You guys remember when Ruin Johnson got praise for the "Fly" episode of breaking bad?
It's a shame that the Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Die Fly, Die" didn't receive the same praise, seeing as it is the same premise.
Maybe we would have had a Mike Judge Star Wars instead.
So speaking of fixing High Republic, some friends of mine saw the remade art that made tards cry since it's inspired by Frank Frazetta.
So I showed off some of Frank's works, like these:
Who of course inspired a lot of the old SW posters and was admired by Lucas himself due to his prevalence in drawing sci-fi and pulp from his childhood years:
This was one aspect I sort of wish the Prequels had done a better job of addressing. Which is about the only time I'll say that because "Slavery bad" is a really, really overdone and dumb hot-take. But as a former slave, it would have totally made sense for Vader to keep going on after his family was dead because, fuck it, we're killing all the slavers.
Which would have also opened up some irony with shit like the Wookie death camps & the spice mines, where you could start have some Imperials who believe in the idea of the Empire but not what its turned into.
If a corporation started blockading North Dakota (which isn't possible) with actual military force, the US military would be on that shit like nobody's business. It doesn't matter if it's a small state or not.
The republic was more like intergalactic UN than a nation-state.
This would be closer to in some shit going down in Venezuela or Iran and Saudi Arabia fueling the Yemen crisis. There's a lot of stern rebukes flying and diplomats trying to talk both parties into making sense, but the will to actually use the military is weak because:
- the cost
- the PR hit to individual nation leaders
- The lack of actual goals
- delay in arraying response usually means the crisis has effectively resolved itself
- many powerful members don't want the rest of their world meddling in their affairs
Look at the UN interventions in Rwanda (for an example of things not going to complete shit) and Somali (for a 'jesus fuck this was never going to end up well' example).
In Rwanda you had an active genocide going on, but the UN troops for the most part had to sit around, watch and report until information made it back to leadership. By the time the UN could do anything, the situation was already mostly resolved.
In Somali, you had an international force with extremely vague orders, no real clear goal, and due to the way the UN was running things, often having to openly colaborate with the people and forces they were ostensibly there to fight/remove.
One interesting thing the EU/Legends did well is utilizing novelizations to enhance the films, rather than being some supposed convoluted uber narrative. This was especially true for the prequel era work.
Labyrinth of Evil and the RotS novelisation are both outstanding, and the Sith novel is one of the best Star Wars books written.
No kidding. And apparently, Lucas gave author Matthew Stover an extensive list of narrative alterations he wanted specifically for the novelization, to the point where the ROTS novel can be considered something of an unofficial Director's Cut.
Come to think of it, all three Prequel Novelizations feel an awful lot like the Expanded Editions of each of the three movies. I mean, you know they're packed with detail when the novelization for TPM doesn't even get into the actual beginning of the film until seven chapters in. The whole beginning of the book deals with worldbuilding on both Tatooine and between Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan that should've been in the film. And AOTC's novelization include deleted scenes from the film like the one with Padme's family, in order to properly flesh her and Anakin's relationship out beyond pretty getaways and picnics.
And that's the difference between the novelizations for the PT and the ST: the prequels have enough good concepts to generate novelizations that give finer detail and better execution for things that already existed in the films, whereas the ST novelizations are working off such poor source material that authors like Jason Fry and Alan Dean Foster have to essentially come up with entire aspects of the story from scratch.
Or, y'know...in the case of Rae Carson, just reinterprate the same barebones events of the films through the filter of tripe YA romantic prose and saccharine internal monologues. Because nothing enhances a Star Wars movie like reading what feels like the Stephanie Meyer rewrite of the script.
Who of course inspired a lot of the old SW posters and was admired by Lucas himself due to his prevalence in drawing sci-fi and pulp from his childhood years: View attachment 1268583
Not only that, but artists working within the EU were highly inspired by Frazetta too, as indicated by Dave Dorman's cover art for various Dark Horse Comics.
Disney/LFL shut the door on Star Wars comic book art ever being good again when they passed over legitimately talented Dark Horse artists like Jan Duursema in favor of tracing hacks at Marvel like Salvadore Larocca.
