Jedi Fallen Order Part 16: That Star Wars Feeling

By Shamus Posted Thursday Dec 3, 2020

Filed under: Retrospectives 240 comments

We’ve spent the last two weeks talking about the Sequel Trilogy and the Star Wars movies in general. Hopefully everyone has had their say, because it’s time to move on. Sort of. I do mention TLJ a couple of times in this article because of the way that movie pulls on the topic of “things that feel like Star Wars”, but hopefully we’re done arguing about the movies themselves. Ideally, at this point we can step back and think about the franchise as a whole.

Okay? Great. Let’s do this…

So What IS The “Feel” of Star Wars, Shamus?

I’m sure you saw this coming, but it turns out the answer is a little different for everyone. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more definitive answer, but “Star Wars” means different things to different people. In 1977, it was so radically different and yet so strangely familiar that it created dozens of fascinating little details for people to grab onto and say, “This. This is what makes Star Wars special.”

Your answer will also vary by age. For me, Star Wars was just the original trilogy, because the prequels didn’t come out until I was 28 years old. Someone younger may have watched the first six movies close together, and thus all of those are equally “Star Wars” to them. Then you have the even younger set that grew up with the Clone Wars and have an ever broader view of what the series is, or could be. Then you have the people who followed all of that, plus the comics and novels, and they have multiple layers of conflicting lore to juggle, some of which has been wiped away by the Disney purge and some of which has been repurposed or re-told. 

The Three Pillars of Star Wars

Man, I'm so looking forward to Chewbacca getting a medal nine movies from now.
Man, I'm so looking forward to Chewbacca getting a medal nine movies from now.

Conceptually, I divide the universe into three domains, and in turn each of these domains is bound to one of our original characters:

Luke Skywalker: The world of the Force where the Jedi battle the Sith try to overcome one another with hokey religion and ancient weapons.

Princess / General Leia Organa: The world of politics, where different factions wage massive-scale war for control over the galaxy. Here is where you get your politics, doomsday weapons, and fleet battles.

Han Solo: The underworld of bounty hunters, crime lords, smugglers, mercenaries, and other assorted lowlifes.

Lots of people only seem to care about one of these – or strongly favor one branch over the other twoPersonally I’m a fan of Han Solo’s domain, which probably explains why I’m so into the Mandalorian. – and so even within the original trilogy there’s a bit of stratification among the fans about what parts of the story give the world its identity.

Most novel / game / TV show adaptations seem to focus on just one pillar. On the other hand if you’re someone at Disney and you’re trying to make a new mainline movie to carry the franchise forward, then maybe you could start with a premise like, “A Jedi, a bounty hunter, and a politician walk into a cantina…” and see where that takes youNote for Hollywood writers: I don’t mean they literally meet in a bar. I’m just saying you shove those three archetypes together and build a story out of the resulting character conflict.

The prequels had Padme for the politics and Everyone Else for the Force stuff, but they lacked a Han Solo. The sequels had Rey for the Force, but Finn and Poe were never in a position to represent one of the other two pillarsActually, Abrams tried to shove Poe into Han Solo’s slot in the third film by making him a spice runner, but that felt like too little, too late.. Maybe this means my entire “Three Pillars” model is hogwash, but I still find it a useful way to think about Star Wars stories.

So let’s talk about what makes something Star Wars-y…

The Skywalker Family

This family has problems.
This family has problems.

I never thought that the Star Wars universe revolved around the Skywalker family. Sure, those first three movies were about Luke Skywalker redeeming his father and defending his sister, but that was just one story, right?

But then we got the prequels, which were all about Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the Dark Side, which ended with the birth of his SUPER-SPECIAL CHILDREN. But that was the prequel. Now we know the full story of the Skywalkers and we’re free to move on and tell stories about…

NOPE!

The sequels came out, and we’re once again focused on Skywalkers vs. Palpatine. The movies are even called the “Skywalker Saga”!

For some of us, this is a universe that revolves around the Skywalker family, and for other people the Skywalkers are these obnoxious celebrity camera hogs that distract us from the rest of this cool galaxy. 

Space Fascism!

Man, Peter Cushing was so amazing. He was the Grandest of Moffs.
Man, Peter Cushing was so amazing. He was the Grandest of Moffs.

For some people, the fight against an oppressive military government is an inescapable part of the setting. For them this is a series about massive-scale war. Abrams and Kazden thought this concept was so important that they cooked up The First Order to replace the old Empire, and they didn’t even see a need to explain how such a group rose to power. Of course there’s a big evil government! You can’t have Star Wars without one!

Personally, I never cared about the scale of the conflict. The Mandalorian isn’t wrapped up in galactic-scale conflict and politics, and it feels more like Star Wars to me than anything made in the last 40 years. For me the fight against the Empire was a one-off, and for the next person it’s the entire point of the setting.

The Third World in Space

I'm sort of petulant and I didn't want any Special Addition crap in my screengrabs, but as it turns out Lucas added CGI nonsense to all of his Tatooine establishing shots.
I'm sort of petulant and I didn't want any Special Addition crap in my screengrabs, but as it turns out Lucas added CGI nonsense to all of his Tatooine establishing shots.

For me one of the most interesting bits of Star Wars was the uneven way in which technology was distributed. The Empire had massive ships of pristine metalNot to mention the Death Star!, and yet other parts of the universe had this patchwork technology that reminds me of third world countries where you’ll see people with western T-shirts and cell phones inhabiting towns that barely have running water. I don’t want to call it “realistic”, but it did add a certain sense of verisimilitude and texture to the setting. 

Star Wars showed us towns with dirt streets and beasts of labor that also had droids and flying vehicles. But then again… it only showed us one place like that. Is Tatooine this weird exception in an otherwise settled galaxy of stable infrastructure, or do most planets feature a few ramshackle towns carved out of a vast desolate wilderness?

We spent a whole generation daydreaming about these sorts of patchwork towns before Lucas showed us what a proper inhabited planet (Naboo) looked like. And for a lot of people my age, Naboo just didn’t fit the style we’d come to love. It wasn’t a weird ad hoc technology oasis, it was a proper advanced civilization with cities and traffic and highrise buildings.

A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy

I used to think Boba Fett was so cool. But then he died a slapstick death. Then Lucas made him less mysterious by explaining his dumb backstory. And now the Mandalorian shows us that Boba doesn't even have proper Beskar armor. Compared to other Mandalorians, he's a loser. (I wonder if he follows the Creed?)
I used to think Boba Fett was so cool. But then he died a slapstick death. Then Lucas made him less mysterious by explaining his dumb backstory. And now the Mandalorian shows us that Boba doesn't even have proper Beskar armor. Compared to other Mandalorians, he's a loser. (I wonder if he follows the Creed?)

Related to the above: In the original trilogy, we really only see two developed population centers: Tatooine, and the cloud city of Bespin. The other planets – Hoth and Endor’s moon – are wilderness.

For me, this created the impression that the galaxy was mostly made up of small isolated communities. It was a whole universe of small towns containing dive bars, gambling dens, fight pits, pawn shops, and palaces for small-time warlords and crime bosses. It seemed like a dangerous world filled with liars, cutthroats, bounty hunters, smugglers, assassins, crime lords, mercenaries, scavengers, and thieves. Bespin – the most livable and stable community in the whole trilogy – comes off like an unusually successful hustle on the part of Lando.

But… was this really an intended part of the setting?

In the original movies, Tatooine was the only planet that worked like this, but I still embraced it as representative of large parts of the galaxy. It was a strange, lawless, dangerous galaxy. And that’s what made it so awesome!

But then the Prequel Trilogy came along and gave us Naboo and Coruscant. From this you might assume that places like Tatooine are the exception, and the galaxy is mostly stable, civilized, and well-behaved.

I never let go of Wild West Star Wars, so I was one of those people who felt like Rose Tico’s gripes about arms dealers in Canto Bight felt weird. Imagine your typical Wild West town. You enter the saloon and see a bunch of cowboys carousing, whoring, brawling, and playing poker. Then Rose Tico shakes her head saying, “These guys made their money by working as poachers, cattle rustlers, and hired guns.” 

For Rian Johnson (and a LOT of other people) Naboo is probably their template for what “the rest of the galaxy” should / could look like. And for them, the galaxy might be a peaceful and just place if not for this small group of powerful and amoral weapons dealers. But for people like me, she was basically complaining that in this galaxy of petty despots and cutthroats, arms dealers weren’t nice people. It’s like complaining that the Wild West is so wild. For me that’s not an in-universe problem to solve, that’s just a feature of the setting!

A New Hope(fulness)

Yay!
Yay!

This was a big deal in 1977. America was in an economic downturn, the gas crisis was going on, the cold war loomed large in everyone’s minds, the Nixon presidency ended in embarrassment and disgrace, and the country was still trying to grapple with the aftermath of Vietnam. On top of everything else, we were discovering the omnipresent dread that came from having a stunning lineup of serial killers covered by sensation-hungry media. The Beatles were broken up. We stopped going to the moon. Ford had pardoned Nixon. Classic manufacturing jobs were in decline. Grown adults somehow actually thought that Tonight’s The Night was the best song of the yearI’m sore about this because 1977 is the same year Fly Like an Eagle came out, and that song is the first time I remember really connecting with music. This was some of the earliest uses of electronic synthesizers and I found it hypnotic.

In short, everything sucked and there was no reason to think that things were going to get any better. 

People were grim and cynical. According to conventional wisdom, they didn’t want heartwarming family dramas or playful movies where adorable people would meet and fall in love. They wanted main characters who were bitter and disillusioned. They wanted bleakness and pessimism. The Hollywood wisdom was that America wanted morally compromised protagonists, lost causes, and bleak endings

Star Wars wasn’t the only movie  of the time to reject this malaise, but it was one of the few, one of the first, and it did so loudly and vigorously. Hollywood discovered that not everyone wanted to wallow in nihilism. Some people wanted escapism, and Hollywood was happy to take their money too. Star Wars wasn’t just upbeat, it was a fairytale

This cultural tug-of-war between cynicism and idealism remains today, and I strongly suspect it’s cyclical. After too much salt and bitterness, everyone decides they want a little sugar. After too much sugar, everyone feels a little sick and wants some bitterness again. The Marvel movies have just given us 12 years of sugar, so I’m sort of expecting that The Boys, the Watchmen TV Show, Brightburn and the general trend of dark / adult superhero films are a signal that our collective sweet tooth has been sated and cynicism is on the way back. Sure, cynical movies never really went away, but I’m talking about what sorts of entertainment dominate the culture. And for the last decade people have been buying a lot of sugar.

Besides making Star Wars palatable to children, that blast of fairytale hope was exactly what a lot of people needed in 1977. And thus for a lot of people, idealism and moral clarity are an indelible part of the franchise. Star Wars is about hope! It’s right there in the title! Yes! We can actually defeat evil without becoming monsters or destroying everything we love. You can make it if you just keep the faith and do the right thing. Your friends will be there for you, and even if they aren’t you just need to believe in them and your trust will bring them back to the light. Our idealism, not our weapons, is what makes us strong enough to overcome the forces of evil.

After a half dozen of these movies a few people find themselves asking, “Why do all the movies have to be so treacly? Can’t we have a Star Wars for grownups?” Why can’t we see some bickering and infighting and power struggles within the rebellion? 

For these people, the fairytale tone isn’t a core part of the franchise, it’s just a weird artifact of the era that created it. 

Greebles

Would it be correct to say that the Death Star is one giant greeble?
Would it be correct to say that the Death Star is one giant greeble?

We take it for granted now, but the look of Star Wars was groundbreaking. Previously, we’d all imagined a world with sparkling clean spaceships and wide open spaces of pristine white and spotless chrome. It was a world with polished floors, fresh paint, and everyone wearing the same color jumpsuit. Everything was made of brand new plastic, because plastic was the future baby!

And then here comes Star Wars, a world where everything looks scuffed, dinged, used, and lived-in. Their garages were greasy just like ours. Their vehicles were beat up, just like ours. Their clothes were joyless dirty earthtones, just like oursUgh. The 70s were terrible.! These touches made the world feel incredibly real despite the fantastical setting.

The Star Wars technology was covered in greebles and fingerprints. It was the futureA long, long ago sort of future., but it looked old and used instead of fresh and new. 

To me, Greebles were the primary ingredient in making the technology look like Star Wars. I thought everyone agreed. But then in 1999 George Lucas gave us the Naboo Royal Starship, which looked like the lame  featureless smooth chrome ships of the cheesy sci-fi that predated Star Wars. It was the most un-Star Wars-y thing I’d ever seen. 

It didn’t fit the Star Wars I knew, but it’s pretty hard to argue with the author. 

Anthropomorphised Droids

I was six when I saw this movie for the first time. I don't remember much from that viewing, but I do remember being terrified by this scene.
I was six when I saw this movie for the first time. I don't remember much from that viewing, but I do remember being terrified by this scene.

Why do droids have quirky personalities? Wouldn’t C-3PO be vastly more useful if he wasn’t burdened with this fussy and cowardly personality? Why do people end up in arguments with droids? Why doesn’t someone program BB and R2 units to speak Basic so average people can understand them? Answer: Because the universe is WAY cooler like this!

It’s a weird idea. In this universe, robots are more like people than in (say) Trek, but at the same time they’re treated less like people. There are no robots suffering from Pinocchio Syndrome in the world of Star Wars, and so far nobody’s been dumb enough to mess with this rule. It would be a disaster if someone were to attempt a classic “robot uprising” story or a “I just want to be human” character arc within the world of Star Wars. The world is not designed to withstand this sort of investigation and if robot personalities ever became a problem then all of my questions in the previous paragraph would become massive plot holes. 

One of the few things I liked about Rise of Skywalker was how C-3PO went through a whole character arcI do have questions about why (and how) little Anakin built a droid that can read Sith but isn’t allowed to share the translation, but then I have questions about why a kid would build a copy of a droid that’s clearly been mass-produced and if we keep pulling on this thread we’ll unravel the entire character. and nobody else gave a shit. In fact, they were mildly irritated by the journey he was on. For me that was spot-on for how robots ought to be handled in this universe. The audience loves him, but the characters don’t. Remember how awful it was when George Lucas broke this “rule” and Queen AmadalaOr her decoy. Whatever. made a fuss over R2-D2 because he was famous to us? Yuck.

Droids are characters that are sometimes humorously treated like machines. Star Wars is the only major fictional universe where we can have this particular brand of fun. I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot. 

Redemption and Friendship

By the end of the trilogy, both of these antagonists will have been redeemed. Unrelated: I nominate this scene / set for the title of 'Most Gorgeous Cinematography in the Franchise'.
By the end of the trilogy, both of these antagonists will have been redeemed. Unrelated: I nominate this scene / set for the title of 'Most Gorgeous Cinematography in the Franchise'.

The original trilogy featured a lot of redemption. Han Solo was redeemed at the end of A New Hope when he came back to save the day. Lando was redeemed at the end of Empire Strikes Back when he gave up his cushy cloud paradise in order to save his friends. Vader was redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi when he finally turned on his terrifying master and gave Luke a hand in overpowering Palpatine.

Note that both Han Solo and Lando were mostly good-ish guys. They weren’t gleefully evil. Han obviously felt kinda guilty about leaving the rebellion before the assault on the Death Star, and Lando was obviously uncomfortable with how his deal with Vader turned out. They didn’t want to be bad guys, they just didn’t have the courage to be good guys. Or maybe they didn’t know where to start. The friendships they forged over the course of the movie were the push they needed to do the right thing. 

Even when our heroes bicker with each other, there’s no hatred. They aren’t scheming, back-stabbing, power-hungry, or irresponsible. This isn’t House of Cards or Game of Thrones. They have some personality flaws they need to overcome, and that gives us a fun arc without any nastiness.

Contrast this with the infighting and betrayals in The Last Jedi. Everyone is an idiot, all their plans are stupid, and their infighting becomes an asset to the enemy. The Resistance is messy, disorganized, complicated, divided, and quarrelsome. That’s a perfectly valid thing for a rebellious group to be! In fact, it’s a lot more realistic than the buddy-buddy hippie idealism of the original rebellion where everyone is friends and ranks don’t mean anything. The Last Jedi portrays a reasonable outcome of what would happen if you tried to run a military with such a laissez-faire approach to leadership. It wasn’t wrong as a story concept, but for people like me it was wrong for Star Wars because I felt that a hippie military based on friendship was part of the setting, and strict chain-of-command power structures were for those squares in the Empire.

For some people, The Last Jedi was Star Wars for grownups, and for others it wasn’t Star Wars at all. The important thing is that this division has always existed within the fanbase, but we couldn’t see it until a movie did something different. 

I find that really interesting.

Is That it?

Obviously there are a million other little details: Broad archetypal characters with easy-to-parse goals and personalities, lots of robes and capes, spaceships with impractical designs in terms of aerodynamics and symmetry, a large and very specific set of expectations regarding what various things should sound like, vague technology with poorly defined limitations, anachronistic scene transitions, and a proclivity for visually stunning single-biome worlds. 

And despite all the things I listed, I’m willing to bet that for most of you I’ve omitted at least one thing you think is crucial and included one thing you think is superfluous.

Isn’t This Series Supposed to Be About A Video Game?

Oh right! I forgot all about this dude.
Oh right! I forgot all about this dude.

I know I took us on a long detour. To be fair, SWJFO brings the plot to a standstill while Cal re-acquires a lightsaber so I figured this was a good time for a three-week digression. 

For the record, I think SWJFO hits most of the Star Wars notes in just the right way. I’ve been nitpicking it pretty hard in this series, but this game feels more like “my” Star Wars than either of the last two movie trilogies. I have a bone to pick with the writer over how they’re portraying the Dark Side, but when it comes to tone and texture this game feels like it’s in the right neighborhood.

Although to put my cards on the table: The Mandalorian is the Star Wars I’ve been waiting for: The galaxy is huge, there are countless local power structures, and for the vast majority of the people the Sith vs. Jedi shit is very far away and mysterious. For me, this is the best Star Wars has been since 1980. 

In any case, this digression is over. Thanks for letting me get all of that off my chest. Go ahead and share in the comments what elements you think are / aren’t core to the Star Wars experience. 

Next week, we’re heading back to Dathomir with a new lightsaber and a fresh injection of old-fashioned Star Wars brand Hope™ and Idealism.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Personally I’m a fan of Han Solo’s domain, which probably explains why I’m so into the Mandalorian.

[2] Note for Hollywood writers: I don’t mean they literally meet in a bar. I’m just saying you shove those three archetypes together and build a story out of the resulting character conflict.

[3] Actually, Abrams tried to shove Poe into Han Solo’s slot in the third film by making him a spice runner, but that felt like too little, too late.

[4] Not to mention the Death Star!

[5] I’m sore about this because 1977 is the same year Fly Like an Eagle came out, and that song is the first time I remember really connecting with music. This was some of the earliest uses of electronic synthesizers and I found it hypnotic.

[6] Ugh. The 70s were terrible.

[7] A long, long ago sort of future.

[8] I do have questions about why (and how) little Anakin built a droid that can read Sith but isn’t allowed to share the translation, but then I have questions about why a kid would build a copy of a droid that’s clearly been mass-produced and if we keep pulling on this thread we’ll unravel the entire character.

[9] Or her decoy. Whatever.



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240 thoughts on “Jedi Fallen Order Part 16: That Star Wars Feeling

  1. MerryWeathers says:

    If there was one feel The Rise of Skywalker did get right, it was the quarantine feel. That scene where Palpatine is so decrepit to the point that he can’t even move and his fingers are shown to be horribly decayed is an accurate representation of what staying in your home for nine months straight while rarely going outside feels like AND IT FEELS GREAT

  2. Joe says:

    Here’s something odd, seeing you break down the three pillars like that. I once imagined a space opera trilogy that now I think of it, each book leaned more on one of those pillars than the others. But it was too ambitious. I didn’t have enough plot. I only completed the middle one, the Han Solo one. That isn’t even my favourite. I prefer the Luke pillar. But it had a simpler story and was easier to write. I never put my finger on the pillars before now. Good one.

    But here’s the thing about our own world. We have both first-world and developing nations. And first-world has rough spots. Your own city might be good, but even then, there’s places you wouldn’t venture unless you had to, especially at night. Then there’s the big patches of nature between bits of civilisation. The world, and thus the galaxy, can contain all of the above.

