Star Wars Griefing Thread (SPOILERS) - Safety off

[Sneed F91]

No one is saying that JJ knew what he was doing, or had some long detailed plan. Various people involved, from producers, editors, from JJ to the actors have made mention about plans that got scrapped and ignored, undone with TLJ.

One simply has to pay attention to the plot of TFA to what the story was.

Rey has a mysterious past, she doesn't know what it is, she's been abandoned on a planet. A sand dune away from Luke's buddy with a map to Luke. Is drawn to and comes in contact with the lightsabre and the force Awakens in her. Suggesting it was sleeping and she is shown a connection to Luke.

The film specifically sets up that Han, Kylo, Maz and I think Snoke all suspect or have ideas as to who Rey is or may be.

Rey goes off at the end to find Luke because she hopes he has the key to answering this central mystery. Who is she and what is this power.

It's the damn plot of the film. Not having a part two that pays any of this off, doesn't mean this isn't the story.

I'm sorry but your post is seriously reaching into headcanon territory.

@The Gangster Computer said it better than I can:

There were no plans by JJ or Kennedy and I seriously don't know where people keep getting these fanfic ideas about JJ and Rey.

You can argue that what you wrote is part of the story of TFA, but I'm trying to argue that none of that shit is interesting because Rey is not interesting. All I got out of your post is that Rey is the super special Mary Sue that the entire story unnaturally revolves around for some reason. Compare this to ANH where the main plot with the planet destroying Death Star and the drama involving the main characters perfectly compliment each other.

Where do the Space Nazis and Death Star planet fit into this? Also, wasn't the movie about finding Luke Skywalker and getting him to " help restore peace and justice in the galaxy"? That's what the title crawl says.

Other than why Luke is on the island, none of the mystery boxes in the story are mysteries to the characters in TFA. They don't ask who Rey's parents are, where the First Order came from, or who Snoke is because they already know or don't care. Rey's past is only mysterious only to the audience. She never once implies that she never knew the identities of her parents, she just never says them because MYSTERY BOX LMAO.

Not only that, but there's a scene where Maz tells Rey that her parents are not coming back and that she needs to look for Luke and be a Jedi solely because she's the protagonist and the story says she needs to be one. Most people gloss over this for some reason, including Rian. Sure the characters are written to say "they might know who this girl is", but the writer themselves didn't. It's an empty mystery box. It's made to lead the fans on for as long as possible so that they can consume as much product as possible.

I cannot in good conscience believe JJ had an outline for the trilogy considering the timeline of the production of TFA and how he's worked with other projects of his in the past. What's the point in having ""plans"" if you make little to no effort to fight for them to be properly executed in the sequels? Because JJ clearly never cared. After TFA raked in the cash, he took the money and ran because he didn't know what he was doing. George didn't pull any shit like that during the OT even though he could have, he stayed and reworked the story between all three films in the OT.

At the end of the day, taking into account everything we've ever known about how the force works, none of this shit would have ever explained how Rey can master the force with no problems, never suffer any serious consequences or setbacks for her actions, and be generally good at everything.

Usually in films like this main protagonists have personalities and character traits that make them interesting on top of having mysterious backstories that get explored in the story. If the only compelling thing about a character is their backstory and nothing else, the character sucks, period.

Edit: After going through your post again I have a better understanding of the point you were trying to make about the general plot of the film, but my thoughts about the plot and character still stand. I agree Rey has a past that's mysterious to the audience. Maz could have "suspected" who Rey "was" but made no attempt to help her (for no apparent reason), instead hoping that Rey finds some suicidal hermit and figures it out. It's too vague to tell with Han and who the hell knows/cares about Snoke?

 

[Registration]

You know the planet Exegol right, and the whole Sith dudes there.

I think dsney went full retarded with not the concept but the execution.

How would I attempt to fix this: Instead of being humans in troopers uniforms, I would use CIS ships and droids from that era. All these weapons aren't originally from the Emperor, but a sidejob from Dooku who eventually was going to war with the Republic/empire, but was killed before. His intent was to kill his master after some time but got beheaded by Anakin before it.
Would it make sense, right? But in the real world, they would need to sell toys for get more profit, so I imagine instead of normal droids, they would sell toys of the droids with the sith emblem painted on them. you could even add new guns to it or give some upgrades or something.

