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thaeonblade · 2 years

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Logics Insight: The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy 1/2

https://www.deviantart.com/thaeonblade/art/Logics-Insight-The-Star-Wars-Prequel-Trilogy-1-2-916696222

Over the past decade or so, may of you have seen me make several jokes and digs at the expense of Star Wars Episodes I, II and III collectively known as the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy.

I've made fun of the characters, concepts, dialogue and previously made a two part rant about how the Jedi Order sucks in the Prequels and how this portrayal of the Jedi very much sinks their reputation and standing within the Star Wars saga going forward.

However, you may be surprised to hear that I actually like the Star Wars Prequels.

I never loved the Prequels, but I never hated them as some fellow fans do.

Part of that may come down to simple personal bias and experience. I was nine when the Phantom Menace came out and watched Episode I with my mother and older siblings at the Warrensburg Theater in O'Fallon Illinois. When Episode II came out, I watched it with my father and older siblings in theaters in Kansas City and then me and my older siblings watched Episode III together in theaters when I was fifteen.

It wasn't until I was older did I become exposed to the wider “Fandom Menace” movement that picked up traction due to the backlash against the 3D re-releases that George Lucas initially planned for all six movies. And he followed up that move with starting with the most hyped and divisive of the the Prequel Movies which many did not like.

Yes, I watched and enjoyed the Redlettermedia reviews. Mr Plinkett raised several observations and critiques about the movie's shortcomings, flaws, missteps and missed opportunities. Most of these criticisms where things that I actually agreed with, but there were many that I thought or found to be misinformed, unfair or made bigger than they really were.

And no, Disney's mishandling of Star Wars for the past ten years did not make me suddenly realize that the Prequels are works of genius art. In some small way, I've always known that even with my own criticisms and a work of art can still be genius and inherently flawed at the same time. Just because the Tower of Piza has a constant lean, that doesn't take away from its architectural beauty and design.

If a work of art can still hold itself up in spite of its flaws, then its worth looking over to appreciate its strengths. Then you can look at its flaws and see how to improve for future works that will be taking influence from the original. Kind of like how the Romans adapted their vision of the phalanx into the maniple system to make for the former's lack of environmental adaptability and required rigidness.

In that sense, the Star Wars Prequels must be acknowledged as withstanding the test of time and being held up as good, but flawed movies. There is artistic value in the virtues of these movies and the story that they tell as well as artistic value in acknowledging their flaws and mistakes. One can appreciate the flaws of the movies and still regard them as good and someone can acknowledge the virtues while still regarding them as bad.

Which is just my fancy way of saying make up your own mind after weighing the pros and cons of these movies. Don't be a reactive fan who insists that criticizing any Star Wars movie means that you're not a true fan. Don't jump on the hate bandwagon that insists that George Lucas ruined your childhood and that makes it okay to harass actors.

You're better than that. Act like it.

Think for yourself.

Like I said, I do like the Star Wars Prequels and believe that there is more good to them than bad. It's just that the bad parts are...easier to see and they stick with you due to the nature of their badness. It's like how the dark side of the force isn't stronger than the light side, its just easier to tap into and therefore, easier to be seduced by. But one will be able to see through the dark and bad to perceive the light and good with calm, clarity, peace and not taking things too personally.

So with that out of the way, I'll be talking first about the things that I will NOT criticize the Prequels for too much. Then we'll talk about the good along with the bad because sometimes they're intermixed. The big issue with the Prequels is that on the positive side, George Lucas really did expand the universe of Star Wars and raised a lot of possibilities in the process. The overall story of the Prequels is great, the themes are good, and the tragedy element is present.

On the negative side, George shoots himself in the foot with several odd characterization decisions. There are also some aspects of worldbuilding which kneecap the internal consistency of the series and create stumbling blocks for future writers and fans alike. There's also the fact that there are aspects of the Prequel plots that are poorly executed and we'll cover those much later. It's a shame because of George had managed to iron out these issues, the Prequels would be overall more solid and respected by the fanbase.

The Dialogue and Acting

Plenty of people have shared their disproval of how George handled the dialogue and acting. There's so many noteworthy lines and quotes that people make fun of that some people just watch the Prequels to enjoy the lousy one liners.

You already know the ones, so I feel free to add them in the comments.

With that said I don't have too much to say here about the dialogue and acting. George Lucas was humble enough to admit that writing dialogue is his weak spot. Hell as a writer myself, dialogue is no joke to struggle with.

You want the dialogue to feel natural to the characters speaking, to convey important information to the audience and to be concise enough to keep the audience interested and not drag their interest. While its inevitable that you'll have filler conversations from time to time, the rest of the time the dialogue should be telling us something about the characters, the world or the story. Even exposition is tolerable or even interesting if used in a way that adds to the story.

I think that the issue people have with the dialogue and by extension the acting in the Prequels is that much of it feels like filler. As though George just threw the scenes in for the sake of having a bridge between the scenes he really wants to focus on. As a result, George writes his scripts in a way that prevents his actors from conveying charisma for his characters.

Before defenders join in, yes I know that the Original Trilogy had wooden dialogue and hookey acting too. The difference is that the editing was way sharper and that he'd written the script in a way to where the characters could have organic and compelling chemistry between them. Therefore, the relationships between the characters, their interactions and their development feels more engaging and interesting. It also helped distinguish each character as the icons that we love them as.

With the prequels, we have a lot of great actors like Ewan McGregor, Ian Mcdiarmid, Samuel L Jackson, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson and Christopher Lee portraying three dimensional characters within an intricate space opera tragedy. Even Hayden Christenson did a great job as Anakin Skywalker and Jake Lloyd was good as little orphan Annie...I mean little Annie. The problem isn't so much the acting or even the dialogue, but how the actors are directed and how the script is set. These good actors can't bring their A game most of the time because the material they're working with restricts them.

There are exceptions of course. Liam Neeson manages to portray Qui-Gon Jinn with a sense of both wisdom and humanity that made him both interesting and likable. In fact when I think of the archetypical Jedi, I think of either Old Ben Kenobi, Yoda or Qui-Gon. Which made it a bit disappointing to see that Qui-Gon was the exception rather than the rule and that his humanity caused his fellow jedi to snub him for a promotion. But more on that later.

The late great Christopher Lee could star in a Ed Wood film and make it Oscar gold, so of course Count Dooku was great for the brief time he was on screen. Ewan gave his character a great deal of charm and sarcastic wit to Obi-Wan and got better with each movie. Ian Mcdiarmid was great as the evil magnificent bastard Palpatine and could easily be seen as the best portrayed character in the trilogy.

Yet, this is in spite of the script and imagine how much better they and the rest of the cast would have been if the dialogue was just reworked a bit more. However, the reason I'm not too hard on the script is because the dialogue is really symptom of a larger problem that I'll go over later. That problem being that George was mixed around about what was the most information to convey during certain key scenes and discussions.

The Special Effects

Each movie had more practical effects than all of the Original Trilogy movies combined. Granted, that's not much considering that each movie had a budget more than ten times that of the financially constrained Original movies. But it does go to show that George did not neglect the basics of film-making even while playing around with his fancy new computer generated toys.

For example, all of the Trade Federation droids were based on a real model and the same goes for the tanks. They used a combination of miniatures and real locations to create the scene for the Gungan vs Droid battle. They didn't just rely on CGI to depict battle droids like they unfortunately did with the Republic clone troopers. A lot of actors were wearing heavy make-up and special props to convey the aliens they portrayed.

Several locations such as the Pod Racer Stands; the Geonosis Collesium; and more were filmed using real models and then used special effects to compile green screen shots of the actors into the environments. The buildings for the Kamino cloner city was a practical model with cgi water added around it. Places like Theed on Naboo, some of the tree cities on the Wookie homeworld Kashyyyk, Utapau's scenery and some areas in Coruscant are all based on old fashioned practical effects.

So why the complaints about CGI?

I'd say that it's because everything is presented in such a shiny and clean manner that it looks fake to the audience rather CGI or practical. Perhaps the complaints wouldn't be so bad if more was done to make things seem more real. Say for instance, a few of the clone troopers were portrayed by real extras in clone trooper armor and then add in Temura Morrison voiceovers for each clone. Or do what they did in the Matrix Revolutions and Reloaded and make wax masks of Morrison and have the extras wear them with most staying silent and those who talk like Commander Cody being dubbed over by Morrison.

But otherwise, I personally don't mind the computer special effects here. Some say that George lost his way and started using the movie to show off CGI rather than using the CGI to tell a story. While there are some rough parts, I absolutely disagree with this idea. Overall, George is still trying to tell the story and is using CGI as a tool to convey that story in a way that he couldn't do before. Keep in mind that that the techniques he used in the Original Trilogy were pushing the envelop at the time. He's doing the same thing though the only difference is that now there are other movies doing the same thing at that time.

Back in the day, the only Sci-Fi High CCI spectacles that could compete with Star Wars were Flash Gordon, 2001: A Space Odessey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek. But each one were so unique and different that each movie was in its own lane. Plus, each were only one single movie with the exception of Star Trek while Star Wars had three movies. Therefore, Star Wars could make out its own niche without stepping on anyone else's toes.

When the Prequels came out, George has a lot more competition and each one is also pushing the envelop of Special effects. Off the top of my head, the competition consisted of:

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The First Four Harry Potter Movies

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Matrix and Matrix Sequels

AI Artificial Intelligence

Serenity

Minority Report

Equilibrium

The X-Men Movies

Sam Raimi's Spider Man 1 and 2

Peter Jackson's King Kong

Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds

Signs

I, Robot

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

And so on.

Of course, the Prequel Trilogy was still a great financial hit due to the name recognition of Star Wars and its great hype. However, it was not a guaranteed slam dunk since everyone else is using some of the same tools that George is using. Wowing audiences with new special effect isn't as great vs back in the old days because audiences are seeing special effects in a longer list of movies.

And these aren't just movies from the Asylum either. These are movies that were all critical and financial hits, movies that also impact film-making going forward. Films by younger, ambitious, eager and hungry directors whose skill is more polished and focused. Meanwhile, Lucas has experience but has somewhat rusted and by the time he shook off the rust, the first two movies had already suffered and the trilogy couldn't shake that off.

So I'm not happy to point out some of those long-reaching problems and how they hindered a good trilogy from being truly great. However, I don't bring these problems up to bash the Prequels, but to point out how they could be better and how future writers can do better. Furthermore, I have to bring up these issues up because future Star Wars stories that are anchored to the Prequel trilogy suffer from these flaws and end up having to play catch up for the prequel's shortcomings.

So let's talk about a few of those issues shall we?

The Worldbuilding of the Prequels

The problems with the Prequel's worldbuilding can be centered around the portrayal of the Jedi Order, the Republic and Anakin Skywalker. Most if not all of the problems with the plots of these movies has to directly or indirectly deal with these three entities. If the characterization and portrayal of aforementioned characters and groups were ironed out more and smoothed over, most of the issues that critics have with the Prequels would disappear.

Notice that I focused specifically on problems with the plot and not with the overarching story.

The overall story theme of the Prequels revolves around tragedy and moral falling. The Republic and Anakin are tragic entities that start out on noble high ground, but are brought low by tragic flaws and failures which Palpatine is all too happy to exploit.

The Republic starts as a beacon of democracy, justice, peace and principle, but was hopelessly corrupt, stagnate and compromised due to indecision and bad leadership. Thus, the Republic is transformed into the Evil Empire which wears the shell of the Republic while preparing to pull of a long list of atrocities including building the planet destroying Death Star.

Anakin Skywalker is a great bold and brave hero from humble origins wanting to be a great protector and liberator as a Jedi Knight. However, Anakin's own frustrations with what he can't control and his overwhelming fear of losing the ones he loves fuels his lack of emotional self control. Making him all too vulnerable to Palpatine whispering into his ear and telling him that the dark side can give him the power he wants. That the dark side can help him protect his loved ones and conquer death itself.

Anakin falls for Palpatine's lies hook, lie and sinker and commits the first of many sins as he embraces his role as Darth Vader. But as a result of his own actions and choices, Anakin loses all of his loved ones and is entombed within the Darth Vader armor. His damaged and burned body forever trapped within a prison of his own making. Vader can't even scream in agony because the voice coming out of his helmet isn't even his own.

George even accidentally makes the Jedi into tragic figures, but unfortunately the movie is so bungled on that angle that it doesn't fit quite as well. Mainly because the films can't really make up their minds on if the Jedi are completely right in their beliefs, if the Jedi are wrong or if the audience is left clues and facts with which to decide their answer for themselves.

The overall tragic story of the Prequels gets sadly muddled by one glaring problem that just builds on itself until the internal consistency of the Prequels is left as a big mess.

