#we don't got george lucas so no star wars

[gffa]

could you give your opinion, or examples from canon, about balance and the light and dark sides of the force? I keep running across fics where people argue that the Jedi are wrong and the dark side is just as necessary, and I feel like canon was clear that’s not what balance means in the Star Wars universe

Hi! First off, I'll say that I would recommend going around arguing with people's fic (not you're necessarily planning to do this! just that I think it's a good reminder), because those people must be allowed their space in fandom, just as we're allowed our space in fandom. I have found that I actually have a much better time in fandom when I'm just in my own space doing my own thing and ultimately this is just fandom, what other people do in their fic, so long as it's not hurting real people, is their choice and not mine, if I let that kind of thing go, it gives me more time to have fun with the things I do enjoy.

That said, sometimes we often get people coming into our spaces to argue and I do like to have my citations ready when it comes to that. Within canon, you're always going to be able to argue about unreliable narrators, even when you point out that all the Force-using dark siders are pretty much miserable villains, there's going to be people who argue.

And one thing that's tricky in my opinion is that the dark side is "necessary" in that it exists. It will always exist. It exists within the Jedi--but they have never denied that it exists or that it's part of life. It's just that they don't embrace it, they don't let it bite into their heart, because Yoda's speech in The Phantom Menace is 100% accurate. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

And if people want to argue about in-canon stuff like that, my response is usually just to go, "I tend to follow George Lucas' Star Wars." and leave room for others to enjoy Star Wars from other creators, if they wish. It's not a value judgement, if someone wants to enjoy something from the Legends continuity--that's what it's there for! And it's not my place to tell them that they're not allowed to enjoy it or follow that version instead. I hope they're having a blast! We'll just agree that we're working with incompatible views on authorial intentions priorities. People are not obligated to take Lucas' commentary with the same weight that I do, so I always advise that we learn to let go of things when someone doesn't hold the same views as we do on this kind of thing, because ultimately that is the message of Star Wars!

SO, THE DARK SIDE, here's what George Lucas directly has said about it:

“The core of the Force–I mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience. "Once you become afraid that somebody’s going to take it away from you or you’re gonna lose it, then you start to become angry, especially if you’re losing it, and that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person who’s selfish, because you spend all your time being afraid of losing everything you’ve got instead of actually living. "Where joy, by giving to other people you can’t think about yourself, and therefore there’s no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience, therefore you’re constantly trying to replenish it, but of course the more you replenish it, the harder it is to, so you have to keep upping the ante. You’re actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy. "So that is ultimately the core of the whole dark side/light side of the Force. And everything flows from that. Obviously the Sith are always unhappy because they never get enough of anything they want. Mostly, their selfishness centers around power and control. And the struggle is always to be able to let go of all that stuff. "And of course that’s the problem with Anakin ultimately. You’re allowed to love people, but you’re not allowed to possess them. And what he did is he fell in love and married her and then became jealous. Then he saw in his visions that she was going to die, and he couldn’t stand losing her. So in order to not lose her, he made a pact with the devil to be able to become all-powerful. When he did that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, so he lost her. "Once you are powerful, being able to bring her back from the dead, if I can do that, I can become emperor of the universe. I can get rid of the Emperor. I can make everything the way I want it. Once you do that, you’ll never be satiated. You’re always going to be consumed by this driving desire to have more stuff and be afraid that others are going to take it away from you. And they are. Every time you get two Sith together, you have the master, the apprentice, and the apprentice is always trying to recruit another apprentice to join with him to kill the master. The master knows that basically everybody below him wants his job.     “Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.”  –George Lucas, Clone Wars Writers’ Meeting

“Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. It can be either one, you add them up and it can be the uber category of happiness. “Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it. “On the other hand is joy and joy is the thing that doesn’t go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction. But it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can’t.  So the secret is that, even though it’s not as intense as pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer. “People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out.  You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work. “If you’re trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you’re doomed. It’s a very American idea, but it just can’t happen. You just let it go. Peak.  Break. Pleasure is fun it’s great, but you can’t keep it going forever. “Just accept the fact that it’s here and it’s gone, and maybe again it’ll come back and you’ll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure, it’s about you. It’s a selfish self-centered emotion, that’s created by self-centered motive of greed. “Joy is compassion, joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else. And it’s the kind of thing that is in it’s subtlty and lowness more powerful than pleasure.  If you get hung up on pleasure you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.” --George Lucas, Academy of Achievement Speech, 2013

"Knowing that the film was made for a young audience, I was trying to say, in a simple way, that there is a God and that there is both a good side and a bad side. You have a choice between them, but the world works better if you're on the good side." --George Lucas Interviews

     ”[The Jedi] trained more than anything else to understand the transitional nature of life, that things are constantly changing and you can’t hold on to anything. You can love things but you can’t be attached to them, You must be willing to let the flow of life and the flow of the Force move through your life, move through you. So that you can be compassionate and loving and caring, but not be possessive and grabbing and holding on to things and trying to keep things the way they are. Letting go is the central theme of the film.“ –George Lucas, Star Wars Archives 1999-2005

BILL MOYERS: “Do you know yet what, in a future episode, is going to transform Anakin Skywalker to the dark side?”      GEORGE LUCAS: “Yes, I know what that is. The groundwork has been laid in this episode. The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion–of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides–the good force and the bad force. They’re the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction.” --George Lucas and Bill Moyers 1999, Time Magazine

     “The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness - the inability to let go. Not only to hold on to material things, which is greed, but to hold on to life, to the people you love - to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go. Everything changes. Anakin becomes emotionally attached to things, his mother, his wife. That’s why he falls - because he does not have the ability to let go.      “No human can let go. It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die, and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, [The scene in which Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel] You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more. The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth, they’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So, what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.” --George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith, 2005

     “The thing about Anakin is, Anakin started out as a nice kid. He was kind, and sweet, and lovely, and he was then trained as a Jedi. But the Jedi can’t be selfish. They can love but they can’t love people to the point of possession. You can’t really possess somebody, because people are free. It’s possession that causes a lot of trouble, and that causes people to kill people, and causes people to be bad. Ultimately it has to do with being unwilling to give things up.      “The whole basis here is if you’re selfish, if you’re a Sith Lord, you’re greedy. You’re constantly trying to get something. And you’re constantly in fear of not getting it, or, when you get it, you’re in constant fear of losing it. And it’s that fear that takes you to the dark side. It’s that fear of losing what you have or want.

     “Sometimes it’s ambition, but sometimes, like in the case of Anakin, it was fear of losing his wife. He knew she was going to die. He didn’t quite know how, so he was able to make a pact with a devil that if he could learn how to keep people from dying, he would help the Emperor. And he became a Sith Lord. Once he started saying, “Well, we could take over the galaxy, I could take over from the Emperor, I could have ultimate power,” Padmé saw right through him immediately. She said, “You’re not the person I married. You’re a greedy person.” So that’s ultimately how he fell and he went to the dark side.      “And then Luke had the chance to do the same thing. He didn’t do it.” --George Lucas, The Phantom Menace, An Oral History, 2019

 “The secret ultimately like in Star Wars is that you have to not be afraid. Fear is the enemy; fear is the Dark Side. If you afraid, you are going to the Dark Side. The Light Side is compassion. As long as you love other people and treat them kindly, you won’t be afraid. So, the secret is to just love everybody - I know that sounds very 60s but that’s what I grew up in - but it its fear that cause the problem. So you have to stop being afraid and be kind to everybody.      “The main theme of Star Wars is that compassion is the good side, fear is the bad side.” --George Lucas, Mellody Hobson George Lucas - Virtual Speaker Interview, 2021

     “The thing with Anakin is that he started out a great kid he was very compassionate, so the issue was how did he turn bad. How did he go to the Dark Side? He went to the Dark Side, Jedi aren’t supposed to have attachments. They can love people, they can do that, but they can’t attach, that’s the problem in the world of fear. Once you are attached to something then you become afraid of losing it. And when you become afraid of losing it, than you turn to the Dark Side, and you want to hold onto it, and that was Anakin’s issue ultimately, that he wanted to hold onto his wife who he knew, he had a premonition that she was going to die, he didn’t know how to stop it, so he went to the Dark Side to find, in mythology you do to hades, and you talk to the devil, and the devil says ‘this is what you do’ and basically you sell your soul to the devil. When you do that, and you’re afraid and you’re on the Dark Side and you fall off the golden path of compassion because you are greedy, you want to hold on to something that you love and he didn’t do the right thing and as a result he turned bad.” --George Lucas, Mellody Hobson George Lucas - Virtual Speaker Interview, 2021

    “Obviously, there are people that just do the easy thing, and the easy thing is to be angry, which turns to hate. It’s not an active thing; it’s a passive thing. Being angry with somebody is a passive thing. You have to work not to be angry, and if you don’t work at it, you’ll just be angry for the rest of your life. Bitter, angry, and of course that leads to suffering - it’s the bad side.” --George Lucas, The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005

    “In this film, [The Phantom Menace] you begin to see that he has a fear of losing things, a fear of losing his mother, and as a result, he wants to begin to control things, he wants to become powerful, and these are not Jedi traits. And part of these are because he was starting to be trained so late in life, that he’d already formed these attachments. And for a Jedi, attachment is forbidden.” --George Lucas, CNN, 2002

There's probably more, if you want to scan through my Jedi Culture and Teachings in Canon guide, just look for chapter 2 of any given part, the section on "How the Force works" is where I put any of these quotes, and you can look around if you're looking for more examples of how the dark side needs to be faced and overcome, that it's part of the nature of life, but that we and the Jedi both should be choosing the light, because that's the way to eternal joy, the dark is the way to eternal suffering. (Check out "Jedi and the need to focus, to be calm when using the Force" section especially, because the Force becomes unreliable for a Jedi when they get angry.)