    I don’t see the Resistance in TLJ as being idiots. They all had legitimate issues. What they didn’t do, was properly share them. The moral of the story, I think, is that poor communication kills. And maybe follow the chain of command. If nothing else, you can at least put the blame on someone higher up.

    I had to stop watching the Mandalorian. I discovered Gina Carano’s politics. I disagree with her quite some bit. It put me off the whole show. No, I am not good at separating art from artist. Besides, it was fine before that, but didn’t set my world on fire.

    By the way, you misspelled Kasdan and Amidala.

    1. Ramsus says:

      That last bit you said about Gina Carano fascinates me.
      While I’m sure based on that I’m in the same broad political alignment zone as you, I can’t imagine caring so much about the real world beliefs (political, religious, or otherwise) of an actor that it would affect my ability to enjoy a work they’re in. This even includes people so famous for their stances on things I disagree with that there’s basically no way you don’t think about the actor when looking at their character.
      Especially when the person is a tertiary character in a show.

      While I understand that this kind of stuff does effect people, there’s just a disconnect with me on it. I’m aware most people out there don’t agree with me on most things and there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason I should allow someone’s personal life interfere with my ability to enjoy things. That would severely limit the amount of things I allow myself to enjoy and it seems like a lot of extra stress and just work to keep track of all that and care enough about it. That’s a lot of people I’d need to be thinking about and I’m just one me just trying to relax and enjoy what are often extremely rare examples of things I enjoy being actually made.
      Also it seems a bit odd to me. It’s not like the actor usually gets to inject their politics into their role. So it’d be a bit like refusing to eat a hamburger made by someone whose views I don’t like. Their beliefs don’t really play a role in how my hamburger tastes unless I put a *lot* of effort into caring about their views when that’s not what I came there for in the first place.

      I’m not saying you’re wrong/dumb/whatever for feeling how you feel. I’m just saying it’s so at odds with how I view the world that it’s a remarkable (thus the remarks) difference to me.
      (Huh, I kinda accidentally kept this on the topic of the article in a way.)

      1. Joe says:

        I didn’t seek her politics out deliberately. Only I follow some socially aware people on twitter. And it just left a bad taste in my mouth. Too bad to overcome the rest of the show.

        1. Dotec says:

          Ah, so the “socially aware people on Twitter” are the problem!

          1. Joe says:

            No. They should keep calling out people with toxic beliefs. Those with toxic beliefs should change and accept the wide world that we live in.

            1. Mack says:

              It might not be enough to counterbalance Carano’s politics, but would it help to know that Pedro Pascal’s are the exact opposite?

              1. Joe says:

                That *is* good to hear. However, I still have no desire to watch again. Sometimes when the passion is gone, it stays gone. Ah well, thanks anyway.

            2. jurgenaut says:

              And who determines the toxicity of one’s opinions? I’m pretty sure both sides of this culture war claim the ‘other side’ is toxic.

              To quote Gandalf: Do not be so quick to deal out death and judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

              1. Bubble181 says:

                And to quote Shamus: let’s not stray further into politics. Because “toxic beliefs” is a very broad term that can – and has – been abused by all sides to silence dissenting opinions.

            3. Dotec says:

              Your response only bolsters my assessment.

    2. Erik says:

      I had to stop watching the Mandalorian. I discovered Gina Carano’s politics.

      You have given me yet another reason to not attempt to follow or learn about actors outside their roles.

      I already have a personal issue where seeing an established actor in a role (especially if I wasn’t expecting them) basically bitch-slaps my suspension of disbelief. Unless they’re one of the few that’s incredibly good at disappearing into their roles, having (say) Charlie Sheen wander on-screen completely bombs me out of “flow with the story” mode and into “this is bogus – nitpick it to death” mode. This is purely personal, but it’s quite real in my head and ruins a lot of things for me. It’s a main reason I prefer to read my stories than to watch them.

      So not knowing any of the actors in the Mandelorian made it much easier to enjoy the flow, and the Mandelorian is built on mood and flow, not galaxy-saving plot. I’ll just ignore the actress, not look into what she’s into, and maybe I can watch the second season and still enjoy it.

  3. MerryWeathers says:

    And now the Mandalorian shows us that Boba doesn’t even have proper Beskar armor. Compared to other Mandalorians, he’s a loser. (I wonder if he follows the Creed?)

    I think Boba’s armor is still Beskar, just heavily worn out after decades of use and damage which is a thing that can happen as seen in the first episode of the show. He also isn’t Mandalorian, his father and the armor might be but Boba was mostly raised and trained by criminals for most of his life. His friends even tease him by calling him a Mandalorian pretender.

    1. John says:

      Beskar, shmeskar. All armor in Star Wars is exactly the same, which is exactly as effective as the plot requires. A single blaster bolt is enough to kill an armored Stormtrooper but an unarmored Han Solo can survive a blaster bolt to the gut well enough to be up and walking around later that same day.

      1. Asdasd says:

        The second blaster was obviously set to ‘stun’. Jeez, do you even know anything about this setting? :D

        edit: ok, so apparently setting blasters to stun actually is a thing in Star Wars, which ruins the joke :(

        1. Alberek says:

          In the TTRPG (StarWars Saga) my players realized that using weapons on stun was even MORE deadly than using them on a normal setting.

      2. MerryWeathers says:

        A single blaster bolt is enough to kill an armored Stormtrooper

        It’s canon that stormtrooper armor is considered shitty in-universe, since it’s essentially just riot gear that was repurposed because the Empire was being cheap. The helmets in particular are blamed for why the stormtroopers have such horrible aim.

        1. John says:

          That doesn’t actually help or even explain anything. Is Stormtrooper armor supposed to be so bad that it’s worse than human skin? Is it supposed to be so bad that wearing it is more dangerous than not wearing it? That’s ridiculous. I dearly, dearly wish that the people who write Star Wars spinoffs would realize that things like this are better left alone. All attempts to rationalize them inevitably fail and only serve to raise further questions.

          1. Daimbert says:

            Stormtrooper armour is essentially the same sort of idea as TIE fighters: cheap to produce, built to swarm, and provides a specific aesthetic that identifies these things as being from the Empire (the armour and TIEs are pretty distinct and homogenized compared to what came before). Their deficiencies are overcome by simply overwhelming enemies with numbers and, as per the Death Stars, AT-ATs and Star Destroyers, overwhelming force when required. The massive use of power and manpower is something that only the Empire can do.

            1. John says:

              That’s great, but it’s still not very convincing. It’s definitely not very compelling.

              Look, the truth is that Han Solo survives being shot because he’s a main character and the Stormtroopers die because they’re mooks. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. My point is that it doesn’t need an in-universe explanation. The “Imperial equipment is terrible” theory is a pointless after-the-fact rationalization without any supporting evidence from within the films themselves. It’s a solution to a problem that no one but the most nitpicky of fans takes seriously in the first place.

              1. Chris says:

                Also, wouldnt an empire be able to set up supplylines and factories capable of producing armor far superior than smugglers can get their hands on? Maybe not the best of the best, but at least higher quality than what a resistance of smaller force can put together.

              2. Joe Informatico says:

                Right, it’s the same with the “Stormtroopers can’t aim” bullshit. The stormtoopers eliminate all Alliance resistance on the Tantive IV within 5 minutes of boarding with minimal casualties and less than a dozen of them take out the giant Jawa sandcrawler. They don’t hit any of our main characters either because they’re main characters or because they were ordered to not hit droids on the Tantive for intelligence gathering purposes, and because they were ordered to let the Millennium Falcon (convincingly) escape so they could track it.

          2. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

            The universe is inconsistent about this. At various points, authors (Anderson, Stackpole) have made stormtrooper armor work pretty much like armor today. It will save you from fragments and near misses, turn lethal direct hits into non-lethal serious injuries, and stop weak shots entirely. A stormtrooper in one novel gets hit by a spear and a bullet (different times) and just shrugs it off. Corran Horn gets shot full in the chest while wearing armor and is out of the fight -but survives with bacta treatment.

            If you watch the opening boarding action of New Hope, you will note that stormtroopers only go down upon direct hits -and given that medics are attending the wounded when Vader enters -those hits are probably not lethal. The rebels, on the other hand, go down even when the blaster shot hits the bulkhead in front of them and they get hit by liquified metal. This, by the way, makes the stormtrooper’s aim really impressive during the Death Star escape -as they are able to hit close enough to the heroes without the liquified metal killing them.

            On the other hand, other books, the Battle of Endor, and Lucas’ own commentaries indicate that, no, the stormtroopers just can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

            1. Daimbert says:

              Corran Horn gets shot full in the chest while wearing armor and is out of the fight -but survives with bacta treatment.

              Admittedly, as of “I, Jedi”, there might be another reason for his survival there …

          3. Joe Informatico says:

            The best explanation for Stormtrooper armour I ever saw was Mike Wong’s on his ancient fan site Stardestroyer.net. He noted that even a common criminal’s blaster like Han Solo’s in Ep. IV is capable of punching fist-sized holes in concrete, so probably no personal armour (beskar notwithstanding) is actually effective against a direct hit from a blaster bolt. But, punching holes in concrete and metal tends to scatter a lot of shrapnel, so trooper armour is probably effective at protecting them from those near-misses. This is in addition to the intimidation factor and the built-in communications and environmental features of the armour.

    2. Decius says:

      Boba Fett’s armor is absolutely Beskar. That’s WHY Din is so fanatical about it.

  4. Daniel says:

    You dread the day when someone is dumb enough to make a Droid Rights plotline, eh…?

    Have you seen Solo by any chance?

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      To be fair, the character is treated kind of like a joke, ends up getting killed, and suffers a fate she would consider as far worse than death. Pop Culture Detective actually made an interesting video on the topic of Droids in Star Wars.
      https://youtu.be/WD2UrB7zepo

      1. Vinsomer says:

        That’s the worst of both worlds.

        You can’t have a story set in a world where the good guys are defined by their connection to all living things, and defending the harmony of existence, which also then raises the point of robots being living, sentient beings deserving of respect, only for that character to be treated as a joke. If you don’t make that point, we can go on thinking droids are just fancy toasters. But, if you do, then you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. You completely redefine the moral dimension of all your ‘good’ characters’ actions of the past. Of all the unnecessary things that Solo, an unnecessary movie, did, that was perhaps the worst one, because rather than just being bad on the character level (like Han’s character arc) it retroactively hurts all the movies.

        At the very least, you can see the use of Clones (which is absolutely a massive betrayal of everything the Jedi claim to believe) as the key to the Jedi’s karmic downfall.

        1. MerryWeathers says:

          You can’t have a story set in a world where the good guys are defined by their connection to all living things, and defending the harmony of existence, which also then raises the point of robots being living, sentient beings deserving of respect, only for that character to be treated as a joke. If you don’t make that point, we can go on thinking droids are just fancy toasters. But, if you do, then you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube

          That’s true but as the video points out, this kind of portrayal of Droids has been consistent across the Star Wars movies and shows where they’re simultaneously treated as sentient and capable beings that deserve to be respected while also being comic relief fodder characters. Solo is ironically just being consistent in this regard.

    2. Carlo_T says:

      I thought the same! And it even started a small uprising in the spice mines of Kessel! However, L3-37 was basically comic relief in the movie. In that sense, it kinda fits what Shamus is saying: L3-37 wants droid rights, but no human takes it seriously, and the desire is seen as being caused by a bug – If I remember correctly, Lando states that its activism was a quirk caused by not wiping its memory regularly.

      That being said, I don’t think that was the intent behind its inclusion in the movie, but I am not really sure what the actual intent could have been – the character is too comedic to be taken as a stand-in for actual civic rights activists, so who knows.

      1. PhoenixUltima says:

        Wait, they actually named a droid “L337”? Like… really? Really? *facepalm*

        1. Canthros says:

          Yes. Yes, they did.

    3. Nick-B says:

      I thought to too, until he pretty blatantly referred to the Solo movie line exactly without actually referencing it by name. So I think he’s making a joke exactly like how people keep referring to these mythological deep fake Matrix sequels.

      Pfft, yeah, as if the Wachowskis would ruin the Matrix by making movies as bad as those dumb fan fics.

      /Please-Let-Me-Have-This

      1. Shamus says:

        For the record: I was not making a joke. I watched like 20 minutes of Solo and then turned it off because I was bored. I don’t even remember those 20 minutes particularly well. I had no idea there was a droid plot in the movie.

        1. Nick-B says:

          Ok, that’s even funnier now.

        2. Cohasset says:

          The first 20 minutes of Solo is a bit dull. The heist near the end of Act 1 is one of the more interesting parts of the movie and it’s unfortunate more of the movie wasn’t a spy thriller (maybe they wanted to but found it didn’t feel “Star Wars” enough for audiences). The droid plot is not very interesting on its own but it’s ultimately used to explain why the Millennium Falcon is so different from other ships after L3-37 is uploaded into the ship near the end.

  5. Redrock says:

    My Star Wars addiction is a weird thing – it usually comes and goes. I might go months without thinking about anything Star Wars, and then it hits me like a rancor on steroids, and I tumble down the rabbit-hole of consuming any and all Star Wars related content in sight. This most recent relapse was triggered by your series here, Shamus, so thanks for that, I guess. Although the new season of The Mandalorian contributed too, surely. After reading the last few entries I went back and pushed through Fallen Order to the end – it gets better towards the end, I think, once you’re done with all the backtracking. I then proceeded to read the Ahsoka novel and last night I re-downloaded KOTOR 2, God help me. Which brought me to the idea that The Old Republic setting is criminally under-used. Disney’s reluctance to break away from the current timeline and go either forward or backward in time seems like a huge missed opportunity. If KOTOR proved one thing definitively, it’s that Star Wars works because of the ‘feel’ more than anything else. I guess we’ll see where the new High Republic thing goes, but seeing as it’s preemptively banished to the shadow realm of novels and children’s books, I don’t see a reason to have any more faith in it than Disney is willing to show.

  6. Adam says:

    I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.

    This was L3-37 in the Solo movie.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTi_8dBhmes

    I found it pretty awkward to watch.

  7. tmtvl says:

    Grown adults somehow actually thought that Tonight’s The Night was the best song of the year.

    1977? That’s when Sin After Sin came out, clearly best song was Dissident Aggressor.

    As to droids, wasn’t the entire side plot of Solo about “droids are people too!”?

    1. RamblePak64 says:

      Yeah, I went and listened to the song, and then immediately Googled for songs released in 1977 that were better. Because I know there were. The 70’s had some pretty seriously awesome rock and roll in it, despite being before my time.

      Sure enough, you could have had Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, or Cold as Ice by Foreigner, or Dust in the Wind by Kansas, or Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel, or Barracuda by Heart, or Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel.

      And these are just the songs Google listed out for me to peruse. I’m not familiar with punk, but The Clash, Sex Pistols, and Ramones all had songs that year. Any of the above bands clearly had albums (including Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, which [i]really[/i] needs a biopic made regarding all the stuff going on during the writing of), as well as releases by Queen (okay, I suppose We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions would be in the above list given their longevity, but they’re at the bottom of my “favorite Queen songs” list), Eric Clapton, Styx…

      I mean, if nothing else, Rod Stewart having the most popular song in 1977 just kind of goes to show how popularity is not a guarantee of quality or longevity. Chances are, if you know the song Tonight’s the Night, it’s because you were alive and old enough to be aware of music in 1977.

    2. evileeyore says:

      You say ‘sideplot’, say running joke because of the way the character was treated. She’s never treated as though concern is valid, half her storyline (being in love with Lando) is very much played for laughs, and the one tie she get’s to make any headway on ‘droid’s rights’ it’s only used as foil to the group and invalidated. And to top it off, she end’s up being reduced in agency and further enslaved.

      She very much came across to me as a big middle finger to all us ‘droid’s rights’ Star Wars fans. Which I doubt was Ron Howard’s intent, so i don;t hold it against him, but the writers have some esplainin to do as far as I’m concerned.

  8. MerryWeathers says:

    In the original movies, Tatooine was the only planet that worked like this, but I still embraced it as representative of large swathes of the galaxy. It was a strange, lawless, dangerous galaxy. And that’s what made it so awesome! But then the Prequel Trilogy came along and gave us Naboo and Coruscant. From this you might assume that places like Tatooine are the exception, and the galaxy is mostly stable, civilized, and well-behaved.

    That’s because the OT was entirely set in the Outer Rim, which was the largest region in the galaxy and hadn’t been fully tamed by either the Republic or Empire. This is why most of the planets there are uninhabited, lawless, or isolated. So you’re still right that they represent large parts of the galaxy. The Mandalorian also takes place in this region which is probably a big reason why you like the show so much.

    Planets like Naboo and Coruscant are in the Mid Rim or Core, which are the more civilized and populated areas of the galaxy. The Mandalorian ironically gave us
    some exposition about this in Chapter 12 but it was hidden away by a cute Grogu scene.

    1. Thomas says:

      I like the core / outer planets setting. It was the same in Firefly, with the shiny Alliance worlds and the backwater wild west worlds.

      It might betray my generation too much, but I think Lucas was right that seeing a Coruscant was interesting, because it shows you what was out of reach of a quiet son of a farmer dreaming on the backwater of Tatooine. It just makes sense to me that the Star Wars universe is really decentralised on the fringes, because the armies and empires are so small compared to the number of planets

      1. MerryWeathers says:

        I thought Coruscant was appropriate for what a metropolis and heavily populated planet would be like in Star Wars, which was basically just Blade Runner.

        Pretty sure the next episode of The Mandalorian will visit the Deep Core, assuming they actually reach Tython and we’re not getting pit stopped again.

      2. Chad Kreutzer says:

        This. Even during the time of the Wild West, we had civilization back east. So yeah, I don’t see these as conflicting visions of the Star Wars, but rather examples of just how big and varied the galaxy is.

      3. Joe Informatico says:

        It was typical for most 20th century resistance/revolutionary movements. The government usually controlled urban centres and important transit points, so the rebels had to base themselves in more remote rural areas or in the poorer districts of large cities. Star Wars is just that on a galactic scale.

    2. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

      One of Lucas’ inspirations was Japanese samurai films -which are mostly set during the 17th century in Japan. In that time -at least for artistic purposes -you have powerful warlords controlling important cities that make up Japan’s civilization. Everywhere else, though, you have pretty much untamed wilds where small villages try to hack their lives out of bandits and wild animals. The roads are dangerous to travel, and the inn is filled with criminals.

      Same story in Chinese Wuxia (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon provides a good modern example).

      And if we want a western analog, we have the third century Roman Empire (hey, we have an Empire in Star Wars), which was constantly fighting rebellions, invasions, and banditry all along its provincial borders.

      Star Wars takes place in that setting -but with starships.

  9. ivan says:

    I’m of the opinion that the weakest part of Star Wars has been the Jedi. Which is a problem because they’ve also more or less been the only part of Star Wars for the last 30-odd years.

    Even my favourite stuff from the EU kinda tonguebathed them (the Jedi/Sith/Force users and the Force in general) a bunch more that I think necessary for the purposes of the actually story that I thought central. (The Thrawn books, in case anyone didn’t already guess this.)

    And the more recent movies? All Jedi. The recent games? All Jedi (besides some I haven’t played about a dude named Dash Rendar). But yeah, not even the Skywalkers; I’d imagine for most younger generation Star Wars fans, Star Wars is a franchise about Jedi and bad Jedi. And nothing else. I don’t really care which, but jeez am I hankering for a really cool space politics/war movie and/or a movie about seedy criminals maybe trying not to be the worst they could be. So, Rogue One was pretty cool I guess.

    1. Joshua says:

      Rogue One had little in the way of Jedi. I was in the minority that didn’t particularly care for the film (mostly for some story reasons), but I did like how the whole Jedi/Force aspect is toned WAY down.

      1. MerryWeathers says:

        Eh, Vader still appears and displays his powers multiple times. One of the main characters is literally part of a religion that worships the Force. There are also references to Jedi like Obi-Wan and the phrase “May the Force Be With You” is still used.

        1. RamblePak64 says:

          Perhaps, but the Force and Jedi aren’t the core of the story. It does not orbit around Jedi and The Force like many other stories would. In addition, having a character that worships the Force but is not a Jedi helps expand the universe in a useful manner without violating any of the “feel” Shamus outlined above. It’s not like suddenly making a Droid fight for Droid Rights. It fits snuggly into what has been established while adding a new layer in terms of “What if someone worships the Force but doesn’t possess Force powers for whatever reason?”