Let's start with my personal list of:

Too Many Details that don't make sense

So the Trade Federation is blockading Naboo because of new trade route taxation laws? Why? What is it about the new taxes that they don't like?

Seeing as that a big chunk of the Senate, beauracrats and committees are on the Trade Federation's payroll, what do they get from working for Sidious that they don't already have from bribing the Republic government?

The Republic doesn't have an army right? The Trade Federation has control ships with thousands of battle droids? Why doesn't the Trade Federation just take over the Republic? Whose going to stop them? Even the Jedi would be overwhelmed by overwhelming numbers and firepower, so why not?

How did the Trade Federation get enough recognition to be granted representation within the Republic Senate? Do all Interstellar corporations have representation in the Senate? Are there laws in place to keep them from making monopolies and using their economic power and wealth to bribe senators to their side?

Why doesn't the Republic have its own army? I know its peace time, but why wouldn't the Republic have at least a token standing army to deal with lesser threats? Why not have at least some of the hundreds of thousands of member systems contribute even one million volunteers towards a Republic army? Doesn't the republic at least use its wealth to hire mercenary companies when necessary?

If Nute Gunray is such a coward then why isn't he ratting on Sidious after he was caught? How the hell did he avoid both prison time and losing his position as Viceroy after blatantly breaking Republic law and peace? Why is he holding back from joining the Separatists/Confederacy until Padme dies, but is also giving over his droids, tanks and ships to the Confederacy before joining them anyway?

Why is Nute Gunray so committed to being Sidious' puppet despite losing everything and getting absolutely nothing from helping out this mysterious Sith Lord?

In fact, who are the Sith? Why are they bad? What do they want? Are all dark side users Sith? What separates a Sith from other dark side users or jedi? Does a jedi automatically become a sith if they fall to the dark side or are their extra steps? Why do they follow the dark side? Why are there only two sith at a time? Why couldn't the Jedi sense that Palpatine was a sith while he was sitting right in front of them? If the Jedi believed that the Sith were destroyed, then how does Yoda know about the Rule of Two? How does Yoda know that there are always only two sith lords at a time, a master and apprentice? Have the Sith always followed the Rule of Two? Is the Rule of Two a recent change in sith philosophy? If so, how do the jedi know that if the sith were supposed to be wiped out?

Why is Anakin too old to be a jedi at nine or ten years old? Do the Jedi prefer new pupils when their toddlers or infants? Why? Do they convince their parents to give up their kids? Do they steal or abduct the children from their families? How does it make sense for Jedi to be discouraged from attachments, but still to be compassionate? Why is it that Jedi are told to use their feelings, but that their feelings are inherently evil and will lead them to the dark side?

I admit that some of these questions are pedantic and that's part of the point which I will make shortly. Technically, there are answers to the major questions that I just posed. Just like there's answers for why the Jedi don't testify on Amidala's behalf about the Naboo invasion. I am also aware that there's an answer to the question about the Sith. I also know that there's an answer about the Jedi's initiation rules, their ban on marriage, relationships and families and how this ties into Jedi philosophy.

Let's start with the Jedi. The Jedi are basically warrior monks who constantly focus on maintaining peace, harmony, knowledge and serenity with the force. The more attuned with the force that a jedi is, the more that they can harness the power of the force through their mind and body. The Jedi code is all about using your power in the force to serve the greater good and to act with un-muddled clarity and inner calm.

Jedi are encouraged to be compassionate and generally kind to all beings. They are called upon to risk their lives and even sacrifice them to save others without hesitation. The duties and tasks of a Jedi are very daunting and difficult, even successful Jedi have led a very trying life. Thus, the traditional interpretation of the Jedi Code requires that a Jedi remove themselves from all distractions which can interfere with their duties or their constant journey to reach enlightenment with the Force.

According to the Jedi, someone who deeply loves another person narrows their focus and makes them put all of their love into that person instead of everyone. This attachment can be a pathway to strong emotions and passions which can lessen a jedi's connection to the greater energies of the Force. It could also be an opening for the dark side to enter the Jedi's spirit if the jedi were to feel jealousy, anger, lust, or any other passionate emotion that comes with love.

Love can also distract a Jedi's commitment from serving the Republic or the Order. Taking things more personally and emotionally rather than objectively and serenely can interfere with a Jedi's judgment which could endanger lives. Therefore, jedi are forbidden from having any strong attachment outside of the order and recruit initiates at very young ages before they can be imprinted upon by their families or people. This means that the younglings will be more easily introduced into the jedi way without any resistance or hesitation on their part.

Indeed, the Jedi have rarely accepted older initiates into the Jedi Order if the Council deemed the individuals situation or talents worthy of granting an exception to the rule. But training these jedi is more difficult since they're entering with a cup half full already and will have a harder time unlearning what they know to learn what they need to connect their spirits with the Force. They've also already formed their own personalities and will inevitably chafe at aspects of the Jedi lifestyle.

In addition, it's clarified in interviews by George Lucas that Jedi do feel emotions like love its just that they've trained themselves to let those emotions flow and then let them go. They feel sadness, grief, joy and love and then they let the emotion go so that it doesn't become an attachment or obsession. Plus, Jedi are not strictly celibate and are allowed to have sex just without any possessive relationships or attachments involved.

Make of that what you will.

As for the Sith? Well, I've talked all about them in my previous analysis essay:

But to make a long story short, the Sith were created by Jedi Renegades who began to experiment with the Dark Side of the Force. When the Council ordered them to shut down their experiments, the Renegades declared war on the Jedi and Republic. After a hundred years, the Renegades lost and the survivors were banished. In time, these surviving Dark Jedi found their way to Koriban where they became the Lords of the Sith Peoples and interbred with them with their descendants rising up to become the Ancient Dark Lords of the Sith.

For thousands of years, the Sith created empire after empire to fight against the Jedi and the Republic. The Sith were not just defeated in battle with the Jedi and Republic, they were also destroyed from constant in-fighting. The very power of the dark side that empowered them also caused the sith lords to keep fighting and betraying each other. These conflicts inevitably weakened the Sith to where they destroyed themselves or were weakened to where the united and resilient Jedi could defeat them.

The last of the Sith died a thousand years before the Phantom Menace, but that's just what the Jedi believed. In truth, a Sith Lord named Darth Bane had survived and gone into hiding. He took on an apprentice called Darth Zannah and created a new Sith Order which would hide in the shadows. With the Rule of Two, Bane believed that the Sith could operate better through scheming, manipulating galactic events, gathering resources and influence, and training a lineage of sith lords that were meant to become stronger with each succession.

Palpatine as Sidious was the latest of the these Dark Lords of the Sith and murdered his master Darth Plageus in his sleep after learning everything that the Muun Sith knew. The Sith have also been conducting Dark Side rituals to shroud the cosmic essence of the Force with darkness to diminish the Jedi's higher connections with the Force's light. There is so much darkness in the force that it's difficult for Yoda or the Jedi Council to discern through it and it took years for them to detect anything from Palpatine.

The problem is that I only know all of this stuff because I'm a super nerd who has surfed through expanded universe material since I was child. Most of what I wrote is NOT IN THE MOVIES. So you are forgiven if the motivations and actions of the major parties involved either don't make sense or aren't very well explained.

Without proper context or explanation, I might believe that the Trade Federation has a justified grudge against the Naboo. Since we never see the Trade Federation actually hurt anyone and we're only told that people are dying, I'm not so sure that they're bad guys. Yes, I know this isn't true, but the movie isn't helping because they don't make the context and consequences of the Naboo crisis very clear nor am I sure that anyone's in danger since we don't see the Trade Federation doing horrible things to the Naboo people. We're only told about it in passing.

Maybe the Sith were well-intentioned extremists who rose up against their tyrannical emotionless Jedi peers. Perhaps the Jedi were the bad guys in the past and Jedi historical revisionism simply painted the Sith as being the evil ones. Thus, the Sith chose to fight evil with evil for the sake of a grander greater good. Even general fans know this one is false, but the movie didn't exactly paint a clear picture so I wouldn't blame someone for coming up with this idea.

The fact that there is an answer to these questions is not the point. The fact of the matter is that I as a viewer should not have to rely on supplementary material in a novel, comic, video game, or wiki page to understand what's happening in the movie. The movie should be competent enough to display or explain the important information necessary for the audience to understand and experience the plot.

This is especially true because the movies are the primary media through which Star Wars tells its grand saga. Most audiences are immediately familiar with and drawn to the movies as they have since 1977. Even today, most people are only interested in the Expanded Universe because of the mainstream popularity of Star Wars series such as the Clone Wars and the Mandalorian among other properties.

So if there's a good or important detail that's not in the movie, most audiences won't care to search for it. And those who do find that detail will join me and others in wondering why this detail wasn't put in the movie because it would add and clear up so much. Its one thing if said detail is irrelevant, minor or unconnected to the movies. But its baffling for major basic stuff like why the Republic didn't have an army to defend itself with for a thousand years!

It doesn't matter if you have a great theme or story to tell if the plot you use to convey that theme and story sucks. The plot is the vehicle that carries the story, themes and characterizations and while its a tricky thing to manage, it's still crucial to get right. Skimping on plot details and execution is going to cripple how you show off your story and make people less interested in it.

The Original Trilogy didn't explain everything, but it explained exactly what needed to be known for the plots of those three films. The audience understood exactly what they needed to know about the world-building and characters to enjoy the plot and story. Details that are only mentioned or seen briefly served as points of interest which created the expanded universe. But in this case, the expanded universe supplements the Original Trilogy, it was not required reading to understand the plot.

The Expanded Universe is not bad, let me clear about that. Despite some bad apples like Dark Empire, Karen Traviss, The Teras Kasi game, The Holiday Special or etc, most of the Expanded Universe material is entertaining and interesting on average. The Expanded Universe surrounding the Prequel Era is filled with a lot of well thought out characters, themes, stories and events which fleshed out and clarified aspects of the last years of the Old Republic.

In fact, George apparently peeks into the Expanded Universe once in a while to give his endorsement, give tips to the writers and artists and even canonizes places, characters and events into the wider Star Wars canon. Coruscant was actually introduced first in the EU book, Shadows of the Empire before making its debut as the Republic's capital in the Phantom Menace.

Characters such as Aayla Secura and Quinlin Voss were star wars comic characters before making cameo appearances or references in the prequel films. The Sith were first brought up in the Tales of the Jedi series that took place thousands of years before the Prequel Era. General Grievous was first introduced in the first Clone Wars series (2003-2004) by Genndy Tartakovsky at George's personal request. I could go on, but the point is that the Star Wars expanded universe is not only good, but was also vital to maintaining interest in the Star Wars franchise in between movie trilogies.

But that does not excuse the Prequels from constant oversights of basic world-building and plot set-up. This often comes down to where the Prequels shows us things that don't make sense and just raise more questions. Or, the focus of the stories is on things that are better off left unsaid or unexplained. This where George gets the reputation for having great ideas, but bad execution and this flaw of the Prequels is no exception.

If the great idea isn't conveyed well in the movie then it doesn't matter if it's clarified in extra material. It wasn't in the movie so it doesn't count. I can understand speculating on certain aspects like the Si-Fo Dyas mystery, why Jango Fett wants an unaltered clone for himself, the Legend of Darth Plageus, or piecing together Palpatine's plot. However, the movie needs to meet the audience halfway by presenting enough important details on screen.

Because what we do see on screen makes it hard to really care about the Jedi, the Republic or the tragic hero of the saga, Anakin Skywalker. Without proper clarity and context, you could see the Jedi as a cult of emotionless drones who demonize all emotions or any independent thought that challenges total obedience to the Order. It's hard to care about the Republic's fall when its set up so poorly that it seems too stupid to exist. And it's hard to see Anakin as a tragic hero when the movies only get the tragic part mostly right while the hero part is missing.

Speaking of Anakin, there are two world-building elements introduced that hurt both the character and the Prequels in General: Midi-chlorians and the Chosen One Prophecy. In addition, we'll discuss how these tie into shortcomings for his characterization among a lot of other things such as his starting age in this series, the romance with Padme Amidala and how the story misses the “heroic” aspect that's meant to tie into his ultimate tragedy.

However, I've kept you good people for long enough so that will be all for today my friends...

Continued in Part 2

#star wars #star wars prequels #review #jedi #sith #star wars anakin #obi wan kenobi

0 notes

gch1995 · 2 years

Note

Alot of the time I see people being like "wah wah, the clone wars ruined the jedi, my best friend george lucas would never do this to me. Non canon! non canon!" When like. My brothers in christ, he was In the writers room. He signed off on literally everything. At least before season 7. My knowledge on the production history of that season is limited. Point is pro jedi dipshits will literally ignore real life if it doesnt fit their view of their precious jedi monsters.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I don’t think that George Lucas ever intended for the Jedi as an overall organization to be the heroes of his saga. I think Luke Skywalker was because he was actually a good person in the OT movies, not just a person who learned to convince himself that his intentions were good like his father and the Jedi before him.