The same goes for the ships, so even the memberries are kept in tact with the CIS droids and ships being represented.

It would make much more sense than having thousands of people on a dead planet just waiting decades to do anything

what you guys think about it? How would you change this bit to make more sense?

 

[Sneed F91]

The time for a sequel trilogy with any ties to the Original Cast was when Lucas was making the prequels.

The late 90s - 2000s would have been the perfect time to make a sequel trilogy. The actors were just old enough to have matured since the OT, and you could believe that they'd still be able to kick ass and fight on the frontlines of a war, instead of having a bunch of geriatrics sitting around being old and miserable, barely able to keep up with the new cast of actors. A female MC with an actual personality and flaws. Competent male characters. That, and there'd be no forced subversive politics since that shit didn't start until the mid 2010s. It's obvious George never cared to make sequels, since he made the prequels instead and only wrote sequel outline because he knew Disney was gonna make sequels before selling the company.

All they needed to do was:

• Have George on the story and special effects only
• Hire a talented writer to make George's ideas make sense with good dialogue
• Hire a talented (and competent) director or directors who understand and care about Star Wars

Too bad that never happened.

 

[Kup]

It would've also meant the first and only time that the Legacy era would've been playable in video game form...which would've been an instant sell for an EU Lore Fiend like me.

Like, to have Darth Krayt and the One Sith as NPC's or enemies...that sounds like the greatest Star Wars game ever made.

So many sells for me, Maul as full-blown villain protagonist, Legacy era, gritty aesthetic, lightsaber maiming in standard combat, Darth Talon, Mandalorians, adopting the vibe of the Maul comic series where he rocked the shirtless look and some Phantom Menace kino with the probe droids.

I even like the Filonishit with Savage being there, that leaves room for some fun banter. Their twist on the master/apprentice dynamic was legitimately interesting and it would’ve been cool to see it play out.

But we don’t get good things, we are sinners and instead we get Fallen Order. A bug-eyed nigger, the faggot from Shameless, a dyke Nightsister, a pajeet Sith and Dark Souls-lite combat.

 

[Shekelslovakia]

If only they made Rey go back in time by some reason either by Palpatine or some veil of the force. She ends up on Tatooine with her memory erase,her Jedi powers gone but only to find out that she is pregnant with child. In actuality the force she had went into the unborn child since palpatine could control the mini-chlorians to create life. She ends up going under a different name but still keeps the Skywalker last name.

TLDR: Rey becomes Shimi and the baby is Anakin. Making the whole Skywalker Saga one big paradoxical meaning you can watch him in any order you want but the story will one continuous loop similar to the original Planet Of The Apes films and the first three of Terminator films.

 

[Mississippi Motorboater]

I even like the Filonishit with Savage being there, that leaves room for some fun banter. Their twist on the master/apprentice dynamic was legitimately interesting and it would’ve been cool to see it play out.

I mean, if the EU has taught me anything, it's that the right author can take a concept from the otherwise unsightly TCW show and make it work.

I hated the Mortis Arc and all of its cerebral fanficky bullshit up until Troy Denning fixed it in the Fate of the Jedi series by retconning it to the moon and back using some old-school SW proto-lore from the Marvel days.

 

[HarpersFerryWest]

The immersion obsession and everything needing storytelling is what derailed them hardcore.

I've said this before, but they should have just built a luxury hotel based on the Palace of Naboo or something. It'd attract non-Star Wars fans as well, just being a nice premium hotel. Where you can lean into some Star Wars stuff or not. Just be a nice environment to relax when you aren't in the parks or day tripping.

People stay at the Grand Floridian because it is very pretty and nice. Not because they have a hard-on for Victorian-era hotels.

Then just make some mid to lower budget hotels based on some different planets. Or one big one with a few different sections themed around different worlds. Then just have fun with it. Have a big At-AT next to a swimming pool, with a water slide coming out of it in a Hoth themed section. Have the main dining area be a Tatooine cantina and so forth.

It doesn't need to have a story or make any internal logic. Just be fun, so people will go, "Hey kids, check it out, the room looks out onto an X-Wing!"

Have golf carts that a vague themed like speeders with droid domes to ferry guests and luggage to their rooms.

People would lap that shit up.