          Granted, some of my problems with Rogue One involve that meta-fan garbage, like having C-3PO and R2-D2 present, and the inclusion of Darth Vader slaughtering rebels so people can dance in their seat because they “finally get to see Darth Vader display his incredible power”. Interesting how, for thirty years, Darth Vader was able to be intimidating [i]without[/i] fancy CG force effects.

    2. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

      The Jedi can maybe be taken or left, but the Force is what makes Star Wars not just regular Sci Fi/Fantasy. Even in the Thrawn Books, the Force is a key plot mover (the whole reason they needed the Ysalamiri).

    3. Joe Informatico says:

      No, the central focus of Star Wars is always the Empire. Vader’s the most popular character and he’s the Number 2 guy of the Empire. The whole prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars is about his rise and fall and how the Empire comes about. The whole original trilogy is about our heroes fighting the Empire. The villains of the sequel trilogy are just the Empire reborn–literally, by the third film. The villains of the period between the OT and the ST are usually ex-Imperials: Thrawn, every major villain in the Mandalorian, etc. You almost never see Sith or Dark-Side Force-Users without them being part of the Empire or Imperial successor. Even the Sith in the Old Republic resemble the Empire. The official cosplaying group of Star Wars started as a bunch of cosplayers who all liked dressing up as Stormtroopers. Even Solo (the film), which doesn’t feature any Force-Users at all until the credits teaser works in the Empire.

      If I still had anything other than a casual interest in Star Wars anymore I might interested in this new High Republic stuff, since there doesn’t seem to be anything Empire-related at all about it, but at the same time, I don’t know if Star Wars can work without an Empire of some kind. I think I’d rather just find different space opera to get that fix. Your mileage might vary though.

      1. Erik says:

        And I’d call this sub-thread proof of Shamus’s three pillars theory – one of you is on the Empire/politics/Leia pillar, the other is on the Force/Jedi/Luke pillar. Which makes you both equally right, and Shamus right as well.

      2. Syal says:

        The Empire gets a lot of screentime, being the main villains and all, but there’s plenty of memorable Star Wars moments that don’t involve them; the Jawa don’t involve them, the Sand People don’t involve them, the thugs in Mos Eisley don’t involve them, the abominable snowman on Hoth doesn’t involve them, Yoda and Dagobah barely involves them, Jabba the Hutt doesn’t involve them, the Ewok camp doesn’t involve them.

  10. Dreadjaws says:

    It would be a disaster if someone were to attempt a classic “robot uprising” story or a “I just want to be human” character arc within the world of Star Wars. The world is not designed to withstand this sort of investigation and if robot personalities ever became a problem then all of my questions in the previous paragraph would become massive plot holes.

    I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.

    Are these subtles jabs at Solo or you haven’t actually watched that film?

    Personally I’m a fan of Han Solo’s domain, which probably explains why I’m so into the Mandalorian.

    I’m more of the Luke Skywalker domain, and I really enjoy The Mandalorian as well. Leaving aside all the stuff about it being “true Star Wars” or not, it simply cares about crafting good stories with interesting characters.

    Also, this is a good time as any to plug my Mandalorian/Breaking Bad fanart. Yes, you read that right. Proceed at your own risk.

    1. Lino says:

      Wow, art’s actually quite good!

  11. Daimbert says:

    Maybe this means my entire “Three Pillars” model is hogwash, but I still find it a useful way to think about Star Wars stories.

    I think that you’re right that those are the three main pillars that the universe is built around, but think that works can focus on one or two of them and work as long as they do that well. I think that The Old Republic does do this fairly well, as its classes can be divided up into ones that interact primarily with one and as an aside with one or two more, and the world and planetary missions also fit into them. But the big thing is that because all of these things are part of the world you need to at least understand that when something would hit one of the other pillars you need to ensure that it works for that pillar in the world. In my opinion, one of the problems with the prequel trilogy was not that it added politics in, but that it did so in a confusing and boring way. ANH brings in the politics with the first Imperial officer’s and Tarkin’s comments, but it explains it simply and gets it all out of the way. One of the things I loved about some of the EU works is the addition of more detailed politics that was fun to work through.

    So, again, there’s room to play with these things and people do, and it works. You just need to do it properly and respect the other pillars and the overall universe of Star Wars.

    The Marvel movies have just given us 12 years of sugar, so I’m sort of expecting that The Boys, the Watchmen TV Show, Brightburn and the general trend of dark / adult superhero films are a signal that our collective sweet tooth has been sated and cynicism is on the way back. Sure, cynical movies never really went away, but I’m talking about what sorts of entertainment dominate the culture. And for the last decade people have been buying a lot of sugar.

    There’s quite a bit of cynicism in the Marvel movies, though, especially the Captain America ones and Civil War. I see the trend of darker movies more a rejection of the underlying premises and tropes and the general format. Subversions don’t work unless your audience recognizes the tropes, and the Marvel movies are big enough and have enough cultural impact for that to happen. It’s also the case that subversions become more popular — especially for writers — the more well-worn the existing tropes seem, as it raises the questions of what would happen if you didn’t follow that trope and things worked out differently. People start thinking about the assumptions and start noticing that there are some interesting stories there if you tweak or break one of those tropes (the Philosophy and Popular Culture books work similarly, except they have a backstory of philosophical questions to appeal to, and so piggyback those questions onto familiar stories and characters to show how it would work beyond dry philosophical argumentation).

    So, for Star Wars, I think the bigger part of it was that it was new by, ironically, being old (bringing in classic tropes and the ones used in serials), not that it was light in a cynical world. It was different, and that appealed to people. Pretty much all people want something different at times, and being different can thus be interesting. Perhaps that explains some of the different ideas about TLJ, with people who wanted something different reacting positively and others who felt that they didn’t get enough of the same before things changed and so who weren’t really ready for something different — or else felt that they shouldn’t have that difference in the main movies — reacting badly.

    Again, we can look at Marvel. They do quite different things and at least some different takes on superheroes, but they tend to segment off those differences in their different series. So if you want something different, pick the series you want and watch it, and if you don’t, stick to the series that more stay the course. One of the reasons for the at least somewhat divided opinion over Thor might well be that it changed where it fit in that, and so became different — more like Guardians than like the other Thor movies — when at least some Thor fans — you can probably include me in this group, actually — wanted something more like Thor and lamented that if they wanted Guardians-style movies they’d go watch them.

    But then in 1999 George Lucas gave us the Naboo Royal Starship, which looked like the lame featureless smooth chrome ships of the cheesy sci-fi that predated Star Wars. It was the most un-Star Wars-y thing I’d ever seen.

    I think that’s a perfect move, though, to establish — as compared to the Falcon — that that’s the sort of thing that the wealthy and influential would have. They might have needed to add in the smuggler part of the pillar to show the contrast to make it work in general and especially for people like you, to show that they aren’t taking away the feel but showing that the different pillars, rightly, have different rules.

    Remember how awful it was when George Lucas broke this “rule” and Queen Amadala[9] made a fuss over R2-D2 because he was famous to us? Yuck.

    It didn’t bother me much because R2-D2 actually did do something pretty impressive there and droids have been established as having enough personality that it might matter. It’s also clearly an excuse for the Queen to get to mingle with people they’ve picked up to feel them out on what’s going on. After all, they in general do care about droids because at the end of ANH Luke is very concerned for R2-D2 and the techs seem to understand his concern and don’t dismiss it as him being a foolish kid.

    For Threepio, part of it might be what you yourself mentioned in the Mass Effect series about him: he’s fun when he’s being fussy and being impeded and annoyed, and giving him an arc moves him away from that into something more serious, hurting what people liked about the character. It also could be adding an unnecessary arc like that into a movie that was already overstuffed seems like a waste of time, even if it was a good arc for the character.

    The Last Jedi portrays a reasonable outcome of what would happen if you tried to run a military with such a laissez-faire approach to leadership. It wasn’t wrong as a story concept, but for people like me it was wrong for Star Wars because I felt that a hippie military based on friendship was part of the setting, and strict chain-of-command power structures were for those squares in the Empire.

    I don’t think it really does, though, or at least not a reasonable outcome in a fictional universe’s idea of that. The reason things are so loose in the Rebellion/Resistance is first out of need — you have fewer people and so people who might be lower rank might be the one’s with the skills you need (see TFA and Han taking Finn into Starkiller Base), requiring more people to be more free to express more opinions directly and strongly outside of the strict chain of command — but also because the whole organization is built around trust. They share a common goal, and as they are smaller they’ve worked together and so trust each other, which avoids that sort of direct conflict that can’t be resolved. This is a WONDERFUL set-up to bring in a Holdo, someone with impressive credentials but who isn’t trusted by the others and doesn’t trust them because they don’t know each other (see Garibaldi’s at least initial arc in Babylon 5 when Sheridan replaces Sinclair for another example of a more minor division). Having Leia as the buffer there who knows and trusts all of them would work really well. But TLJ didn’t base the conflict on that directly, nor did it resolve it on that basis. So we never really get that clash over the trust being broken (directly referencing spies and traitors would work well here as well). So then it seems like conflict generated by the idiot ball, not reasonable reactions to the changed situation.

    For some people, The Last Jedi was Star Wars for grownups, and for others it wasn’t Star Wars at all. The important thing is that this division has always existed within the fanbase, but we couldn’t see it until a movie did something different.

    I think, rather, we never noticed until a movie tried to do the grownups part badly. I’m kinda comparing it to the game “Tender Loving Care” (that I just finished) which seems to have fallen into the common trap of thinking that being a more adult work means adding sex instead of using sex in a way that enhances the story and lets you tell things in a different way. Lots of people like Rogue One and it isn’t anywhere near as divisive despite it being more cynical and at least arguably more for grownups than TFA was, and TFA is less grownup but isn’t all that well-received among Star Wars fans. I will add that trying to make the grownup part the main focus on a mainline Star Wars movie helps as well, since it loses that other part and people coming to the mainline movies probably at least want both (and many of them, obviously, would want that part instead of the grownup part to be the one in there if they could only do one).

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      I think that’s a perfect move, though, to establish — as compared to the Falcon — that that’s the sort of thing that the wealthy and influential would have. They might have needed to add in the smuggler part of the pillar to show the contrast to make it work in general and especially for people like you, to show that they aren’t taking away the feel but showing that the different pillars, rightly, have different rules.

      I really think it’s the CGI’s or at least the compositing of it that’s at fault for why so many people are turned off by the PT aesthetic. I initially thought so too that the PT just didn’t get the Star Wars look right but other SW movies and shows do similar shiny or clean designs while still feeling completely natural to the setting.

      I think the terrible CGI makes most of the sets and visuals look like something out of Spy Kids, which takes the viewers out rather than making them feel immersed in the universe in the same way the OT and ST did with it’s visuals.

      1. Sartharina says:

        I really can’t understand all the complaints about “bad CGI” in movies. The worst CGI is still better than the best of Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, (and takes considerably more effort and just as much passion to make), and those movies were great.

        1. John says:

          There’s plenty of bad CGI out there, even in big-budget movies with technically impressive CG models. Some of it falls into the uncanny valley. Some of it is simply badly animated or directed. It’s not right to say that Technique A is always better than (supposedly) more primitive Technique B when so much depends on the artistry with which the two techniques are used.

          1. Daimbert says:

            One of my Cognitive Science classes actually covered this with the uncanny valley: the closer something is to real, the more small flaws can bother people, even if they’d forgive worse with less realistic methods. It’s likely because with the worse things once we get into them we suspend our disbelief and just accept that that’s how “real” things look, but if things look too real we don’t need to do that, and so when it suddenly stops looking real it’s really jarring and breaks our immersion.

        2. Dotec says:

          Because it’s… well, bad? You can run a clip of any of the CGI dino shots from Jurrasic Park and while you can probably detect a few things wrong if you dig into it, you’ll likely find it holds up better than most other films leaning on computer-generated special effects over the subsequent decade. I personally think we’ve only recently entered the territory where a lot of CGI is no longer noticeable and doesn’t raise flags in my brain.

          It’s also not just that the CGI is bad, but that the PT is forcing dump-trucks of it into your eyes from AOTC onwards. Some iffy computer effects here and there would be absolutely forgivable if they were more sparse. But the PT is choking on fake clone troopers, fake aliens, and god damn fake rooms where people do little more than slowly walk and boringly talk. There was no restraint in using CGI, which is a bad choice when the digital material being slathered over every frame of note isn’t that great to begin with and will age worse than milk.

          I’m fine with questionable CGI and computer effects. One of my favorite shows of the last few years (if not my life) has FX that look like they were crudely and amateurishly animated in some Adobe product. But it was limited, it fit the weird tone of the show any way, and never felt distracting. The PT is full of distractions, by comparison.

        3. Syal says:

          CGI is a cartoon. Cartoons have no physical restrictions. Even stop-motion at least feels like it’s subject to gravity. Cartoons aren’t subject to gravity, or strong force, or anything at all, so there’s no tension; a CGI ship can explode and then unexplode if the director wants it to.

          My go-to comparison is the egg-hatching scene from Jurassic Park versus the egg-hatching scene from the new Jurassic World. The old model feels like an egg is hatching, the new CGI feels like they were too lazy to make a model.

          1. Decius says:

            My go-to comparison for stop motion is the giant dogs from Ghostbusters, done in stop motion quite badly, compared to the ghost effects in the same film, which I think were done as animation.

            1. Syal says:

              Of course ghosts are also not supposed to have physical restrictions, so the cartoon look fits well.

              Just to be clear, nobody is saying CGI should be replaced with stop motion. There’s a reason it went away (though stop motion has also improved). But that’s not the only solution.

        4. Philadelphus says:

          I think I must have some incredibly high tolerance for CGI compared to most people, because I feel the same way; I never understand people’s complaints about bad CGI (even for movies I’ve seen) because it generally looks unnoticeable to me. I think once I remember seeing a movie (can’t remember what it was now, unfortunately, it was within the past few years) and feeling like the CGI wasn’t quite up to snuff at one point.

          To give you an idea of what I mean, I’ve heard complaints about the CGI faces in Rogue One for Leia and Tarkin. I didn’t actually know Peter Cushing had passed away before the movie’s filming when I saw it in the theater, I just thought he was doing a great job reprising the role. Yet I’ve seen people talk about how clearly bad a job was done projecting his face on the actor playing Tarkin. I’m not some CGI apologist or anything, it’s just interesting that these “obvious, terrible CGI effects” I hear people rail against are…not at all obvious to some of us. And I don’t know why.

    2. Syal says:

      because the whole organization is built around trust.

      I want to link to A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry discussing the merits of professional vs. unprofessional armies, through the illuminating perspective of The Battle Of Helm’s Deep.

      And also supergreatfriend playing through Tender Loving Care. Now you, too, can learn the value of Hugging the Shame Boy.

  12. Parkhorse says:

    And then here comes Star Wars, a world where everything looks scuffed, dinged, used, and lived-in. Their garages were greasy just like ours. Their vehicles were beat up, just like ours. Their clothes were joyless dirty earthtones, just like ours[6]! These touches made the world feel incredibly real despite the fantastical setting.

    The Star Wars technology was covered in greebles and fingerprints. It was the future, but it looked old and used instead of fresh and new.

    This is the most important part to me. The wild west/Tatooine/third world in space thing is just another part of this, for me – it feels dirty, used, lived in, and dangerous (the Millennium Falcon was a deathtrap in the original trilogy). It’s not just the tech, it’s the planets and the people. I love that feeling in my fiction – it makes it feel more real. It’s a big part of why I loved Babylon 5, and Firefly, and why I couldn’t stand how JJ Abrams’ Enterprise felt like someone stuck a warp drive on an Apple store.

    1. Mousazz says:

      Babylon 5 really stood out to me for being practically the only sci-fi show I’ve seen that had space hobos.

  13. Randint says:

    For what it’s worth, the way that the current Star Wars tabletop RPG is divided into three same-ruleset-but-different-focus lines (Edge of Empire, Age of Rebellion, and Force and Destiny) pretty much completely matches up with your three pillars approach.

    1. Nixorbo says:

      Seriously though, somebody needs to get Shamus the Edge of the Empire beginner box.

  14. Joshua says:

    Contrast between grungy, small isolated settlements and slick, technology-filled metropolis capitals?

    So, how do you feel about Firefly? :)

    1. Bubble181 says:

      I still wonder how he feels about the difference between New York and Shanghai, and Addis-Abbeba and frankly most of middle Asia and Africa.

      A world has different parts, so does an Empire.

  15. Asdasd says:

    https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_Droids:_Rebellion

    I offer this link not to be contrary but as a footnote of interest. I had this comic (at least I think it was this one) in my tender years in the 90s. It details a classic robot uprising of the kind you mention in the article led by C3PO, in a comic irony (his personality gets rewritten to be more assertive).

    My memory of it is hazy, but I seem to recall that in the denouement, all the droids partaking in the (failed) rebellion have to have their memories wiped, so as (in the metafictive sense) to repair the otherwise irrevocable damage it would do to the setting, and to return us to the status quo. Even as a kid I found it a little existentially depressing.

    I seem to recall it had great art though. Lots of greebles (thanks for teaching me this great word).

  16. John says:

    It’s interesting that you thought that Tatooine was supposed to be representative of the broader galaxy, Shamus. I never got that sense and I’m pretty sure that’s not what Lucas was going for, not least because Luke, our viewpoint character, clearly thinks of it as anomalous. Luke is not necessarily in a position to know what he’s talking about, having been stuck on Tatooine his whole life, but the possibility that the rest of the galaxy, or at least parts of it, are different is raised very early in the very first Star Wars film. One of the archetypes that Luke embodies is that of the bored rural or small-town kid who dreams of a more exciting life in the big city. For Luke to make sense, therefore, there has to be the space-equivalent of a big city out there somewhere.

    Luke’s life on the farm–to say nothing of Beru’s outfit–may suggest that Tatooine is more or less 70s rural America, but everything that Luke experiences off the farm implies that it’s really the Wild West. The Tusken Raiders are movie Indians. Mos Eisley is a lawless Western boom town full of dangerous and dissolute characters. And if there’s Wild West it seems reasonable to believe that there’s also a Back East, where things are very different. And there has to be one, doesn’t there? Where else would all the neat, tidy spaceships and neat, tidy people in neat, tidy clothes be coming from? That Star Destroyer definitely isn’t from any place like Tatooine. Neither is Leia or Tarkin. Nor are most of the other characters in the original trilogy, as far as I can tell.

    I think that one of the things that Lucas does well is present the galaxy as a big, varied place. Tatooine is a desert. Yavin is a jungle. Hoth is an ice planet. Endor is a forest. The plot of the original trilogy does not take us to many habitation centers, but Cloud City does not particularly resemble Mos Eisley. Variety is very important to Lucas. (His few public criticisms of the Disney films certainly suggest as much.) So, in the prequel trilogy, not only is Naboo nothing like Tatooine, it is deliberately designed to contrast with Tatooine as much as possible. It’s green, it’s got large bodies of water, it’s got beautiful buildings with beautiful gardens. It’s affluent, even extravagant, in ways that Tatooine isn’t and can never be. My guess is that if we had ever gotten a good look at Alderaan in the original trilogy it would have looked like Naboo, mostly for the sake of contrast with Tatooine, and that Lucas would then have chosen a different type of contrasting aesthetic for Naboo in the prequels.

    I’ve been enjoying The Mandalorian as well, Shamus, but now that you’ve pointed out that all planets are all basically Tatooine–when they aren’t actually, explicitly Tatooine, that is–I can’t help but feel a little dissatisfied. It makes sense that a semi-legal soldier of fortune like Mando would stick to the grimier parts of the galaxy, but I suddenly find myself craving some more visual variety. At least we got to see a nice garden in the last episode.

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      I agree, The Mandalorian has especially done a good job of showing off a bunch of visually interesting planets that also feel new for Star Wars. Trask, with the whole fishing village/bay thing it has going on and Corvus, with the apocalyptic and polluted scorched earth look are my favorites.

      1. Henson says:

        There’s….there’s a Star Wars planet named Trask? You think it’s named after our second-favorite tutorial sacrifice, Trask Ulgo?

        1. pseudonym says:

          Is Jenkins number one then?

          “He never stood a chance, ripped right trough his shields”

          *new codex entry: shields*

          He died so that we may listen to a narrated codex entry and live!

          1. Henson says:

            You better believe Jenkins is number one!

          2. GloatingSwine says:

            But did he have chicken?