No, Obi-Wan and Yoda weren’t as outright scary and villainous as Vader and Palpatine in the OT movies, but they weren’t particularly good people. They spent roughly three movies deliberately deceiving and manipulating Luke Skywalker in an attempt to use him as a weapon to kill off the monster of a man they inadvertently helped turn his biological father in to 19 years before Luke was even born. I don’t care whether a lot fans think that Anakin deserved the death penalty for his crimes or not at that point. For self-defense protection reasons, I can definitely see the validity of his victims wanting Vader dead at that point. I can definitely see why a lot of people hated him in the galaxy at that point. From a realistic legal and psychological perspective, I don’t think it’s fair to place the blame on just Anakin for becoming the horrifying human disaster he grew up to be, considering the lifetime of compromised agency under abusive, corrupt, and oppressive authority figures, but I don’t think he’s wholly innocent either since he did give up on fighting back after going dark, too. Either way, though, his many victims were completely justified in hating him.

However, like I said before, I don’t have a problem with the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda believe that Anakin/Darth Vader is too great a threat to stop without killing in self-defense in and of itself. I can completely understand why a lot of people in the galaxy would completely and utterly despise Darth Vader, never be able to forgive him, and want him dead. I can completely understand why Obi-Wan and Yoda feel deeply betrayed and hurt by Anakin’s crimes against them and their Jedi Order.

My first issue with Obi-Wan as a mentor and person started from his very first introduction in A New Hope. Right off the bat, he tells Luke that he failed Darth Vader as a teacher because he “thought he could train him as well as Master Yoda.” Sure, Darth Vader is a fully grown man, and he is no longer Obi-Wan Kenobi’s student. Therefore, sure, it’s fair to say that Obi-Wan no longer needs to feel personally obligated to stop his former student from committing these horrendous crimes throughout the galaxy on behalf of the Empire’s ruler Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine and/or a personal desire for vengeance.

While it’s never his fault that his circumstances suck under these abusive, arrogant, corrupt, deceitful, manipulative, isolating, hypocritical, and oppressive extremist authority figures, laws, and systems, Anakin is still an adult with enough rationale and self-awareness in regards to his relationship with objective reality to understand the basic differences between right versus wrong when we see him commit these crimes under their influence, so those crimes are also at least partially on him for choosing to not take the risk of doing what he knows is better out of too much fear to face the unknown.

What’s more, we have also seen an adult Anakin/Darth Vader chose to commit a number of personally motivated crimes out of extreme anger, an extreme desire to gain control, an extreme desire to enact vengeance against those who hurt him and/or those he loves, an extreme fear of the actual and/or perceived threat of abandonment from loved ones, an extreme fear of facing the unknown when presented with enemies or outsiders from the “greater good,” and an extreme sense of impatience when faced with disobedience, disrespect, or rebellion from those under him after going dark. So yeah, regardless of constantly compromised agency and shitty circumstances, Anakin/Vader is certainly no blameless innocent either. It’s not just his fault he could grow up to become a monster, and it’s not his fault that there were no safe escape options from the instability and toxicity of rampant crime and slavery on Tattoine, the Jedi Order, the old Republic, Sidious, and the Empire. He is a victim in that sense. However, he did also become an asshole and a monster who became increasingly willing to enable and perpetuate much of the same abuse, crime, manipulation, oppression, tyranny, and vengeance that he was victim to himself before because he eventually became too angry, depressed, exhausted, insecure, and terrified to make an effort to risk trying any better, even though he knew taking the easier path of enabling and perpetuating that same cycle of systematic abuse of power he got thrust into in these systems, was morally wrong.

Obi-Wan and Yoda may no longer be responsible for the crimes of Darth Vader now that he is a fully grown adult and no longer their student, but how to persuade an innocent young man with no prior formal experience and training in being a Jedi warrior to destroy an enemy of the galaxy who they claim to have had a hand in driving away in the first place through their methods? They don’t have to feel responsible for Vader’s crimes anymore, but why use Luke to finish a monster they helped create in the first place? If they’re as anti-vengeance as they claim to be, then why did Obi-Wan deliberately stand there when confronted by Vader on the Death Star with a lightsaber, egg him by telling him “I’m about to become more powerful than you can ever imagine,” and then allow for Vader to stab him right in front of Luke?

This all happens in A New Hope before we ever find about Darth Vader being Luke’s biological father Anakin Skywalker, or Yoda’s influence on Obi-Wan as the Jedi leader. Obi-Wan already comes off as manipulative and suspicious as hell, regardless of his intentions.

They’re not directly responsible for Anakin’s actions against the galaxy, but Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the Jedi Council were canonically shown to repeatedly be very arrogant, emotionally/psychologically abusive, controlling, deceitful, isolating, hypocritical, and manipulative bastards who refused to take full accountability for their bad choices and mistakes that heavily contributed to the circumstances, environment, instability, and mindset that influenced Anakin’s fall in the first place by following broken, outdated, and toxic methods in their Order and the corrupt Republic. The fact that trying to use his biological son to deal with a monster they helped create in his biological father in the first place, even if inadvertently, is messed up

In fact, while much less outright abusive, creepy, and threatening than Anakin/Vader in regards to Luke, their basic motivation to recruit him and train him through deceitful, dangerous, and manipulative means that they know are objectively wrong to achieve personal worthy ends of destroying Vader is pretty similar to Anakin’s ultimate goal in Empire Strikes Back and the beginning of Return of the Jedi of attempting to manipulate Luke to use him for his own goal of finding a kind and trustworthy ally/family member/friend to turn to the dark side to help him escape from Palpatine. You could also argue that a part of Anakin did feel unduly indebted to Palpatine after years of being groomed in the ways of the Sith and to be submissive to a psychopathic dictator. A part of him likely convinced himself that turning Luke to the dark side was the “best” way to keep his son safe from Palpatine. The point is that Anakin still knew Luke deserved better than that from him. He was being selfish by trying to mold Luke into someone he was not and disregarding his son’s say in the matter of his own fate. Anakin was being selfish by putting Luke through hell that he didn’t deserve because he was too afraid to stand up to Palpatine and do the right thing.

However, in spite of how awful Anakin did become at his worst as Vader, by the end of the original trilogy, he’s still the only surviving member of Luke’s predecessors from the old Jedi Order and Republic, who actually seems to realize that it’s not fair to betray, deceive, endanger, harm, and intimidate his son to pressure him down a path he doesn’t want to take, as a means to an end to escape and/or avoid his own issues with Palpatine, the Sith, the Empire, or his own bad choices.

Meanwhile, for such “wise” and “heroic” monks, Obi-Wan and Yoda never do really seem to realize that it was wrong to use Luke as a pawn for their own ends of “what’s best for him.” Nor do they ever do or say anything that indicates remorse over the shitty ways in which they treated Luke for their own worthy ends. In spite of how great the OT movies of SW otherwise are, this was probably my biggest gripe with them. The Obi-Wan and Yoda were portrayed as “blameless” and “justified” for being problematic in their methods with recruiting, training, and using Luke to try to take down Vader never struck me as okay for them to completely get away with without remorse, just because their enemies were worse. That’s how you get designated heroes and moral hypocrisy in fictional narratives in which the writer wants their heroes to be well-intended morally ambiguous and sketchy extremists, but only allows them to get away with it because the enemies they are fighting are worse. Obi-Wan and Yoda still get the happily ever after force ghost treatment, even though there never was one moment in their relationship with Luke when they weren’t deceiving him, manipulating him, or using him for their own ends.

Sure, objectively, Anakin was far more horrifying towards Luke than Obi-Wan and Yoda were, and Luke would also have had absolutely every right to hate him, no matter what, too. However, at the very least, he actually got consistently framed as in the wrong for betraying, endangering, and/or harming Luke to manipulate him for his own ends. At least, Anakin actually did something to genuinely express remorse for his mistreatment of him by selflessly sacrificing his life for him. At least, Anakin realized he was wrong about Palpatine, wrong to run away from his problems, wrong to try to use Luke to escape them, and tried to make up for it to his son.

Obi-Wan and Yoda never really seem to learn anything in the OT movies from their bad choices and mistakes on screen because it seems like George Lucas wants us to agree that they were justified in deliberately deceiving, endangering, and manipulating Luke for their own ends of “the greater good,” simply because they were facing a greater evil threat. Luke wouldn’t have just blindly and eagerly jumped on board to fight for them at their insistence, if he had been told the whole objective truth by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda in the beginning, so I do get why they felt like they had to do it.

This is exactly why I love most of the PT movies and SW media. At least, pre Disney. It doesn’t absolve Anakin of his many crimes, but, while it’s still made clear that the entire Order and Republic didn’t deserve mass murder or the Empire, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the adults involved in the Jedi Order and Republic government don’t get framed as being in blameless victims in the right for being abusive, arrogant, classist, manipulative, and oppressive assholes “for the greater good” either. They actually pay negative consequences for it. Certainly worse than what they deserved at the end, but they are definitely not framed as wholly “blameless” good guys either.

Yeah, I don’t understand how in 2022 there are still fans out there who wholeheartedly support every decision the Jedi have ever made as an overall organization. The only reason they get to be the good guys before Luke in the OT and PT movies is because the Empire and Sith are far worse, which isn’t a high bar to rise above at all. Not to mention the fact that their teachings and lifestyle helped influence the rise of the Empire. That exceedingly collectivist “greater good” line they repeatedly encouraged their students to use to feel better about giving in to pressure to enable and/or perpetuate “necessary” systematic abuse, crime, isolation, and oppression to hold onto security is what helped influence a creation of more dangerous and organized lawful evil Sith, who were able to convince themselves they were being heroes “for the greater good” in the first place in using shitty means to achieve worthy ends more easily.

#pt Jedi critical #anti jedi apologism #obi wan critical #yoda critical #yeah they weren’t as bad as the Sith before Luke nor were they deserving of mass murder #but the Jedi before Luke as an overall organization were still assholes

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fantasmadaagnes · 2 years

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Análise e Comentários sobre Lendas do Recomeço

Lendas do Recomeço; a saga inaugural da Terceira Série da TMJ.

Layout

O estilo da TMJ mudou drasticamente na Terceira Série, e eu não posso dizer que foi uma decisão errada! Gostei muito do traço novo dos personagens, só ainda não me acostumei totalmente.

Fiquei MUITO feliz em ver que os desenhistas voltaram a se preocupar com as roupas dos personagens. Lembro de uma época em que a Mônica só vestia jeans e camiseta lisa...

Só peço que PELO AMOR DE DEUS, Maurício, para com essas páginas brancas! Volta pro papel normal de mangá!

Milena

FI-NAL-MEN-TE temos a Milena Jovem, já não era sem tempo! O desenho ficou lindo e eu mal posso esperar pra acompanhar o desenvolvimento da personagem.

Na Turminha Clássica a Milena se destaca pela animação, otimismo e o grande amor que ela tem pelos animais, por influência da mãe que é veterinária.

Vamos ver como ela evolui na TMJ!

DC e Isa

Do nada o DC e a Isa engataram em um namoro. Eu só tenho uma pergunta: POR QUÊ?

Não tinha NENHUMA necessidade de inventar essa besteira de namoro. A impressão que eu tive foi de que só queriam calar a boca de quem ainda shippa DC e Mônica (eu, no caso) com a desculpa de que além da Mônica estar com o Cebola, o DC agora é comprometido.

A Isa e o DC não tem NENHUMA química. Absolutamente NADA das personalidades deles indica que seriam um bom casal. Eu tenho quase certeza de que esses dois NUNCA tiveram uma interação de verdade antes desse "namoro". NÃO FAZ O MENOR SENTIDO!

E eu preciso lembrar a vocês que desde a edição 33 da Primeira Série a Isa JÁ TEM UM NAMORADO, com quem ela mantêm contato pelo celular, já que ele mora na cidade natal dela.

Sem nem mencionar que: na edição 33 da Primeira Série, na primeira aparição da Isa, você até shippa ela com o Luca porque eles passaram o gibi inteiro interagindo, construindo uma amizade, demonstrando o porquê aqueles dois seriam um bom casal. AGORA QUANDO FOI QUE ISSO ACONTECEU ENTRE ISA E DC???

Sigo defendendo que Mônica e DC são um casal incrível, e só terminaram porque a Mônica e o Cebola são "prometidos" um pro outro. Assim como a Isa e a Maria Mello não podem ser nada além de um casal! Pelo amor de deus, essas duas são namoradas!