Episode 1) Amidala is a queen. Why? Because Leia is a space princess - so how can she be a princess if her mom was never a queen? Therefore Padme has to be the queen.
Of course Anakin can't be older than 8-10 to leave his mom and start Jedi training. And it would be REALLY weird to have Amidala be in her 30s-40s when she and Anakin finally hook up. So she's a young queen! She's only like, 14. How did she get to become queen then? Uh... her planet holds elections!
See? Extremely convoluted, silly answer to a question that has a very simple solution: Just make Leia's adoptive parents royalty.
Breha Organa was a queen and grounds for Leia's title. Apparently this wasn't enough for Lucas, and he wanted her to be a "real" princess of the royal blood.
(Reminder that when Lucas decided to have a kid with his latest squeeze, he paid to have a woman's body poisoned and mutilated to produce a genetically related child rather than adopt. No, I won't let that slide.)
And maybe that was too creepy, given that they're fighting an evil Emperor in the OT, so he had to make her a democratic Queen. (An easy solution for Padme to be a young queen was to have her parents die. This happened all the time on Earth.)
And I actually like the result, to be honest. It gives me that "galaxy far away" vibe, as if "Queen" is an English translation of a foreign title. I like the idea of a culture electing a bright and virtuous ceremonial ribbon-cutter for a set term. (A creepier version of this also happens on Earth - a young girl is chosen to be worshipped as an incarnation of a goddess, then dismissed when she gets too old.)
Maybe it's an international status thing: imagine an alternate universe medieval Europe in which one region became ahistorically democratic and the others couldn't conceptualize the change - it'd make sense to designate a ceremonial representative: "Yes, this is our queen. We're a proper country too, you can't just walk in and grab our land. You've got to roll out a red carpet for her and shit, in order to properly honor our nation. Yes, it'll be a new person in five years, so what. As if your royal heads don't roll fast enough. At least she'll still be a respected member of a good family." In spaaaaaaaace! with culturally isolated planets, this makes even more sense.[/QUOTE]
Maybe it's an international status thing: imagine an alternate universe medieval Europe in which one region became ahistorically democratic and the others couldn't conceptualize the change - it'd make sense to designate a ceremonial representative: "Yes, this is our queen.
Well, there's medieval/early modern Poland's electoral system. It was kind of a clusterfuck, though. Probably accelerated the collapse of Poland as an independent state. It also appears the only eligible candidates were royalty.
(Reminder that when Lucas decided to have a kid with his latest squeeze, he paid to have a woman's body poisoned and mutilated to produce a genetically related child rather than adopt. No, I won't let that slide.)
See, this is what I mean. I can read this perfectly in the respective voices, but you need a damn good reason to have Obi-Wan talking about tax proposals in a Star Wars movie. Maybe a spinoff or a TV show, I'll grant you, and definitely in a novel, but not for a movie that is supposed to be Star Wars's triumphant return to the big screen after 16 years and meant to start a prequel trilogy.
I think this shows some of the balance that's needed with detail -- whether it's a movie, novel, comic, whatever. Constraints such as time, budget, number of pages, etc. mean that some details have to be glossed over so that the work doesn't get so bogged down in detail that there's no time to properly tell the main story to completion.
This could be why mention of the taxation of trade routes appeared in the opening crawl with the movie's first scene being Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan arriving at their destination to serve as negotiators tasked with learning what concerns the Trade Federation has about the taxation. Any sort of discussion of the taxation and its related politics, no matter how brief, was probably better left off-screen and understood to have taken place en route than it was to include it in the film and have to cut parts away from key action scenes such as the epic Maul vs. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan lightsaber duel. Instead, such a brief discussion might work better as a brief passage in a novelized version of Episode I.
With all the various ideas bounced around in this thread, we probably have enough decent content for at least one complete Star Wars KF trilogy (if not more) that would be better than anything Disney could come up with on their own. (E: Spelling)
The key problem with the Phantom Menace is that it requires some great writing to pull off, but even if it had great writing, it wouldn't feel like much of a Star Wars movie.