You know what, that's actually a really neat idea! I'm shocked that an idea like this - which would be far less expensive to build and more appealing to general audiences - would just slip my mind.

Using the prequels and original trilogies as inspiration, there's also so much more that can be done with the more grounded hotel theming. Your mention of Naboo is totally spot on, since the hotel that would come out of it would essentially be an Italian/Spanish-inspired palace with some fantastical elements. It would still definitely be a sci-fi place, but still far enough within the margins of reality to be enjoyable for all. The guests could enjoy the fancy design of the hotel, get immersed in the setting, open the windows for fresh air, and still receive basic hotel amenities from the phone service and the lobby convenience stores. Even people I've talked to who aren't that into "Star Wars" tend to really like the look of Naboo, to the point where it's one of the handful of things that they remember as a complete positive from Episode I. Similar to "Star Tours," this hotel would also benefit from the idea that it's a cultural exchange from Naboo to Earth. It would make sense for characters from the movies to show up for meet-and-greets, since they'd be "visiting" Earth at this galactic hotel. Rather than having the patrons go through the trouble of "getting on a space cruise," the beloved characters are coming to see the patrons, which makes them feel more honored and special. It's these subtle details that if handled correctly, are a hospitality designer's dream come true.

I actually got excited at the simple brilliance of this idea, which of course makes me all the more sad when I realized how over-designed and over-budget the "Star Wars" hotel we're getting will be. The best way to solve a problem really is the simplest, isn't it? I guess Disney still has to figure that out.

 

[Ghostse]

The film specifically sets up that Han, Kylo, Maz and I think Snoke all suspect or have ideas as to who Rey is or may be.
[...]
It's the damn plot of the film. Not having a part two that pays any of this off, doesn't mean this isn't the story.

You're falling for JJ's mystery box bullshit.
Ok, so Han & Maz (and Snoke) believe that Rey has some force powers. WHERE do they do anything to hint its Palps? They don't. They just have everyone acting cagey and secretive around Rey because they know something, but aren't saying what it is. It could be anything - and that's just as JJ intended.
This is how that nigga operate. He sets up something interesting, but has no idea how to deliver on it.
LOST contains a roadmap to all of JJ's writing.

Again, JJ made the mistake a lot of abused wives star wars consoomers made, which is "Disney paid $4 billion for this, they certainly aren't going to shit up the franchise by hiring retards who have no idea what they're doing". He thought he was going to set up mystery boxes, then someone who was actually good at writing would deliver the contents, and he'd get all the credit. Then Roundhead instead pissed on everything.
And you are falling into that trap with the ruins of JJ's mystery boxes. He didn't intend for Rey to be Palp's granddaughter. She was to have mysterious important origin, but left it open. He came back for TROS and was told "Cram it with memberberries; we have seriously fucked things up and we need to cram as much nostalgia and social justice as we possibly can into this thing to try make the trannies and fans from getting angry"

 

[Registration]

@Mississippi Motorboater

you convinced me to read Tales of Jedi, but I am in doubt of which version should I read, the dark horse 2 omnibus version covers it all?

 

[ZMOT]

Daisy Ridley is not a good actress.

doesn't really matter, hardly anyone blew me away in the OT by their thespian excellence. in a way she suffered the same fate as hayden christensen by having to make do with an absolute shit script - and while that may sound as a big defense, truth is even the other actors who (depending who you ask, but laura dern is an award winning actress) are actually good had an absolute shit performance, so we'll never know. despite the upper middle class white girl nonsense there was still potential there, ironically just like it was for TFA. ffs those are the same people who had her run around in the same outfit for almost 3 movies (TLJ only really changed the color and hair and was quickly changed back afterwards).

I mean, I will give JJ and RoS one thing and it's that deciding to make a retarded rip off of Dark Empire was downright novel and inspired compared to the last two which were just lazy and retarded rip offs of the OT.

it's lucasfilm and jarjar, there was nothing novel about it after they were cribbing off the EU the whole time. kylo ren is more or less jacen with the nametag filed off. even if you consider "what if han's and leia's son turns baaaaaaaaad" is the piss easiest idea to have, given what else they (didn't) came up with that's like a stroke of genius. you can pretty much bet some trust fund assistant was browsing wookipedia while taking a shit and sold it as some grand idea.
it's also one of the reasons he's pretty much the only one that resembles somewhat of an actual character if you squint hard enough, since those concepts were established long before by better authors. everyone else is barely above a cardboard cutout, even the old characters got flattened to their bare minimum.