Ler sobre esse novo "casal" foi como se o Maurício de Sousa em pessoa tivesse cuspido na minha cara.

Mônica Coadjuvante

É oficial: a Mônica virou personagem secundária!

Vão ter que mudar o nome do gibi, porque já faz tempo que deixou de ser a Turma da Mônica Jovem!

Em seis edições, 384 páginas, a Mônica sequer apareceu em um terço delas, e não teve nenhum destaque. Faltou protagonismo, faltou personalidade, faltou iniciativa, faltou a Mônica.

Ela virou uma personagem chata e genérica. Só entrou no torneio pra cumprir a tal “promessa” que ela e o Cebola fizeram (eu juro que cada vez que eles mencionavam essa “promessa” eu revirava os olhos). Se essa fosse a Mônica de verdade, ela entraria no torneio pra competir mesmo, pra se divertir, vencer, e jogar com os amigos!

Sem falar em toda a trama da empresa Lotania, a desenvolvedora do jogo que maltratava os funcionários. A Mônica saiu tanto da personagem que quem resolveu a coisa foram o Franja e o DC. Quer dizer, fala sério! A maior característica da Mô é como ela sempre luta contra injustiças e busca fazer o certo!

Estou muito decepcionada com o que fizeram com ela.

Mônica e Cebola

Eu nunca fui muito fã do casal. Eu acho que eles são bons na teoria, com toda essa questão de se conhecerem desde a infância e terem personalidades do tipo “os opostos se atraem”. Mas na prática, depois de tudo o que o Cebola fez com a Mônica, a forma escrota como ele tratou ela durante toda a primeira série, além do bullying na infância (que claramente afeta a Mô até hoje), eu jamais colocaria os dois juntos.

Eu entendo que o Cebola amadureceu e percebeu os próprios erros, mas uma coisa é perdoar, e outra é esquecer, e considerando todo o sofrimento e estresse que a Mônica passou durante esse tempo… isso com certeza não se esquece.

Mas o maior problema com esse casal, que é aquilo que, na minha opinião, ficou muito evidente em Lendas do Recomeço, é que para que os dois funcionem juntos eles teriam que renunciar à si mesmos.

Calma, calma. Eu explico: A Mônica e o Cebola cresceram brigando, e isso se deve, em maioria, ao fato de que eles têm personalidades muito fortes e totalmente incompatíveis. Nenhum dos dois sabe ceder, ambos estão muito acostumados a estarem certos, e quase nunca estão dispostos a manter a cabeça fria e conversar.

A Mônica é forte, física e moralmente, e sente que é responsável pelo bem-estar de todos à sua volta. Ela é teimosa, inconsequente, e tem uma bússola moral muito forte.

O Cebola despreza ser visto como fraco, e tende a se sentir ofendido com a insinuação de que precisa ser protegido. Ele valoriza a inteligência e tem um ligeiro complexo de superioridade. É manipulador e ambicioso, um estrategista nato.

Para a relação desses dois ficar equilibrada e “paz e amor” eles não poderiam continuar sendo quem são, e eu desprezo isso que os gibis tem feito ao sacrificar as personalidades deles em detrimento de uma relação “fadada a acontecer”.

Cascão

DESDE QUANDO O CASCÃO PASSA POR CIMA DOS AMIGOS PARA CONSEGUIR O QUE QUER?

ESSE NÃO É O CASCÃO, CARA! POR QUE FIZERAM ISSO?

Magali e Quim

Esse casal parece que só continua junto por preguiça dos roteiristas. Saudades de quando a Petra Leão fazia e desfazia casais.

Eles são muito fofos, mas sinceramente não vejo química nenhuma entre os dois. Parece que estão unidos pela comida ao invés de um sentimento verdadeiro.

O pior é que nessa saga, de novo, o que se passou com eles foi a mesma coisa da edição 45 da primeira série; da edição 67 da primeira série; da edição 89 da primeira série...: o Quim é inseguro demais na relação, e não importa o quanto a Magali o tranquilize, ele não é capaz de se comunicar de forma saudável.

Os problemas entre eles nunca se resolvem e o namoro não evolui.

História Monótona

Cadê o clímax da história?

Não sei se foi porque agora a gente têm mais de uma história por edição, logo a história é mais curta,... não sei bem. Só posso dizer que faltou a construção de um enredo. Eu até senti que tentaram encaixar um suspense, mas foi muito fraco.

#tmj #turma da mônica jovem #tmj terceira série #lendas do recomeço #mônica #cebola #cascão #magali #quim #do contra #dc #isa #crítica #análise #turma da mônica

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horrordirtbag · 3 years

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Do you think “HorrorIsDead” has a point when he said NLC ruined the Jason movies?

Does he have a point? Sure, but I also think he largely overreacted. I used to agree with him a lot when I was a kid tho. I classify F13 fans into like... 7 different categories (I’ve been meaning to make a meme about that for a while lol), and I kind of fall into the “New Line Apologist” category lol.

JGTH was a fucking terrible start, yes, but Jason X and FvJ were fine installments imo. I can see why many people don’t like X, though, but FvJ, which I think is one of the best in the franchise, I believe has gotten totally unfair backlash. And really, FvJ is the key to explaining the entire New Line saga

Throughout the entire 90s, FvJ was their #1 project in regards to both franchises. JGTH was only made because work was beginning for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and with Freddy on hold they figured they ought to make a new Jason movie so he wouldn’t be dormant. It was an afterthought, and their biggest mistake was giving total control to Adam Marcus, but even then Sean Cunningham deserves more blame for that. But their reasoning for making it wasn’t to go on an evil pro-Freddy rampage to drag Jason through the mud.

Here’s some context going forward: production for FvJ was monitored by two camps. On one side you have Michael De Luca at the head of NLC, on the other hand you have Sean Cunningham with Crystal Lake Entertainment.

So 7 years later, this would repeat itself with Jason X. FvJ was taking too damn long to get made, they couldn’t find a good script, so Sean demanded they needed to make a new movie to keep Jason relevant, and he threatened to walk off the project entirely if they didn’t. The result was that NLC almost had nothing to do with the production of Jason X. If HorrorisDead or anyone really hated that movie, the blame almost entirely falls on Sean and his company’s hands.

So, my point is... JGTH and X were really side projects. NLC’s sights were always on FvJ, and I think FvJ fucking rocked. They went through hell to get that movie made. Why I love that movie is a post of it’s own (literally, I made one like 2 years ago lol). It’s just a total gift to the fans with real heart and soul put into it by writers Shannon & Swift.

I remember the doc talking a lot about Jason being afraid of water, but it’s a moot point because that actually wasn’t what happened in the film. S&S confirmed Jason wasn’t scared of water itself, just that in his nightmare it triggered a subconscious feeling, a memory of the last time he ever felt fear: when he drowned as a child. This is why he reverts back to a kid in the dream. Ronny Yu buried this under metaphors and symbolism that understandably got lost in translation, but it’s important to know the intention wasn’t to make Jason afraid of water (he’s even seen wading through water multiple times later in the movie).

I agree with him about Kane Hodder, though. Removing him was a fucking dick move. It sullies my enjoyment a little, but it’s not fair to hold it against the entire movie. I also remember him using this as evidence that FvJ wasn’t made by fans, just mindless corporate executives, and while it’s true Ronny Yu wasn’t, this ignores the fact that Shannon & Swift were huge fans of both franchises, and their story is like the number 1 most important thing of that movie. It also ignores the hard work Michael De Luca put in finding a script fans would love.

He also omits all that New Line Cinema did for Friday the 13th outside of the theater. As we all know, Paramount was ashamed of Jason. This meant there was barely any merchandizing for the property. But NLC embraced Jason, again De Luca was a fan, and they had a blast making all sorts of new Jason stuff. For the first time ever, there were officially licensed costumes, comics, toys, fuckin whatever. Those McFarlane Movie Maniacs figures? That was New Line Cinema’s doing. Same with early Neca Cult Classics and Mezco’s Cinema of Fear. They even almost made a videogame.

You could view this cynically as just whoring him out for money, and it is lol, but interviews with those in charge of this talk about it more lovingly. Paramount put nothing out for the fans for Jason, and NLC wanted to give them something to chew. If Jason was a prostitute I’d be his #1 customer so I really appreciate their whoring him out lol, but I get some people wouldn’t really care abt that

So... yeah, I’ve come to disagree with his points over the years. JGTH and Jason X are moreso the casualties of FvJ’s pre-production trainwreck rather than an evil anti-Jason company’s plot to destroy him. I’m willing to forgive

I really, really recommend the book Slash of the Titans, it’s where I got most of the information for this post lol. It’s a fun read and it really gives you some appreciation for NLC, they really wanted to make FvJ good. That movie was in extraordinary pre-production hell, it’s lucky it didn’t get scrapped.

this was a loooong one lol

#Freddy vs Jason #New Line Cinema #freddy krueger #jason voorhees #friday the 13th #slashers #horror movies

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youngfcs · 3 years

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Olá Cib, eu queria saber umas coisas.

você já leu algum livro da saga Percy Jackson?

Se você pode me achar um FC pros Nico Di'Angelo e pro Will Solace (Se você quiser pode me recomendar FCs pros outros personagens também).

Tipo, o Nico na minha cabeça tem uma aparência de quem ta meio morto sabe, com olheiras enormes debaixo dos olhos por não dormir direito, sempre de cara amarrada e bem magro.

Já o Will, ele tem diversas sardas no rosto, uma versão loira de olho azul dos Weasleys, usa diversas roupas coloridas tbm, enquanto o Nico vive usando preto.

Olá! Então, já li toda a saga Percy Jackson, a saga que vem depois de Percy Jackson e também a dos deuses Egípcios. Se eu amo Rick Riordan? hmmmmmmm

Então, eu não conheço ninguém com TODAS as características, porque é muito difícil já que o personagem foi escrito na cabeça do Rick, né? Posso dar algumas opções que eu acho que podem funcionar.

Não dei opções de outros personagens, porque não sabia quais você queria :c qualquer coisa, pode pedir de novo!!

Nico:

Finn Wolfhard (14-18)

Skandar Keynes (18-25) [em filmes antigos, porque ele não está mais atuando]

Tyler Young (18-26) [em Eyewitness ele tava bem dark]

Alex Storm (17-24)

Timothée Chalamet (17-25) [ele em Duna, me passou essas vibes]

Cole Sprouse (18-27) [ele nas primeiras temporadas de Riverdale]

Finlay MacMillan (17-25)

Will: (que eu me lembre ele era loiro)

Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen (16-21) [provavelmente o único com sardas aparentes que eu conheço]

Louis Hofmann (16-24) [também tem sardas, mas menos aparentes]

Connor Jessup (17-27)

Danny Griffin (17-24)

Hugh Laughton Scott (17-25)

Linus Wordemann (18-25) [é ruivo, mas tem muitas sardas]

Nicholas Hamilton (15-21)

(cib)

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the-far-bright-center · 8 months

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People saying 'everyone loves Hayden Anakin now that he has a good script'....FUCK OFF. The script was never the actual reason the dudebro fanboys hated Anakin in the Prequels. They had already viciously hated on little Ani back in TPM. And not because of so-called 'bad writing', but because he was a cute, precocious little kid and they couldn't stand that being associated with their beloved 'badass' Vader. And likewise, they IMMEDIATELY decided to hate Anakin in AotC when Hayden was cast because he was a pretty boy instead of whatever headcanon they wanted for him. They resented Anakin in the Prequels because he was first depicted as a sweet and caring child who loved his mother, and then later because he was an emotionally vulnerable young man who had a romantic storyline and was motivated by love and his fear of losing those he loved. The fanboys hated Prequels Anakin because he wasn't Vader. They wanted Vader. They have always worshipped Vader. THAT is the reason. Not the script. Seriously, there are so many older male fans who are STILL bitter over a 'pretty boy' playing Anakin. Stop blaming the script for everything. The Prequel films and Hayden Anakin were only thought to be universally 'hated' due to the fact that the fanboys ruled the internet in those early days, and spread the hate around with no one to counter it. The Prequels are way better films than anything Disney could EVER hope to produce, and it's infuriating that people are acting like the material Disney of all things churns out is somehow the 'reason' people like Hayden Anakin now. No, it's because they've had time to go back and appreciate his role in the Prequels and seen that it's actually a compelling story and his performance is, in fact, good.