Overall, it's about how the dark side is consistently, repeatedly tied to attachment (the fear of living without someone, so desperate that you'll let a thousand people die to save that one person you can't live without, as it's more aligned with the Buddhist meaning), tied to fear and anger and hate, which are parts of our lives, but that we must work to overcome. The Jedi don't deny this--look at any scene where they express negative emotions, Mace does it on Geonosis, Yoda does it at Palpatine before their big fight, Obi-Wan is mad on Geonosis when Anakin almost abandons his post, etc., but they don't let it bite into their heart, they let those feelings pass, they let them go and find their way back to calm and peace, because "the world works better when you're on the side of good (the light side)".

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I'm unfortunately realizing that if I want to write an alt-history that diverges in 1900, I've gotta imagine a whole different pop-culture for the inhabitants because I've butterfly effect'd a whole bunch of the big names out of existence.

[deadlylittlemiho]

So I'm genuinely concerned

Are we really all gonna just pretend not to like Harry Potter anymore? Because of one terf with a million bad ideas and a superiority complex?

When the fandom has long since denounced her and started making their own fan works and headcanons? The existence of Harriet Porber makes me feel like ???? We don't need to destroy the series just because the creator is a bigoted moron???? Stop me where I'm wrong but I thought the point was to separate art from the artist, and as long as we're not supporting HER, where is the harm?

[david-talks-sw]

So that whole interaction between Ahsoka and Huyang, where they talk about Sabine's choice to help the enemy find Thrawn (in hopes that she can then find Ezra) is clearly meant to be subtext for what happened with Anakin.

I mean change the pronoun from "she/her" to "he/him", tweak some of the names and...

... it's just blatant.

The parallels were already clear in the previous episode, as pointed out in this post here, and it still holds true:

Sabine's struggle with attachment mirrors Anakin's.

We know Filoni's whole stance on why Anakin fell to the Dark Side: he'll usually acknowledge that Anakin was ruled by his attachments, got possessive of Padmé, but then adds:

"HOWEVER is loving that way really that bad?"

"HOWEVER he never stood a chance because Qui-Gon wasn't there to teach him properly and be the father Anakin needed."

I've already gone into why both these statements don't track with Lucas' intended narrative here and here... but I wanna touch on this notion that "Anakin wasn't trained enough to make a better choice."

He was.

You know how we know? Because we saw him overcome his attachments before.

We saw him explain the theory of the non-attachment rule, before.

In fact, wee saw him pass down a lot of the Jedi lessons, in The Clone Wars, including being disciplined, following orders and not acting impulsively.

The issue is that - while Anakin knows the theory, even has a few minor successes applying it - he never builds the self-discipline needed to master it because... deep down... he doesn't want to.

This is partially because you got Palpatine telling him he doesn't need to, molding him into an arrogant, power-craving person... but the fact remains that Anakin made the choice himself.

Which Filoni acknowledges, sure... but not quite. The difference between his thesis and George Lucas' is that the latter picks a stance and defends it.

"He started out as a very loving and compassionate person. And as he progressed, it was his inability to control his temper, his inability to let go of things, and his quest for power that were his undoing." - George Lucas, E! Behind the Scenes - ROTS, 2005

Anakin fell because he was greedy, just like any one of us can be.

Cool. Filoni, on the other hand, doesn't seem to land anywhere.

He dances around the issue (as can be seen by the debate between Ahsoka and Huyang, with no clear winner) and merely questions whether it's as simple as that.

Clearly he wants to justify Anakin's actions to some degree... but y'know, the narrative considers those actions so reprehensible that Anakin gets friggin' burned alive for it.

"I felt it was important that we actually see that happen so that we could see the consequences of these bad things that he did. […] He forces his friends to turn against him. Which is heartbreaking." - George Lucas, “The Chosen One” Featurette, 2005

Because Anakin's actions are not meant to be justified.

It's easy to see why Filoni likes Anakin. One of the earliest tasks he had when writing The Clone Wars was humanizing a character whose sole functional purpose was to carry out a narrative about how:

"Without self-discipline, greed [can] force a character off the path to freedom." - Micael Hearn, The Cinema of George Lucas, 2005

And Anakin is a very sympathetic character.

His flaws are flaws that we all carry.

Q: Is it fair to assess Anakin is kind of cursed by his own goodness/good qualities? "I wouldn't say that’s true. He’s cursed by the same flaws, and issues that he has to overcome, that all humans are cursed with. There's a lot going on there. [...] The whole point is—and the reason I started the story where I did—is that Anakin is a normal, good kid. And how does somebody who is normal and good turn bad? What are the qualities, what is it that we all have within us that will turn us bad?" - George Lucas, Star Wars Insider #52, 2000

But narratively, Anakin is selfish.

He doesn't want to save Padmé's life, he wants to save himself from the pain of losing Padmé.

And while you're supposed to sympathize with him, you're not meant to agree with him. He's Darth Vader, the space nazi. He messes up and consequentially "leaves the Force in darkness" for 20 years, instead of ushering it towards the light in the chancellor's office, when he has the chance.

So to shift the blame and say that...

HOWEVER, Anakin didn't have the proper support system or training to make a better choice.

... when the whole point of the narrative is about taking personal responsibility and being selfless instead of selfish... well, it is missing that point.

He did know better. He just didn't want to choose better, so he convinced himself he wasn't able to.

[pedge-page]

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

Joel Dealing with Preggo Wife : Yapper

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

- - - -

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

Or at least, it used to be.

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

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

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

“Joel. Joel. Hey Joel.” 

“Y-yes?”

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

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

“Chewbacca! From Star Wars!”

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

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

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

“C’mon, guess!”

“I really don’t know, can we—“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“BABE!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

......... 

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

- - - -

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[mortuarywriting]

Falling into Place

Ao3 Link - [First] - [Next Chapter ->]

All things considered this isn't what you were expecting to wake up to when you went to bed. One minute you're on your phone, trying to pass out, and the next? You're here. You've had some interesting greetings in your life, but dropping about six feet and having twelve guns leveled at your face? That takes the cake

Warnings:

Reader Insert, Plus-Size Reader, The Author Regrets Everything, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Isekai, canon divergence Look we're gonna dig into the implications of omegasverse changing bits and pieces of history as well as addressing whatever the FUCK is happening as CoD's history. Idk man Godzilla is canon and nobody bats an eye at that fact and you think I'm gonna be normal about that? No

You could be having a worse day, you think, as you stare at the interrogation table you're cuffed to. They could've shot you the second you fell the six feet from the sky into a random army base. That's a very real thing that could've happened.

But no, you just had a dozen guns pointed at you in one moment and a slew of questions you didn't have satisfying answers for.

No, you had no idea how you got there. You'd been in bed tooling around on your phone and then you were falling.

They asked who you worked for, and were not impressed by your mundane answer. You didn't work for some pmc or intelligence organization. You asked them to their faces if they thought you could pass a PT test if you tried. Not that they answered or appreciated your point, mind.

It was only after you gave them whatever identifying information you had that things got… spicy.

"I would love to tell you what this designation of yours is if you tell me what you mean. Is it like a classification of civilian versus enlisted? Is it physical? Is it your horoscope? I don't know what I don't know," you explain again for the Nth time. You didn't wanna play twenty questions but here you fuckin were, captive audience and all.

The man asking you questions had lost his charming good cop look. He was getting more and more annoyed on this one, "your designation," a demand, not a question and sure as shit not an answer.

"Again, would love to tell you! I don't know what you mean! Feels like some kinda Star Wars thing," you grumble the last bit to yourself but the man cocks his head.