    2. Thomas says:

      I might be a bit behind, but I think we’ll see some of that contrast as Mandalore the planet comes more into the plots focus.

      1. MerryWeathers says:

        The last time we saw Mandalore was in Clone Wars where it was already a dead planet and the Mandalorians had to live in glass dome structures where everything was cubic and made of glass inside.

        I’m interested in seeing what the Empire did to make what was already an uninhabitable planet even moreso.

      2. John says:

        I sincerely hope that Mandalore the planet never comes more into the plot’s focus. I like Din as a character and The Mandalorian as a show, but Mandalorians in general do not impress me and I do not care about their planet. I have never watched a show or read a book in which it appears and I see no reason to change now. I would rather The Mandalorian keep doing its own thing than turn into a stealth sequel for The Clone Wars or Rebels or some other thing I haven’t watched or haven’t read.

  17. Christopher Wolf says:

    Am I the only one who had to Google what Greebles were?

    1. RFS-81 says:

      I thought they were invisible creatures only cats can see, but that didn’t make any sense.

    2. Daimbert says:

      They grobble but they don’t fall down …

  18. Leipävelho says:

    The Mandalorian is the Star Wars I’ve been waiting for: The galaxy is huge,

    So, any bets on how many episodes until Mandalorian ends up on Kashyyyk or Tatootine?

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      The show already visited Tatooine, twice too.

      1. Leipävelho says:

        I know.

  19. Abnaxis says:

    For me, back when I was a huge Origins Trilogy fan, what set Star Wars apart was all the non- humanoid characters (especially droids) who weren’t just rubber foreheads, but also not portrayed as “weird.” Different and inhuman, yes, but more like culturally different instead of “isn’t your mind BLOWN by this weird Cthuhlu alien?” Somehow, I don’t feel like other movies have captured this feeling that nonhumans have personality and identity the way the first movies did to me.

    And again, few rubber foreheads. I can’t stress that one enough. If it hadn’t been for Jim Henson I probably wouldn’t have even finished the first trilogy.

  20. Dudeguy says:

    “To me, Greebles were the primary ingredient in making the technology look like Star Wars. I thought everyone agreed. But then in 1999 George Lucas gave us the Naboo Royal Starship, which looked like the lame featureless smooth chrome ships of the cheesy sci-fi that predated Star Wars. It was the most un-Star Wars-y thing I’d ever seen.

    It didn’t fit the Star Wars I knew, but it’s pretty hard to argue with the author. ”

    I think this happened for two reasons. 1: sleeker designs are easier to do in CGI. Greebles were necessary when they were representing space-vehicles by filming miniatures. The little weird details made it more believable that these were planes with four wings in outer space and not models. But when all the space vehicles are done with CGI, adding greebles is visual clutter. The CGI of the late 90’s and early 00’s was also a lot more primitive than today’s.

    The second reason for the sleek designs is to show a visual shift. The prequels take place at the sunset of the Republic, before the “dark times” Obi-Wan spoke of. Think about the height of Rome and what came after it. Or think about the civilization depicted in Asimov’s Foundation. Lucas stated it was an inspiration of his and even wanted to name Coruscant Trantor after the capital of Foundation. That civilization collapsed and all its high technology only lived on because of a group which tried to preserve it. I think Lucas’ decision to sleek up the ship designs was weird given the short amount of in-universe time between ROTS and ANH, but given the fact he was borrowing ideas from Foundation, it makes sense.

    1. Retsam says:

      It’s also worth mentioning Naboo’s ultra reflective ships are an outlier, even in the prequels – and the chrome monstrosity that is Padme’s ship, even more so. The other ships we see, while still noticeably cleaner than the original trilogy, still fit quite well with the original Star Wars aesthetic.

      Like the first ship we see is the Radiant VII, which was intentionally designed to be very similar to the iconic Tantive IV, except the Radiant is cleaner and notably doesn’t have guns bolted onto every available surface, but has a much beefier communications array, as makes sense for a ship intended for diplomacy. It’s a really good example of communicating world-building through ship design, while maintaining continuity with the original trilogy.

      And as a whole, I think the aesthetic design of the prequel trilogy did a good job on that front. Like the Jedi Starfighters, for example. In Episode II, they’re one of the earliest foreshadowings of the iconic triangular design of Star Destroyers, and then in Episode III, they use a new model which is a cross between the previous design and a TIE fighter, without just looking like a TIE fighter ripoff at first glance.

      And yeah I remember watching Star Wars special features where they outright said that the point of the cleaner prequel designs is to show that the galaxy was a nicer, wealthier place before decades of civil war tore it up. Sure, there are have always been places like Tatooine; but what’s the point of overthrowing the Empire if the galaxy was basically just as much of a shithole before?

      This is also probably why there’s no Han Solo pillar in the prequels – because the massive criminal organizations really only thrived in the chaos of the civil war. Of course, not that crime is non-existent (Jango Fett pays the bills somehow), but having a main character associated with “the underworld” would really have undermined the idea that the pre-Civil War galaxy was a better era.

    2. Olivier FAURE says:

      Yeah, I think the aesthetic difference would have been easier to sell if it had been used to contrast between the first arc on Naboo and the second arc on Tatooine.

      Like, when they escape Naboo and get shot, they could have added a plot point where the ship is permanently damaged, and they have to trade it for a crappier ship instead of repairing it. Or if they do repair it, add a scene actually showing the repairs, with crude redneck tech assembled by unqualified slaves clashing against the pristine polish of the ship.

  21. Geebs says:

    I think my list of things that “feel like Star Wars” is basically the OT, the Mandalorian, KOTOR 1 and Jedi Outcast.

    The entire rest of the franchise is either infected with third rate Sci-Fi tropes or George Lucas’s midlife crisis.

    Has anyone else played the recently-released Squadrons? I’ve only played the first couple of levels, but that’s a game that can put you in a perfectly rendered X-wing cockpit in VR and still doesn’t manage to feel much like Star Wars, somehow.

    1. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

      I like it -but my comment was that it feels more like the successor to Project: Sylpheed than it does X-Wing. This isn’t necessarily a complaint. I like Project Sylpheed, and Star Wars and Project Sylpheed pull from a lot of the same WWII dogfighting stories. But it still feels more like a cousin to the franchise than a descendent.

      But again -I like the game, so if you like flight sims don’t let that be a turn-off.

      1. RamblePak64 says:

        You just said the magic words. I loved Project: Sylpheed and lament that it will never get official backwards compatibility support from Microsoft because of how anime it was at a time when all the cool kids were avoiding that. I might have to actually pick up Squadrons next time it’s on sale.

      2. Geebs says:

        The game part of Squadrons is perfectly competent; it’s the writing I don’t find very convincing. Somebody obviously decided that players wouldn’t be able to relate to being a Tie Fighter pilot if that meant they had to be a bad guy; so from the outset there’s this #notallimperials thing which just doesn’t work for me.

        1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

          See, I got the opposite vibe. Almost all the imperial except for Gray seems like a complete psycho. But I am only 3 missions into the imperial line. I actually find it rather off putting. TIE Fighter did this much better.

    2. Daimbert says:

      I’m curious now, based on that, what your or others’ opinions are of X-Wing Alliance (I think everyone will agree that X-Wing et al feel like Star Wars, and Alliance had two of the three pillars Shamus talks about).

      I personally think that Star Wars: Rebellion had it as well, but that was mostly by osmosis in having all of the Star Wars characters in it and prominent.

      1. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

        I thought most of the games had it -Dark Forces, Rebellion, even Force Commander and Empire at War.

        I think Republic Commando did pretty good.

        The only one I can think that whiffed was Masters of Teras Kasi.

        1. Daimbert says:

          Whether it has the feel or not, Demolition was actually a surprisingly fun game …

    3. John says:

      I’d throw in Tie Fighter as well. It isn’t perfect, but it gets so much right. A big part of the appeal of Star Wars is the space pilot fantasy. Tie Fighter puts you right in the cockpit of one of those ships and lets you inhabit that fantasy directly in a way that most Star Wars games not only don’t but can’t. It also gets the appeal of the Empire. As an Imperial pilot, you’re on the side with the most space ships, the cleanest uniforms, and the poshest accents. You also get to tell yourself that you’re bringing peace and order to an unruly galaxy. At the same time, it shows that the Empire is fundamentally corrupt. Imperial officers are selling equipment to smugglers, pirates, rebels, and other malcontents. The Imperial fleet is full of political officers who operate outside the normal chain of command, encouraging you to doubt, undermine, and inform on your direct superiors. Two out of three named Imperial admirals are traitors, more than willing to turn on the Empire to further their own interests. Finally, Tie Fighter nods to the larger Star Wars universe without being obnoxious or awkward about it. Admiral Thrawn from the Zahn trilogy makes an appearance, but the game doesn’t expect you to know or care who he is and it doesn’t even mention his frankly ridiculous abilities from the books. (The Mandalorian could learn a thing or two from Tie Fighter.)

      1. Olivier FAURE says:

        Thrawn was the source of both some of Star Wars Rebels‘ best moments and it biggest problems.

        From the moment he was introduced, everything became about him, and the show was forced into a really awkward structure where every episode had to both make the Rebels win and make it seem like part of Thrawn’s plan somehow.

        The approach in the trilogy where he was introduced, where he didn’t do that much and the source of tension was more about the protagonists being in his vicinity, made him a lot more threatening.

        (but even then the problem is you don’t have much room for other villains and stories)

        1. MerryWeathers says:

          Filoni Thrawn lacked most of the nuance that made his EU (or book in canon) counterpart so interesting. Stuff like his crew’s genuine loyalty to him, error doesn’t equal mistake, the significance of being an alien member of the Empire and coming from the Unknown Regions, his pragmatism, and his actual military brilliance are mostly omitted from Rebels in favor of him just constantly staring at art and saying he’ll definitely destroy the rebels this time while his admittedly great organ theme music plays in the background.

          1. Olivier FAURE says:

            Eh. It’s less nuance and more “not literally being Darth Vader”. It’s only nuanced by Star Wars standards.

            I actually think Thrawn is kind of bland. He’s intimidating and a good source of conflict and he’s fun in small doses, but his schtick gets old after a while; for instance, I like his original books, where he only shows up in a few chapters, a lot better than the Disney canon book by the same author where he takes 60% of the text and becomes boring really quickly.

            I honestly liked him better as a character in Rebels, because they played a lot more with his penchant for art, gave him gasp flaws, and set up something of a rivalry between him and Hera Syndulla (where he’s all, “nothing personal, this is war after all” and she calls him out and goes “these are people’s lives we’re fighting for”). But, like much of Rebels, it never really went anywhere.

      2. Daimbert says:

        Admiral Thrawn from the Zahn trilogy makes an appearance, but the game doesn’t expect you to know or care who he is and it doesn’t even mention his frankly ridiculous abilities from the books

        Having re-read the original series very recently, he actually isn’t as bad as his legends now make him out to be. He does make some interesting deductions, but in general they are, in fact, deductions. And quite often he outsmarts himself. In one case, he set up a trail for framing Ackbar through a planet and expected that people like Han would immediately go there. When they go somewhere else, he presumes that there’s something more important than Ackbar going on that leads them to go there instead. The problem is that Han jumped the queue a bit and instead of backtracking through that planet looked for something that Ackbar’s political enemy seemed to want to protect and figured that would be a better option, and so was really looking for Ackbar all along. He also find Wookiee hairs in a Noghri’s ship and assumes that he was captured by them (which also explains a delay in reporting), missing completely that those hairs were there because that commando had been converted and brought Leia and Chewbacca there. It also never occurs to him that if the Noghri revere Darth Vader that they might also revere his children (although what he knew about either might be unclear). This ultimately results in his death.

        In the first trilogy, he’s just intelligent enough to be a real threat but often too clever for his own good, which gives him vulnerabilities. It’s later works that make him out to be the infallible genius.

        1. John says:

          I only read the trilogy, once, and it was way back in the 90s. I have long since forgotten everything about it except for the parts that I thought were exceptionally silly. The only thing that I particularly remember about Thrawn is the way he studies art in order to understand the psychology of the planets he’s attacking. It’s the kind of thing that could only ever work in a fictional universe.

          1. Joe Informatico says:

            Hard same. At least the Star Wars films are silly on purpose.

            In retrospect, the Thrawn trilogy doesn’t really feel like a Star Wars story to me so much as a different space opera setting that throws in Star Wars trademarked stuff here and there. Like Zahn either had little interest in developing the OT characters, or he felt they were sacrosanct and didn’t want to mess with them, but ultimately it results in his own creations like Thrawn, Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, etc. driving most of the plot while the OT characters react to them. And since Zahn set the tone for the EU, what little else I read from it also didn’t really feel like Star Wars to me. (This is not a judgement if you liked the EU, btw.)

            1. Bubble181 says:

              That the OT team doesn’t feature int othe mtoo heavily is exactly what I like about ‘m.

              “Star Wars” is many different things.

              The 9 Main Movies were always meant to be on ewhole (which went belly-up really) and told the Skywalker story. Or the story of the Jedi’s demise and rebirth, or whatever Lucas thought was the big overarching story at first.
              The EU (whether pre- or post-Disney-purge) – games, books, series, other movies – ca nflesh out the whole world – go back a thousand years, flash forward 50 years, talk about droids, make a whole story without a single Jedi in them, whatever. A movie like Rogue One does a lot of that quite well. The Mandalorian does that quite well. I thought some of the early Thrawn books did that quite well.
              What they SHOULDN’T do is try to cram ever-more fan favorite main characters in their stories to make Luke or Han do Even More Awesome Stuff – Yeah, you saw him blow up a Death Star, but now read about him blowing up TEN Death Stars! And the SUPER SECRET CLOAKED Death Star! And a whole PLANET re-built into an EVEN BIGGER Death Star! And whoo all the damsels! And
              Well, you get the point. New characters allow a setting to be fleshed out and expanded, to develop cool new tricks or tidbits, without messing up the Main Story – if the writers aren’t complete hacks. Books where the main characters suddenly undergo major evolutions or changes are more problematic to me, and often just read like fan fiction.

              1. Daimbert says:

                That’s probably one of the best things about the X-Wing series. It has Wedge and some other minor characters from the movies, which also allows them to bring in some of the other main movie characters when necessary, but it focuses on the more minor Wedge and the new characters around him. This lets it keep the connection to the movies without being dominated by it, and also leaves room for other works to focus on things at other levels and other places, and even to extend the main characters more without really impeding or being impeded by what happened there (although it did result in the ship-to-ship combat of Wedge with Iella or Qwi Xux).

                I also like New Jedi Order because its works were done kinda that way as well, breaking each trilogy down into segments of the EU where the writers had freedom to play with the parts of the EU and the characters they liked while making the major developments happen only in the main works, and then be referenced later. In my opinion, speaking as someone who was missing some of the very important works in the series, it worked so that I could focus on and read the ones I had/liked without being confused about what was happening elsewhere (as an example, I was missing the first one, Vector Prime, for the LONGEST time. MANY really important things happen there, but I pretty much knew what happened just from reading the other works and was never confused about what was going on).

          2. Daimbert says:

            Well, I’ve done a bit of philosophy and Cognitive Science, and it isn’t THAT far-fetched. What he gets are general psychological traits — fear of the unknown, a general perceptual flaw — that he then uses in his plans, and at least the fear of the unknown part is something that you could get from art. I agree, though, that it would have made more sense to use literature or plays instead of simple sculptures and paintings, but art and aesthetic criticism aims at that. About the only real objection at that point is that he couldn’t expect it to apply to everyone on the planet, but that’s no sillier than Star Trek’s cultures AND his main points are vague enough and his plans work at a large enough scale that he can bet on it and be right most of the time, and he DOES use it to get insights into individuals, which makes more sense.

            1. John says:

              It’s completely far fetched. As you point out, it’s also utterly reliant on the “planet of hats” phenomenon common to science fiction. If you try to imagine an actual human doing the same thing in any real or historical scenario the concept immediately becomes ridiculous. To predict what an enemy leader will do, you study the enemy leader rather than art by unrelated persons.

              1. Syal says:

                Hee hee, Thrawn’s just pulling mentalism tricks to wow his underlings. “This painting tells me they have a Fear of the Unknown. Yes, you need the painting to know that.”

              2. Daimbert says:

                While there’s one exception — an early scene with a small battle — for the most part the other times rely on averages, as he needs most of the people and the leaders to capitulate. While individuals will differ, you can indeed often rely on averages across an entire culture. For the biggest one, all he needs is for them to capitulate faster than average, which is a safer bet. And Thrawn does, in fact, on as many if not more occasions study the art of enemy leaders as well in making his plans.

          3. Olivier FAURE says:

            The “Thrawn likes art” bits in Rebel are a little more mundane, which makes them both more grounded (no more “this 3D chess move will only work because this entire species has a deep-seated phobia of this exact type of space maneuver”).

            Eg Hera gets caught because Thrawn identifies the artefact she was stealing as a family heirloom.

      3. MerryWeathers says:

        The Mandalorian could learn a thing or two from Tie Fighter.)

        From what I’ve seen, name drops and guest appearances in The Mandalorian are part of what makes people love the show so much. I’ve seen many posts and videos of people saying Filoni and Favreau “get” Star Wars whenever they have a character reference something that happened in Clone Wars or Rebels.

        1. Shamus says:

          Another viewpoint: I love the Mandalorian, and as a movies-only fan, the various name drops mean nothing to me.

          I would say the cameos in the Mandalorian are the best cameos I’ve ever seen, based on the fact that I had NO idea they WERE cameos.

          A few episodes ago there was some sheriff guy that wore Mandalorian armor. I thought he was just another character. Then later I learned he’s a big deal in the EU. I liked how the show didn’t feel the need to roll out the red carpet or make a big deal about him. OMG folks it’s SHERIFF CAMEO! Now he’s going to randomly mention that he was roommates with Boba Fett in college and he personally repaired Luke’s X-Wing just before the assault on the Death Star!

          Same goes for the Mandalorian trio that showed up a few episodes ago. I had no idea this lady was from some other series. She was just another cool character to meet along the way.

          Din goes to tatooine and even to THE CANTINA, but the driector doesn’t feel the need to tell us that this cantina is some special historical landmark. Nobody from the OT drops by. To Din it’s just another dive, and if you somehow never saw A New Hope you’d never know this place was special. They didn’t even play the now-overused cantina music.

          1. MerryWeathers says:

            Yeah, the guests also feel more natural in The Mandalorian because they were already a part of established Mandalorian storylines or lore so its appropriate they would appear in the show about a Mandalorian. They also actually serve a purpose in the story, Bo-Katan gives us more information about the Mandalorians and how the ones we see in the show relate to previous depictions in canon.

            It’s not like the characters of Rogue One suddenly bumping into Dr. Evazan or Ponda Baba out of nowhere and for no reason at all either.

          2. John says:

            A few episodes ago there was some sheriff guy that wore Mandalorian armor. I thought he was just another character. Then later I learned he’s a big deal in the EU. I liked how the show didn’t feel the need to roll out the red carpet or make a big deal about him.

            I agree that this is the ideal way to handle characters from other spinoffs. I’ve never heard of that sherrif guy either. I have heard of some of the other guest characters, however, and I can’t help but be distracted and concerned when they show up, especially when the show seems to be dropping hints that these characters and their associated problems are going to become plot relevant in the future. I am perhaps worried for nothing. The only way to know for sure is to wait and see.

            1. MerryWeathers says:

              however, and I can’t help but be distracted and concerned when they show up, especially when the show seems to be dropping hints that these characters and their associated problems are going to become plot relevant in the future.

              If you’re talking about Ahsoka and Thrawn, I wouldn’t worry because that seems to be setting up the Rebels sequel show, separate from The Mandalorian. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ahsoka never appears again in the show.

              Stuff like Bo-Katan retaking Mandalore or Boba’s armor are probably setup for new storylines in the show but I personally don’t mind since they’re related to Mandalorians.

              1. John says:

                Stealth pilots are the worst.

                1. Henson says:

                  ‘Stealth pilots’, that’s such a great term.

                  1. MerryWeathers says:

                    They weren’t so stealthy in the Cold War.

                  2. John says:

                    Then it may amuse you to know that the more traditional way of saying the same thing is “backdoor pilots”.

                    1. Syal says:

                      Dirty scenes, run dirt cheap.

        2. John says:

          From what I’ve seen, name drops and guest appearances in The Mandalorian are part of what makes people love the show so much.