See, this is what I mean. I can read this perfectly in the respective voices, but you need a damn good reason to have Obi-Wan talking about tax proposals in a Star Wars movie. Maybe a spinoff or a TV show, I'll grant you, and definitely in a novel, but not for a movie that is supposed to be Star Wars's triumphant return to the big screen after 16 years and meant to start a prequel trilogy.
The core problem with the Phantom Menace (which has the majority of the political content in the PT, and also the driest political content) is that it has very minimal relation to the rest of the Prequel Trilogy, whose goal is to show us the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. It would be like if instead of A New Hope we get a movie about Luke's struggle to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. That could be a cool movie, he has a run in with the Tusken Raiders, Ben Kenobi saves his ass (and Uncle Owen chews him out for doing something so dangerous), and he and Biggs have to bullseye some womprats in their T-16 to bribe some random soldiers for the Empire. Could be a great movie and sounds a hell of a lot more entertaining than TPM. But it doesn't work as part of a trilogy whose goal is to show Luke destroying an evil empire since it's a pointless prequel.
I think this shows some of the balance that's needed with detail -- whether it's a movie, novel, comic, whatever. Constraints such as time, budget, number of pages, etc. mean that some details have to be glossed over so that the work doesn't get so bogged down in detail that there's no time to properly tell the main story to completion.
This could be why mention of the taxation of trade routes appeared in the opening crawl with the movie's first scene being Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan arriving at their destination to serve as negotiators tasked with learning what concerns the Trade Federation has about the taxation. Any sort of discussion of the taxation and its related politics, no matter how brief, was probably better left off-screen and understood to have taken place en route than it was to include it in the film and have to cut parts away from key action scenes such as the epic Maul vs. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan lightsaber duel. Instead, such a brief discussion might work better as a brief passage in a novelized version of Episode I.
This? The minor quibble. Part of my complaint is that George had all the time he needed, but he didn't bother maximizing it.
Let's go over it like autists now. Here's the TPM openings scene.
For those who don't have 4 minutes to spare, here's the bit taken from the transcript.
OBI-WAN: I have a bad feeling about this.
QUI-GON: I don't sense anything.
OBI-WAN: It's not about the mission, Master, it's something... elsewhere... elusive.
QUI-GON: Don't center on your anxiety, Obi-Wan. Keep your concentration here and now where it belongs.
OBI-WAN: But Master Yoda says I should be mindful of the future...
QUI-GON: ...but not at the expense of the moment. Be mindful of the living Force, my young Padawan.
OBI-WAN: Yes, Master... how do you think the trade viceroy will deal with the chancellor's demands?
QUI-GON: These Federation types are cowards. The negotiations will be short.
Reminder, this is what I proposed as a rough draft:
OWK: I've got a bad feeling about this.
QGJ: This is an awfully lot of trouble for a simple trade dispute.
OWK: All this over senator Palpatine's tax proposal?
QGJ: [thing it would pay for - i would actually brainstorm this with like, all of you here]
OWK: Do you agree with him, master? Should [program] be instituted?
QGJ: Issues come and go, my young padawan. Tomorrow it will be something else. It is not for the Jedi to concern ourselves with such things but focus on the eternal. Concentrate on the Living Force, and calm yourself.
Mine is actually 2 lines shorter. Meaning you could swap out my dialog into the original movie and possibly open up more time for the lightsaber duel.
(Possibly. I will allow that at least 2 of mine lines would be longer meaning the time spent could break even. My biggest problem is that often George will waste time saying nothing at all. You bring up the opening crawl. Let's take a look at it real quick.)
EPISODE 1 THE PHANTOM MENACE Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlaying star systems is in dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo. While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict.....
Again, it doesn't say much. We could better convey the information with say...
"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. Senator Palpatine's proposed taxes have enraged the greedy Trade Federation. In retaliation, they have used deadly battleships to blockade his home planet of Naboo, stopping all shipments.