His eyes narrow, "what are… Star Wars, you said?"

You blink owlishly, "beg pardon?"

"Star War. Clarify."

It's your turn for your brow to furrow, and furrow it does, "Star Wars? As in the multi-billion dollar franchise created by George Lucas and eventually sold to Disney," your tone is questioning, just shy of asking if the guy lived under a rock but his expression didn't let up and the last thing you needed was bad cop, so you continued, "the story of what happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away? The political space series of movies versus Star Trek's more scientific and discovery based longstanding TV show? Nine major movies and the Clone Wars before Disney sunk their talons in. Like yeah we got more shows and movies that expanded the universe but they also cut out decades of book contributions in their acquisition and that kinda sucked. But yeah, that Star Wars?"

"Nine movies," his tone is disbelieving, and now it's your turn for your eyebrows to raise, "can you name them?"

You nod, "well yeah. Do you want them in episode order or release?"

His brows furrow, "did they not release in order?"

"In a sense? Three trilogies, 4-5-6 back in the late 70s early 80s, then 1-2-3 in the late 90s early 00s, and 7-8-9 through the teens. So order, yes, just… not a cohesive one."

"Release, then," he leaned back and crossed his arms, a position you'd love to mimic if you weren't cuffed to the table for… an indeterminate period of time now, actually.

"A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi-"

"Woah now, empire? What's a jeddy?"

You give him a blank look, trying very hard to mask your disbelief as you look between him and the mirror behind him. You look at your reflection, take a deep breath, and- "sir would it be easier for you to maybe check the internet?"

He seemed to bristle, nose flaring and looking at you expectantly.

You just… kinda sat there. You tapped your fingers together on the desk and kept the eye contact he was intent on. It took a good minute and him getting progressively pissier before you simply ask, "would you like the other movies now?"

You didn't expect an explosion of movement from the man. He downright snarled and slammed his hands on the table as he burst to his feet, the sudden change sending his chair screeching back before falling with a clatter. You leaned as far back as your cuffed hands would allow, eyes wide and a panic rising.

Both of you turned to look at the door when it slammed open with a barked, "Williams!" 

The man who opened it reared back a bit, "Christ, layin' it on a bit thick," he groused, his tone sounding more like someone chastising a teenager for using too much Axe body spray. He smoothed his posture back into something casual as he fanned the air dismissively with a hand, "cap wants you to take a walk."

Your interrogator- Williams, apparently- stares at the man in the door, the two locking eyes before the one in the door straightens from his purposely relaxed posture. You watch the both of them, noting the shoulders tensing as the two just. Staring at each other? Eventually the guy who'd been grilling you looked away and stormed out, the man in the doorway letting him slip out easily enough before turning a charming look back to you.

He took a minute to fan the door a few times to get newer, blissfully cool air in before he entered the room, "sorry 'bout him. He really did a number in here," the new guy tsked before closing the door quietly behind himself.

Your brow furrowed even as you slowly relaxed a bit, had this Williams guy like… farted or something? A nice quirk of ventilation keeping you from smelling something abhorrent? Either way you simply shrug as he walks in and tips the chair back up, sitting and giving another reassuring smile, "how you doing, love?"

You opened and closed your mouth a few times before simply settling on, "I'm a bit… whelmed? This has been," you give as vague a rolling gesture as you can without your cuffs rattling too badly, "a lot? And I have no idea what just set him off either?"

It's the man before you's turn to quirk a brow, "no idea?"

"If I knew the answers to his questions I'd've given 'em by now. I don't, though, and then he just started staring? And hell I just thought it was some kinda macho 'I can stare the truth out of you,'" you pitched your voice lower and pushed your shoulders out for a second to mimic the douchebag behavior before settling, "so I kept eye contact because I'm so out of my depth I have no reason to lie at all and now…" you trail off, gesturing around the room, "all that."

The man nods slowly, "alright love, could you tell me about the last five years?"

Your brows furrow, "oh fuck, 2019 was five years ago wasn't it. God, time is an illusion. Anyway, you want what I was doing leading up to and through the pandemic?"

You think he might've startled for a second but he simply moved to scratch his chin, "mhmm. Just your thoughts on the last five years is all."

So… you ramble. Because he was nice and not prodding or asking weird questions. You talk to him about your job before the pandemic, how people thought covid was just a flu until the death tolls kept climbing, how tons of governments dropped the ball on a local or country-wide level and how that kicked back onto your life, and then the absolute crapshoot of the last election cycle, the shitty 'oh no this is the new normal everything is fine' behavior that has lead to surges and cycles of a fucking plague and so on. He simply nodded, gave some sympathetic hums and winces appropriately at your experiences.

"And did you go back and watch Star Wars through that? Or other things Disney owned?"

And, well, that was a weird way to phrase it but you shrugged, "the mouse is just shy of a monopoly and not one that anybody can take that down so… yeah, I guess? They kept putting shows out and expanding their Star Wars universe so that's been kinda neat to watch but not just them, no. Couple other games and stuff like that to keep me busy, too," you kinda handwave and shut up because panic rambling to MILITARY PERSONNEL is probably not your smartest move in hindsight. Especially when you don't know his name. A+, self.

You tap your fingers against the metal table as he looks at you, "and you said covid has a long term effect of ruining people's senses of smell and taste?"

You nod slowly, "yeah, dude? It's one of the biggest warning signs for most people? Like if everything starts tasting like it was made by a middle class white mom who keeps shoving random letters in her kids names you should swab? That kinda shit?"

What rock has this guy been living under? You were pretty sure the military were supposed to be way more familiar with this shit all things considered, but you've been wrong before.

It was his turn to give you a bit of a wide eyed look before he poorly covers a laugh, "alright, that's fair. I need to go talk with my captain," he hooks a thumb over his shoulder to the window, which didn't surprise you that there had been people back there. He offers a reassuring smile as he stands, humming idly as he pushes the chair back in. He pauses mid-step, "you mentioned that there were cards…?"

You find yourself nodding slowly, "yeah it was important and you couldn't fly or go to certain places if you didn't have one for a while. Should still have a picture of mine buried on my phone," you really didn't wanna get another first-round of covid shots, you REALLY didn't wanna repeat the 24 hours of suck for no reason.

"Cool, thanks," he flashes another charming grin before he slides out of the room.

You lean back in your chair, what an odd guy. Nice though.

-------

"Right," Gaz says as he opens the door to Price and Ghost, "either our mystery guest is off her nut or she's legitimately from somewhere and somewhen else."

Ghost and Price look at each other before turning back to Gaz, this… complicated matters.

Well, it's not like you hadn't given them information to identify yourself. They'd dig up who you were one way or another.

-------

You stare blankly as the nice man from before gives you a sympathetic look, "what do you mean I'm dead?"

Behind him is a guy you're not sure if he's just fuckoff huge or if he's just moderately huge and it's forced perspective.

You don't think it's forced perspective.

You are absolutely trying not to panic spiral.

You are absolutely doing a horrible job at that.

"Well," he opens the file before him and there's a news article, proudly proclaiming "Locals Die in Horrible Freak Accident" like that's not some form of you that was looking like some smear on the pavement, "there's this. Fingerprints match up. Can check for dental if you're really curious."

"Were there even any teeth left after that," you mumble as you take and read the offered article. Seven people were involved, the pictures used are mostly flattering. Hell, you almost don't mind what pic they used for an alternate you but… "that's certainly not the pic I would've wanted. Maybe this me had different tastes?"

You take the time to actually read through the article. It's not helping because for as much as you stare at the page you're not absorbing any information. Some form of detachment, if this was really you? You'd died. A different you but a you nonetheless. You died and you're reading how it happened. There was a lot to unpack in all this and you just needed to put the suitcase away for now. You'd much rather throw it away at this rate.

You were rapidly coming to the understanding that you and Toto were not in Kansas anymore, and there wasn't a convenient yellow brick road to get yourself back home. No easy way to get the hell out of Dodge either. Was it Dodge or the O.K. Corral that was in Kansas? No the O.K. Corral wasn't in Kansas- Dodge was though, that's right. 

This analogy was getting away from you and some part of you figured this was just your brain trying to protect yourself but… wait, wasn't this a metaphor? There wasn't 'like' or 'as' or goddammit not again.

You recognize some names here and there but largely everyone involved were perfect strangers. The article doesn't cover if it would've been slow or quick. You hope for the smear that it was quick. Smears like that don't happen slowly, right? Well, not unless it's like a dramatic slide down a window, but not usually across pavement like that.

Still not sure how you feel about all of it. Bit morbid being confronted with your mortality like that.