          I’m sure that’s true for some people. But The Mandalorian is, if not exactly a prestige drama, a relatively big-budget live-action show with wide appeal. I’d be willing to bet that a majority of the people watching are really only familiar with the movies and have never watched The Clone Wars or read an EU novel. Those people are not showing up for the name drops, which means that the name drops and cameos need to be handled carefully and kept to a reasonable minimum.

          1. MerryWeathers says:

            I actually think most of the people watching The Mandalorian are already familiar with the Clone Wars at this point. Many of the comments and reactions I’ve seen online about the episodes seem to know who Ahsoka or Bo-Katan is.

            It’s like the MCU where Dr. Strange can casually pop up in Thor and instead of this being met with confusion, people say “Ayyy, it’s Dr. Strange”.

            1. John says:

              Enthusiasts commenting online do not necessarily represent the entire audience. They theoretically could, but it is by no means certain.

              1. MerryWeathers says:

                Of course not every single person watching The Mandalorian has also watched the previous shows which is why I said “most” and not “all”. I do feel it’s not far fetched for a significant amount of viewers to have already watched The Clone Wars as it’s one of the most popular shows on Disney+.

                Those people are not showing up for the name drops, which means that the name drops and cameos need to be handled carefully and kept to a reasonable minimum.

                The whole point is that the name drops or guest appearances are supposed to be unexpected and the viewer is meant to be pleasantly surprised by the crossovers. The show seems to have done this well for most people since there isn’t much confusion and people get even more excited for what the show has to offer later on.

  22. Biggus Rickus says:

    I think Firefly fleshed out something akin to what the Star Wars galaxy implied. There would be a central civilized power base to the empire. A rebel alliance would naturally have to operate on the fringes of that galaxy (the rim worlds in the Firefly setting). Whether this was Lucas’ intent or not, it makes logical sense. And really, the original trilogy only hinted at most of the workings of the galaxy. We could fill in gaps with our imaginations. The prequels ruined all of that, because they filled in the blanks unsatisfactorily. The sequel trilogy is just a messy money grab that often feels more like fan fiction than a story anyone wanted to tell.

  23. Smosh says:

    > I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.

    That’s L3-37’s arc in the movie Solo.

    She wants droids to be treated like humans, not just like machines. She spends the whole movie fighting to end droid-slavery, and have them all be treated like people.

    I would say that’s a solid match, and like you predict: It is a horrible fit for the setting. They try to play over the issues with making it a joke, which only makes it worse: She is being belittled for a whole movie, and in the end her body is destroyed, and her consciousness gets uploaded into a ship’s computer. She is robbed not just of all agency, but also bodily autonomy and even her ability to talk. To her, this must be the most hellish fate imaginable. And it’s played as a cute joke.

    She’s also the only female-coded droid in all of Star Wars with a significant number of lines, so her behaving like “a feminist SJW” and then literally being disenfranchised leaves an extra sour taste in my mouth. That’s political, but it’s a political position taken not by the fans or haters, but by the author.

    Here’s someone putting all of this way better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD2UrB7zepo

  24. RamblePak64 says:

    By time we reached Revenge of the Sith I was disappointed in the vehicle design. I think I was in high school by then, and I had already established in my mind that the Rebellion was effectively using a bunch of old and outdated ships and fighters from the Clone Wars. It makes sense, right? That’s why they looked all scuffed and busted up. They were the fighters that managed to survive or be functional enough to be repaired. A rebellion wouldn’t be able to manufacture new ships.

    But George Lucas decided to instead have all these sleek looking vehicles that would look like the “early stages” of what we knew as the X-, Y-, and A-Wings…. only, these “early stages” looked far more clean. It seemed to me like the appropriate step would be to have a far cleaner, fancier version of the X-, Y-, and A-Wings. Instead, if you look at the design of the vehicles, it’s like going from a 2020 Ford Mustang to a 1970 Ford Mustang. Somehow, technology and design went backwards.

    Of course, regardless, of all of that, it doesn’t actually impact the narrative elements of what makes Star Wars. I will agree, however, that there’s something to the dirty, lived-in look that helped Star Wars remain visually appealing even as other movies of the time looked increasingly dated. Superman is actually a perfect comparison, because everything about that movie “looks old” from a modern perspective. I’m actually curious how a twelve year-old would respond to that versus Star Wars, which will no doubt also look old. Or, perhaps I’m wrong and the twelve year-old will be unable to distinguish either of them. I just know when I was a child in the 90’s watching Star Wars on VHS, it didn’t feel like an “old movie” to me. The first time I saw Superman, however, it felt like an “old movie”. And realistically speaking, neither one of them was even 20 years old at the time! (Man, it’s weird what a child considers “old” compared to… well, actually getting old)

    In any event, something I found interesting about watching The Mandalorian was how much it gave off Firefly vibes. To that end, I think there’s a conversation to be had in terms of a “feel” and how it can transfer due to influence. Firefly is no doubt inspired by Star Wars, even if not directly, in its rag-tag group of rebels on a spaceship. Malcom Reynolds is definitely a Han Solo for a new era, and as others have noted, it takes place on the outer rim (though I think that whole “Outer Rim” thing also was just George Lucas signing off on an Extended Universe book without really reading its contents and therefore is now “canon”). While it has a lot of that “Western” look due to budgetary reasons, one can argue that contributed to the lived-in look of Star Wars as well, as everything needed to be built from parts from a scrap yard. While Firefly did not enjoy the popularity of Star Wars, it has certainly been influential, and as such could easily have helped inspire the direction of The Mandalorian.

    To that end, whose “feel” is it originally? Star Wars, or Firefly? Or is this “feel” just something bound to continue evolving? If Mandalorian truly was influenced by Firefly, then I think that is for the better. If you keep looking to the original trilogy for inspiration, then you’ll never evolve and grow.

    Finally: for some reason all this talk of “feel” reminded me of reading the Iwata Asks on the development of Ocarina of Time. There was a point where the programmer demonstrated being able to cut a sign in half and the plank of wood floating in the water upon landing there. “Ah, now this is Zelda!” was Shigeru Miyamoto’s remark. However, would any single fan latch onto such a small detail and think “Yup, that’s what makes Zelda, alright!”? Well, by Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, I think it’s clear that, no, that’s not the sort of thing that fans believed made Zelda what it was. Personally, that’s more what makes Nintendo who they are than it is what makes Zelda what it is. Yet it just goes to show that, from developer to fan, the “feel” is bound to be different for a lot of people.

  25. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

    I think the best I’ve heard is that Star Wars is, at heart, an aesthetic. Star Wars is a universe with a large, galaxy spanning power, but all the benefits of that power haven’t reached the edges of the galaxy. I compared it to Rome in the 3rd century above, but it is also drawing on the Japanese and Chinese cinema histories of the Sengoku period in Japan and Jianghu in China. What makes it different is that these ancient worlds are portrayed as future worlds -but Lucas had one more insight: that these future worlds should look used. Even the Star Destroyers look like places people work -not movie sets.

    The great thing about that aesthetic is that it can support a great deal of storytelling. You can tell stories of samurai and martial arts masters, you can tell stories of diplomats and generals, and you can tell stories of scoundrels and criminals. What you have to keep in mind is that the setting is Jianghu in space.

    I have a lot of thematic and plot gripes with Lucas -but even in the worst stages of the prequel trilogy, he got the aesthetic correct.

    The mistake JJ Abrams made right off the bat was assuming that the central power has to be evil. It just has to be remote. The New Republic is too large and too busy -just like the Empire and the Old Republic -to deal with the First Order/Imperial Remnant. So, a small band of former rebels has to organize the rim to deal with Snoke et al, but again I think much of the aesthetic is there.

    Johnson, however, just completely missed it. Canto Blight, Crayt, the Holdo Maneuver -these are not the right feel. They are imports from other genres -mostly Tech Thrillers I’d say. And Star Wars doesn’t take Tech Thrillers well (so far as I know, the Black Fleet Crisis is still considered a narrative dead end). It’s also why Rose sticks out a bit -she’s an import from a different genre as well. And it is why John Boyega is not wrong to gripe about what happened to Finn -because his character was catapulted out of the Star Wars genre and into something completely different.

    Johnson did recover the feel for a few moments: Yoda talking to Luke, Luke’s confrontation with Ben, Frankly, anything involving Ben -Adam Driver is the best thing about the sequels. But overall, the movie feels like a tech thriller crossed with a submarine movie. This is a fine movie (The Hunt for Red October is a great film!)-it just isn’t Star Wars.

    One thing I don’t think was appreciated enough in the movies was the central role of the Force in the Star Wars universe. Remember what Obi-wan Kenobi says: the Force guides your actions, but also obeys your commands. What makes the Star Wars Universe different is not just Jianghu in space, it is also the providential guidance of the Force (which is why “The Force Be With You/And also with you” is a great line -though a Reform Mandalorian might say “and with your spirit”). A lot of people have mistaken that to mean that the movies are about the Skywalkers (because they are powerful force users), but actually it is just about the Force. Part of Rogue One’s success is the recognition -made literal by Chirrut -that the Force guides our actions, but there is still a place for Free Will. So even though there are no Jedi (Vader’s cameo doesn’t count), it is still a movie permeated by the Force.

    The force is an energy field that surrounds us, penetrates, and binds the galaxy together.

    That’s Star Wars.

    1. Kathryn says:

      On Adam Driver – I have seen only TFA. I didn’t think he was good. Not terrible or anything, but not good. Was he significantly better in the other two films than in TFA, or do we disagree about his TFA performance (or both)?

      1. Sabrdance (Matthew H) says:

        After TFA I called him Darth Emo. I think his problem was direction, though. He’s the best thing in TLJ and ROS.

    2. Paul Spooner says:

      “Jianghu in space” seems like a really good way of putting it.
      If we’re going to characterize “The Force” in narrative terms, I’d say it’s the Hero’s Journey, which is another explicit inspiration for the Original Trilogy, and another way in which the Disney Trilogy broke the pattern.

    3. Lino says:

      Ditto. That’s what Star Wars has always been for me. That, combined with the martial arts philosophy. It’s also part of the reason why I love the prequels. Although that last one may also be a generational thing.

    4. Nate says:

      What you have to keep in mind is that the setting is Jianghu in space.

      THIS SO VERY YES.

      Star Wars, to me, is Americanised Chinese Wuxia. An American future Jianghu.

      I know everyone, probably including Lucas himself, points at Japanese Samurai stories – but to me, the Galaxy is much more *Chinese* than Japanese. Specifically, the 1930s in China, where you have an invading explicitly fascist empire (Japan, a little bit mashed up with the late Qin) that’s taken over from a dysfunctional Republic (the 1911 Republic, again), and a rebellion based on air power and private adventurers (the Yunnan government and the American Flying Tigers). Plus a little bit of WW2 Battle of Britain. Princess Leia is readily identifiable as either one of the Soong Sisters, or Princess Elizabeth of England. But it’s that whole 1930s pulp feel, drawn from the headlines of an actual world at war, that we’ve now almost forgotten really existed.

      In Star Wars, travel should take days to months, because that’s what travel took in the 1930s. Air travel was just getting started, and was mostly private adventurers, sea travel was established but dirty and dangerous, and that’s what hyperspace should feel like. It should NOT feel like 21st century air travel or the Internet. You shouldn’t be able to just dial up a planet and be there in seconds. That breaks the whole 1930s pulp-noir feel.

      But you specifically need the Chinese feel because you need martial arts and this sense of a very old, very large civilisation. It’s not just a small island, it’s a whole continent. And the Force isn’t magic – it’s just Qi. Arguing that “the Jedi should be dismantled because they don’t control the Force” is as silly as arguing that “The Shaolin Temple don’t control Qi”. Of course there’s no and there should be multiple Force / martial arts factions, but, the Jedi were a faction who *studied* Force/Qi, and know quite a bit about it.

      Also the Light and Dark sides of the Force are not the same as Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are the natural turn of the seasons, ‘hot/hard’ and ‘cold/soft’ forms of energy. Neither of these are good or evil. But good and evil do exist in human actions. The Force is more like the realm of ghosts/ancestors/energy, who can be called upon for assistance in battle. How you act will determine who responds to your call. There are bad ghosts who if you have a bad attitude, will be happy to help you do bad things, but this will ultimately hurt you. The Force isn’t a superpower. It is a natural feature of the world. Learning to use it *safely* however is what requires training. You balance Yin and Yang by finding the natural balance, like the seasons, between summer and winter, day and light, fast and slow action. But the dark and light sides of the Force cannot be ‘balanced’ in the same way. You don’t get balance by doing good one day and evil the next. The Force changes as human society changes, and can become all light. In wuxia the heroes always strive to do what is right; they don’t try to balance good and evil actions.

      When I discovered TV adaptations of the 1950s/60s Wuxiaworks of Jin Yong’s “Condor Heroes”, I squealed with delight because THIS was the Star Wars feel. An empire under seige from an invading/occuping force. Patriotic rebels, criminals, bandits, spies, femme-fatales and fighters, AND intensely soap-opera romances and family dramas and a deep sense of
      honour and loyalty.

      Watch the 2017 Legend of the Condor Heroes and tell me that this isn’t the Star Wars aesthetic (everything except being set in a future with spaceships and droids).

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKxLId-CEmc

      1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

        Oh yes on the balancing point. It is what made the prophesy in the prequels make no real sense, and why the concept of Gray Jedi obviously has purchase in the EU. It also makes sense of the Jedi’s blindness. They have chosen to ignore everything outside their particular interpretation of Yin.

      2. John says:

        But you specifically need the Chinese feel because you need martial arts and this sense of a very old, very large civilisation.

        I dunno. With the arguable exception of Yoda as the wise old master figure, nothing about the original trilogy says “Chinese martial arts” to me. I note that we never see Yoda teach Luke anything about fighting. You can argue that we would have, had he not been a puppet, I suppose, and that all the fighty-fighty training happened off screen. However, all of the melee fighting that we do see in the original trilogy is thoroughly western in nature. It’s much more Adventures of Robin Hood than it is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. That stuff is all in the prequels. It’s a part of Star Wars, certainly, but I don’t think it’s an essential part, and saying that you “need” it is probably going too far.

        Unless of course that’s just what you personally are looking for in Star Wars, in which case I apologise.

        1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

          Speaking only for me – it is very much a blend. It is what you get when you mix a California car guy raised Methodist with Japanese and Chinese cinema.

          The lightsaber duels of the OT are based in Kendo, but the blasters are Wild West. The starships are Muscle Cars. The Force is qi (maybe) but the metaphysics are very Christian (even if heretically manichean).

          1. Nate says:

            You’re right of course about Star Wars being a cinematic mash-up, with as much Wild West and WW2 as Chinese/Japanese cinema. And a bit of Flash Gordon and French sci-fi comics, a bit of Dune, a bit of Foundation.

            I think it’s the Jedi specifically who are the Wuxia element.

            In fact, thinking about it, I think Shamus Three Pillars pretty much represent three cinematic forms that Lucas drew on:

            * “Luke”/” The Jedi” is Chinese/Japanese martial arts cinema, more Wuxia than kung-fu because it inherits some of that end-of-a-dynasty and warring-sects feel. (And bearing in mind that wuxia is quite modern – 1930s and 1950s/1960s, so paralleling pulp/noir and superhero comics, and actually borrows a lot from those).

            * “Han”/” The Underworld” is Westerns and gangster movies

            * “Leia”/”The Republic” is WW2 newsreels, US political drama, and Apollo space programs. It’s part of what gives Star Wars a deliberate “documentary” feel.

            It’s all mixed up a bit too, but the Pillars roughly match “what was on TV in the 1950s”.

        2. Lino says:

          There isn’t anything about Chinese martial arts in the OT? Every single scene with Obi-Wan and Luke has to do with martial arts. The OT is more about martial arts than most martial arts movies :D. This was somewhat carried over to the PT, as well. The entire way the Jedi work is permeated with it Chinese martial arts.

          Yoda is the archetypal example of the old, wise teacher. If I have to be extremely reductionist (which I have to be, if you don’t want this to turn into a 3000-word wall of text), there were different types of monks in the Shaolin temple. Some of them learned to be warriors, but a larger part of them didn’t. Like Yoda, they were mainly focused on their religious teachings – much more than their warrior counterparts. But the coolest thing is that Yoda isn’t even that – we learn that he’s an example of a very rare type of monk who has achieved an extremely high level of skill as a warrior. So high in fact, that he doesn’t have to fight anymore. He teaches Luke to be a fighter without ever needing to take out his lightsaber or talk about something as superfluous as techniques. If anything, the scenes with Yoda are the most Chinese martial arts scenes in mainstream media.

          1. John says:

            I’m not going to argue about Yoda, but the statement that “every single scene with Obi-Wan and Luke has to do with martial arts” is so obviously untrue that you have just blown my mind. None of those scenes except the lightsaber drill have have anything to do with martial arts and none of them at all have anything to do with obviously Chinese martial arts. Everything about the Jedi is permeated with quasi-Buddhism and quasi-Taoism, but that’s not the same as martial arts.

            1. Lino says:

              Everything about the Jedi is permeated with quasi-Buddhism and quasi-Taoism, but that’s not the same as martial arts.

              I beg to differ – the philosophy of Japanese and Chinese martial arts is very, very closely tied to Buddhism and Taoism. Also, “fighting techniques” is a very, very narrow definition of martial arts. They’re part of martial arts in the same way that making cake frosting is part of bakery. Yes, making a good frosting is important (and it’s what a lot of people focus on), but it’s only barely scratching the surface.

              But that’s a whole ‘nother topic entirely, and I don’t want to sidetrack the conversation.

              1. John says:

                I could just as easily say that you have a very, very expansive view of martial arts. To say that quasi-Buddhism automatically implies martial arts is like saying that rectangle-ness necessarily implies square-ness. It’s just not true. You’re conflating the subset with the superset to which it belongs.

                1. Lino says:

                  This is a very Western way of looking at things – you’re projecting Western ideas onto an Eastern mindset. In China especially, movements like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Zen percolate thorugh the entire worldview and way of life of people – much more than similar things do here in the West. Which is why I said that martial arts are closely tied to said movements.

                  While we here may have strict boundaries on what is the domain of religion, what is the domain philosophy and morality, in China these boundaries are very, very fluid.

                  A great book on the matter is Eastern Philosophy by Mel Thompson. While it only briefly touches upon this aspect, it’s a great starting point. One of the things I like about it is that the author makes lots of parallels to Western philosophy and ideas, and gives many examples. It’s extremely to-the-point (and also gives you a really good bird’s eye view of some of the main Asian religions – such as Hinduism, Jainism, Zen, Buddhism, Taoism, Tantra and Confucianism; though that last one isn’t technically a religion; I’m frankly amazed how he managed to pack so much information in just 300 pages :O).

                  1. Lino says:

                    Of course, none of this is to say that all Buddhism and Taoism have to do with martial arts (like you pointed out). It’s just that the dividing lines are much more fluid than that statement makes them out to be.

          2. Nate says:

            I think for me discovering Wuxia made some of the confusing social conventions in Star Wars make more sense, because it’s just a very different world than today.

            Eg the master/apprentice relationship, the existence of martial arts sects (Jedi/Sith) as social institutions that aren’t quite the same as the official government or military, but also aren’t quite autonomous, acting a bit like…

            Well, in modern terms, if universities / business schools / professional guilds / charities were run by churches who also ran private yet highly regarded war colleges, maybe? And they had license to fight bandits for the local mayors, and trained CEOs’ children in self-defense, and maybe also occasionally started revolutions? And if you were a fighter (a noble usually, not a commoner) you would have trained at one of those institutions, and you would have sworn a blood oath to not reveal their trade secrets, which might outrank your duties even to an Emperor. And your reputation for honourable fighting AND of being undefeated would both be very important, sort of like your, um, credit rating or impact factor as an academic, or your number of Twitter followers, and so your priorities in a fight might not always just be “win this battle for my employer” and “be loyal to my family/country” but also “uphold the honour/secrets of my school/church/guild”. *And everyone would just understand and accept this so having divided loyalties would not feel out of place*. It’s just a *very* different social order.

            And this is why Luke has to face Vader – or rather, why a martial arts character who Luke is just a Westernised copy of, would. Because he’s sworn to a temple/guild. Because he’ll lose honour in the entire fighting class of society if he doesn’t face a fight. (An action roughly like being thrown out of your profession AND your church AND going bankrupt; you can recover, but it may take years). Because temple/guild rules and fighting honour are older than and matter more than mere politics or even war, and everyone understands this, *especially* the people fighting wars.