While the Congress of the Republic... etc etc"
(If say... you want to keep Palpatine's identity a secret, you can tweak some of it with like "a new senator has proposed..." or "a popular senator has proposed..." etc.)
Phantom Menace is probably the most noticeable because it is a 30 min story stretched out over an hour and a half. And part of what makes it worse is that there's very sparse world building in it. Like throughout there's a goal of reaching the Senate, of talking to the Supreme Chancellor, etc etc. But it's never defined what that will accomplish. If the Senate goes, "no! bad trade federation" what would be the consequences? As someone said elsewhere, there's a lot of implications that the Republic had no military, so the Senate trying to stop the trade federation would be like...
A minor adjustment of lines here and there would go a long way towards fixing these. Say the jedi can't act unless authorized - so then the goal is to bring the full force of the Jedi (pun intended) down on the Trade Feds. As one of my buddies likes to point out, the entire first act of the movie revolves around the Jedi being sent to "resolve" the dispute, and then are never called forward as witnesses by the Senate. Certainly with everything we're shown, it seems like their word would swiftly validate everything and cut through the red tape.
Now that I think about it, maybe we throw in a line that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were never supposed to be there so they can't be admitted without Valorum facing a huge scandal of abuse of power. And there are NUMEROUS places in the movie you could swap in those lines and others to better paint a picture of the galaxy and its politics. Off the top of my head, you could cut the underwater planet core trip in half, trim up a lot of Jar Jar's scenes (instead of banishing him, make him an explorer that wanted to see the wider world - make him useful), etc.
Anyone ever stopped to wonder why the most prominent non-clone character in the Republic's military in TCW is Admiral Yularen?
The character first appeared as one of the senior officer present during the Death Star conference room scene (with no lines), and if memory serves, I don't believe he was ever really elaborated on much beyond that prior to his first appearance in TCW, in its theatrical release in 2008, where he shows up as a naval fleet commander. Prior to then, the character was identified as an Intelligence officer (as was easily discernible from the white tunic and black trousers he wore in ANH) with a rank of Colonel.
Now, in the real-world, it's certainly not unheard of for military personnel to retire from one service and then join a different one, as Yularen apparently did at the end of the Clone Wars, stepping down from his command in the Republic-turned-Imperial Navy and embarking on a new career in the Intelligence services, but it does seem a bit odd that the Republic's leading fleet commander ends up as an anonymous seat-warmer on the Death Star, or rather, it seems kind of odd that an anonymous seat-warmer on the Death Star would be revealed as having been the Republic's most prominent naval officer during the Clone Wars, but I can think of at least one likely reason as to why this obscure background character was scooped up and elevated to a major role in Filoni's The Clone Wars :
Since 2003 or even earlier, Yularen's given name was known to be "Wullf."
The character first appeared as one of the senior officer present during the Death Star conference room scene (with no lines), and if memory serves, I don't believe he was ever really elaborated on much beyond that prior to his first appearance in TCW, in its theatrical release in 2008, where he shows up as a naval fleet commander. Prior to then, the character was identified as an Intelligence officer (as was easily discernible from the white tunic and black trousers he wore in ANH) with a rank of Colonel.
Now, in the real-world, it's certainly not unheard of for military personnel to retire from one service and then join a different one, as Yularen apparently did at the end of the Clone Wars, stepping down from his command in the Republic-turned-Imperial Navy and embarking on a new career in the Intelligence services, but it does seem a bit odd that the Republic's leading fleet commander ends up as an anonymous seat-warmer on the Death Star, or rather, it seems kind of odd that an anonymous seat-warmer on the Death Star would be revealed as having been the Republic's most prominent naval officer during the Clone Wars, but I can think of at least one likely reason as to why this obscure background character was scooped up and elevated to a major role in Filoni's The Clone Wars :
Since 2003 or even earlier, Yularen's given name was known to be "Wullf."
In Short the Rule in two allows more than two Sith, it's just that they are all ruled over by Two Sithlords, so when Yoda says always two there are, no more, is just a giant misinterpretation of the rule. I hate Woke Wars.