Certainly answered a lot of questions about your theoretical passing you never thought about. Like if the obituary for you in what you know to be your own home and world is just as… really kinda just mediocre as this. Have you really done nothing of note for an obituary? Damn.

You kept pouring over the article, each pass bringing new words into focus that help connect the picture a little bit, but… Something repeated in the article made you pause, "two alphas, four betas, and an omega?" 

There was no decent way to ask about that. Any questions invoked from here would border into dangerous territory better kept between yourself and a private browser history. You knew what you were about but there was no fucking way.

"Their designations," the nice man whose name you still hadn't caught explains, "mostly explaining their secondary gender."

You look at him owlishly. You pray to whatever God might be listening that you wake up shortly. Or that the earth below your feet opens up and swallows you. Whichever comes first, the mortification will snipe you otherwise.

"Please tell me this is an elaborate joke at my expense," you are very quiet as you are trying to get really cool with a lot of things really quickly.

"Negative," the big fucker in the back practically growled and you knew that voice would do things to you if you weren't half stepped out of your own body. 

You missed whatever his followup was but your brow furrowed when you checked the date on the article, "I've been dead for months? That…" you let the paper fall from your hands. Everything about this is wild at best and very overwhelming at worst. 

A lot of this qualified as worst.

You look up at the two, missing the odd look they shot at each other as you try to pull yourself back together, "so now what? You've got a not-a-smear of me that fell from the sky onto a secure military base, and where I'm from we didn't have," you paused to gesture between the paper and the two soldiers, "dynamics was it? That was just a fanfiction special."

"Fanfiction."

The way he said it was so carefully neutral you paused, "oh my god without Star Trek to popularize fanfiction and the fan community, how has fandom evolved? Is fanfiction a thing- well, yes, it does fanfics have been a thing since Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy and even before- well, the question is more if it's still popularized? Are there still the wattpad fics of- I am getting so off track. What exactly is the next step?"

You look from the nice man to the big fucker and back, neither saying anything but looking at you with careful blankness.

You felt like you were being weighed and measured in their eyes.

You hoped to anyone listening that you weren't found wanting at least. Not when you're in the shit situation it looks like you ever so increasingly fell into.

"Considering I'm. Not smear. And very much not from here? Are blanks a thing? Or is that what a beta is I'm," you trail off, brow furrowing, "fuzzy. On the whole thing. The flavor of understanding, dynamics, and population skew tended to be dependant on the author's level of horny."

The did get a bit of a snort from the pretty one before you, the one in the back tilting his head just so as the pretty one spurred you on, "okay please don't take this the wrong way, you have given me nothing to go on but A/B/O and-" a finger was raised in question to that, you quickly explaining, "the fanfic shorthand for the universe without being a mouthful. Anyway- I've seen population numbers being roughly the same across the board, I've seen alphas and omegas at roughly 1% of the population of society on either end, I've seen alphas at about 5% and omegas at 1%- those ones are usually the most horny I swear.

"And it's all over the board, no consistency- sometimes it's betas are infertile, sometimes they're the straightman to the comedy that's an alpha and omega trying to woo each other without being too horny to function. Sometimes it's a sliding scale where being beta just means you're more the more middle-ground regulated hormonally with alphas and omegas being the opposing ends of a spectrum. Can you please say something and give me a fucking break because my panic rambles are probably like. Some kinda prejudiced. I'm still not over the 'I'm supposed to be a smear on the ground we don't even have dental images of to confirm who it is anymore' nugget you dropped on me. I think I'm doing well for this"

You would rather not tell them that as soon as you're out of this box of a room you were gonna be curled up in a ball and unabashedly weeping. That was none of their business.

The pretty one gave you what you're sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile but the quiet stretched just a bit too long. You looked from one to the other before leaning forward, "is this supposed to be soothing in some way? Because it's just a bit of an extended awkward silence and that's uh-"

It was the big one in the back's turn to give an amused snort, the pretty one looking bashful, "right, sorry, we uh-"

You jerk a bit, "wait, was that supposed to be some scent thing," you really didn't wanna say pheromones and potentially dig yourself into a deeper, more awkward hole based on Horny Pseudoscience.

Pretty rubbed the back of his neck, "something like that. You really couldn't smell anything?"

You know the exact Face you're making. It's very much your 'I have told you this and I'm getting tired of having to repeat it' face. You can tell he clocks it but for the record, because to your mortification this has to be recorded, you simply give a succinct, "no, I haven't smelled anything. Not from you, not from him," you jerk your head towards the big fucker, "and not from douchebag from be- Williams! His name was Williams. Nothing. Really had no clue why you were fanning the door when you came in."

You sigh, rubbing the heels of your palms into your eyes, "okay. Assuming I'm not about to be put into past tense a second time. Do we have any idea what popped me out here?"

The sentences are stilted, you know you're getting more rattled the longer you're here but sue you alright it's been the worst six hours of your life here.

They just continue to look at you, pretty keeping a polite almost customer service look as big one just stares unceasingly.

"Right. Okay. Am I going to be reintegrated to society or is this," you gesture around the little room as much as you can, "looking like my home for the foreseeable future."

No change in what you can see of either's expression, and you just sag. Deep breath in, deep breath out, "cool. Alright. Well. I know nothing of how biology is altered here, I'm not sure how that has impacted changes throughout history, and frankly I don't know what your pop culture has done. I'm assuming math and written languages are largely the same but in all fairness I don't know what I don't know."

You just stare quietly at the table for a bit longer before looking back at the two of them, "is there anything else you need because I can feel the freakout creeping up and while I know there's no real privacy, uh…"

The pretty one looked back to the big one, at some point you're sure you'll get some sort of names but for now? Now you watch the big one nod, the pretty one give you a polite smile and some vaguely polite bullshit your brain is swiftly going too far out to hear.

You only hope that whoever is behind the mirror is polite enough to look away as you put your head down on the table and give yourself the opportunity to, just this once, cry. As a treat.

[Next Chapter -> ]

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I mean, by "writers" you mean George Lucas himself because Palpatine is primarily a character created by Lucas.

The short answer is no, I don't, I think Palpatine is exactly what he needs to be.

The long answer is that I don't tend to see Palpatine as a CHARACTER very often and more as a symbolic representation of a lot of the themes in this story. One of the major themes in Star Wars is the choice between selfishness and selflessness and we see this through Anakin's story, Luke's story, and the story of the Republic as a whole. Temptation towards selfishness IS powerful, that's sort-of the whole point in many ways. It's powerful because it's easy, it's instant gratification, it feels good right up until it doesn't. So Palpatine is powerful more because of what he represents than anything more practical.

But if I'm going to TAKE a more practical look at it, then I'd say that the reason the Jedi beat the Sith Empire back in the day is because the Sith are all selfish people who don't know how to work together even against a common enemy and they constantly undermined and betrayed each other in a way the Jedi just did not. So there's just never enough of them combined to truly hold back the Jedi's forces. But Palpatine doesn't ever face them head on, he is the result of a thousand years of planning and laying low and so instead of trying to use real force to take out the Jedi, he uses a more poisonous method that removes a lot of their support from the inside. He learns politics, he gets himself into a position of power, he gets himself all the right allies, he starts corrupting the galaxy itself by encouraging the selfishness in the Senate (which causes most of the "clouding" of the Force, it is never Sidious alone, it's the galaxy becoming darker AS A WHOLE because of his machinations but also because of the choices people are making everywhere), and he is able to then start a war that he can use his power to shove the Jedi in the front of which starts causing a lot of them to die and scatters them across the galaxy inside the trap that is the clone army. Palpatine sees the mistakes made by his predecessors and very intentionally DOESN'T MAKE THE SAME ONES. He gets smarter and uses different methods to take the Jedi out from within the system they created to FIX the galaxy.

So if we go back to the thematic thing, Palpatine is powerful because the choices of a lot of people around him BOLSTER him enough to make him powerful. He is powerful because a lot of people are choosing to be selfish and cruel and greedy. He's not powerful all on his own, we see that when he goes up against Mace. He CAN be beaten by the Jedi, and fairly easily, if he has to rely on force alone. But he knows better than to rely on that and so he never does. Palpatine is a poison in the galaxy just by EXISTING, that's what causes the Force to be more clouded and unbalanced, and it's why Mace recognizes that he's too dangerous to be left alive. This is what the Sith ARE, by their very nature. It's why the Jedi dedicate themselves to eradicating the Sith and everything the Sith represent. There can be no fixing the galaxy or finding balance so long as the Sith remain.