            But this is all very murky to us now, in the West, and so if we don’t understand any of this Asian social background, we just think ” OK but that’s silly, Jedi should be able to cast Force Lightning because it gets you higher DPS” and from there it’s easy to think “well the Jedi are just this stupid hidebound cult who like killing people”. Not entirely wrong, but, there once was a whole social background behind all those weird-to-us-now martial arts rules.

  26. krellen says:

    I do not view The Last Jedi as “Star Wars for grown-ups”, but at this point I give up entirely on trying to convey my side to this community and its host. I give up.

    1. Shamus says:

      Well, I wasn’t trying to speak for ALL fans of TLJ, which would be a mistake since:

      1) I’m not qualified to do so.
      2) It’s not possible to do so, since TLJ fans latch onto a lot of different things.

      I was just offering that viewpoint as something I’ve seen as I followed the debate.

    2. Paul Spooner says:

      I think Shamus (and the members of the community who know who you are) understand your side. It’s just that it’s an unusual side, and not many people agree with you. You explicitly disagree with the idea that “A New Hope(fulness)” has ever characterized Star Wars in any way.

      Star Wars is a series about how noble intentions can lead to dark endings
      The central theme for Star Wars to me has always been “The Jedi Were Wrong”

      Now, that’s totally fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. But it is a rather odd one, so you can’t expect this corner-case to be widely acclaimed in a discussion of the broad themes.

      But this whole post is about how “Star Wars” means different things to different people, so I don’t even know what you’re complaining about. Unless…

      Please stop replying to my comments.

      You aren’t actually interested in a discussion, and just want everyone to agree with you?

      1. krellen says:

        Shamus was once swayed to my side, before the Sequels came out.

        And that comment was directed at one particular poster, not to a collective group.

        You are being purposefully abrasive, Paul. Don’t think I don’t notice.

        1. krellen says:

          Also, you are still misrepresenting my side.

          1. Shamus says:

            It was not my intention to misrepresent your side. During the post, I had several points where I wanted to point out situations where TLJ broke from what *I* thought was Star Wars. That’s the whole reason I did the last 2 weeks of posts: I wanted to talk about how TLJ – by doing things that hadn’t been done before – discovered all of these hidden fault lines within the fandom.

            But I didn’t want it to feel like this article was yet ANOTHER condemnation of TLJ. So the pattern I used was thus:

            * Other movies did X. I thought X was part of Star Wars.
            * TLJ didn’t do X, so it didn’t feel like Star Wars to me.
            * Other people thought differently, and thus had no problem with TLJ.

            The intention was to show that the two views were equally valid, and that my particular view on Star Wars is descriptive, NOT proscriptive. The most straightforward way of doing that is simply stating what others have said to me in arguments.

            “I thought there were no ham sandwiches in Star Wars, but then Holdo had that massive Dagwood-style ham sandwich right before doing the Holdo maneuver. I thought such a sandwich couldn’t exist, but other people had evidently been waiting to learn about the sandwiches of the Star Wars universe.”

            There’s my position, and there’s the position of someone who has disagreed with me in the past. But it doesn’t mean that everyone who liked TLJ cared about the ham sandwich. I wasn’t trying to perfectly articulate the position of every TLJ fan, I was just trying to acknowledge that my opinion wasn’t the final word on anything.

            I really was trying to be fair and make peace, and if I messed up I’m sorry. It’s a tough job and sometimes my efforts to avoid disagreements end up causing disagreements. That doesn’t mean I intend to be disagreeable. :)

        2. Henson says:

          At the risk of kicking a hornet’s nest, I found the person you directed “please stop replying to my comments” in the previous thread to be perfectly respectful in their replies, had only made three replies to your comments, and had made several different replies to many other commenters in that same post. His behavior was so unremarkably ordinary that I found your “please stop replying to my comments” remark rather baffling, to be honest. ‘Why get upset over what seems to be normal discussion?’, I thought. In light of that, I think it’s understandable how some could interpret it as an outright rejection of discussion itself, at least on this subject.

          1. Shamus says:

            I really appreciated the “I don’t want to talk to you anymore” comment. Here’s why:

            I wish more people were able to do that sort of thing. It’s a really important conversational safety-valve. It would be nice if we were all Vulcans that could debate endlessly without getting exasperated, irritated, frustrated, or pissed off. But we’re not, and so it’s important to have a mechanism for halting a conversation before it blows up. If you find yourself arguing with someone that:

            1) Is constantly saying things that annoy / offend you.
            2) Is so far from your point of view that it’s going to take many long exchanges to get them to understand your perspective.

            …then it’s totally reasonable to say, “Nah. I don’t want to do this.”

            The person krellen waved off (I THINK it was Falling, but I’m not 100% sure) was incredibly prolific that day, and I can understand not wanting to get into a debate with someone so energetic. That sort of business can eat a TON of time and is unlikely to yield useful results.

            I’m not saying this is what krellen was thinking. I’m just saying why I think a conversational abort button is an important tool for keeping things civil. It ultimately doesn’t matter why krellen wanted out. All that matters to me is that other people respected that. (Which I THINK everyone did, although I can’t see the threading from the mod panel.)

            1. Henson says:

              That’s an interesting perspective. I’m not sure I understand it fully, though. In a real-life conversation, if you don’t want to continue the debate, saying ‘let’s not do this’ is certainly a practical thing to do, but in internet text conversations, wouldn’t the prudent move be to simply not reply? (especially with people you probably aren’t close friends with)

              Furthermore, in an internet post, there are several conversations happening at once, between multiple people. If a person says ‘please don’t reply to me’, that applies not just to the conversation in question, but to every conversation at once. This, to me, seems unfair. It’s putting forward a standard where one person can put forward an opinion or argument, but another specific person isn’t allowed to respond in the thread with their own perspective.

              I suppose I could understand if two people have an ugly history of replying to each other in the past, and it’s best if they simply avoid each other. I can’t say I’m aware of such history between these two commenters, although such things can be very difficult to be aware of.

              1. krellen says:

                I am going to reply to this, but in classic Shamus fashion I feel like I need to head off some questions at the forefront.

                Firstly, I only checked the site again because I felt the years of para-social friendship I’ve shared with Shamus warranted giving him a chance to respond – and I notice and appreciate his moderation.

                Secondly, Shamus is mostly correct; it was an effort to forestall further frustration with a stranger I had no desire to develop animosity for – and for the record, yes, Falling did respect my request. Thank you, Falling.

                If you just don’t reply, this can be viewed as either acquiescence – yes, you’re right, you’ve won the point – or simply “I haven’t gotten around to responding yet”. By requesting an end to the discussion, you’re making it clear that you have not conceded but do not wish further debate (and that first part is important, because people should know when their arguments have worked).

                As for “why”, it seemed that the poster was systematically going through the thread and refuting my points specifically, not just “replying to everyone”. Being the only person supporting a thing can be exhausting, and I was asking one of the most prolific responders – who was, in my view, largely just reiterating things I had already disagreed with – to give me a break.

                This shall be the last time I comment on a Star Wars-related post. I really should have known better and just let the side enjoying their outlet have their outlet (as has been my wont in the past.)

              2. Daimbert says:

                I’ve always preferred to instead of saying that the other person shouldn’t reply to me that I’m just not going to be replying to them and so not engaging them. That way, they can still make points if they want to and I’m not demanding that THEY do something to make ME feel more comfortable. There’s one particular commenter that I used to engage a lot (on other blogs) that I decided it wasn’t productive to engage, so I never reply to his comments anymore. He often replies to mine, but since I don’t reply I don’t get dragged into long, frustrating discussions anymore and if he wants to reply to mine with points … eh, let him.

                1. Chad Miller says:

                  One odd side effect of this tack is that it reverses certain incentives I (and probably a lot of other argumentative people) feel in a conversation: if you tell someone you’re giving them the last word, then they say something stupid and productive, then “You are WRONG on the Internet!” is now tempered by “I’m going to look really stupid if I said I wasn’t going to respond anymore and then got baited by this.” A followup response would have to be really productive for me to break that particular promise once I’ve made it, and in practice I’ve found that it never is.

            2. Falling says:

              It was me, and I was posting a lot that day. I’ve thought about the movie a lot (and made some screenshot comics critiquing it). I hadn’t talked about it for awhile, and it’s nice to talk about it in an environment where there is still a multitude of perspectives.

              I wasn’t really paying attention to who I was talking with and I can certainly understand not wanting to hold long discussions with someone who seems to come at you like the energy bunny :)

              Anyways, I think it’s fair play to want to engage so far and then no more. So I hope all is good and seems from a lower comment that maybe it is.

  27. Max says:

    I find it very interesting that early on in the article you seem to take for granted that younger Star Wars fans have a broader view of what the franchise is about. Now I’m sure there are some people out there with such a broad view, but most people I know don’t seem to have it. As an example, when I was growing up, most of my friends pretty much considered the Prequel trilogy to be what Star Wars was about. Sure they knew the original trilogy existed, but they just didn’t seem to care about it all that much. As someone who actually was a fan of the original trilogy this sort of thing did bug me, but I eventually learned to get over it.

    Now that I’m back at college to try and switch careers, I have friends who are about a decade younger than me, and this introduced me to another kind of Star Wars fan, people for whom the Sequel Trilogy and the Mandalorian(and in some cases just the Mandalorian because they have seen none of the movies at all) is what Star Wars is about. I guess what I’m saying here is almost every Star Wars fan I’ve met in my life seems to have exactly as narrow a view about what Star Wars is about as I do but it’s coloured by how they were introduced to the franchise.

    1. Kathryn says:

      You know, I think it’s actually the Thrawn trilogy that codifies Star Wars for me. I was in elementary school when Heir to the Empire came out. I had of course seen the Star Wars movies, but it was HTTE that really ignited my love for Star Wars. I still have my original copy, beat all to hell after many rereads (and I have the 25th anniversary release with Zahn’s commentary too!). So I think this point about the generational differences is key.

      As for the three pillars, the Thrawn trilogy does a good job hitting them IMO. (Zahn did introduce a new character, Talon Karrde, to take over Han’s role, since Han is married to Leia and consequently wrapped up in supporting her work as she tries to get the New Republic up and running, rather than abandoning her and their children.)

      1. Kathryn says:

        Following on to the generational thought, does anyone have the time/interest to put together a survey asking for what year you were born, what was your flashpoint for SW fandom, and general opinions on OT, PT, ST, etc.? Might be interesting to see where the dividing lines are and if there are correlations.

        1. Luka Dreyer says:

          The generational ebb and flow of “Star Wars” fandom is a point that Hello Greedo brings up quite often in his You Tube videos. It is one that I think goes a long way to foster appreciation for one another’s respective love of this galaxy far, far away and sidestep all the toxic rubbish that has made me just hate “Star Wars” conversations in recent years. I’m not quite sure how you’d tabulate/collate everyone’s positions in a succinct way, but on a very nerdy level, it would defintitely be interesting.

          Oddly enough, the generational argument doesn’t really seem to apply to me specifically. I was born in 1995 and grew up watching the original trilogy Special Edition with my dad, later becoming interested in the original cuts and hunting down the limited edition 2006 DVDs (and subsequently Harmy’s “Despecialised Editions”). To this day they remain my favourite movies of all time as deeply personal, aspirational and life-affirming experiences. End of discussion. Goodbye. The end. While I loved the prequel films when they first came out (at arguably the perfect age between 4 and 10) and still admire aspects of them today, as I grew older and developed a more critical eye, they just didn’t stick with me like the original trilogy has. Now, at the age of 25, I’m in the process of watching “The Clone Wars” and I love it. It has legitimately re-ignited my love for “Star Wars” after the decidedly mixed bag that was the recent trilogy (of which “The Last Jedi” was the one shaky, yet glimmering hope of originality and inspiration).

          The argument of what does and doesn’t feel like “Star Wars” though, is generally very interesting to me. Even in George Lucas’s stories, “Star Wars” went from a “galactic fairytale” (so accurately summarised in the “Empire of Dreams” documentary) in the original trilogy to a far more ambitious sort of historical epic charting the mirrored downfall of a democracy and a good person in the prequel trilogy. Then “The Clone Wars” goes back to its serialised roots, using the episodic structure to hone in more specifically on the genres that influenced “Star Wars” (i.e. some episodes are more like westerns, some are more like war films, some are mysteries, some are more heavy on the mythology and Force, etc.). It’s hard to pinpoint what ties all of that together. But I do think as “Star Wars”, like so many stories before it, has moved out of the hands of its original creator, it is far more healthy and realistic to expect a wealth of different interpretations, some good, some bad – form a certain point of view. Could Fitzgerald ever have foreseen Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” or Joseph Conrad foreseen Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now”?

      2. Daimbert says:

        On the three pillars, Stackpole’s X-Wing books definitely have that as well, with the politics being woven in mostly through Wedge and the Council, Mirax and Corran representing the smuggler side, and Corran eventually adding in the Jedi side as well.

        1. Kathryn says:

          Agreed, I liked Stackpole’s (and later Allston’s) books as well. But I stopped reading the EU before I finished that series, because Kevin J. Anderson had seemingly taken over the EU, and I really didn’t like the direction he was going. (I have read one non-Star Wars book by KJA and actually liked it, so maybe it’s a conflicting visions of Star Wars problem as Shamus describes and not a “this guy SUCKS!!!!” problem, which was my (admittedly immature) assessment at the time)

          1. Daimbert says:

            To be fair, I think that most of the EU fans find Anderson’s work to be inferior to the others. The X-Wing books are the ones I re-read the most, but for the most part I even like the mega-series except for Fate of the Jedi. If you can find them, the X-Wing series is, in my view, worth finishing. You probably have to read “Starfighters of Andumar” if you were a fan of Wedge in that series.

          2. Nate says:

            I hated KJA’s Star Wars work in the 1990s-00s too – I bailed on the EU pretty hard after his “Jedi Academy” trilogy. While it did set up Luke as having an Academy, almost everything else he did was bad.

            I haven’t read KJA’s non-SW work, but my impression is that the Dune fandom were pretty split about how he handled the Dune prequel novels too.

            The man was a writing machine, turned out lots of novels, but my estimate of George Lucas’ taste in employees went way down when he came along. This was before the Prequels, too – an early indication that maybe George wasn’t the best caretaker of his own fictional universe. That impression has only deepened since.

            But tbh, Disney’s experience also shows that curating Star Wars is *hard*. Like, “being the Pope and somehow not making anyone in the world angry” level of hard. I think a lot of their troubles come from radically underestimating how hard the job of making modern mythology in fact is.

          3. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

            I liked the Jedi Academy series when I read it. It was also the only other trilogy out there besides Thrawn – so choices were thin. It has not aged well, though. It was probably an early second step towards superweapon of the week. By Anderson, for all his faults, wasn’t the worst. I think that honor has to go to the Correllian Trilogy – which introduced a heretofore unknown brother of Han Solo, and a suoerweapon that could destroy planets.

            1. Nate says:

              I hope Han Solo’s brother was called Qin Solo (if older) or Tang Solo (if younger).

              1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

                I believe it was Sol.

                This is among the reasons I haven’t reread the book.

              2. John says:

                So Han’s grandad would be, what, Shang?

  28. Nick-B says:

    In 1977, it was so radically different and yet so strangely familiar that it created dozens of fascinating little details for people to grab onto and say, “This. This is what makes Star Wars special.”

    “This. This is what makes Star Wars special.”

    Star Wars Special.

    Oh no.
    *images of cirque du soleil blaze through mind*
    Oh no no no.
    *Images of wookie being aroused by human in Oculus-like VR program*
    OH NO NO NO!
    *Image of Boba Fett back-slapping a dinosaur with taser-gun*
    AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh…..
    *Un-subtitled Wookie noises for 30 minutes straight follow the fading screams.

    1. Radkatsu says:

      I’ll just say this: if the Star Wars Holiday Special didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have both two great episodes of Best of the Worst, and Voxis Productions’ own take on the special. I’ve never seen the special itself, but the warm feelings of joy I get from these videos ripping the Special apart are irreplaceable :)

  29. Retsam says:

    Yeah, I’m a big believer that the optimism of Star Wars is a huge part of it. To go back to discussions from the start of the series, it’s a big part of why I’m always so against people trying to bring “grey and grey” morality into Star Wars, with takes like “the Jedi are as bad as the Sith” and “maybe we need Grey Jedi who are halfway between the two”.

    I understand that some people find “black and white morality” stories boring; I happen to disagree, and IMO that simple heroic morality is closer to the heart of Star Wars than any aesthetic decision. I’m not really opposed to other stories told in the same universe with a different focus: I’m not like angry that Mandalorian exists, but neither does the Mandalorian happen to feel particularly Star Wars-y to me, from the bits I’ve seen (which admittedly, is not that much).

    Like, yeah, Han is an important character in the original trilogy; but I feel sometimes people focus on his Episode IV, lovable rogue persona, and miss the point that his arc is about the self-interested rogue turning into the heroic general. I feel like stories that focus on the “Han Solo” pillar of the universe often miss that bit.

    1. Falling says:

      Yeah, I both disagree that black and white morality is boring and there are already numerous stories with moral ambiguity (Breaking Bad happens to be among my favourite.) Let Star Wars be Star Wars in this regard. We can have Lord of the Rings without needing to turn it into A Song of Ice and Fire. We have both- there is no need to turn one into the other. (Plus, I prefer Tolkien over GRRM.)

      1. Radkatsu says:

        “Plus, I prefer Tolkien over GRRM.”

        Probably just as well. GRRM is never finishing the series, that much is obvious now.

  30. Ramsus says:

    I grew up on the original trilogy as well (watching them is practically one of my earliest memories) and I believe the prequels didn’t come about until my later high school years. But I had a wildly different view on what the galaxy was supposed to look like than you did. I heard “core worlds” and saw the intention array of different species and such and basically thought “Ah, this is the wild west…. as it worked out irl in the US. “Core” is going to be more civilized and probably shiny/chrome/fancy in the same way the eastern US was more settled and lawful and had big cities.”
    So when the prequels came along and there were big city planets (that thanks to some EU stuff I already knew existed) and shiny chrome spaceships and a beautiful planet like Naboo I was just like “ah, and there’s that stuff I knew in my heart also existed in this universe but had yet to be shown in a film”.

    I do happen to agree that the Mandalorian is a more enjoyable Star Wars experience to me than the last trilogy of movies was. But I felt that way about the other Star Wars TV shows in the last decade or two as well. A live action one is a pretty nice change of pace though.

  31. Warclam says:

    For the most part, I think this is a really clever analysis. The greebles, in particular, are something I’ve never thought about before, except as something that I think is goofy-looking. But without them, it just doesn’t look like Star Wars.

    I don’t think the point about a surplus of sugar makes any sense, though. Game of Thrones just ended. Frigging everyone was talking about it. Idioms from the show have entered common parlance (“sweet summer child”). We are definitely not just coming out of an era of sugar, if the codifier for the Cult of the Badass had that much cultural presence.

    1. krellen says:

      “Sweet summer child” predates Game of Thrones.

    2. Philadelphus says:

      And while the MCU has just wrapped up a 12-year story meta-arc, it’s not like they’ve stopped producing new MCU movies. This year has delayed some that were slated to come out (I believe), but there’ll probably be some releasing next year, and continuing after that, so it’s not like we’re done with “sugar” either.

      (On a related note, I suspect it might not prove to be a bad thing to have given audiences a year or two’s break between the end of the Infinity Stones arc [or whatever it’s called] and the next set of MCU movies; gives everyone a chance to come back to it a little fresher.)

  32. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    As I said before the real core of Star Wars for my money is to take old adventure/medieval fantasy/western/WW2/samurai… movies and serials, mash them together, put it in space with the Force as a stand in for magic and you’re golden. The rest of the universe (the planets, the jedi, the background) is just the glue holding that magic together. The crucial mistake that the prequels and sequels did was to focus on the glue instead of the core. The Mandalorian didn’t, and it absolutely rules. In the last episode (little to no spoiler) we had a western duel AND a samurai duel at the same time! Rogue One was also rather well received and was a war movie with a SW coat of paint.

  33. evileeyore says:

    And here I intended to discuss with you why I think you’re mildly ‘wrong’* about one thing:

    * “Wrong” is inarticulate, but I am failing to find a better way to express it.