#anti-disney #pro-lucas saga #prequels defense squad #seriously gtfo with that bullshit #especially if you weren't THERE and did not experience how the hate ACTUALLY manifested back then #no one cared about the damn script #despite people making fun of 'i don't like sand' it wasn't that big of a deal #the issue was simply that the dudebros decided they hated Lucas' version of Anakin in the Prequels and that was that #they just never opened their minds enough to actually appreciate him #believe it or not Hayden actually respected Lucas' vision for Anakin and for the Prequels #he understood what Lucas was trying to convey #so please kindly FUCK OFF with the Prequels hate

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myevilmouse · 4 years

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In Defense of The Rise of Skywalker

Or...how I learned to stop hating and enjoy a movie

Spoilers and random thoughts below the cut.

I hate the abomination that was/is The Last Jedi. Let’s get that out of the way. I’ve already explained the hundreds of reasons why, the biggest and most unforgivable being the character assassination of Luke “I call him Jake” Skywalker and the invalidation of every victory of the OT. I resent this making people lump me into a “gatekeeper” sect, or accuse me of racism (Rose was annoying and ruined Finn’s heroism, jeopardizing hundreds of lives for her own selfish reasons without building up a convincing romance and blah blah etc). It has nothing to do with her gender, race, or anything. It has to do with poor character development and inconsistent motivations/messages.

I’m also not a huge fan of The Force Awakens, mainly for its lack of originality and the treatment of Han/Leia, but otherwise I thought it was OK. I liked Finn, wanted him to become a Jedi, found Poe to be a worthy heir to our antihero mold. Rey left me indifferent and Kylo Ren was a temper-tantrum throwing teenager, but anyway...

Let’s keep that as background/context and not get bogged down.

Since they announced the title of this movie, I have been livid with rage. How dare they use my man’s name to sell their disgusting imitation of a beloved universe? I was certain, ever since it was announced, that Rey would take Luke’s surname, despite having treated him so horribly in TLJ, despite having done nothing to earn it, despite having spent far more time with Leia, so if anything a Solo/Organa family name would make more sense. It was just to sell tickets and I was furious.

I read all the spoilers. Worst fears: confirmed. I looked at leaked photos. I raged over the inanity of the plot and the sad conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, which in my mind will always end with ROTJ.

Still, I love Mark Hamill, and I decided to treat this film as a MH film. The completist in me required theatrical viewing. Rare to get our man in a cinematic release. So I went, ready to hate watch, prepared to dull the bitterness and betrayal with wine.

But….JJ Abrams directed a fix it fic. And it’s good. This film not just address the real injustices and horrible story decisions of TLJ, but also addresses some of the major problems of TFA too.

I tried to go in with an open mind, but obviously I had many preconceived notions, and already knew almost every single story point and character beat. I was ready to roll around in my hate and slam the abomination. I want to emphasize that I am one of those people that was COMPLETELY prepared to hate EVERYTHING about this.

There are flaws.

But there is so much that is great.

I really really liked it.

No one is more shocked than I at my own reaction. I was ready/willing/wanting/primed to hate everything about this. Please keep that in mind. Hahah and no one is paying me to write this post 😉

I decided to write this because I also read all the negative critical reviews online from the pro critics yelling FAN SERVICE. And I’m like…damn straight? Ever since George Lucas made Han shoot second, fandom has understood that we understand this franchise better than film executives. We aren’t concerned with adding an extra dewback or improving special effects. We love these films the way we first experienced them, and they cannot and should not be “improved” to the ultimate detriment of the brand.

I’m here to tell you that the critics are not being fair. The spoilers on reddit were true, but the movie works. Let’s accept, before we go further, that Abrams couldn’t entirely rewrite the mess that he stepped into/helped create. So I can’t defend the fact that Finn isn’t a Jedi yet or the mess that is the new Rebellion/failure of the old. I, like many fans, wish we had been given a different/better story from the beginning. Sadly, we were not.

That is something we don’t have to accept (I certainly don’t consider these films “canon” in my mind—Mara Jade forever!) but let’s approach this film in the spirit it seems to be intended: An attempt to address the very valid criticisms loudly voiced about the others in the trilogy, with the caveat that we are stuck with TFA and TLJ no matter how much we hate them.

First, the music is amazing, as we all knew it would be. The acting is stellar.

Some of the things Abrams “fixed:”

“Rey is perfect/Mary Sue/good at everything”. There is a conscious effort in this film to show her training, with Leia as her Master. There is a good scene foreshadowing her final struggle, where she strains to hear the voices of Jedi past and fails. There are several signs that she is not a Jedi yet, including how Palpatine talks about her, and perhaps my favorite, when she tells Leia she hasn’t earned Luke’s lightsaber.

Me: Damn straight you haven’t.

And Leia AGREES, keeping Luke’s weapon because Rey isn’t ready for it. She’s still learning.

Further proof of her non-Jedi status, when Rey is killed, she doesn’t join the Force. She is a corpse. On the other hand, Ben Solo, once redeemed, disappears as we would expect a good Jedi to do. A clear distinction between the two of them.

And speaking of Leia:

Leia’s character: TFA and TLJ Leia is weak and sends other people to fight, whereas our brave Princess from the OT is volunteering for suicide missions, grabbing weapons from the hands of her rescuers, and running into danger for a good cause. It always bothered me that she didn’t go after Kylo herself (or with Han). In this, we see her as a Jedi Master, training Rey, with her own lightsaber. Leia is once more a badass, true to her character. A legitimate Jedi who also joins the Force (although not sure why it took her so long post-mortem, that was weird).

Luke’s character: Hello, I am A LUKE FANATIC. The biggest sin of TFA and especially TLJ was this idea of Luke hiding out and becoming the disgusting, pessimistic coward he was shown to be. Abrams ignores this pretty much entirely, starting with the revelation that Luke was actually going on missions with Lando to hunt for a Sith artifact to help the Rebellion. Luke kept notes, he was busy and ACTIVE. He wasn’t giving up; he was leaving a trail to help anyone who followed. The best ‘fuck you’ in the whole movie was Luke catching Anakin’s lightsaber when Rey throws it away. The ultimate rejection of his TLJ characterization.

Luke’s conversation with Rey echoes very much the ROTJ “you must confront Vader” conversation. There are many echoes of ROTJ but given the restrictions on what we are working with, I accepted this parallel. Much like Luke had to face his unfortunate inheritance, so must Rey. It’s not terribly original, but these films aren’t.

I also loved the simple line “I was wrong” when Rey asks why he did what he did in TLJ. This to me is simply “Rian Johnson was wrong/The Last Jedi was wrong.” There is no excuse that is acceptable, but this is a filmmaker acknowledging an injustice, and I appreciated it. (Did I mention these films are not canon for me? They aren’t, just giving credit for this attempt.)

Han’s character: I hated SO MUCH how they turned Han into a failure in TFA. A buffoon, not even a good smuggler anymore, a failure as a father, a husband. When I heard he was going to be in this I was like HUH? But this “memory” of his father that Kylo Ren sees after Rey heals him and departs, after he’s lost his mother, is another attempt to redeem the injustice to Han’s character. Han is the one in the movie who brings Kylo Ren back to the Light, not Rey. It is a very short scene, but effective. The acting is poignant, with the “Dad” working for me. Maybe I’m a softie. But I appreciated this brief proof that Han Solo, in the end, didn’t suck as a father, and ultimately, even as a hallucination, inspired the love that saved his son.

Chewbacca got a medal: I said Abrams was fixing things in the sequels, but I admit I was choked up to see this fixit from A New Hope. Finally Chewie gets the medal he is LONG overdue.

Team dynamic with the new characters: Finally we understand why these people care about each other. They go on shared adventures, they have banter (and some good jokes, not the stupid bathos of TLJ), and there is finally some sense of camaraderie that was discarded in TLJ. There are several references to Rey’s “new family,” clearly referring to this band of Rebels, and it was far more compelling than in earlier films.

Finn’s Force Sensitivity: I, like many, desperately wanted Finn to be a Jedi. Since TFA, it seemed inevitable! I loved how he used the lightsaber, how he seemed to have Force abilities (that were never really explored). TLJ ignored that potential completely, sidelining him on that stupid Canto Bight quest and pulling him away from Rey. There are so many signs that he is destined to be a Jedi in this film, I was thrilled to see them. Knowing things without explanation, doing amazing things, sensing things, trusting his feelings, it’s another ‘fuck you’ in my opinion, to RJ for ignoring this former stormtrooper’s destiny in favor of overblown set pieces and pointless CGI theatrics. When he says, towards the end “I can feel it,” I wanted to fist pump. YOU GO BE A JEDI FINN! THE FORCE IS WITH YOU. Personally, I would have loved for Finn to be the main protagonist of all three films, but I appreciate us getting what we got, since we can’t get what we want.

Stuff that worked:

The Wedge cameo: Yeah.

Lando: Wonderful. His dialogue, especially at the beginning, does a lot to fix our view of Luke.

Kylo’s redemption: See above re: Han. I’ve seen a lot of criticism about the kiss. I get the whole “female character’s purpose is to validate the evolution of the male” criticism, but I want to point out a couple things about this. First of all, it’s not a “Reylo” kiss. Kylo is gone. This is well after Kylo is redeemed. He’s been of the Light for a while before this, it’s clearly Ben at this point. It’s also obvious Rey knows that, and like Luke forgave Vader for his abuse, she forgives Ben Solo for his. So I understand also the criticism that is making people puke about Rey kissing her abuser, but again, Luke sheds tears for the father he loves, who maimed and traumatized him. Star Wars is about redemption and forgiveness that accompanies it, and I don’t have the same issue with this. If she kissed KYLO without him being redeemed before he died, for example, I would be disgusted. This is not that.

The cinematography/pacing/story: So many critics and the spoilers made it sound like this was a convoluted mess. I went to see it with a non-native English speaker and neither of us had any trouble following the plot. Yeah, a lot happens, but it all is linear and consistent within the film.

The humor/dialogue: Felt way more Star Wars-y and better placed than the last two films.

The Jedi Helping Rey: As much as I thought I would hate this, it was really well done, largely, I think, due to the foreshadowing during her earlier training. When Palpatine says all the Sith live in him and we know what she’s gonna say but it still works SO WELL. I was rooting for her and I’ve never been a huge fan. But at that climactic moment, I was a believer.

Major flaws

Of course there are some. For me the most major:

A Jedi Strikes Not In Anger: In every single lightsaber battle (pretty sure, I only saw the film once), Rey is the first to strike. She always seems to be fighting from anger and with negative emotion. This is not at all Jedi-esque and I found it particularly jarring in her duels with Kylo Ren. This bothered me more than almost anything else in the film because it is never addressed. She fights ANGRY and she fights FEARFUL and then somehow when she’s supposed to strike down Palpatine, she has it in her to resist. This, above all else, makes me not like her as the “heir to the Jedi”. I thought it was a real problem, and makes her ultimate evolution at the finale less convincing.

Rey Skywalker: I get why they did it, but I stand by my earlier thoughts regarding taking the Solo or Organa name. I have nothing against adopted families. And I found it SLIGHTLY more palpable because since the Emperor refers to Ben as “the last Skywalker” and then since he transfers his entire life force into her, you can argue that she has “Skywalker” literally in her spirit now. OK fine. But I still don’t really think she earned it. She came CLOSER than I thought she would and I didn’t ultimately want to burn down the cinema as I expected I would want to.

Force Resurrection: No. Just no. This changes so much and makes so much of the earlier films moot. Why wouldn’t Anakin just resurrect Padme? Don’t get me started.

Other random new Force things: Like Force Ghosts touching shit. Yeah I know Obi Wan sat on the tree in Dagobah, I know, but we keep learning new and more powerful Force shit each film. Teleportation of objects (that lightsaber?!), astral projection, rapid healing, and now playing catch with your ghost friends. I get they are important to the story but it feels lazy. But my exception here was Luke catching the saber because FUCK YOU RJ. 😊

Redemption=Death: I wanted Kylo Ren to die for his sins too, but I recognize this strange thing we have going on in the GFFA that if a baddie goes good they die. It’s the equivalent of the horror movie “fuck and the killer gets you” trope. I didn’t necessarily mind Ben dying, but it seemed … lazy.

The final shot: It was a mistake to even touch this iconic moment. It wasn’t earned. Make your own legend/iconic moment and leave my farmboy his.

Something no one can fix: The sucky destinies of Luke Jake, Han, and Leia. They didn’t live happy lives, they didn’t see the end of tyranny, they all died with only the hope of success. I will never forgive the attempted destruction of the legacy of the OT (attempted cause it’s still how it all ends in my world), this disregard of the triumph of the Rebellion over the Empire, and I will never believe that the New Republic failed so completely and miserably. Bring on the EU/Legends and forget this shit.

Final thought: I went to this expecting the cinematic equivalent of a back alley abortion and instead I got what felt like an apology. An entertaining and polished and sincere apology. We deserved better, and I think the people who made this film realized that and did their best. TROS had to wrap up something that was divisive and imperfect and misguided, and tried as hard as it could, in my opinion, given what they were working with.