Now, if we look at what the SEQUELS did with Palpatine, then yeah, sure, Palpatine is too powerful because now he's surviving getting thrown down a reactor hatch in a space station that got blown up somehow (which isn't like... UNUSUAL in Star Wars, Maul does something very similar and I hate it just as much as I do this variety of it) and then manages to like suck Force energy out of a Force dyad in order to make himself more... corporeal? I have no idea. But he also then makes the big "I am all the Sith" claim which was HILARIOUS to me when I rewatched the film recently because this might be the first time in galactic history that the Sith have all collectively worked together like that at all. Like HOW is he "all the Sith", what does that MEAN, how does it give him more power, and why does he even NEED IT? It's weird, it's stupid, he should be dead and we all know it, so by the time of the Sequels yes, he's too powerful, but in the Prequels and Original trilogies? No, he's fine, he's exactly as powerful as he needs to be to get across the narrative themes he helps represent.

[intermundia]

in the 'master and apprentice' behind the scenes short, dave filoni stresses that it was george lucas at the clone wars planning meeting who said "anakin had a padawan," and essentially gave the order for ahsoka to exist. i think filoni gets a lot of flak for her being his OC, and while that ended up imho being true, it is interesting to me that it was lucas who had the original vision for how the clone wars cartoon would work. we know that he made adjustments to anakin's characterization to make him more of a traditional action hero, and then he gave the kids an audience surrogate so they could tag along with him. it was the best way to make a show about the clone wars and lucas also probably knew from a merchandising perspective, anakin's padawan being a spunky teenage girl would be successful with the kids (despite the hate that she got at the beginning from older fans). it's interesting to know more about her genesis, in light of what she became, how complete her story is; she's one of the most developed star wars characters at this point. while i (a known tragedy enjoyer) am frustrated at how her story currently dangles off into an uncertain future, so we don't truly understand her fate, i can only hope that it gets tied off well with this show. it's impressive to consider how important she became, for originally just being part of a footnote (per lucas) to anakin's story.

[lastoneout]

Honestly, I really hate this new trend of game studios specifically patching speedrun strats and exploits as fast as possible, especially in single-player games where the exploits don't effect the average player AT ALL. It seemed like FromSoft was actually paying attention to the speed and challenge runs and specifically patching the stuff those players were using to the detriment of the average player's experience, and Nintendo got rid of a lot of the first TotK exploits with a forced update like two weeks after the game came out. (And you can't downpatch with Nintendo games the way you can with stuff on other platforms too, which is an extra mega fuck you on top of it.)

I get when things are actually broken and need fixing but people who speedrun your games are doing it because they LOVE them and it's such a dick punch to see game studios target them specifically instead of just letting their product be a smidge imperfect so more people can have fun with it. It just reminds me of like, George Lucas constantly fiddling with Star Wars long after it's done like just leave it alone your product is fine, we don't need 600 updates for years that just amount to a slap in the face to the fans and do nothing to actually make the product any better.

[piglet26]

Rey...A Mary Sue?

When it comes to the Star Wars fanbase.....Disney is the maker of many of their own problems. Disney has blown things out of proportion. They've attacked their own fanbase and then hidden behind that very slander to avoid criticism. They haven't honored the very audience they seek to make a lot of money from, not to mention the franchise. They've bounced around between visions trying to please everyone and then pleased no one.

However, the Star Wars fanbase is also to blame for many of their quarrels, grips and dissatisfactions with the franchise. Oh, you don't like the corporatized Disney sequels? Well I remember you didn't like the prequels which George Lucas actually did them. Disney sequels are too comedic? The movies would've been better if there was less humor? Well the prequels were too whiny, political and serious.

It's not enough that Disney films are more diverse, have a female lead and have more females on the production side..... unless those characters are saying, doing and being portrayed exactly how the fanbase would like.......then Disney is still misogynistic and racist.

Carrie Fisher, The Princess, faced sexism, ageism and body shaming from both Disney and the Star Wars fandom prior to returning for The Force Awakens. Since he passing obviously many people would like to forget about this or flat out bury it.

Carrie Fisher tells British Good Housekeeping that she was pressured to lose more than 35 pounds to reprise Princess Leia in The Force Awakens: “They don’t want to hire all of me — only about three-quarters! Nothing changes, it’s an appearance-driven thing. I’m in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance."

She first donned that golden slave bikini when she was 27. Thirty years later, Carrie Fisher’s back as Leia in “Star Wars,” but apparently some viewers thought she’d look exactly the same. The 59-year-old actor was the unfortunate recipient of a barrage of hateful tweets from critics who felt the need to tell her she’s aged badly in the past three decades. She Tweeted, "Men don't age better than women, they're just allowed to age." Meanwhile, Harrison Ford looked old and Mark Hamill looked liked a drunk.

All of this is to say the question of whether or nor Rey is a Mary Sue isn't a simple one. While Disney LucasFilm didn't develop the character as well as they could have.... the audience largely had double standards. Rey, as a woman, had more work to do to win over an audience already suspicious of the feminization of Star Wars.

Let's address the criticism

Why does Rey seem so skilled?

Rey works for Unkar Plott scavenging. It would make sense she understands engineering and mechanics. She has to understand how things work, which parts are valuable and understand that about multiple forms of machinery. How does she fly? Just fly, not even combat fly. If in her introduction she was shown to be flying commercially maybe people would've let it go, I'm not sure. Luke and Anakin by contrast turn out to be expert pilots who fight in combat..... no one questioned a thing and one of them is a child. When she initially flies the Falcon she does an alright job and in the three sequels films we never see her fly in combat. Finn never learned how to fly!!!! He famously needed a pilot, yet, got a crash course in The Last Jedi enough to fly at the end against the First Order. She speaks droid, but all our protagonist in Star Wars do. Someone has to be able to understand them.

Rey has no flaws and she's so perfect.

No, actually she's not. Rey is extremely vulnerable, lonely and requires validation. She fears she's gonna be an old woman cleaning gear on Jakku, but she doesn't leave. The only character she really relates and connects to.... is the villain. Yes, she's likable and she's suppose to be because she's our protagonist. Who the hell finds fault with either the character or the production team for trying to make their main character likeable?! Other characters are attracted to her. It's important to note that most force users come off as charismatic, magical and attractive.

Does Rey have a personality?

Yes. Many people get held up on the fact that Rey seems to be bubbly and happy despite growing up in isolation in a tough environment. Initially, with Finn, she comes off pretty hostile and untrusting. It was only when she assumed he was resistance (something safe) and he went along with the assumption that she relaxed a bit. She responded with anger at him just grabbing her hand, but when he showed concern for her then she reciprocated. Neither Finn nor Rey have proper social development which explains why they latch onto one another. Not to mention both are outsiders thrown into pivotal roles without much concept on how to deal with those roles.

Rey is also very childlike. It's something Kylo Ren tries to push her out of. She waits around for her family for years. She licks plates and plays with the resistance helmet. She latches onto people. She latches onto Finn once she trust him. She latches onto Han perceiving him as an ideal father figure. When she forms a connection to Kylo Ren she latches onto him. She's loyal to the people and things she cares about. There were things that could have helped Rey become a fuller developed character. Rey can fight but we never learned WHY she learned how to fight. Has she been stolen from a lot? Has she been attacked? Was she trained? Rey was taken at a young age, what schooling did she receive? Did she just learn trade work? In the novels, her character is obviously developed more, but Lord! People really act like any oversight of character development was a feminist statement about perfection. In reality, it was a film trying to balance multiple characters in a 2.5 hour film.

Rey doesn't have any training and yet is so magical with the Force.

Rey is assisted by The Force. Force users can use the force with very little understanding of it or training. Anakin as a 9 year old is just winging it. So there's that. Now the first time she encounters Kylo Ren, she's terrified and running/shooting for her life. When he force freezes her she's helpless. When he puts her to sleep with the force, she has to be rescued by men.

Now this is the most important. Her bond with Kylo Ren is one of the reasons she's able to access more of and learn about the force. "A Force dyad, also known as a dyad in the Force, was when two Force-sensitive beings had a unique Force-bond—that was unbreakable—that made them one in the Force. The power of a dyad was as strong as life itself, with the individuals forming the dyad sharing a connection that spanned across time and space."

They don't play this up enough in the movies. In the novels it's clear that their minds bridge. She's able to access Kylo's mind from understanding how he accessed her mind. Their bond boost both of their strengths in the force. It's important to note that Rey's abilities actually terrify her.

Rey knows more about the Falcon than Han Solo.

She explained that Unkar Plott installed a compressor which Rey was aware of and both Han and Rey agreed put stress on the hyperdrive. After her assistance bypassing the compressor Han is firming in control of The Falcon.

She beat Kylo Ren at the end of the Force Awakens despite never holding a light saber.