No one is saying that JJ knew what he was doing, or had some long detailed plan. Various people involved, from producers, editors, from JJ to the actors have made mention about plans that got scrapped and ignored, undone with TLJ.

One simply has to pay attention to the plot of TFA to what the story was.

Rey has a mysterious past, she doesn't know what it is, she's been abandoned on a planet. A sand dune away from Luke's buddy with a map to Luke. Is drawn to and comes in contact with the lightsabre and the force Awakens in her. Suggesting it was sleeping and she is shown a connection to Luke.

The film specifically sets up that Han, Kylo, Maz and I think Snoke all suspect or have ideas as to who Rey is or may be.

Rey goes off at the end to find Luke because she hopes he has the key to answering this central mystery. Who is she and what is this power.

It's the damn plot of the film. Not having a part two that pays any of this off, doesn't mean this isn't the story.

I don't really want to kick a downed man, but in addition what others have said I think the issue is that a bunch of random plot hooks in front of an empty canvas that is a new star wars trilogy might look like a plan, but it's not. can't even blame you, jarjar's mystery box is successful for a reason, otherwise he would just be some no-name if everybody could immediately smell the stains of hackfraud on him. the "plan", if you wanna call it that were at best some cliffnotes where they _could_ go (which exist because jarjar writes his characters and scenarios backwards), not something to follow.

it makes sense when you understand how jarjar works. an actual good writer would take a character and give him traits and a backstory as an explanation for said traits. then give that character a goal in line with his personality so it's understandable why he's going on that journey and a reason for the reader or viewer to wanting to keep following the story. so the question would be "what are his motives? why does he do what he does the way he does it? is it interesting? does it make sense?".
jarjar on the other hand is all about the effect and what it takes to string people along, not to create a good character on it's own or even a good story. all style, no substance. that's why TROS is such a great movie, it's peak jarjar in it's purest form: constant barrage of visuals and dialog in a pace you simple can't take a step back and process what is actually happening, because if you did everything would immediately fall apart, like a magic trick you figure out. that's why the mystery box works, you're not supposed to think about what's actually in the box (surprise! it's nothing!), but what you THINK is inside - because in your mind it will always be miles above any reality, you gonna fill the ambiguity with your own best headcanon; and at the end you're supposed to be so numb and distracted you forgot ever thinking about the contents of the box in the first place. it's perfect for the braindead consoomer who can read something and immediately afterwards not remember a thing he just read.

what gave people a false sense of comfort (same thing which tripped you up) is even with TFA there was still plenty of room to go in any direction. just like ruin johnson took that mystery box and put a turd in it, someone else could've done the opposite (unlikely under disney, but at that point back then we also didn't know what we do now). I'd go as far and say even after TLJ it was still salvageable, but what disney did was like hiring the same plumber again after he "fixed" your sink with plywood and ducttape.

 

[TinCan Wizard]

I mean, if the EU has taught me anything, it's that the right author can take a concept from the otherwise unsightly TCW show and make it work.

I hated the Mortis Arc and all of its cerebral fanficky bullshit up until Troy Denning fixed it in the Fate of the Jedi series by retconning it to the moon and back using some old-school SW proto-lore from the Marvel days.

Can you detail more on the Marvel lore beign tied to Mortis? Sounds interesting. I'm also planning a comic marathon, so I'm looking forward to it. Gonna go through the original Marvel run, the Thrawn trilogy comic, Dark Empire and Crimson Empire.

 

[The Ugly One]

I still think Rey could work in a movie. Just hire competent filmmakers, ditch the trilogy aspect, and ignore the dumber shit from the sequels. She would be the new Luke battlin' evil across the galaxy with her perfect cherry ass.

It's very difficult to have a woman convincingly play a heroic figure. You need the perfect actress and writer, and Daisy Ridley is no Sigourney Weaver.

Just also echoing that Darth Talon is very worth having a hard-on over.

