which is possible because of the money Disney keeps generating for him, as an investor.

So it doesn't surprise me one bit that George Lucas, of all people, to side with the Devil he knows rather than the amateur exec, because the latter is a painful road he knows all too well.

[melis-writes]

my favorite thing about the godfather-pacino-hiring debacle is that literally the only people who wanted al for the role were women + francis. diane recommended al. george lucas’ wife recommended al. i remember francis saying that pacino is like a magnet to women 😭

what i’m saying is women knew

i also started going though the archives for fun to read stories/gossip, and creating a timeline of his dates or girlfriends. rn there is 26 names, but i’m pretty sure i’ll find more 😂

good for him

Lmaooooo those ladies just KNEW!! 😭😭 I remember I think it was Francis who kept mentioning that Al just got SO much attention from women no matter where he was (and Al even said at restaurants some women would randomly come up to him and kiss him on the lips jdfjkgjfg?!) amidst so many more things.

EVERYONE just knew Al was fine as fuck, okayyyyyy! 🥵🥵 We knew it then, we know it now! 😂 Even the mention "he undresses you with his eyes" is sooo true lmfao that's how we know why Michael Corleone has that intense, sexy, "please take my clothes off and fuck me rn" gaze. 🥵🔥

Good for him indeed lmfao 😂❤

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

“Sometimes we get a bit niched,” says Swedish actor Rebecca Ferguson in her slightly lingua-divergent English, “and become the kick-ass woman or the sci-fi woman. I hope not to be that.” She has played a lot of different kinds of roles, she points out, starting with her year and a half in a Swedish soap opera while she was still at high school; more recent prominent roles that weren’t at all kick-ass include her Jenny Lind, the opera singer, in The Greatest Showman and a medieval English power-player in the BBC series The White Queen. It was playing a spy of dubious loyalty in Mission Impossible, however, that made her not only a star, but one of the very few women known as action stars.

Rappelling from a Viennese rooftop with her legs wrapped around Tom Cruise’s hips: that’s how we think of Rebecca Ferguson. “I don’t seek those roles,” she says. “When scripts come, I don’t look for the physicality and not take it if that’s not there. But for some reason those roles have come to me and I’ve done as well with it as I can.” Mission Impossible led on to Dune, the second part of which is due out soon. She loved that. ”I think we need to see women who are really great at fighting, in stories where the fighting is seen to be necessary to protect someone else. That’s what I like about Dune: everything is there for a reason.”

Silo is based on a series of fantasies – nine so far, with one-word titles like Wool, Shift and Dust – by American writer Hugh Howey. The idea of living in an authoritarian closed bunker is a familiar sci-fi trope: the most familiar reference point is probably Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), but Silo has more in common with George Lucas’ debut THX1138 (1976) and the enduring cult favourite Logan’s Run (1971). What lured Ferguson into Silo’s grey, steampunk gloom? “I was drawn to the world,” she says. “Not to the sci-fi, post-apocalyptic fantasy world – that never interests me – but it was the fact that people were living underground in a claustrophobic environment, due to something they themselves had created. I liked the philosophy of that.”

She was also drawn to her character, a mechanic known for her genius at keeping the 140-year-old generator’s boiler running, whose promotion to sheriff comes as a shock to everyone. Juliette Nichols has a fierce yearning for truth and justice, but she is also cranky, unkempt, bitter, unsmiling and, through some strange alchemy of performance, decidedly plain. We don’t much like her; neither does the camera. “That’s what made me fall in love with her,” says Ferguson. “I find the forced likeability so uninteresting. Also, what she’s gone through wouldn’t make you likeable. Wouldn’t put you in the pocket of wanting to be touched, seen, loved. There is a reason why she’s good with mechanical things.”

Ferguson found international fame relatively late in life. She is 39, child of a Swedish father and eccentric English mother, now a mother herself to two children. On Zoom she is strikingly still, intense and has a translucent Nordic beauty that suggests a blameless life sustained by nothing but wild salmon and cloudberries. I wonder if there were any new skills she had to learn as the formidably capable Juliette. “I think what I found challenging and fun was not being good at certain things,” she says. Nobody in the silo can swim, for example; nobody has ever seen a sea or a river. “So in a situation where water is filling up, how do you activate a body that does know how to swim without looking cartoonish or silly? I’ve known how to swim since I was a little child, and those things are really difficult to relearn.”