Well, I agree with this one. Kylo Ren wasn't trying to kill her. He was sparring with him and testing her talents. If he wanted to kill her, there was a convenient cliff he could've pushed her over. He wants to train her and he wants her.

Daisy Ridley is a talented and charismatic actress.... she just isn't recognized for it. The fandom looks for flaws, weaknesses and reasons to complain. I don't want to take away anything from the males in Star Wars. I want them to be great. Honestly A Song of Fire and Ice is how I'd like to see more men and women written. Some are good, some are bad, some are great, some are horrific and all are flawed.

[gffa]

When it really comes down to it, no, I don't think the Star Wars prequels were "better" than the originals (if we absolutely must pit them against each other), I don't think the prequels could have legitimately Changed Everything in the genre in the same way that the originals did, I don't think the prequels were as polished and well-done in the same way as the originals, but I also think the prequels tickle something in my fandom brain that the originals can never hope to replicate. The worldbuilding and themes of the prequels have so much crunch to them that I want to chew drywall about the smallest of details, I've got it so bad for the prequels that I have listened to every George Lucas interview I can get my hands on because I want to know what was going on in that three-ring circus brain of his, every ridiculous choice and every brilliant choice he made and hell I even want to know about every mediocre choice he made and the bad choices he made, I want to know the narrative intention of Star Wars because it enhances what was shown on the screen, that it threads the needle between being a fairy tale and something with solid political and thematic foundations that are actually being woven into the storytelling of the prequels. The originals are a foundation and frame to build a house on that the prequels can never compare to, but the prequels are adding in architectural structure and decorative setting that's the stuff I'm actually going to stare at every day for the rest of my life and constantly fiddle with, in a way that the originals can never reach the same heights of. They both fulfill a function that the other can't, that without both of them I wouldn't be here, but also that's why I spend all day talking about one more than the other.

[steampunkforever]

Looking back at the latest run of movies I've filmposted on, you might be tempted to think I'm only watching the good stuff these days. Let me dispel any thought that I've abandoned horrendous cinema as we tackle what I believe to be the reason George Lucas is the way he is: the Star Wars Holiday Special.

For the uninitiated (people who became Star Wars fans around the time the term "Reylo" was minted) let me set the stage. It's 1977, and the world has been changed by the arrival of Jedi to the silver screen. Lucas et al. can now afford more matte paintings than ever before, and are busy planning out the thrilling sequels to carry on the Star Wars saga ("Planning the Star Wars sequels" is a sentence that will not be uttered again in studio conference rooms until 2017, at which JJ Abrams will precede the sentence with the words "We will not be"). CBS approaches Lucas with a revolutionary concept: worldbuilding for the Star Wars universe by developing discrete self-contained stories through the medium of Television (the book of bobos, coming soon).

Lucas says yes, develops an allegedly solid script off his idea for an all-wookie movie, and then will not budge on his idea for a movie entirely focused on a species of alien that grunts with no subtitles. He's just put out one of the biggest movies to hit the screen ever, and furthermore is a man of great artistic vision. With Lucas at the helm this is set to be a hit.

Except Lucas needs to move studios to fit all the matte paintings he can now afford. So Lucas drops the story in the hands of the ever capable CBS and heads to the matte painting store, leaving them to find another director after the first guy quit after finishing the Jefferson Starship concert and "Bea Arthur sings at the Cantina" scenes.

Lucas' trust was, to be blunt, misplaced. CBS' finished cut was simply terrible (with the exception of a charming animated segment), and Lucas even offered to pay them to keep the abomination off air. They declined, but the Holiday Special was only aired once, at which point all copies were destroyed at Lucas' behest. At this point Lucas is at the top of his creative game and we haven't been subject to anything like Indiana Jones 4 yet, so you can imagine what a blow this is to the man who has yet to mastermind Jar Jar Binks.

Much like the preservation of HBO originals in the present day, the Holiday Special was only preserved and propagated through outright piracy, to the point that Holiday Special bootlegs became a known fandom trope. And so this week, for the second time in my life, I watched a rip of the Star Wars Holiday Special made somewhere around Baltimore on that fateful night in 1978, slotting in right before Wonder Woman. It was bad, yes, just not spectacularly so.

There is no question in my mind: The Star Wars Holiday Special killed George Lucas' directing career more so than the runaway success of the first movie.

In my writings on film, there runs a throughline (often utilizing Lucas as a prime example) that discourages sequels. I'll admit that this comes predominantly from my upbringing in a world of shared universes and IP sprawl, but it's a pretty agreed upon point that A) serialization only serves as a chance to tarnish an otherwise solid first film and B) new, discrete stories are more interesting. That said, sequels are not bad, and my analysis of Star Wars does not lay blame on the fact that we got to see what happened after the Yavin Award Ceremony.

You see, beyond being bad, The Holiday Special taught Lucas all the wrong things with its failure. Artistic control is paramount, yes, but what his experience with CBS taught Lucas was that in order to secure his legacy, he had to chain himself to the Carbonite slab that was Star Wars and micromanage it for the rest of his life to ensure the world he'd created would maintain the quality he intended for it.

Looking at the state of Star Wars in the years after Lucas cut the series loose, I don't think this was an incorrect statement, but a singular devotion to guiding his store-brand Flash Gordon empire is what led to a 22 year hiatus between directorial efforts. Even after this, as much as I personally find the prequels to be misunderstood, they lacked the same spark Lucas had, making me wonder what he could have put out in his most creatively charged years had he not lashed himself to the helm of a franchise that's abandoned most of the work he spent years tailoring to his vision in favor of Baby Yoda.

The Star Wars Holiday Special is truly what separates Lucas from Coppola. Without that harsh lesson in trusting Star Wars to someone else, Lucas might've focused on directing future projects of his own rather than managing those of people expanding his space wizard universe.

Or maybe if you'd swapped their places Coppola would have Don Corleone meet up with cheerful Gungan Jar Jar Binks.

Of course this is all conjecture. Lucas has put out some of his best work as a writer and story lead working on projects like Indiana Jones and Willow, but it's sad to see one of the most influential film workers in the world, whose work I truly admire, with only a half dozen directing credits despite having all the matte painting money he could ever desire to make passion project films. Coppola went broke, but at least 2/3rds of his filmography didn't get coopted to sell Disney streaming packages.

Then again if I'd just put out three revolutionary films in a row and then saw what CBS did with my high concept wookie script, maybe I wouldn't be seeing things so clearly.

We're about a dozen paragraphs too long for a filmpost on the Star Wars Holiday Special, so I'll wrap up now: I can't say I recommend it.

[clonewarsarchives]

Matt Lanter & James Arnold Taylor at Star Wars Celebration 2023 Day 2

livestream timestamp: 02:54:50-03:07:10

What is a quote from the show that's less quotable but more haunting, because it was difficult to get out in the moment?

ML: Well, it's not difficult to get out necessarily, but Anakin says something like, and it may not be verbatim, but something like "I realize, more than you know, I realize what it's like, wanting to leave the Order." [note: "I understand, more than you realize, I understand wanting to walk away from the Order." final words to Ahsoka in 5.20 The Wrong Jedi] and that says so much to me. It's something that we never really see Anakin kind of voiced that, he's sort of handcuffed, he felt chained, and he sort of voiced that to Ahsoka. It was such an intimate moment, I love that moment.

JAT: [Obi-wan voice] "It takes strength to resist the Dark Side. Only the weak embrace it." [5.16 The Lawless] That episode was haunting for me. We would get the scripts when we walked into the room. I did not know - spoiler alert! I think at Star Wars Celebration it's okay to say - In Season 5, Satine, I did not know what was gonna happen. So... when Obi-wan says "Satine..." under his breath, those are little ad-libs, those are moments that would just happen because it was heart-wrenching to be there and to be a part of that. Those moments are haunting, because I also think Obi-wan is a true believer. He wanted to see if he could save Darth Maul. He really believed there was a chance, with Ventress or with any of these people that he could maybe, save them. Or any of these people [points to Matt] "You were my brother!"

ML: "I hate you!"

JAT:  "Get over it." [laughs]

full recap:

How have years of experience working with both George Lucas & Dave Filoni changed your perspective on Star Wars?

ML: every time we go in recording, Dave would sit there and talk half an hour at least. It's amazing we got work done. He would sit there and talk about Star Wars, where the character were, and share storytelling which he learnt from George. It's a pretty cool moment

JAT: It was those moments where we were recording an episode, and he's through the glass and he's on the phone, and then he hangs up the phone, he says, "OK George just said..." and I'm like "Wait a second, George George?" "Yes." It was so great to watch that, see what he's taken from the Master and made so wonderfully now with everything he's doing.

ML: I feel like I've learnt a lot about character, from Dave.