@The Gangster Computer
I can't quote, and I'll just say this:
The time for a sequel trilogy with any ties to the Original Cast was when Lucas was making the prequels. Everyone was too old in the 2010s. They should have had Luke just be a mythical figure. If he gets brought back at all, it should be as a force ghost. Everyone in the OT should have long dead for the ST, instead of forcing their mummified remains to shamble about for the camera.
Hell, if you want to just go ahead and cement the First Order = Nahtzees, have it be lead by a senator convincing the 'imperial core' world they needed to reclaim their rightful place and remove the humiliating restrictions/reparations put on them after the galactic civil war.

Of course the problem there is then the movie needs to stand on its own merits instead of memberberries.

They could have used the original cast in their old age if the setup to the new movie had been that there has been 30 years of peace since Luke & Crew defeated Palpatine and destroyed the Death Star, but oh no, now there's a new threat! Some young guy is...bad. Or something. Luke & Leia are now important, high-ranking people who are too busy to have their eyes on the low level where the bad things are happening. But JJ screwed up the setting at the outset, and they had nowhere to go but down.

 

[Creep3r]

Can you detail more on the Marvel lore beign tied to Mortis? Sounds interesting. I'm also planning a comic marathon, so I'm looking forward to it. Gonna go through the original Marvel run, the Thrawn trilogy comic, Dark Empire and Crimson Empire.

Mostly the stuff from Marvel UK that was later compiled in the Devilworlds collection which in 2008 Lucasfilm became more interested in re-canonizing by referencing them again in guide books and future stories like SW Encyclopedia, RPG articles, Fate of the Jedi and the unreleased Supernatural Encounters and Cult Encounters novels-data books (spoiler: one of the characters from said comics turns out to be the "mother" of Abeloth in the "eldritch corpse spawn" sense.).

It's very difficult to have a woman convincingly play a heroic figure. You need the perfect actress and writer, and Daisy Ridley is no Sigourney Weaver.


They could have used the original cast in their old age if the setup to the new movie had been that there has been 30 years of peace since Luke & Crew defeated Palpatine and destroyed the Death Star, but oh no, now there's a new threat! Some young guy is...bad. Or something. Luke & Leia are now important, high-ranking people who are too busy to have their eyes on the low level where the bad things are happening. But JJ screwed up the setting at the outset, and they had nowhere to go but down.

This would've been the best way to go about it without utterly disgracing the characters and their accomplishments (or making the setting feel lifeless) just to make it easier for Disney's ugly ass or hollow OCs to overshadow them. Even for all the shit the prequels get, they at least didn't undo the ending of the OT or the success of its characters while still leaving Luke and his friends as the saviors of the galaxy and of a new path for the jedi, unlike the sequels completely rendering them meaningless and turning all the original characters into assholes just so Disney's obnoxious brit mary sue with a hormonal imbalance can become the true hero and savior of the galaxy who establishes a better jedi order.

Either that or have the stupid sequels take place so far off into the future, hell have it be thousands of years, so there's zero chance to have to bring up any character fates like Legacy did to leave it up to your imagination, not have to worry too much about continuity, allow enough time for change and just have the films tie together via Luke and Leia's ghosts as guiding mentors or voices of reasons while also giving you the option of retreading plot points in a gay unoriginal manner even since enough time has passed to allow a repeat in history at the very least.

Edit:

@Mississippi Motorboater

you convinced me to read Tales of Jedi, but I am in doubt of which version should I read, the dark horse 2 omnibus version covers it all?

Yeah, there's also the Tales of the Jedi companion sourcebook for further details and two audio books if you're interested, however the audio books only adapt some of the runs, although they're not mandatory to enjoy the comics. The Power of the Jedi sourcebook also has more backstory on some of the characters iirc which is entirely optional too but an interesting read if you happened to like characters like Odan-Urr and Arca.

 

[The Ugly One]

This would've been the best way to go about it without utterly disgracing the characters and their accomplishments (or making the setting feel lifeless) just to make it easier for Disney's ugly ass or hollow OCs to overshadow them. Even for all the shit the prequels get, they at least didn't undo the ending of the OT or the success of its characters while still leaving Luke and his friends as the saviors of the galaxy and of a new path for the jedi, unlike the sequels completely rendering them meaningless and turning all the original characters into assholes just so Disney's obnoxious brit mary sue with a hormonal imbalance can become the true hero and savior of the galaxy who establishes a better jedi order.