It was a good movie. Ambitious, with flaws, but I am glad I saw it, and I hope you will be too. <3 May the Force be with you.

#tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #ix spoilers #my thoughts

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goldendown · 4 years

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Scrap Mechanic full version

Dal momento che il titolo è stato consegnato ai componenti free-to-play, tutti gli utenti con un account Steam possono giocarci senza spendere un centesimo senza limitazioni, avendo accesso a tutti i contenuti gratuitamente, incluso il coo Mann vs Machine modalità -op in cui devi affrontare una catena di robot in ondate. Il tutto senza dimenticare che Valve continua ad aiutare lo sport con nuovi aggiornamenti e attività costituite da Jungle Inferno.

Dopo un inizio esteso e graduale, Star Wars: The Old Republic si è regolarmente trasformato in un MMORPG stellare, normalmente fino all'ampliamento di Knights of the Fallen Empire. Il gioco viene fornito come un gioco di ruolo d'azione con spade laser, combattimenti ad area, cavalieri Jedi e cacciatori di taglie.

Se sei tra quegli amanti della saga che non vedono l'ora che arrivi Kotor 3, oggi Star Wars: The Old Republic rimane il fattore più vicino ad esso. Considerando che il prezzo del biglietto è slacciato, i fanatici della collezione creata utilizzando George Lucas non devono ignorare la possibilità di tentare il gioco.

Lanciato durante l'estate come un divertimento autonomo ambientato nel mondo di Life is Strange, Le fantastiche avventure di Captain Spirit è un episodio autonomo che segue i meccanismi di LIS e LIS 2, fornendo la storia del giovane Chris e del suo adattamento ego, l'avventuroso Captain Spirit.

Sebbene con una durata principalmente ridotta (lo sport può essere completato in sole più di tre ore) The Fantastic Adventures of Captain Spirit è senza dubbio un titolo emozionante, inoltre alcuni passaggi sono attentamente correlati a Life is Strange 2 ...

Se stai cercando un GDR d'azione ispirato a Diablo, Path of Exile è sicuramente l'opzione che fa per te. L'identità di Grinding Gear Games si presenta come uno dei giochi loose-to-play più raffinati ed equilibrati, con un bel gameplay e un sistema di microtransazione molto discreto e minimamente invasivo.

In regalo è anche la modalità cooperativa per la missione nel datore di lavoro di uno o amici attraverso una vasta selezione di situazioni deliranti, in cui potrebbero esserci numerose orde di mostri da eliminare per anticiparti. Path of Exile è attualmente disponibile come download non risolto per tutti i clienti di PC.

PES 2019 Lite

Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 Lite, l'edizione loose-to-play della nuova identità calcistica di Konami, consente a tutti gli utenti di PC di giocare gratuitamente in modalità offline (Esibizione e Allenamento) e due modalità online (myClub e PES League). In myClub, sicuramente il più interessante dei 4, possiamo essere in grado di creare il gruppo dei nostri desideri assumendo le piacevoli star del presente e non solo.

Se sei dell'umore giusto per il calcio virtuale, o semplicemente se sei curioso di provare molto bene la nuovissima generazione dello sportivo Konami, Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 Lite rimane un nome allentato che vale la pena scaricare.

Battaglia reale di Fortnite

La modalità Battle Royale di Fortnite, disponibile anche gratuitamente su PC, onestamente non ha bisogno di essere creata. Parliamo del fenomeno multiplayer più fresco del momento, con una base di fan in crescita e l'assistenza costante assicurata da Epic Games con l'aggiunta di contenuti recenti, pistole, aggiornamenti, auto e gadget da applicare sul campo di battaglia.

La stagione 7 di Fortnite è iniziata lo scorso dicembre, una nuova stagione di gelo e neve che ha introdotto numerose nuove funzionalità all'interno della mappa sportiva.

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him-e · 4 years

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Have you begun to feel better or rekindled some of your old love for SW since December? TROS is just one movie so I’m torn between thinking it shouldn’t affect my love of SW as much as it has and not wanting anything to do with SW ever again

You know I’m always pro cherrypicking and compartmentalizing canon to keep part of your love for it alive rather than throwing it all in the garbage. My love for the OT is still strong, because when I think about it I see a story that has nothing to do with the sequel trilogy, and was actually never meant to have a sequel (at least in the form it was released; I know Lucas had ideas for episode VII and beyond, but the way ROTJ ends is absolutely final). I have no problem going back to the way I felt for SW before I even knew the sequel trilogy was going to be a thing. All I have to do is compartmentalize the new canon out and go back to the me who was just ~fond~ of SW—who didn’t feel the need to engage in meta, spec and long heated debates, in short, who just loved SW without necessarily being an active fan.

But that’s the point. In order to keep my “old” love for SW alive, I need to consider it a dead franchise, like I used to do pre-2015. JJerrio didn’t ruin my childhood, they *just* ruined present day SW for adult me. They killed my ability to care for SW as an ongoing franchise, with an expanding worldbuilding and new themes and new horizons to touch, that could add value to the original material, make it more interesting and complex and compelling, rather than undermining it. Why should I watch new SW contents knowing they did THIS to the main saga? I can’t trust them. And if I can’t trust them, there’s no point in being actively interested in SW as a still-expanding ‘verse.

Right now, Reylo and (maybe) Luke’s arc up until TLJ are the only valuable parts I want to salvage from this mess, and I really want to find them a place in Lucas’ canon without having to acknowledge the rest, but they don’t exist in a void. They exist in the context of a trilogy that was done with no clear concept or backbone or unifying theme in mind, and even worse, with no heart. The only way to integrate them in the SW canon I still love is to reimagine the structure of the ST completely. In doing this, in theory, TFA and TLJ *can* remain pretty much the same—TROS has to change, of course. But TROS isn’t just an individually bad movie; as I said, it’s the ultimate proof that whatever intent/message/theme we thought was underlying TFA/TLJ just never existed in the first place, which makes even the good stuff ring hollow in hindsight. To make it work, you have to rethink the whole thing from the get go—you need to put a heart where there was never one. I’m just not sure it’s worth the effort.

#anon #asks #sw asks #sw for ts #sw negativity #sw criticism

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son-of-alderaan · 5 years

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There’s a desert valley in southern Jordan called Wadi Rum, or sometimes “the Valley of the Moon.” There are stone inscriptions in Wadi Rum that are more than 2,000 years old. Lawrence of Arabia passed through there during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. More recently, J. J. Abrams went there to film parts of the latest Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, because it’s largely uninhabited and starkly beautiful and looks plausibly alien, and one of the things that has always made the Star Wars movies feel so real—as if they had a real life of their own that continues on out beyond the edges of the screen—is the way they’re shot on location, with as few digital effects as possible. George Lucas shot the Tatooine scenes from A New Hope in southern Tunisia. For Skywalker, it’s Wadi Rum.

They don’t do it that way because it’s easy. Abrams and his crew had to build miles of road into the desert. They basically had to set up a small town out there, populated by the cast and extras and crew—the creature-effects department alone had 70 people. The Jordanian military got involved. The Jordanian royal family got involved. There was sand. There were sandstorms, when all you could do was take cover and huddle in your tent and—if you’re John Boyega, who plays the ex-Stormtrooper Finn—listen to reggae.

But in a way that’s the whole point: you’re out there so the world can get up in your grill and make its presence felt on film. “It’s the things that you can’t anticipate—the imperfections,” says Oscar Isaac, who plays the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. “It’s very difficult to design imperfection, and the imperfections that you have in these environments immediately create a sense of authenticity. You just believe it more.” When Isaac arrived in Wadi Rum for his first week of shooting, Abrams had set up a massive greenscreen in the middle of the desert. “And I was like, ‘J. J., can I ask you a question? I notice we’re shooting on greenscreen.’ And he’s like, ‘So why the hell are we in the desert?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘Well, because look: the way that the sand interacts with the light, and the type of shots you would set up—if you were designing the shot on a computer you would never even think to do that.’ There’s something about the way that the light and the environment and everything plays together.” It’s that something, the presence and the details and the analog imperfections of a real nondigital place, that makes Star Wars so powerful.

It was powerful enough to bring 65,000 people to Chicago in April for Star Wars Celebration, a fan convention where you could see a giant Stormtrooper head made out of 36,440 tiny Lego Stormtrooper mini-figures, which is a world record of some kind, though I’m not sure exactly what, and where people were dressed up as Muppets who were themselves dressed up as Star Wars characters. But the main event was the launch of the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, which was held in a 10,000-seat arena and was such a big deal that even though the trailer was going to be released on the Internet literally seconds after it was over, I—an at least theoretically respectable member of the media—was not only tagged, wristbanded, escorted, and metal-detected, but sniffed by a K-9 unit before I could go in.

J.J. Abrams, alongside Stunt Coordinator Eunice Huthart, directs the Knights of Ren; elite fearsome enforcers of Kylo Ren’s dark will.

I sat down with Abrams a couple of hours later. For the occasion, he was wearing a suit so black and sharp, he could have been doing Men in Black cosplay, but his most distinctive feature is his dark curly hair, which is upswept in a way that is only slightly suggestive of devil horns. Abrams talks rapidly, as if he can barely keep up with the things his racing brain is telling him to say. When I told him that not only was Star Wars the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter, but that all 10 of the Top 10 trending topics were Star Wars–related, and that he personally was No. 5, he was visibly stunned.

Then he recovered enough to say: “Well, I aspire to No. 4.” (For the record, No. 4 was the late Supreme Leader Snoke, who frankly did seem beatable. If you’re curious, No. 11 was pro golfer Zach Johnson, who had just accidentally hit his ball with a practice swing at the Masters. Life goes on.)

Disney executives talk about how important it is to “event-ize” Star Wars movies; i.e., to make them feel not just like movies but like seriously momentous occasions. They won’t have much trouble with this one: The Rise of Skywalker isn’t just the last movie in the Star Wars trilogy that began in 2015 with The Force Awakens; it’s the last movie in a literal, actual trilogy of trilogies that started with the very first Star Wars movie back in 1977, which began the saga of the Skywalker family. The Rise of Skywalker will finally, after 42 years, bring that saga to an end.

FIRST LOOK Vanity Fair reveals Keri Russell as the masked scoundrel Zorri Bliss, seen in the Thieves’ Quarter of the snow-dusted world Kijimi.

We all thought the story was over in 1983 with Return of the Jedi, and then we really thought it was over in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. But Star Wars has always been an unruly beast, too big and powerful (and profitable) to be contained in one movie, or even in a trilogy, or even in two trilogies, let alone numberless novels, TV shows, comics, video games, Happy Meals, and so on. Now Abrams has to gather all those threads and bring closure to a story that was started by somebody else, in an America that feels a very long time ago indeed. “That’s the challenge of this movie,” Abrams says. “It wasn’t just to make one film that as a stand-alone experience would be thrilling, and scary, and emotional, and funny, but one that if you were to watch all nine of the films, you’d feel like, Well, of course—that!”

Like a lot of things that we now can’t imagine life without, Star Wars came really close to never happening in the first place. In 1971, Lucas was a serious young auteur just five years out of film school at U.S.C. He had only one full-length movie on his résumé, and that was THX 1138, which is the kind of visionary but grindingly earnest science-fiction epic that only the French could love. (They were pretty much the only ones who did.) Everybody expected Lucas to go on and make serious, gritty 1970s cinema like his peers, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola. At the time Lucas and Coppola were actively planning a radical epic set in Vietnam with the provocative title Apocalypse Now.

FORCE MAJEURE First Order leaders General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Allegiant General Pryde (Richard E. Grant) on the bridge of Kylo Ren’s destroyer.

But Coppola would have to finish that one on his own, because Lucas went a different way. “I had decided there was no modern mythology,” he said in 1997. “I wanted to take old myths and put them into a new format that young people could relate to. Mythology always existed in unusual, unknown environments, so I chose space.” Lucas tried to acquire the rights to Flash Gordon (that would’ve been a dark timeline indeed), but when he couldn’t, he came up with his own original science-fictional epic instead. He called it The Star Wars. Like The Facebook, it would have to shed a direct article on its way to glory.

Even though American Graffiti had made Lucas a bankable director, Star Wars still came together slowly. In the first draft, Luke was an old man, Leia was 14, and Han Solo was “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills.” Fox executives were baffled by Star Wars, and they squeezed Lucas relentlessly for time and money. We forget now how jerry-rigged the first movie was: the cantina aliens weren’t finished, and the monumental Star Destroyer that dominates the opening shot is, in reality, about three feet long. The Death Star interior is basically one set re-arranged several different ways. To make Greedo’s mouth move, the woman in the Greedo suit had to hold a clothespin in her mouth. “What I remember about working on the first film,” says John Williams, the legendary soundtrack composer, “is the fact that I didn’t ever think there would be a second film.” (He also, like everybody else, thought Luke and Leia were going to get together, so he wrote them a love theme.)