JAT: and Sketch! He's a great artist. Dave would sketch characters as we're going, so he would draw little Ahsokas for Ashley and things and give them to her. Now she's gotta hold on to them, they're worth a fortune for now I'm sure.

Fave moment making TCW?

ML: some of my fave are moments like this! we're all on stage, we're celebrating TCW and Star Wars in general, travelling with these guys, be up at the ranch. Truthfully, seeing the joy it brings on people's faces, people come up to us and just talk about - "it was my childhood" or some traumatic event but TCW got them through. Those are the little meaningful things that you don't forget. So along with enjoying it, it brings people thorugh tough times. Those are the really, really cool things to hear.

JAT: I would wholeheartedly agree with what Matt says. It's a life-changing experience to be a part of it. I saw Star Wars- I'm the old man in the room now- I saw Star Wars when I was 7yo in a driving movie theater and it changed my life, never thought one day I get to be old Obi-wan. Now I think I'm one of the only peole, if not the only person here, that was actually in the first Clone Wars. So you see those 20 years, Clone Wars 20 [logos], that's because the micro series of Clone Wars, and I was Obi-wan in that, and that was the first time I got to play Obi-wan.

What are you most proud of as your part of the legacy for these characters, that are just larger than life in the Star Wars galaxy?

ML: I think that in TCW, we got to see Anakin a little different than we did in the films. George and Dave wanted to take the Clone Wars time to sort of expand the character of Anakin and make him a hero that we really really loved, so when he falls, and becomes Darth Vader, I feel like it's that much more sad. It's so much more tragic because you rooted for this guy, you cared for him and it also adds more to his story as to why he turned: the loss of Ahsoka, which is something we didn't know about. All of that, it's been such a joy to just add to that character, making him so much more rich than he already was.

JAT: Yeah, I totally agreed. Hayden and Matt complemented so much on this character of Anakin Skywalker and they bring so much to it. I'm honoured to work with this guy on a regular basis, he's an amazing actor, a wonderful friend. We live near each other, he actually lives on a hill now, just so he can say "I have the high ground! [Matt echoes]" It's not fair!

ML: It's true, "I have the high ground."

JAT: And I would say for me, bringing the sass to Obi-wan Kenobi has been the funnest. Yes, I love that too.

What is a quote from the show that's less quotable but more haunting, because it was difficult to get out in the moment?

ML: Well, it's not difficult to get out necessarily, but Anakin says something like, and it may not be verbatim, but something like "I realize, more than you know, I realize what it's like, wanting to leave the Order." [note: "I understand, more than you realize, I understand wanting to walk away from the Order." final words to Ahsoka in 5.20 The Wrong Jedi] and that says so much to me. It's something that we never really see Anakin kind of voiced that, he's sort of handcuffed, he felt chained, and he sort of voiced that to Ahsoka. It was such an intimate moment, I love that moment.

JAT: [Obi-wan voice] "It takes strength to resist the Dark Side. Only the weak embrace it." [5.16 The Lawless] That episode was haunting for me. We would get the scripts when we walked into the room. I did not know - spoiler alert! I think at Star Wars Celebration it's okay to say - In Season 5, Satine, I did not know what was gonna happen. So... when Obi-wan says "Satine..." under his breath, those are little ad-libs, those are moments that would just happen because it was heart-wrenching to be there and to be a part of that. Those moments are haunting, because I also think Obi-wan is a true believer. He wanted to see if he could save Darth Maul. He really believed there was a chance, with Ventress or with any of these people that he could maybe, save them. Or any of these people [points to Matt] "You were my brother!"

ML: "I hate you!"

JAT:  "Get over it." [laughs]

Anything you want to say to people who has been with TCW/these stories/your characters from the start?

JAT: Thank you all. You all saved Clone Wars. All of you. [stands up] [ML: Yeah, absolutely.] You all saved Clone Wars. We love you. We truly love you and thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

ML: You guys embrace The Clone Wars, and now we've got 7 spectacular seasons of Star Wars content that just adds to the saga, and makes it so much more rich. To be a part of that and feel the love from you guys, the warmth, it's pretty amazing. It's great to celebrate TCW on its anniversary and Star Wars in general. It's amazing to be here.

[host reminiscing SDCC 10th anniversary panel]

JAT: We never thought that it would come back, truly. None of us did. So it was truly fantastic to see that panel. The explosion from everybody there was fantastic.

How emotional was it for you to come back and step into those roles again?

ML: For me, people ask me this all the time, "What was it like to come back?", but I feel like I never really put Anakin down. We were always doing video games, special little projects here and there. And also honestly, Anakin is a part of me. We've been doing now for 15... 17...

JAT: 17 years, because we started 2 years prior to it coming out.

ML: So I mean, I had a Star Wars wedding. Shoutout to my wife, if you're watching back in the States. It's a part of me now, and it's always has been, so I never really let it go. But it was great to come back and be in the booth with these guys, for sure.

JAT: We were in the same studio that we recorded originally, so it was very magical. I remember the last time we did was Ashley and myself, and Dee, and Matt. And Dave goes, "We got it the first time, let's just do it again because it's fun to watch you guys," so we did it like 2 or 3 more times, and that was the energy of it. 'Cause we're really just a family. We truly are a family and we just love being a part of it all.

[david-talks-sw]

When a Star Wars writer engages with the material but not the narrative.

I'm writing a long post about the Jedi and the clone troopers and there's a whole section that I had to remove because it was too long:

Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and the clones.

I already wrote about why Karen Traviss' take on the Jedi and Yoda doesn't track with what George Lucas had established in his narrative of the Prequels. Since then, I've been able to do more research.

It's no secret that one of the reasons Traviss listed for criticizing the Jedi in the Expanded Universe books she wrote is their treatment of the clones (or at least what she understood it to be).

In 2008, she wrote a now-deleted blog post about it (it was really long, so I'm only including the part relevant to my point, if you want the full context you can look it up, this is old stuff).

So if you ask me, in the above quote, Traviss is essentially doing the equivalent of saying:

"Batman is a psycho elitist who beats up the mentally ill and indoctrinates kids, turning them into child soldiers for his unending crazy vigilante war on crime, and if you can't recognize that then you scare the living crap out of me."

Like... you can argue that, and a couple of comics have argued that.

But by and large, the general consensus is that Batman is a superhero, the Robins are his sons and daughter, and the "mentally ill" are in fact the Joker and Two-Face aka mass murderers.

So if you make that argument, that's you applying your real-life values and conclusions to a narrative that deliberately doesn't acknowledge those points, in-universe, in order to tell the story it wants to tell.

It's counting on your suspension of disbelief, defined as "the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoying its narrative."

The Jedi accepting the clones and the clones being slaves isn't a "delicate point". It's barely a point at all!

It's never addressed in the film (because of course it isn't, the Prequels are about Anakin and the Republic, not the clones).

It's only addressed once by Slick, an unreliable narrator, in The Clone Wars.

That's it. Hell, in 2008, when The Clone Wars writer Henry Gilroy was asked to comment on the relationship between clones and Jedi, he explicitly said he'd "rather not get into" that particular point.

I recently got Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of 'Attack of the Clones' and nowhere is that detail touched on by Lucas at any point.

Nobody wants to touch on that point with a 10ft pole, because it's not relevant to the story.

So while Traviss acknowledges the Jedi are fictional characters, she doesn't follow that thread through to the end by acknowledging that fictional characters don't have free will, they must abide by the story and the whim of the writer.

She's engaging with the material, but refusing to engage with the narrative. She's having her cake and eating it too.

My reason for saying all this is that in the book Star Wars on Trial, she elaborates on her thought process upon discovering this detail.

Shortly before to this, she acknowledges twice that she knew nothing about Star Wars, beside seeing the original films in her youth.

Another writer who saw the new films and saw Mace Windu argue against there being a war...

... the worry on his face at the prospect of the Jedi being thrown at the Separatists...

... and the sheer melancholy on Yoda's face upon announcing the Clone War had begun...

... might have instead wondered how the Jedi, so opposed to war, could've ended up being generals.

Because while we don't see the Jedi openly protest the use of the clones in the film... they're not exactly giddy about it, either. All they can do is watch powerlessly as it gets voted by the Senate.

"The Jedi are there. But the Jedi aren't really allowed to be involved in the political process. They're there, but they can't suddenly step up and say, "No, no. You can't do that." They have to let the political process go." - George Lucas, Attack of the Clones, Commentary #2, 2002

We also don't see them take on the role of generals, either.

We only see them begrudgingly lead troops on Geonosis, specifically.

But they're not referred to as "generals" yet.