Either that or have the stupid sequels take place so far off into the future, hell have it be thousands of years, so there's zero chance to have to bring up any character fates like Legacy did to leave it up to your imagination, not have to worry too much about continuity, allow enough time for change and just have the films tie together via Luke and Leia's ghosts as guiding mentors or voices of reasons while also giving you the option of retreading plot points in a gay unoriginal manner even since enough time has passed to allow a repeat in history at the very least.

They wouldn't have even had Luke's ghost be the voice of reason. He's a white male, so Rian Johnson would have subverted expectations by making Luke's ghost continually wrong as Rey demonstrates time and time again that she's just a font of Girl Power and doesn't need any stupid old fuddy-duddy from the past telling her what to do. In fact, if they set it in the future, the plot would probably revolve around Rey dealing with the legacy of the Luke-era Republic's racism, and Luke's Force Ghost would be useless precisely because his racist/sexist/homophobic outlook has rendered him irrelevant, and the whole trilogy would be nothing more than a hamfisted allegory for the 1619 Project.

 

[Sneed F91]

@ZMOT

doesn't really matter, hardly anyone blew me away in the OT by their thespian excellence. in a way she suffered the same fate as hayden christensen by having to make do with an absolute shit script

Every actor in both trilogies had to deal with shit writing, so it's hard to use that as an excuse. People couldn't shut up about Adam Driver's performance as Kylo Ren but he's one of the worst written characters in each movie. But my point was that Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence both managed to break out from their roles in YA adaptation hell to become praised actresses, because they had talent. Daisy has not shown much, if any real ability to act in anything since Star Wars ended and it was only hurt by playing the biggest, blandest, Mary Sue imaginable. Every actor in the DT manages to act around Daisy, but I will say that some like Driver and Boyega manage to make her performance slightly better.

It's very difficult to have a woman convincingly play a heroic figure.

It really depends. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley was a once in a lifetime sort of thing. You can't have a woman as Arnold in Conan or something, you just have to write a female protagonist as a female, which is admittedly hard to do. Don't make something weird like Rey with little to no female traits. You could literally replace her with a 12 year old boy and apart from the romance with Kylo it'd be exactly the same.

They wouldn't have even had Luke's ghost be the voice of reason. He's a white male, so Rian Johnson would have subverted expectations by making Luke's ghost continually wrong as Rey demonstrates time and time again that she's just a font of Girl Power and doesn't need any stupid old fuddy-duddy from the past telling her what to do. In fact, if they set it in the future, the plot would probably revolve around Rey dealing with the legacy of the Luke-era Republic's racism, and Luke's Force Ghost would be useless precisely because his racist/sexist/homophobic outlook has rendered him irrelevant, and the whole trilogy would be nothing more than a hamfisted allegory for the 1619 Project.

Rian already did that shit in TLJ. He was the personification of the outdated old ways of the Jedi like Obi Wan and Yoda (even if it didn't make sense for his character), while Rey was the socially conscious new ways of the Jedi who knew better than some old straight white male. She saw the good in Kylo for no other reason than because she wanted to fuck him because Luke couldn't. Disney Luke was wrong about everything.

forgot to post this earlier

 

[Adamska]

Rian already did that shit in TLJ. He was the personification of the outdated old ways of the Jedi like Obi Wan and Yoda (even if it didn't make sense for his character), while Rey was the socially conscious new ways of the Jedi who knew better than some old straight white male. She saw the good in Kylo for no other reason than because she wanted to fuck him because Luke couldn't. Disney Luke was wrong about everything.

You know the funniest thing; at the end Ruin was still ripping off Jorge then; he just did the final movie's conflict instead. So in trying to pretend he's creative, he rips off another OT film instead.

 

[Sneed F91]

You know the funniest thing; at the end Ruin was still ripping off Jorge then; he just did the final movie's conflict instead. So in trying to pretend he's creative, he rips off another OT film instead.

I'm pretty sure the lines of dialogue in the throne room scenes of ROTJ and TLJ are nearly the same.

TLJ was a pretty blatant copy of ESB and ROTJ. I've said it before but Rian is a boring, uncreative filmmaker. Deconstructing something requires zero effort. The people who say that it tried to do something "different" are retards distracted by the film's subversive attitude, pretty pictures, and Rian's baffling execution of his terrible script to really see it.