But wherever real mythology comes from, Lucas had gone there and brought something back alive. People wanted movies that gave them something to believe in instead of relentlessly autopsying the beliefs that had failed them. We’d had enough of antiheroes. We needed some anti-antiheroes. “I realized after THX that people don’t care about how the country’s being ruined,” Lucas said. “We’ve got to regenerate optimism.” Like American Graffiti, Star Wars is a work of profound nostalgia, a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate anthem of longing for the restoration of a true and just power in the universe—the return of the king. And at the same time it’s a very personal hero’s journey, about a boy who must put right the sins of his father and master the strange power he finds within himself, and in doing so become a man.

Star Wars is also an incredibly enduring vision of what it’s like to live in a world of super-advanced technology. Science fiction often ages badly, turning into kitsch or camp—just look at Flash Gordon—but Star Wars hasn’t. More than any filmmaker before him, Lucas successfully imagined what a science-fictional world would feel like to somebody who was actually inside it—which is to say, it would look as ordinary and workaday as the present. He even shot it like it was real, working close-in and mostly eschewing wide establishing shots, more like a documentary or a newsreel than a space opera. “It feels very grounded,” says Naomi Ackie, who’s making her Star Wars debut in Skywalker playing a character named Jannah, about whom she is allowed to say literally nothing. “There’s the kind of spectacular-ness, and the supernatural move-things-with-your-mind magic stuff, but then there’s also this really grounded, rugged nature where everything is distressed and old and kind of worn out and lived-in. And I think playing with those two ideas means that you get this feeling that it could almost be real. Like, in a galaxy far away, it could almost be the case that you could have this.”

When Lucas made the first Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, he cheekily labeled it Episode V, then went back and re-labeled the first movie as Episode IV, as if the movies were an old-fashioned serial that the rest of us were all just tuning in to. Around that time, he also started talking about Star Wars as a nine-part epic—so in 2012, when Lucas retired and sold Lucasfilm to Disney, it wasn’t exactly heresy that Disney announced more movies. At the time, Kathleen Kennedy had just been named co-chairperson of Lucasfilm, and she tapped Abrams to direct the first Disney-owned post-Lucas Star Wars movie. It was a bit like saying, Make the lightning strike again, please. Exactly here, if you could. Oh, and could you also earn back that $4 billion we just spent to buy Lucasfilm? (Narrator voice: He could.)

At first blush, Abrams’s debut Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, looked like an elaborate homage to the original. Just like in A New Hope, there’s a young Force-sensitive person on a poor desert planet—that’s Rey, played by Daisy Ridley—who finds a droid with a secret message that’s vital to the Rebellion (or wait, sorry, it’s the Resistance now). There’s a villain in a black mask, just like Darth Vader, except that it’s his grandson Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), né Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia. Kylo has a planet-killing weapon, much like the Death Star but way bigger, which becomes the target of a desperate attack by Resistance X-wings. There’s even a bar full of aliens.

Abrams also insisted on keeping to the analog aesthetic of the original trilogy: those aliens had to be latex and yak hair, not bits and bytes, and everything possible was shot on location using film cameras, not digital ones. Even Lucas had abandoned that approach by the time he made the second Star Wars trilogy, but many fans consider those movies to be a cautionary tale. “Famously, the prequels were mostly greenscreen environments,” Abrams says. “And that was George himself doing that, and it ended up looking exactly how he wanted it to look—and I always preferred the look of the original movies, because I just remember when you’re in the snow on Hoth, when you’re in the desert on Tatooine, and when you’re in the forests of Endor—it’s amazing. If you put a vaporator here, there, all of a sudden almost any natural location suddenly becomes a Star Wars location.”

But the more interesting thing about The Force Awakens and its successor, The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, was how they subtly complicated Lucas’s vision. Thirty years have gone by since the ending of Return of the Jedi, during which time the newly reborn Republic became complacent and politically stagnant, allowing the rise of the reactionary neo-imperial First Order, whose origins we will learn more about in Skywalker. “It was almost like if the Argentine Nazis had sort of got together and actually started to bring that back in some real form,” Abrams says. Just like that, the rules of the Star Wars universe changed. It wasn’t all over when the Ewoks sang. Obi-Wan Kenobi and all those Bothans had died in vain. Even Han and Leia split up. It’s all a little less of a fairy tale now.

The feather-haired godling Luke suffered the trauma of having a Padawan go bad on his watch. It’s an echo of what happened to his old mentor, Obi-Wan, with Anakin Skywalker, who became Darth Vader. But where Obi-Wan made peace with it, waiting serenely in the desert of Tatooine for the next Chosen One to arrive, Luke’s guilt curdled into shame. He hid himself away, so that his Chosen One, Rey, had to spend most of The Force Awakens searching for him, and then another whole movie convincing him with the help of Yoda’s Force ghost to keep the Jedi Order going at all. Star Wars arrived as an antidote to the disillusionment of the 1970s—but now, in its middle age, Star Wars is grappling with disillusionment of its own.

DESERT POWER Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Ridley, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and John Boyega (Finn) await the call to action for a chase scene.

By dint of advanced Sith interrogation techniques, I was able to obtain valuable advance information about The Rise of Skywalker. Here it is: common emblem.

Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3P0, is the only actor who has appeared in all nine movies of the Star Wars triple trilogy, so if anybody’s entitled to leak, it’s him. Daniels says he loved the script for The Rise of Skywalker, but he didn’t get it until the last minute, right before shooting started, and for some reason he just couldn’t memorize his part. “My first line would not go in my head!” he says. In person Daniels is like a C-3P0 whose preferences have been reset to charming and voluble. “The line that I couldn’t say was two words: ‘common emblem.’ Common emblem, common emblem—I would say them thousands of times. My wife would say it back. I just couldn’t say them!”

Fortunately C-3P0’s mouth doesn’t move, so he could add the line in postproduction. Anyway, there’s the big scoop: “common emblem.” I don’t know what it means either. (Also I 100 percent guarantee that they will change the line before the movie comes out so that this scoop will end up being fake news.) Daniels also told me that C-3P0 does something in this movie that surprises everybody—but he wouldn’t say what. “He keeps his clothes on. It’s not like he suddenly does this thing, but …”

The only other member of the old guard on the set this time was Billy Dee Williams, who plays the charismatic Lando Calrissian. At 82, Williams has lost none of his roguish charm, but now it comes wrapped in a kind of magisterial dignity. People tend to remember Lando for the deal he cut with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, rather than for his redemptive comeback in Return of the Jedi, and Williams appears to have spent the last 45 years defending him. “He’s a survivor. It’s expediency for him,” Williams says. “You know, he was thrown into a situation which he didn’t look for and he had to try to figure out how to deal with an entity which is more than just a human.” And, he adds, with the weary air of somebody who has spent way too much time justifying the behavior of a fictional character, “nobody died!”

HOT TAKE Members of the crew shade and shine Daniels, the only cast member to appear in all nine of the Skywalker films, while BB-8 looks on.

Chewbacca is still here, too, but it’s not the same man in the suit. The original actor was Peter Mayhew, a seven-foot-three-inch gentle giant who was working as a hospital orderly in London when Lucas cast him in the first movie. Mayhew retired after The Force Awakens, and he died on April 30 at 74. His replacement is Joonas Suotamo, a fresh-faced former professional basketball player from Finland who always wanted to be an actor but was hard to cast because he’s six feet 11 inches tall. “When I first met [Mayhew] he told me I was a wee bit too skinny,” Suotamo says. “But we also had a Wookiee boot camp, which lasted for a week. He told me all kinds of things about the moves that Chewbacca does, how they came to be and his reasoning behind them.” Suotamo has now played Chewbacca in four movies and enjoys it about as much as I’ve ever seen anybody enjoy anything. “It’s very much like silent-era film, with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin,” he says. “He’s a mime character and that’s what he does, and I guess in that minimalism comes the beauty of the character.”

Other things we know about Skywalker: We can safely assume that the Resistance and the First Order are headed toward a final smash, which will be a heavy lift for the good guys because, at the end of The Last Jedi, the Resistance was down, way down, to a double handful of survivors. They’ll face a First Order who suffered a stinging but largely symbolic loss at the Battle of Crait, and who, I feel confident, have learned something from the previous eight movies. The Empire built and lost two Death Stars. The First Order has already lost one super-weapon in The Force Awakens. Presumably it won’t make the same mistake twice, twice.

But the stakes go even higher than that, cosmically high. Sources close to the movie say that Skywalker will at long last bring to a climax the millennia-long conflict between the Jedi Order and its dark shadow, the Sith.

HORSING AROUND Finn and new ally Jannah (Naomi Ackie), atop hardy orbaks, lead the charge against the mechanized forces of the First Order. “It’s extremely surreal to be in it,” says Ackie, “and see how it works from the inside.”

STAR CROSSED Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey battle it out with lightsabers in a stormy confrontation. Their Force-connection—what Driver calls their “maybe-bond”—will turn out to run even deeper than previously revealed.

The hottest area for speculation, however, is the identity of the titular Skywalker, because at this point there aren’t many Skywalkers left to rise. One is General Organa, the former Princess Leia, Luke’s sister—but Carrie Fisher, who plays her, passed away in 2016. That was a deeply painful loss for Abrams personally, but it also presented him with an impossible choice as a filmmaker. He needed Leia to tell the story, but Abrams didn’t feel like a digital Carrie Fisher could do the job, and there was no way Lucasfilm was going to re-cast the role.

But then a strange thing happened. Abrams remembered that there was some footage of Fisher left over from The Force Awakens, scenes that had been changed or cut entirely, and he dug them up. “It’s hard to even talk about it without sounding like I’m being some kind of cosmic spiritual goofball,” Abrams says, “but it felt like we suddenly had found the impossible answer to the impossible question.” He started to write scenes around the old footage, fitting Leia’s dialogue into new contexts. He re-created the lighting to match the way Fisher had been lit. Bit by bit, she found her place in the new movie. “It was a bizarre kind of left side/right side of the brain sort of Venn diagram thing, of figuring out how to create the puzzle based on the pieces we had.” Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, appears in the movies as a Resistance officer named Lieutenant Connix, and at first Abrams deliberately wrote her out of the scenes in case it was too painful—but Lourd said no, she wanted to be in them. “And so, there are moments where they’re talking; there are moments where they’re touching,” Abrams says. “There are moments in this movie where Carrie is there, and I really do feel there is an element of the uncanny, spiritual, you know, classic Carrie, that it would have happened this way, because somehow it worked. And I never thought it would.”

The only other member of the surviving Skywalker bloodline—that we know of!—is Leia’s son and Luke’s former Padawan, the fallen Jedi Kylo Ren. Kylo probably isn’t capable of actual happiness, but things are definitely looking up for him: by the end of The Last Jedi he has taken control of the First Order and killed or at least outlived his actual father and both of his symbolic fathers-in-art, Luke and Supreme Leader Snoke. Sources at Disney also confirm that his long-rumored Knights of Ren will finally arrive in Skywalker. “And then he had been forging this maybe-bond with Rey,” Driver says, “and it kind of ends with the question in the air: is he going to pursue that relationship, or when the door of her ship goes up, does that also close that camaraderie that they were maybe forming?”

SANDBLAST Camera operator Colin Anderson readies a take for a chase sequence spotlighting the heroics of Chewbacca, BB-8, and Rey.

Darkness in the Star Wars movies tends to come from fear: for Anakin Skywalker, Kylo’s grandfather, it was his fear of losing his mother and his wife. After two movies it’s still not so easy to say exactly what Kylo Ren himself fears, even though he’s as operatically emo as Vader was stoic. He’s fixated on the past—he made a shrine to his own grandfather—but at the same time the past torments him. “Let the past die,” he tells Rey in The Last Jedi. “Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.”

Presumably whatever’s eating at Kylo started in his childhood: maybe being the kid of literally the two coolest people in the galaxy isn’t as fun as it sounds. Driver—who has obviously thought this through with a lot of rigor—points out that, as cool as they are, Han and Leia are both obsessively committed to lifestyles (smuggling, rebelling) that don’t leave much room for kids. He also points out that, unlike Luke and Rey, Kylo never got to go on a nifty voyage of self-discovery. Instead he grew up under the crushing pressure of massive expectations. “How do you form friendships out of that?” Driver says. “How do you understand the weight of that? And if there’s no one around you guiding you, or articulating things the right way … it can easily go awry.” By the emotional logic that governs the Star Wars universe—and also our own—Kylo Ren is going to have to confront the past, and his fears, whatever they are, or be destroyed by them.