    Conceptually, I divide the universe into three domains, and in turn each of these domains is bound to one of our original characters:

    Luke Skywalker… Princess / General Leia Organa… Han Solo

    I disagree that this is you “Core Three Pillars”, because on their own, they do not suffice to inform a movie of “being Star Wars”. For instance, you say that to you The Mandalorian is the most Star Warsy thing since the Original Trilogy, but it has only two main characters and one of them is an infant. Instead I think it upholds two of the these Core Three Pillars:

    1 – Core Personalities At Odds:

    Conceptually, I divide the universe into three domains, and in turn each of these domains is bound to one of our original characters:

    Luke Skywalker… Princess / General Leia Organa… Han Solo

    You have three classic Archetypes: Idealistic “Immature”* Hero, Realist Authority Figure, Cynical Anti-Authoritarian. Each one also, as you point out, inhabit one main area of the ‘franchise’, Luke the Religion and Hope, Leia the Politics/Military and Pragmatism, Han the Underworld and Cutting All Corners.

    These characters of course shift as the movies go on, Han becomes disconnected form the Underworld and Crime and connects with Military; but never loses his ‘anti-authoritarian’ trait; Leia is shown as being just as ruthless as Han and just as Hopeful as Luke, but remains in Authority and Politics/Military; Luke’s Immaturity is replaced with Steadfast Loyalty and Experience, but he remains the Hopeful Questing Idealist.

    * Immature in that he is ‘moldable’. I the first movie there are a few different moments where yo can see Luke trying to emulte Han and Leia, behavoir he doesn’t do in the second and third movies.

    2 – Central Theme:

    And thus for a lot of people, idealism and moral clarity are an indelible part of the franchise.

    Even in Han, the cynic, you see him reaching for hope again and again. Yeah, he might call it luck, and he’d never admit to wishful thinking, but clear even he retains Hope. And again, even our shady heroes, Han and Lando aren’t immoral so much as “feel pressured to do bad things but retain the sense of Morality to turn back and stack a stand when “things have crossed the line”.

    3 – Setting Details:

    And then here comes Star Wars, a world where everything looks scuffed, dinged, used, and lived-in.

    Yes. Star Wars was a dirty future, something not even Battelstar Galactica [1978] with it’s “rag-tag” fleet of refugees really nailed.

    However, while I personally enjoy the gritty Star Wars more than the sleek Star Wars, the ‘sleek’ (the Empire) is presented alongside our Outer Rim sensibilities. It’s just cloaked in “villainy”.

    Of course I also grew up reading the books after the Original Trilogy, so I was introduced to sleek Coruscant and the idea that it wasn’t “sleek” villains versus “dirty ragtag” heroes. It was “Core” versus the “Rim”, or in a Western setting sensibility, “Back East” versus “The Frontier”.

    While I too prefer my Star Wars set on the Frontier, I can enjoy a good Cowboy/Samurai Western set in a “big city” (frex, I enjoyed Shanghai Knights as much as I did Shanghai Noon, and I loved the Clone Wars cartoons, which often featured the sleek future of Coruscant).

    Maybe this means my entire “Three Pillars” model is hogwash, but I still find it a useful way to think about Star Wars stories.

    It isn’t “hogwash”, but I think a good Star Wars can certainly be set without all three of the ‘primary’ character types (hello The Mandalorian), as long as the other two pillars of the setting, Theme and Details, are strongly represented.

    If you’re going to eradicate one of the other two, Theme for the Sequels, or Details for Prequels, you need have a strong central cast to hold up it’s end. The Sequels was no where near it (the scattered nature of having two directors pulling at odds to each other, one not understanding concepts like “Theme”, “Setting”, “Characters”, and the other trying to invert those things), the Prequels tried in Phantom Menace, but fell short and ignored trying to have the cast uphold it’s end the other two Prequel movies.

    In Phantom I argue that Qui-Gon is our Underhanded/Anti-Authoritarian, he was willing to steal the parts from Watto (mind control hims to give them away) and cheats to win; Ob-Wan is our Hopeful Idealist; and Padme is the Pragmatist. Likewise Padme inhabits the Politics, the two knights cover the Military/Religion, but we’ve lost our Underworld character.

    I think the attempt to have the characters bridge these roles is why Phantom Menace seems to the most popular of the three Prequels with those of our generation and older (Inversely I found the Clone Wars and Revenge to be better, but I really didn’t like little Annie or Jar-Jar).

    In the original trilogy, we really only see two developed population centers: Tatooine, and the cloud city of Bespin. The other planets – Hoth and Endor’s moon – are wilderness.

    But then in 1999 George Lucas gave us the Naboo Royal Starship, which looked like the lame featureless smooth chrome ships of the cheesy sci-fi that predated Star Wars.

    Again, to me Naboo was fine (we also see Tantooine and Watto’s garage/pawnshop), but again I had the books to bridge that gap.

    The Marvel movies have just given us 12 years of sugar, so I’m sort of expecting that The Boys, the Watchmen TV Show, Brightburn and the general trend of dark / adult superhero films are a signal that our collective sweet tooth has been sated and cynicism is on the way back.

    I don’t think people go through phases, I think market goes through phases and people just suffer through them. For instance while I’ve enjoyed the syrup of the Marvel Franchise, I’ve also been getting my fill of the sour lemons of the Watchmen (and other deconstructionist supes media), and the spiciness of … well… The Boys are about as spicy as it gets, but to me The Boys are a nice blend of sweet, sour, savory, and spice.

    But that’s the way of Hollywood. Something makes “more money then god’ and everyone chases it for awhile making “rip-offs” until the next big “breal-away’ genre causes everyone to go chasing it.

    It’s a weird idea. In this universe, robots are more like people than in (say) Trek, but at the same time they’re treated less like people.

    They’re slaves. They’re treated exactly as you’d expect an fully indoctrinated slave class to be treated.

    There are no robots suffering from Pinocchio Syndrome in the world of Star Wars, and so far nobody’s been dumb enough to mess with this rule.

    I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.

    To quote everyone else above me, so haven’t seen Solo then? Or the the Rebels cartoon?

    Solo has that very droid character cartoonishly calling out for droid rights, Rebels has Chopper, arguably the most back-talky, self idealized droid in the Star Wars universe (he is basically R2 if R2 was constantly swearing at people and back-talking… which arguably R2 does, but Chopper is just louder and more verbose/abusive).

    There really are three ‘types’ of droids in Star Wars: completely servile (C3-PO), loyal friends (R2-D2, BB8), and servile animals (any droid type that doesn’t get ‘speaking lines’).

    The Resistance is messy, disorganized, complicated, divided, and quarrelsome. That’s a perfectly valid thing for a rebellious group to be! In fact, it’s a lot more realistic than the buddy-buddy hippie idealism of the original rebellion where everyone is friends and ranks don’t mean anything. The Last Jedi portrays a reasonable outcome of what would happen if you tried to run a military with such a laissez-faire approach to leadership. It wasn’t wrong as a story concept, but for people like me it was wrong for Star Wars because I felt that a hippie military based on friendship was part of the setting, and strict chain-of-command power structures were for those squares in the Empire.

    I think the Sequels being ‘spit and polish’ military could have worked, if they’d have signaled this switch-over. TFA has the slap-dash “Rebel” era feel to it’s Resistance, TLA has one character trying to carry spit-and-polish all on her own, and I’ve not watched TRS and never will… so I can’t comment on it.

    1. Boobah says:

      It breaks my brain a little to see ‘Chopper’ next to ‘R2’, rather than ‘Artoo’ or (checks Wookiepedia) ‘C1-10P.’

      Not that it makes sense how you derive ‘Chopper’ from ‘C1-10P’ when you’re writing it all with Aurebesh. It gets worse when you know that Aurebesh has a separate letter for ‘ch.’ I guess this is one of those things you’re just not supposed to think about.

      1. evileeyore says:

        Sorry, I gave up trying to remember Chopper’s unit designation. Besides, C1-10P is his slave name, and Chop is way to sassy for a slave name.

        But seriously, it’s about speed and ease of use, Chopper and R2 are memorable and easy, ‘Artoo’ and ‘C1-10P’ are longer and less memorable.

  34. The Big Brzezinski says:

    The Dark Knight, cynical? I thought the whole trilogy was rather optimistic. It struck me as a repudiation of the nihilism and angst of the 90s rather than an exercise in it. Bruce is just as damaged a person as any “hero” in the Watchman, but his connections to other people both save him and give him the strength to help others (see also; United States of Smash). Even the scene at the climax of DKR is a shout out to the much brighter Adam West movie, as if asking it to come up on stage and take an overdue bow. Bruce even gets away alive in the end AND gets the girl. That’s one notch away from a Wayne’s World mega-happy ending.

    Sorry, I got distracted by the passing Batman link. Even if I don’t find Star Wars much fun to talk about anymore, Batman always is.

  35. Fizban says:

    Droids are characters that are sometimes humorously treated like machines. Star Wars is the only major fictional universe where we can have this particular brand of fun. I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.

    I’ve always noticed the disconnect and found it a bit odd: obviously droids are people*, but they’re treated as not-people whenever people feel like it, which is obviously bogus. This is an important thing that people should think about. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re supposed to address the big question in this particular setting. I think you can totally have a story raise some incidental things that people should Think About, even if they’re never meant to be explored in detail in that setting. You take those thoughts and go think about them elsewhere, search out other stories, settings, or dialogue to explore that concept. “Fairytale” is an apt description, as moralizing fairtales never hold up to scrutany in the details, but are specifically meant to make you think about things in other contexts. Treating some people as not-people can be humorous, and it can remain humorous in its story, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn that it’s wrong overall.

    *I generally don’t give Star Wars much credit for shaping my childhood or views, but I did see the OT when I was a kid before the PT came out, and this is probably something I picked up immediately. I’ve never questioned the fact that a robot which acts and feels like a person is a person, and yet sometimes I hear people trying to claim with a straight face that they’re not (legit devil’s advocates, trolls, sociopaths, who knows?).

    1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      In the first movie, they are modeled a lot after the 2 peasants from Hidden Fortress – who are emphatically not treated as people by the samurai and aristocrats.

      I think droids allowed Lucas to get that parallel and humor in without having to establish something like Japan’s class system existing to an audience that doesn’t understand class systems.

  36. Jabrwock says:

    Possibly head-canon, but I got the impression from Anakin trying to build a stock 3PO unit out of spare parts to help his mom with her chores as a throwaway “this is how poor we are, we can’t even afford a pretty standard interpreter droid”. Like having a flip phone in a movie set in 2020, it’s a visual cue that you’re poor (or a purist).

    Could she still do her job without a translator droid? It’s been established that some people learn the droids blips and bleeps, and there’s even translation modules in things like the X-Wing to allow the socketed droid to communicate with the pilot. But it would definitely make her job easier.

    It brings up the question of why stock 3PO models would have a block for translating Sith, unless Anakin added that later when he grew up, maybe tinkering with C-3PO was his side hobby? Or maybe it was more effort for the manufacturer to delete the translation capability than it was to just put “#ifdef Sith exit(factoryReset)”

    1. Nate says:

      I got the impression from Anakin trying to build a stock 3PO unit out of spare parts to help his mom with her chores as a throwaway “this is how poor we are, we can’t even afford a pretty standard interpreter droid”. Like having a flip phone in a movie set in 2020, it’s a visual cue that you’re poor (or a purist).

      That’s an interesting interpretation, and a reasonable one.

      I didn’t get that impression from TPM at all when I watched it in theatres – I got instead that “Anikin is SUCH a super-mega-genius that he LITERALLY DESIGNED AND BUILT AN ENTIRE DROID NUDGE NUDGE WINK WINK ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED FANS”. Which annoyed me deeply because it was obvious before that that C3PO was just a standard assembly line model (there’s even identical models we see in the films) and here this movie was trying to make both him and Anakin super-special.

      I think Anakin only assembling C3PO is a much better take. Maybe that was always Lucas’ intention. I hope so.

      Also a block on translating Sith? Well, if stock droids were manufactured by the Empire or late Republic, it’s quite possible that Sith would be blocked as a proscribed group. Like here’s this language only ever used by this notorious terrorist faction, zap, it’s been added to the Galaxy-wide revoke list, maybe it was done thousands of years ago by some bureaucratic order or other, and the programming’s never been updated since, it’s just a big old firmware blob you download from an archive and shove in, and everyone’s just forgotten.

      I like the idea of there being ancient layers of programming going back millennia (like Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep universe). Probably doesn’t work with “brand new models of ships are coming out every year with better hyperdrive specs”, but there’s always been contradictions there.

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        I love the idea that all the tech in Star Wars is scavenged precursor tech. There are no “new” reactors, engines, shields, etc. They are all cobbled together from found parts (which explains the greebles). In that context, there are no “new” droids, just ones assembled from found parts. It doesn’t work with the prequels, but I’m okay with sticking to the OT for the purposes of the thought experiment. Here’s the article about why something like this is required from the power density we see: http://blog.projectfledgeling.com/20120710/117/

        An even crazier extension of this idea is that the “galaxy” is one huge waste digester, with weapons shipped in by the real tech creators as a kind of stellar-scale enzyme to promote the breakdown of material into their components. It would explain why the only powerful tech is weaponry. And now we’re somewhere in the Mass Effect 1 neighborhood.

  37. Amstrad says:

    I’m sort of petulant and I didn’t want any Special Addition crap in my screengrabs, but as it turns out Lucas added CGI nonsense to all of his Tatooine establishing shots.

    You were never going to win with Tatooine and establishing shots that don’t have CGI nonsense, especially not with the specific shot you’ve chosen as it wasn’t even in the theatrical version of the film. There are some other establishing shots you could pick, but none like the one you used.

  38. Nate says:

    Why do droids have quirky personalities? Wouldn’t C-3PO be vastly more useful if he wasn’t burdened with this fussy and cowardly personality?

    This one is easy, I think. C-3PO is fussy and bureaucratic because he’s a *protocol* droid. That is, his one function in life is to interface between other systems, and that means *always being exceedingly fussy about details*. He cares about Protocol, and if Protocol is Violated he gets unhappy. This shouldn’t be happening! This is Not What The Rules Require! My one function is to Make Sure The Right Things For Every Situation Happen and The Right Things For This Situation Are Not Happening!

    He’s a C compiler for your social life set to Strict Mode With Full Warnings, in other words. He is gonna nag you and nag you until you Do Thing Correctly.

    (He’s also an actual C compiler, and a Visual BASIC for Galaxies IDE, and able to offer visual design suggestions for the colour schemes of over 9 billion abandoned GeoPlanets pages).

  39. Grimwear says:

    When it comes to Star Wars I’m not sure what it means to me. Now it means nothing but I started watching them back when I was 4 and never much cared for our protagonists. I liked the Storm Troopers. My favourite action figure growing up was the tatooine trooper on a dune lizard, loved that thing. I used to watch the ewok fight in slow motion on our vcr just to have the battle last longer. Then the prequels came out when I was 9, I loved Darth Maul’s look and his dual lightsabre but my favourite prequel movie is the worst in the series: Attack of the Clones. For the simple reason that just like Storm Troopers I loved Clone Troopers. Watching the battle for Geonosis was all I ever wanted. I’ve never really cared about humans in general but something about the Storm and Clone troopers really appealed to me. Tie in the first Battlefront game where you can do galactic conquest as Clone Troopers and I was in heaven. I even got the demo for Republic Commando from the Xbox Magazine but unfortunately it was too hard for me at the time so I didn’t end up buying and beating it until it came to Steam.

    I’ve never really been one to read Expanded Universe novels but I did read Karen Travis’ Clone Commando series but dropped it after the second book. I know she’s not well regarded in the Star Wars community and I can see why. The first book has a Jedi apprentice come across a clone commando and using her force powers she initially thinks that a small child is nearby since clones have barely been alive very long and have no experiences. Which is interesting. Until the second book where she and the commando have a relationship and she’s pregnant and all I can think is…according to the author these commandos have the mindset of a child (not including war experience) how is this not extremely awkward and uncomfortable? But it never gets addressed. She also used hard numbers which is a big no no in Star Wars and said how many clones were in the galaxy which when spread across the Star Wars universe ended up being something like 1.2 clones per planet which people did not like.

    And speaking of numbers that’s the one thing that TLJ shouldn’t have touched on. They literally say they are the last of the resistance. So at the end of the film you can see that the resistance is only like 15 people. On a galaxy scale that’s nothing. They aren’t even a speck of sand in a desert threat. At least in Empire they never say exactly how many people there are or give any firm numbers. So that later when they get to the battle they have an army available to fight. At least at the end of TLJ they have the scene where they say their message has been heard and a new resistance can “pop up” spontaneously later (which JJ takes advantage of) but you didn’t need that scene at all. You didn’t need to say “this is the last of the resistance” because it doesn’t raise the stakes any more being the last of them when all the characters we’re supposed to care about are already there. Just having Leia, Poe, and Finn on the verge of death is good enough.

    I guess coming down to it Star Wars for me is more just the games and more specifically aliens. I like interacting with other races way more than boring old humans and will gleefully fill my party with them any chance I get.

    1. Syal says:

      …wow. This whole time I thought Karen Traviss had spoken at my school, and I finally look up a book she mentioned writing and it turns out it was actually Vonda McIntyre. And that she died last year. The whole world is upside down.

      You didn’t need to say “this is the last of the resistance” because it doesn’t raise the stakes any more

      It eliminates the most obvious way out of the chase, of allies showing up and driving off the enemy. The military version of “I can’t get cell service.”

    2. Yeah, the scale of TLJ really bothered me, even the first time I saw the scene. Even here on planet Earth, that is of the scale of skirmishes that don’t even hit the news fairly routinely. I acknowledge that Hollywood isn’t going to make a big budget fight scene where literally millions of ships go up against millions of other ships, but the other Star Wars movies at least managed to make some of the fights feel like they had some scale beyond the varsity football team going up against the junior varsity football team.

      And “the resistance” literally couldn’t assault a single Star Destroyer, which means, even if they get away… so what? They don’t win. They don’t have a chance of winning. They just get to not die today. Now, hey, many a fine movie has been made with that sort of stakes being the deal… but that’s not what the story seems to think the stakes are. The story seems to think the stakes are the fate of the galaxy. That’s something like filming a hold up at the 7-11 and insisting that the stakes are the fate of the United States or something.

      1. Falling says:

        I found it was a rather weird ending because the character reactions and the music was telling me this was a happy ending. But everything else that the film showed me was that this was an unmitigated disaster for the Resistance. TLJ made the mistake of saying 1) All of the remaining Resistance was present on the ships we see (no cell groups or logistical groups elsewhere I guess. and 2) There have no allies in the entire galaxy that are willing to fight.

        Then all that escaped were a dozen people on a freighter, meaning that’s it. That’s everyone that is willing to fight. By rights, it should have been game over for enemies of the Empire for the next several decades. Even at the end of Revenge of the Sith, things weren’t so bleak, but at least that one recognized it was a downer ending with a modicum of hope. There is huge incongruity with the atmosphere and the actual end result.

        Oh, and Luke’s dead after accomplishing nothing. That’s a win for the Empire however you look at it.

        1. BlueHorus says:

          I’ve said it before, but Redlettermedia’s ironic take on TLJ – that it’s like a comedy film, where the characters mess up continuously and create a disaster – seems pretty on point.
          And the discordant ending (hey, we’ve got almost no-one left after a laughable series of fuckups, but, hey, ‘happy ending’ guys!) just kind of added to it.

  40. Axehurdle says:

    What’s weird is I think I’m not invested enough to think of any of the listed elements as crucial to star wars-ness. Like, to me you just listed a bunch of things that are in the Star Wars franchise.

    At this point the universe is so vast and diverse basically any sci-fi concept would fit my idea of what star wars can be and I don’t think I’d find it jarring unless it contradicted prior canon.

  41. Alex says:

    “I’m dreading the day when some well-intentioned idiot attempts to do a “Liberate the machines! Droids are people too!” plot.”

    Besides Solo that someone already mentioned, Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG has a flashpoint (a dungeon basically) and a mini-storyline where droids across the galaxy are being reprogrammed by a central intelligence and rising against organics for their freedom. Though essentially it’s just the central intelligence controlling them instead, not true freedom.

  42. Khwarezm says:

    “I never let go of Wild West Star Wars, so I was one of those people who felt like Rose Tico’s gripes about arms dealers in Canto Bight felt weird. Imagine your typical Wild West town. You enter the saloon and see a bunch of cowboys carousing, whoring, brawling, and playing poker. Then Rose Tico shakes her head saying, “These guys made their money by working as poachers, cattle rustlers, and hired guns.””