Another writer might have imagined a scene where after Geonosis, Mace Windu talks to Palpatine thinking the Jedi will go back to their roles as diplomats, and that what we saw in Attack of the Clones was a one-time thing to save Obi-Wan, but Palpatine politely goes:

"Ha! No. Didn't you hear? The Senate was so impressed by your performance on Geonosis that they voted to make you all generals in the GAR. Now, get back to the front."

Another writer might've elected to write them having that "big moral debate" she mentions.

Instead, Traviss immediately jumps on the "Jedi are elitists" train.

Because her personal experience with the military makes her sympathize with the clones and her personal belief is that - while the story may frame the Jedi as "the good guys" - nobody is that good a guy, real life people aren't that pure and selfless. There's gotta be something off about them and aHA! That's what it is!

That's her choosing to take that line of thought instead of one more in-line with the story, because she perceives it as unrealistic. But like... Star Wars isn't real life, it's a fairy tale.

That's like saying:

"The hunter in Little Red Riding Hood commits animal cruelty by cutting the Wolf open. He should've let nature take its course, the wolf earned that meal fair and square. If you think the hunter should've saved Red Riding Hood and her Grandma, then clearly you're the kind of monster who thinks one life is worth more than others."

... no?

The story's narrative clearly portrays the wolf as the villain of the tale and frames the Hunter saving Red Riding Hood as a good thing.

Disagreeing with that narrative is absolutely fine, but anybody who acknowledges the wolf is the bad guy in the story isn't automatically an animal hater and/or a bad person. Just because you say "the wolf is the villain" doesn't mean that you think that, in real life, killing wolves for shits and giggles is good.

Conversely, the narrative of the Prequels asks you to suspend your disbelief and not consider the implications that having a clone army entails. Because the use of clones doesn't have a direct impact on either Anakin or the Senate's stories.

Edit: I finished the post this one here originally spun out of!

You can find it here:

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Animation Face-Offs

I find it amusing that the first real major animated movie box office show-off is occurring some 35 years after the one that arguably started it all...

November 18, 1988... Walt Disney Feature Animation's celebrity-loaded modern musical OLIVER & COMPANY from first-time director George Scribner, and Universal's release of the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas-produced ex-Disney director Don Bluth adventure THE LAND BEFORE TIME...

This wasn't the first time two animated pictures opened next to each other.

In fall 1982, Hanna-Barbera's HEIDI'S SONG opened opposite a Looney Tunes clipshow anthology movie called 1001 RABBIT TALES. Combined, they made $5m at the domestic box office... Not great times to open an animated feature that wasn't Disney, and not that their distributors probably even cared at the time anyways.

Sometimes, there are around two animated features a month. It's not uncommon for two studios to share. Off the top of my head, you had - in November 2010 - MEGAMIND at the beginning of the month, and TANGLED before Thanksgiving. In the early summer of 2013, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY only opened about a few weeks before DESPICABLE ME 2. TROLLS and MOANA shared November 2016. Again, just random examples off the top of my head.

But usually, they're spaced out... TROLLS BAND TOGETHER and WISH are five days apart...

TROLLS 3 is projected to take in around $20-25m this weekend, which is significantly less than what TROLLS took in back in 2016, but still alright for this kind of movie. WISH is set to out-open it, with over $50m for the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend stretch. For a $200m-costing movie, it's going to need all the legs in the world to get by. TROLLS 3 will need to pull some good weight too to more than double its much more modest $95m budget. (Wild to think that $95m seems *low*... There was a time when a DreamWorks/PDI movie cost $75m... And for a good while, roughly $135m!)

I'm curious to see how each film affects one another. Families aren't made of money, and there's gotta be a kind of adult pull to really make big bucks, and I'm not sure if either of these films have that. Plus you have stuff like WONKA right around the corner... Thankfully no Marvel, Star Wars, or Avatar movie to counter with. Although, PUSS IN BOOTS Dos last year, woooooow. That cat held his own against the blue cat aliens.

But yeah, if you think about it... This is a rare head-to-head race.

One could argue we saw this in late winter of 2021 when Warner Bros. released their live-action TOM & JERRY, and then Disney Animation had RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON out a week later. But that was before vaccines got out for all age groups (they were distributed to the elderly first, I - who was 28 at the time - couldn't get my first shot until April.), and the films had simultaneous streaming debuts, so I don't really count that. Plus, Cinemark theaters refused to show RAYA over a disagreement on who got most of the earnings. (That would've been my return trip to the movies after a year-long hiatus, my return ended up being A QUIET PLACE: PART II two months later.)

It's funny how TROLLS 3 is Universal and WISH is Disney... Just like how LAND BEFORE TIME was Universal, and OLIVER was Disney.

The Disney-Universal race was successful for both. OLIVER took home $53m domestically (the $71m figure you often see comes from the film's 1996 re-release), LAND BEFORE TIME took home $48m. Worldwide is up the air, because Disney never released OLIVER's numbers, Universal reported that LAND made around $84m. Winner is unknown, but it was always assumed to be LAND. Maybe because dinosaurs are more Universal than a modern-day New York comedy? Who knows!

Perhaps greatly inspired by that double-whammy of animated hits, MGM/United Artists wanted to try that for themselves. Don Bluth split with Spielberg and Lucas due to creative disagreements during production of both LAND BEFORE TIME and his other Spielberg collab AN AMERICAN TAIL, and set up ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN with the lion. MGM/UA released ALL DOGS the same day as THE LITTLE MERMAID...

Bluth's movie got left to sink by the Ron Clements and John Musker-directed musical sleeper hit... It wasn't even close. $27m domestic vs. $84m domestic, and in addition that, MERMAID's worldwide figures put it at roughly $183m. (Again, in 1989-90, without the 1997 re-release counted.) ALL DOG's worldwide total is unknown.

This didn't entirely scare distributors away from trying again.

The fall of 1990 was originally set to see another Bluth vs. Disney face-off. If plans had held, MGM-Pathe would've released Bluth's ROCK-A-DOODLE on the same day as Disney's sequel THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER. MGM-Pathe ran into financial and legal problems, putting Bluth's film in limbo for a bit...

Instead, Warner Bros. went toe to toe with Disney, releasing an animated feature that wasn't a Looney Tunes clipshow: THE NUTCRACKER PRINCE... Suffice to say, it barely scrounged up $1m domestically, and Disney's sequel had troubles of its own, stalling at $29m domestically, $47m worldwide.

Two films fled from the autumn of 1991, as BEAUTY AND THE BEAST looked to not be a repeat of RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, but a repeat of LITTLE MERMAID and OLIVER's successes... 20th Century Fox - who had FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST - and The Samuel Goldwyn Company - who picked up ROCK-A-DOODLE - chickened, literally in the latter's case...

Only Universal had the guts to take on the beast... By releasing AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST the same day. The Don Bluth-less sequel made only $22m domestically, while BEAUTY AND THE BEAST made... $145m in North America alone, and blew up with $331m around the world...

After FERNGULLY and ROCK-A-DOODLE wisely fled from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, they duked it out in April 1992. DOODLE opened the first weekend of the month, with FERNGULLY following. FERNGULLY won with $24m domestically, DOODLE struggled with $11m. (It's worth noting that DOODLE first came out in the UK in August of 1991.)

Universal initially thought they'd have WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY ready to compete with ALADDIN, but they likely realized that that was not a great idea... WE'RE BACK! opened over a full year after ALADDIN and still flopped hard. It opened nearby BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM, which also made a paltry amount.

From there on out, things were typically spaced out. Sometimes the smaller efforts opened close to each other.

And now here we are, Thanksgiving week of 2023... We have trolls vs. wishing stars. Universal vs. Disney. It'll be fun to watch, but I hope the two film crews of both get to put food on their tables once more.

[darthvaders]

What’s the tea with George Lucas and Disney??

He wanted to make sequels but no studios would finance it, bc the prequels got critically panned so they thought the brand was dead (lmao) but disney was ready to finance the sequels if he sold them the rights. He did it thinking they would take his ideas but they decided to do their own thing so he moved on. (x)(x)

All in all he didn't like TFA, haven't speak much since then. But he said this:

“The other thing that got abused, the studios and everything said, ‘Wow, we can make a lot of money. This is the license to kill.’ And they did it. And the only way you can do that is not take chances, only do something that’s proven… "

“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that,” Lucas adds. “Every movie, I work very hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships, make it new.”

"I got to move on. And everything in your body says, don't, you can't — and these are my kids. All those Star Wars films ... I loved them, I created them, I'm very intimately involved in them, and I sold them to the white slavers that take these things."

He was on set of The Mandalorian season 1 so I guess Disney tried to mend things with him after the backlash the sequels got but yeah, he's not a fan.