Where Lucas’s trilogies tended to follow the roots and branches of the Skywalker family tree—their personal saga was the saga of the galaxy writ small—the new movies have a slightly wider aperture and take in a new generation of heroes. There’s Rey, of course, who sources say will have progressed in her training since the end of The Last Jedi to the point where it’s almost complete. With that taken care of, all she has to do is reconstitute the entire Jedi Order from scratch, because as far as we know she’s the Last One.

If Kylo Ren can’t be redeemed it will almost certainly fall to Rey to put him down, in spite of their maybe-bond. Their relationship is the closest thing the new trilogy has to a star-crossed love story on the order of Han and Leia: a source close to the movie says that their Force-connection will turn out to run even deeper than we thought. They’re uniquely suited to understand each other, but at the same time they are in every way each other’s inverse, down to Kylo’s perverse rejection of his family, which is the one thing Rey craves most. “I think there’s a part of Rey that’s like, dude, you fucking had it all, you had it all,” Ridley says. “That was always a big question during filming: you had it all and you let it go.”

PUNCH IT! In a historic reunion, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) retakes the helm of the Millennium Falcon, joined by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Chewbacca, D-O, and BB-8. “He’s a survivor,” Williams says of Lando.

Rey is also, according to totally unsubstantiated Internet theories, a leading candidate to be the Skywalker of the title, pending some kind of head-snapping reveal about her ancestry. (For the record, the other leading unsubstantiated Internet theory has the “Skywalker” of the title referring to an entirely new order of Force users who will rise up and replace the Jedi.)

Rey seems ready for it all, or as ready as anybody could be. “It’s nice having that shot at the beginning of the teaser,” Ridley says, over avocado toast at a fancy Chicago hotel, “because I think it’s quite a good visual representation of where she is now: confident, calm, less fearful.… It’s still sort of overwhelming, but in a different way. It feels more right—less like inevitable and more like there’s a focus to the journey.” Focus is a good word for Rey: on-screen Ridley’s dramatic eyebrows form a wickedly sharp arrow of concentration. I asked Ridley what she’s thinking about when Rey is using her Force powers, and it turns out Rey seems focused because Ridley is actually seriously focused. “I literally visualize it. When I was lifting rocks I was visualizing the rocks moving. And then I was like, Oh, my God, I made it happen! And obviously there’s loads of rocks on strings, so, no, I didn’t. But I visualize that it’s really going on.” (That scene, which comes at the end of The Last Jedi, is another example of classic nondigital Star Wars effects: those were real rocks. “It was actually really amazing,” Ridley says. “It was sort of like a baby mobile.”)

There’s also Finn, the apostate Stormtrooper, played by the irrepressible Boyega, who in person practically vibrates with energy and speaks with a South London accent very different from Finn’s American one. In some ways Finn has gone through a complete character arc already: he confronted his past—by beating down his old boss, Captain Phasma—and found his courage and his moral center. He has had a tendency to panic, if not actively desert, in clutch situations, but at the Battle of Crait he proved that he was past that. “I think he’s just an active member of the Resistance now,” Boyega says. “Episode Eight, he couldn’t decide what team he was fighting for. But since then he’s made a clear decision.” (Cast members tend to refer to the Star Wars movies by their episode numbers: four is the original movie, seven is The Force Awakens, and so on.)

Finn still has to make a clear decision about his romantic situation, though. As Boyega put it at Star Wars Celebration: “Finn is single and willing to mingle!” The movies have been teasing his emotional connections with both Rey and the Resistance mechanic Rose Tico, played by Kelly Marie Tran, with whom he shared a fleeting battlefield kiss in The Last Jedi. Rose seems like the more positive choice, given that she stops Finn from deserting early in the movie and saves his life at the Battle of Crait, and that the precedents for romantic involvements with Jedi are extremely bad. Tran is the first Asian-American woman to play a major role in a Star Wars movie, and she has been the target of both racist and sexist attacks online. But she has come through them as a fan favorite: when she appeared onstage in Chicago, she got a standing ovation.

Finally there’s Poe, who has mostly struggled with his own cocky impulsiveness, because he’s a loose-cannon-who-just-can’t-play-by-the-rules. Poe will have to step up and become a leader, because the Resistance is seriously short on officer material. In fact, some of that transformation will already have happened where The Rise of Skywalker picks up, which is about a year after the end of The Last Jedi. “There has been a bit of shared history that you haven’t seen,” Isaac says. “Whereas in the other films, Poe is this kind of lone wolf, now he’s really part of a group. They’re going out and going on missions and have a much more familiar dynamic now.” Star Wars has always been about friendship as much as it is about romance, and as of the end of The Last Jedi, Rey, Finn, and Poe are all finally in the same place for the first time since The Force Awakens.

The Rise of Skywalker introduces some new players, too. There’s a tiny one-wheeled droid called D-O and a large banana-slug alien named Klaud. Oh, and Naomi Ackie, Keri Russell, and Richard E. Grant have all joined the cast, though, again, we know practically nothing about who they’re playing. Going from being outside the Star Wars leviathan to being right in its belly can be a dizzying experience for a first-timer. “I actually tried to do this thing while we were filming,” Ackie says, “where I’d go one day, walking through London without seeing a Star Wars reference somewhere. And you can’t do it. You really can’t. So it’s extremely surreal to be in it and see how it works from the inside.

WELL MET Jordanian locals play the Aki-Aki, natives of the planet Pasaana.

If anything, Star Wars is only getting more omnipresent. The franchise under Lucas was a colossus, but he still ran it essentially as a private concern. He could make movies or not, as his muse dictated—he was beholden to no shareholders. But Star Wars under Disney makes the old Star Wars look positively quaint. Between 1977 and 2005, Lucasfilm released six Star Wars movies; when Skywalker premieres in December, Disney will have released five Star Wars movies in five years. “I think there is a larger expectation that Disney has,” Kennedy says. “On the other hand, though, I think that Disney is very respectful of what this is, and right from the beginning we talked about the fragility of this form of storytelling. Because it’s something that means so much to fans that you can’t turn this into some kind of factory approach. You can’t even do what Marvel does, necessarily, where you pick characters and build new franchises around those characters. This needs to evolve differently.”

A useful example of that fragility might be the relatively modest performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. Solo was a perfectly good Star Wars movie that has made almost $400 million worldwide—but it’s also, according to industry estimates, the first one to actually lose money. In response Disney has gently but firmly pumped the brakes: the first movie in the next Star Wars trilogy, which will be helmed by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the duo behind Game of Thrones, won’t arrive till Christmas of 2022, with further installments every other year after that. There’s no official word as to what stories they’ll tell, or when a second trilogy being developed by Rian Johnson will appear.

But even as the movies pause, Star Wars continues to colonize any and all other media. In addition to video games, comics, novels, cartoons, container-loads of merch, etc., there are not one but two live-action TV series in the pipeline for Disney+, Disney’s new streaming service: The Mandalorian, created by Jon Favreau, and an as-yet-untitled show about Cassian Andor from Rogue One. I have personally tried a virtual-reality experience called Vader Immortal,written and produced by Dark Knight screenwriter David Goyer. At the end of May, Disneyland will open Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, a massive, 14-acre, $1 billion attraction where you can fly the Millennium Falcon, be captured by the First Order, and drink a blue milk cocktail (it’s actually nondairy) and Coca-Cola products out of exclusive BB-8-shaped bottles at the cantina. It’s the largest single-theme expansion in the park’s history: Take that, Toy Story Land. The Disney World version will open in August.

You realize now that, under Lucas, Star Wars always slightly had the brakes on—we were always kept a little starved for product. With Disney driving, we’ll really find out how big Star Wars can get.

ENCORE Composer John Williams conducting the Star Wars score, drawing on themes and motifs he has woven across four decades. “I didn’t think there would ever be a second film,” he says.

When people talk about the new Star Wars movies, they tend to talk about how faithful they are to the originals. What’s harder to say is how exactly the new films are different—how movies like Skywalker keep their connection to the past while at the same time finding a way to belong to the world of 2019. Because regardless of whether or not Star Wars has changed since 1977, the world around it has, profoundly. “There’s a loss of innocence, a sense of innocence that existed in the 70s that I don’t think to any extent exists today,” Kennedy says. “I think that has to permeate the storytelling and the reaction to the stories and how they’re set up. It has to feel differently because we’re different.”

We know things, as a people and as an audience, that we didn’t know back then. For example: back then it felt sort of O.K. to like Darth Vader, because even though he was evil he was also incredibly cool, and the kind of fascism he represented felt like a bogeyman from the distant past. But now fascism is rising again, which makes the whole First Order subplot look super-prescient, but it also reminds us that fascism is not even slightly cool in real life. “Evil needs to feel and look very real,” Kennedy says, “and what that means today may not be as black-and-white as it might have been in 1977, coming off a kind of World War II sensibility.” In the Star Wars–verse, Dark and Light are supposed to balance each other, but in the real world they just mix together into a hopelessly foggy, morally ambiguous gray.

But the changes are liberating too. Star Wars doesn’t have to stay frozen in time; if anything it’s the opposite, if it doesn’t change it’ll die. It will turn into Flash Gordon. For Abrams, that means he can’t go through this process so haunted by the ghost of George Lucas (who is of course still alive, but you get what I’m saying) that he winds up doing a cinematic Lucas impression. At some point Abrams has to let Abrams be Abrams.

The Rise of Skywalker might be that point. “Working on nine, I found myself approaching it slightly differently,” he says. “Which is to say that, on seven, I felt beholden to Star Wars in a way that was interesting—I was doing what to the best of my ability I felt Star Wars should be.” But this time something changed. Abrams found himself making different choices—for the camera angles, the lighting, the story. “It felt slightly more renegade; it felt slightly more like, you know, Fuck it, I’m going to do the thing that feels right because it does, not because it adheres to something.”

There are a lot of small subtle ways that Abrams’s Star Wars is different from Lucas’s, but if there’s a standout, it’s the way that the new movies look at history. Lucas’s Star Wars movies are bathed in the deep golden-sunset glow of the idyllic Old Republic, that more civilized age—but the new movies aren’t like that. They’re not nostalgic. They don’t long for the past; they’re more about the promise of the future. “This trilogy is about this young generation, this new generation, having to deal with all the debt that has come before,” Abrams says. “And it’s the sins of the father, and it’s the wisdom and the accomplishments of those who did great things, but it’s also those who committed atrocities, and the idea that this group is up against this unspeakable evil and are they prepared? Are they ready? What have they learned from before? It’s less about grandeur. It’s less about restoring an old age. It’s more about preserving a sense of freedom and not being one of the oppressed.”

FROM THE ASHES Mark Hamill, as Luke, with R2-D2. Speculation is rampant about who will “rise” as the Skywalker of the movie’s title—and how that choice will reflect the way the world has changed since Star Wars debuted in 1977.

The new generation doesn’t have that same connection to the old days that Luke and Leia did. It’s not like their parents destroyed the Old Republic. We don’t even know who their parents were! They’re too young to remember the Empire. They’re just here to clean up the mess they got left with, the disastrous consequences of bad decisions made by earlier generations, and try to survive long enough to see the future. Is any of this resonating with 2019? Might there possibly be a generation around here somewhere that’s worried about the consequences of its own decisions for the future? Star Wars has never been and probably never should be a vehicle for political arguments, but to paraphrase Ursula Le Guin, great science fiction is never really about the future. It’s about the present.

You could even—if you’re into that kind of thing—imagine the story of the new Star Wars trilogy as a metaphor for the making of the new Star Wars trilogy. In fact, I was totally prepared—because I am into that kind of thing!—to try to push this overthought metafictional hot take onto Abrams … but I didn’t have to. Abrams got there ahead of me. “The idea of the movie is kind of how I felt going into the movie as a filmmaker,” he says, “which is to say that I’ve inherited all this stuff, great stuff, and good wisdom, and the good and the bad, and it’s all coming to this end, and the question is, do we have what it takes to succeed?”

Kylo Ren has it all wrong: you can’t bring back the past and become your own grandfather, and you can’t kill the past, either. All you can do is make your peace with it and learn from it and move on. Abrams is doing that with Star Wars—and meanwhile the Resistance is going to have to do that, too, if they really are going to bring this saga to an end. Because we’ve been here before, watching a band of scrappy rebels take down a technofascist empire, and it seemed to work fine at the time—but it didn’t last. The same goes for the Jedi and their struggle with the Sith. To end this story, really end it, they’re going to have to figure out the conditions of a more permanent victory over the forces of darkness. Their past was imperfect at best, and the present is a complete disaster—but the future is all before them. This time, finally, they’re going to get it right.

#star wars tros #the rise of skywalker #vanity fair #long post

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