 

[Ghostse]

They could have used the original cast in their old age if the setup to the new movie had been that there has been 30 years of peace since Luke & Crew defeated Palpatine and destroyed the Death Star, but oh no, now there's a new threat! Some young guy is...bad. Or something. Luke & Leia are now important, high-ranking people who are too busy to have their eyes on the low level where the bad things are happening. But JJ screwed up the setting at the outset, and they had nowhere to go but down.

Or you have Luke missing because he's been put into force-prison by Snoke.

The problem with having Luke/Leia/Han being successful is you run into YA novel "Low stakes because the adults have it" problems. Which while its en vogue to shit on YA shit, YA is great for kids in that young adults in western cultures where its better to merely Not Fuck Up, and while its formulaic it doesn't need to be high art. (However people being 29 and still holding Harry Potter out as the pinnacle of Literary perfection... fire away.) The problem is that the sort of constrained-stakes of YA doesn't translate well to Space Opera where everything is to be exaggerated and melodramatic. Which as discussed, while star wars has enough space for you to tell whatever stories you want to tell (i.e. Jedi Academy) for a main-line Numbered Release you don't want that.

If you start with the "good guys" in power you end up with...well, The Phantom Menace.

It really depends. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley was a once in a lifetime sort of thing. You can't have a woman as Arnold in Conan or something, you just have to write a female protagonist as a female, which is admittedly hard to do. Don't make something weird like Rey with little to no female traits. You could literally replace her with a 12 year old boy and apart from the romance with Kylo it'd be exactly the same.

It's very difficult to have a woman convincingly play a heroic figure. You need the perfect actress and writer, and Daisy Ridley is no Sigourney Weaver.

Sigourney Weaver also took two movies to become Ripley, where she repeatedly demonstrated and honed her skills underpressure. She was also able to be wrong, make bad decisions, be put into serious trouble (and rescued! by evil males!). None of that heretical shit is allowed in CURRENT YEAR.

 

[Sex Cannon Lupa]

@ZMOT

Every actor in both trilogies had to deal with shit writing, so it's hard to use that as an excuse. People couldn't shut up about Adam Driver's performance as Kylo Ren but he's one of the worst written characters in each movie. But my point was that Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence both managed to break out from their roles in YA adaptation hell to become praised actresses, because they had talent. Daisy has not shown much, if any real ability to act in anything since Star Wars ended and it was only hurt by playing the biggest, blandest, Mary Sue imaginable. Every actor in the DT manages to act around Daisy, but I will say that some like Driver and Boyega manage to make her performance slightly better.

imo Daisy is objectively a better actor that Hayden Christensen. Watch any of his recent work compared to stuff he did two decades ago and he's the exact same wooden thespian only slightly older looking. Daisy isn't great, but she's adequate and capable of at least two emotions (such as the CHEWIE! moment). For a chick who's biggest role was playing a topless corpse, and who got her part literally because she resembles Keira Knightley, I'd say she's been quite successful, like an undrafted QB nobody expected to last the preseason becoming your long-term backup.

She's a cokehead and maybe she's hard to work with, I don't know, but the fact that she can't get any real roles is weird. I don't think it's fair to compare her to Driver, Oscar, and pretty much the entire cast, though, because they were all established actors before Star Whores.

TLJ was a pretty blatant copy of ESB and ROTJ. I've said it before but Rian is a boring, uncreative filmmaker. Deconstructing something requires zero effort. The people who say that it tried to do something "different" are retards distracted by the film's subversive attitude, pretty pictures, and Rian's baffling execution of his terrible script to really see it.

Uncreative? Bro! He put the Hoth scene at the end of the movie, and made the snow salt!

 

[Mississippi Motorboater]

Can you detail more on the Marvel lore beign tied to Mortis? Sounds interesting. I'm also planning a comic marathon, so I'm looking forward to it. Gonna go through the original Marvel run, the Thrawn trilogy comic, Dark Empire and Crimson Empire.

Ninja'd by @The Gangster Computer , but since he's illustrated the ties to the Marvel comics before me, I wanted to add this:

I'd recommend you add the Dark Horse adaptation of Shadows of the Empire as well as Mara Jade: By The Emperor's Hand to your comic marathon...the latter especially works as a great lead-in to The Thrawn Trilogy by detailing Mara's experiences as the consequences of Endor unfold.