The question that underlies any story like this one, of course, is how would we would cope living this way? They would chew that over on set, Ferguson remembers. “The tricky one, though, is that you can ask those questions: how would you react, what would you have done – but you can’t forget that they have lived there for 200 years. So you have to first think: ‘What is reality to them?’ They don’t know what ‘outside’ means. All they know is that there is something there. What’s fascinating is the philosophy of people who just follow the rules. You can compare it to the society of Big Brotheror the Second World War and Hitler, greed and power and banning books and taking things away from people and pushing them into a compact little environment to control them. It’s a bit like a religion as well. I’m scared of anything that tries to control our narrative.”

The higher purpose of dystopian fiction is, of course, to tell us about our own world. Were there parallels she spotted, even people she recognised? “I think it’s very difficult as a thinking human being to not see resemblances between what you do and the real world,” she says. “Some things happened after it was written – like we live in a silo and then COVID happened. But I think human beings when they create things will constantly pick from their environment, right?” Every now and then she would spot something in the script that made her think yes, that was smart, people will get that. “But I keep coming back to the idea that all the battles are the same, wherever we are.” In The White Queen, for example, where she played Elizabeth Woodville, wife of the deposed Edward IV, whose sons were murdered. “It’s the same battles there. It’s power and greed and needs, the same issues heightened and minimised. There’s always been chaos.”

[jedimasterbailey]

It's Revenge of the Ask time 😘 the crackhead one, you know which one I mean 🤣 I humbly request 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 22

Oh boy… 🤣 I know you pick some hard ones on purpose since I tortured you with a bunch so let’s see how I do!

6. What is your favorite Star Wars meme?

Like Hayden Christensen I enjoy the Anakin and Padme memes where Anakin says the most unhinged or ridiculous thing and Padme is just praying what he’s saying is a joke and we all know Anakin never jokes.

10. If you could pull a George Lucas and sneak into Disney+ and edit any Star Wars scene, what changes would you make?

I would input Barriss Offee everywhere until Feloni and the gang have no choice but to address her story. Just kidding (slightly), I would input all the deleted Jedi scenes (like the Mirialans tandem fighting) during the Battle of Geonosis in Episode so we can see all the awesome background Jedi fighting instead of exclusively Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme mostly.

11. Who would you want as a Jedi Master? (Why)

As much as I love Luminara, Mace, etc, we don’t really get to see them in the teaching role very much so it’s hard to gauge so I would have to go with Obi-Wan on this one. Obi-Wan undergoes through so much pain and trauma in his life yet he always stays in the light and bounces back and as someone whose also had a pretty traumatic life I would benefit immensely from a Jedi Master who could completely get me and guide me on the right path. Not to mention he’s incredibly kind, noble, smart, patient, and witty which are traits I greatly admire in someone.

12. What lightsaber form would you master?

Form 3 Soresu which is the lightsaber my most favorite characters in Star Wars use and I’d be living that Jedi truth of only drawing my lightsaber in defense and not attack so that would be my preferred fighting stance.

17. Pick one Star Wars line to describe your life, what would it be?

“It takes strength to embrace the Dark Side. Only the weak embrace it.”

-Obi-Wan Kenobi

Again I’ve had a very traumatic and depressing life pre-marriage that I still struggle with to this day and possibly for the rest of my life and there have been many times where just being a bad person or unaliving myself were very tempting options for me, but time and time again I chose to resist it as hard as it has been. So Obi-WAN’s quote to Maul here resonates deeply with me. It does take strength to confront your pain and challenges head on and stay in the light because it is so much easier to not be.

22. Ask your own slightly unhinged question here! The question I was given; which two characters would fight each other to the death only to end up in the most intense lovemaking?

Cal Kestis and Trilla Sunduri for sure and if you’ve played the game or seen the Fallen Order cut scenes then you would definitely know why this doesn’t need further explaining.

Original Ask Questions