    This comment baffles me, in the actual real wild west there really were a bunch of people who had exactly this reaction and weren’t too keen on the unstable greed and lawless violence that could happen. People tend not to have a positive outlook on lawlessness and might makes right even if they live in societies were it can be commonplace, why do you think the west stopped being wild?

    1. Falling says:

      Thing is, coming from Rose, this is a very holier-than-thou attitude (which unintentionally seems to be a consistent character trait for her.) She’s an self-appointed enforcer of the lawless. The Resistance is not the New Republic (as far as I can tell- the sequels are bad at giving any sort of explanation for what is going on), but are themselves flaunting the law and presumably reliant on these armaments. And she’s been zapping people to keep them part of the Resistance.

      I also personally don’t find her claim very credible: that this is the ONLY way to become that rich in this galaxy. It’s presumptive of her and either she is wrong, which puts her in a bad light. Or her assumption is right and the writers have created a very black and white universe where money = bad (which erodes the supposed goal of creating a more nuanced morality from the OT’s more binary morality.)

      Actually it is one of the things that bugs me about her character- she is constantly just assuming things about people, their motivations, and about experimental technology. And then she moralizes about it, which makes her very preachy. Rian has troubles in this film with what characters should actually know based on the information they have on hand. Far too many characters look like they’ve been reading ahead in the script and Rose is one of the worst offenders.

      Also, this universe is very inconsistent if you do any additional reading to try and make it make sense. Supposedly, the last major battle was 30 years ago and then the New Republic has been disarming since then (hence the Resistance). How is it possible that arms dealing is the way to get rich? There isn’t even a cold war-style arms race to get rich off of.

      It can’t even be the Resistance that is generating all this money because they have next to nothing and mostly outdated equipment and ancient bases. Who are the buyers sufficient to make it the only source of wealth? The First Order alone? So much for DJ’s ‘both sides buy weapons, kinda makes you think, man.’

      1. Falling says:

        Oh, it’s also unlikely that it’s the First Order that is buying weapons in sufficient quantities to be the only source of major wealth. With a little extra reading, apparently that Supremacy ship is itself a shipyard that can produce Star Destroyers two at a time. Are they manufacturing their own Destroyers but subcontracting all their TIE’s to the lowest bidder? Doubt it. Particularly if until TFA they were supposed to be a secret organization.

        What’s on screen makes very little sense. The out of film lore makes even less sense. Also, that Supremacy ship is a cool concept (mobile capital, mobile shipyard) that was completed wasted in TLJ. Five Star Destroyers would have had the same narrative impact, but the Sequel seems to believe Bigger is always Better.

      2. Mr. Wolf says:

        The moral hypocrisy of Rose Tico is one of my biggest gripes with this film (and like most everybody else, I have a lot of gripes with this film). Her sister kills thousands in a bombing run: Yay, how heroic! Arm Dealer X sells them those bombs: Boo, how villainous! She moralises very loudly about the immorality of arms dealing while being part of a paramilitary organisation. How exactly did she plan to fight fight if they don’t buy weapons?

        Speaking of how she plans to fight, “That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”

        Yeah, don’t bother fighting the bad guys, just rescue the people you like! The First Order isn’t really a problem, just so long as your not-love-interest makes it to the next film. I’m sure putting your personal relationships above the fate of the galaxy won’t end badly.

      3. Khwarezm says:

        Some of this stuff I don’t like either but I see it as fundamentally borked problems that were dragged along by The Force Awakens worldbuilding that simultaneously managed to be derivative and nonsensical. Like why not just call the good guys the Republic? Are they that hellbent on making sure that everything is exactly the same as the old movies that they need to awkwardly force them into the role of rag tag resistance even though it makes no sense? Whatever, I’d just consider someone like Rose to be a representative of the Republic and the values it stands for, in her mind anyway.

        Also, yes, it doesn’t make any sense for the First Order to be at all a secret organization, but again I think that this was a problem built into the core of the sequel trilogy with TFA that the Last Jedi wouldn’t really have been able to fix without wasting a whole lot of time.

        But other stuff you mention just seems tediously pedantic, like you really don’t need to read it 100% literally when she says this is the only way to get rich in the Galaxy, if I was watching a gangster film and a character said something like ‘The only way to make a decent living in this neighborhood is through crime’ I don’t think it benefits the film for him to stop himself to inform the audience that actually if he pursued his education properly, worked hard and saved properly he could make a respectable living as a small business owner managing a dry cleaning business and thus there are in fact other ways to make good money in this place, disregard my previous comment it was only for rhetorical effect! The audience can read between the lines for god’s sake.

        It also doesn’t follow to me that Rose is somehow ahead of the plot, presumably a lot of people plugged into the galaxy’s politics would probably be aware of places the rich and wealthy hang out, and what kinds of things they do to get that wealth, like its not like Beverly Hills or Middle Eastern oil sheikhs are secret information here in the real world. More importantly her most crucial assumption of all, the main reason she and Finn went on their adventure in the first place, turned out to be hopelessly wrong and showed that she clearly wasn’t reading ahead in the script if that’s what you take issue with.

        Finally:
        “Or her assumption is right and the writers have created a very black and white universe where money = bad”
        Now, this is my politics shining through but personally I think extreme wealth inequality has been one of the worst and most persistent evils to blight humanity, and considering these are rich guys who openly partake in slavery, animal cruelty and war-profiteering, something an awful lot of real life rich also did or do!, I really don’t care too much to gripe about with her vaguely socialist sounding comments.

        1. Shamus says:

          “Now, this is my politics shining through but personally I think…”

          Yeah. Great. And now some non-socialist is going to feel the need to jump in here and the two of you will argue economics for the next three days. As the person who moderates this site, I really don’t care to read another one of those. Which is why political discussions are explicitly prohibited.

          1. Khwarezm says:

            You’re running into the perennial problem with trying to enforce a hardline restriction on political arguments in discussions like this with the fact that most art is intrinsically political to some degree or another, it gets really hard to discuss things with any kind of depth if you just say ‘no politics’. Look, really, I know that it gets ugly but its very frustrating trying to discuss this kind of thing while constantly dancing around this distinction which tends to be arbitrarily applied in the first place. Most of the stuff already discussed in the post I responded to was political in its own way, talking about the actual politics within the Star Wars universe which has obvious parallels with real life problems like wealth inequality, oppression, war and political legitimacy.

            What am I to do? All I did was say that, because I agree with the sentiment that Rose expressed and why that I don’t really have a problem with her stance. I apologize if that’s overly divisive politics but its nearly impossible to avoid when talking about this subject, art almost always brings politics with it, usually quite explicitly, and Star Wars is no exception, especially TLJ, since the issue we took opposite sides on was brought up by the film itself.

            1. Shamus says:

              Yeah, “everything is political”. Which is sort of true. But if we don’t have some limits then “Everything is political” will become “every comment thread needs to be a goddamn flamewar”. Fair or not, this is the only way this site can operate.

              “What am I to do?”

              The usual way of handling this sort of thing around here is to say something like, “I agree with the sentiment she expressed” or “I agree with her take on wealth inequality.” Or something along those lines.

              Most people here are adults. They’ll get where you’re coming from, and nobody will feel the need to argue about weather real-world “rich people commit slavery, animal cruelty and war-profiteering”. I know that’s not literally what you’re saying, but I know that’s how it will be read, and I know what that debate will look like.

              If you can’t figure out how to make your point without making statements that will start long angry political arguments, then just skip commenting. This isn’t the senate, we’re not voting on anything, and the point of these discussions is to have fun.

        2. Falling says:

          @Khwarezm

          The rightness or wrongness to the idea is irrelevant to my point. My focus is entirely on execution.
          Defenders claim that TLJ introduces nuanced morality. TLJ might even aspire to create nuanced morality via DJ. The point is that it fails to embed its themes properly in its story elements. Where it tries to be nuanced, it instead creates more simplicity.

          I can see a film that is in agreement with my worldview and still cringe inside because of its simple-minded presentation. And I can see a film whose worldview is antithesis to mine and acknowledge that they portrayed it well in the characters’ struggles and the conflict of the story.

          My point was how it is actually portrayed on film we are seeing with the characters and conflict. Intent doesn’t matter to me so much as good execution- there are unintentionally funny films after all. In both cases it is the failure in the art of storytelling.

          1. Syal says:

            I can see a film that is in agreement with my worldview and still cringe inside because of its simple-minded presentation. And I can see a film whose worldview is antithesis to mine and acknowledge that they portrayed it well in the characters’ struggles and the conflict of the story.

            And I can see a movie that clearly has a moral view but damned if I can actually tell what it is, and laugh heartily at its incompetence.

            1. Falling says:

              Ha. That’s another possibility as well. Some films are just confused :) Although I don’t think I’ve bothered to see that particular one.

          2. Khwarezm says:

            I suppose that depends on what you mean by nuanced morality. I’m not sure if I would say that was a major thing that stood out for me in TLJ, but either way, I don’t think it follows that because the film seems to take a fairly firm stance that these things are bad (re; the war profiteers who own slaves and abuse animals) that it lacks nuance. Its not unrealistic that sometimes you frequently just have tons of people partaking in terrible systems and behaviors, people owned slaves and actively participated in terrible war crimes during times like World War 2 in the real life past. Do you feel as though the film would be improved if we really got to know some of the guys at the casino and it tried to offer a counterpoint to suggest they aren’t as bad as we think?

            I would say that overall its a film that still maintains Star War’s wide eyed good vs evil stance, but suggests that its often a lot more difficult to be good than other Star Wars movies tend to recognize and that there is a lot of failure and disappointment in trying to do so. I don’t think DJ was meant to be particularly nuanced, I think it was meant to suggest that sometimes the affable rogue simply just doesn’t have a heart of gold like Han Solo and is driven by pure self interest despite what you might hope.

    2. Shamus says:

      “in the actual real wild west”

      The real wild west is very unlike the fictional gun-slinging west, which is itself only partly similar to the Galaxy far, far away. More to the point, this entire article is talking about baked-in genre expectations, so arguments regarding real-world analogs are kind of a non-sequitur.

      I’m talking about the behavior and reactions of someone within a fictional universe. And in a world brimming with outlaws with blaster rifles where everyone travels in combat-ready ship, it felt weird to freak out over something so pedestrian as arms dealers.

      1. Khwarezm says:

        Even fictional, heck, ESPECIALLY fictional interpretations of the old west make the conflict between law and order a huge part of the overall theme.

        From like High Noon to Red Dead Redemption 2 lawlessness is a constant element of the setting but it is not an element passively accepted by all of the characters in the story. A lot of stories fixate on the process of bringing justice, peace and the rule of law to this world, with the good and bad that that all entails. At this point I would say that the inevitable passing of the western spirit that entails both that sense of crude brutality along with a uniquely American ideal of freedom has become crucial to modern interpretations of the genre since the 1960s and the end of old Hollywood, the poker table full of rogues is not just something that is passively accepted by all, the fact it isn’t is a major part of the setting.

        Tying this back to Star Wars, far be it from me to say but I think the casino scene brings in elements of the revisionist westerns I mentioned after the 60s, a film like the Wild Bunch or McCabe & Mrs. Miller were trying to question the tropes and assumptions built into the western genre to build something less stale and more thematically interesting. The casino was trying to examine the dichotomy of the conflict as its usually presented and suggest that, regardless of the ideology of either side there is a deeply cynical and unequal system being empowered and enriched by the very fact that the war exists. Rose isnt a hypocrite to be disgusted by this on some level any more than a US trooper cant be leery about the American industrial-military complex while they are in the middle of fighting the Nazis during World War 2.

        1. Shamus says:

          I have no idea what you’re on about here. I think you’re confusing my arguments with the arguments of others. I never called Rose a “hypocrite”. That was someone else. I only said her comments didn’t fit the universe as I understood it. Nothing you’ve said here changes that. You’re just sharing more interpretations that don’t work for me and I don’t agree with.

          I’m not sure what your goal is here, and you don’t seem to understand my position.

          1. Khwarezm says:

            I’m saying that this:

            “I never let go of Wild West Star Wars, so I was one of those people who felt like Rose Tico’s gripes about arms dealers in Canto Bight felt weird. Imagine your typical Wild West town. You enter the saloon and see a bunch of cowboys carousing, whoring, brawling, and playing poker. Then Rose Tico shakes her head saying, “These guys made their money by working as poachers, cattle rustlers, and hired guns.””

            Is a very odd criticism because it doesn’t really line up with a lot of westerns, which Star Wars certainly took inspiration from. It would probably be the inciting incident for a 50s Western plot that a character like Rose gets into a confrontation with a bunch of rogues because they’ve been doing stuff like cattle rustling or murder for hire. It gets further complicated by the fact that the Western Genre went through a tremendous amount of change, and as it became less of a fixture in popular culture there were a lot of very complicated reinterpretations of the very basics of the genre that went far beyond its roots, that’s why I was talking about the evolution of the revisionist western. In short the whole genre has become far too complex to pin down in that kind of way, if it ever could have been at the start.

            If it comes across as though I’m going on a tangent, well, I think its particularly relevant to the Last Jedi because as noted Star Wars takes an absolutely huge amount of influence from Westerns, which gets particularly obvious in works like the Mandalorian, and TLJ is trying about as hard as it can, within the confines of being a multi-billion dollar franchise, to re-examine the very concept of a Star Wars story and the assumptions that undergird it, which I think draws major parallels with the aforementioned revisionist western genre. You can balk at Rose pointing out how questionable it is that unsavory characters are enriching themselves through death and destruction and the continuation of the war, with even the good guys abetting that system, because it doesn’t feel properly true to the Star Wars spirit in some slippery way. But it doesn’t really work to refer to Western stories and their baked-in genre expectations (as you say) as an example to try and show why this is silly since a lot of the best Western stories just don’t actually have those baked-in expectations and question the setting itself in a similar way.

            Also, I didn’t mention it earlier but I think its a bit disingenuous to compare guys having a blaster on the side and some self defense capabilities on their ship with what seems to be a very high level military industrial complex that’s outfitting massive galaxy spanning civilizations to continue their planet destroying wars. Its like the difference between some small gunshop and Lockheed-Martin.

            1. Shamus says:

              “But it doesn’t really work to refer to Western stories and their baked-in genre expectations (as you say) as an example to try and show why this is silly since a lot of the best Western stories just don’t actually have those baked-in expectations and question the setting itself in a similar way.”

              So you’re not even arguing with my main point? You’re just haggling with me because you didn’t like my analogy?

              “I think its a bit disingenuous […] ”

              Okay, so you think I’m being deliberately misleading? You don’t understand where I’m coming from, so rather than trying to understand that point of view you just assume I’m engaged in dishonesty? Fine, but in that case there’s no point in discussing this further. I keep pointing you back to genre expectations and you keep arguing that those expectations are wrong. That makes no sense. Are you trying to convince me I like the movie?

              Furthermore, you’re REALLY running against the point of this conversation.

              1) The argument about TLJ was three weeks ago. And to a lesser extent, the following week. I made it pretty clear at the top of this post that it was time to move on.
              2) Two weeks ago I encouraged people to frame the discussion in terms of why THEY liked / disliked it, without telling people they’re wrong for doing the opposite.

              So you’re two weeks late, going against the spirit of the conversation, and haranguing me over an analogy I made in a supporting argument that wasn’t even central to the thesis?

              Move on. Whatever this is, I’m not interested.

              1. Khwarezm says:

                Shamus, I’ve read your blog for a long time and mostly like what you have to say but I frankly don’t understand where your getting this level of venom from, if you’re feeling this heated over my comments we could just not respond and move on if you feel like this is getting too aggravated.

                I’m disagreeing with you because I think you have an overly rigid interpretation of what a Western film ‘should’ be that doesn’t really actually match up with the genre as it exists, with all the intricacies that have developed over time. This is kind of relevant because you used it as part of your analysis on what a Star Wars film ‘should’ be, the difficult to pin down ‘Star Wars Feeling’ as you titled this post itself. I’m free to disagree with that interpretation of Westerns and what essential elements they need to be Westerns at all, and by extension I also disagree with some of the ideas of what makes a Star Wars film have that specific Star Wars feeling. In this case I didn’t find it strange or jarring at all that Rose would have the reaction she did, within either context of Star Wars as a Western or as its own thing with a more elusive quality that makes it Star Wars.

                I’m sorry if you find my use of the term disingenuous to be insulting but, like, I don’t really know what else to say, I just think its a bit of a dishonest comparison, the galaxy spanning weapon selling moguls who are outfitting extremely powerful political entities seems to be on a way larger scale than some bounty hunters in the Cantina with their blasters, and they aren’t really the same thing because, like I said, its the small gun shop in town versus Lockheed-Martin. I’d like to hear your reasons why you disagree if you want.

                To wrap up:
                “1) The argument about TLJ was three weeks ago. And to a lesser extent, the following week. I made it pretty clear at the top of this post that it was time to move on.”

                You brought up TLJ again this week, its really unfair to do that and then turn around and say somebody can’t disagree with you because you we were meant to restrict discussion of that film to several weeks ago.

                “2) Two weeks ago I encouraged people to frame the discussion in terms of why THEY liked / disliked it, without telling people they’re wrong for doing the opposite.”

                Its hard to discuss anything if I can’t disagree with someone, talking about what you like or dislike about a film like TLJ tends to entail engaging with the counter arguments and why you have a different stance. This is especially the case with this film since people tend to have wildly different reactions towards the same elements of the film, and their positions are colored by very different ways they approach storytelling and, yes, politics.

                1. Syal says:

                  what a Western film ‘should’ be that doesn’t really actually match up with the genre as it exists, with all the intricacies that have developed over time.

                  “Western” will always be lone ranger westerns. Just like “Sci-fi” will always be laser guns and aliens, and “Romance” will always be girls meeting boys and falling in love. The generic stuff.

                  I’m sorry if you find my use of the term disingenuous to be insulting but, like, I don’t really know what else to say,

                  Just say “wrong”. Keeps the focus on the topic, where “disingenuous” and “dishonest” are inferring the motives of the speaker.

                  1. Khwarezm says:

                    “Western” will always be lone ranger westerns. Just like “Sci-fi” will always be laser guns and aliens, and “Romance” will always be girls meeting boys and falling in love. The generic stuff.

                    According to who? None of these definitions are set in stone in any of these genres, and again just come across as arbitrary, tons of Westerns tend to entail decidedly not-alone characters (ie the Magnificent Seven), tons of sci-fi films are far more grounded away from over the top aliens and lasers (ie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and tons of Romance aren’t about girls and boys falling in love (ie Call me by Your Name).

                    Most genres are extremely poorly defined and this is particularly obvious with Westerns, the most recurring element tends to be the broad setting, as the name implies its in the American West, usually between 1840-1920, but even that has a ton of asterisks attached to it, ie there are films extremely similar to the American Western set in completely different countries like Australia or Manchuria, and Western style movies set in much more modern times. So does it then revolve around broad frequently recurring thematic elements like the cost justice or the march of civilization? But then not every Western film has that, so its still pretty unclear.

  43. Topher Corbett says:

    “That’s a perfectly valid thing for a rebellious group to be! In fact, it’s a lot more realistic than the buddy-buddy hippie idealism of the original rebellion where everyone is friends and ranks don’t mean anything. The Last Jedi portrays a reasonable outcome of what would happen if you tried to run a military with such a laissez-faire approach to leadership. It wasn’t wrong as a story concept, but for people like me it was wrong for Star Wars because I felt that a hippie military based on friendship was part of the setting, and strict chain-of-command power structures were for those squares in the Empire.”

    The Rebellion in the OT clearly has ranks and a formal, uniformed military with a chain of command. The main reason you’re forgetting about it is that the main characters have all been promoted out the wazoo for blowing up the death star or in Lando’s case offscreen. Leia was already one of the high ups to start with because she and her dad were senators and basically founded the Rebellion, Luke went from a last-minute recruit to a Commander and the leader of Rogue Squadron, and Han goes from Captain to General. Han has to clear leaving to go deal with the price on his head with General Rieekan at the beginning of ESB. And if you’ll remember it’s a major source of conflict (including the romantic tension of course) between Han and Leia that he’s leaving. Han, Leia, and Luke all issue orders to subordinates in ESB and in ROTJ.

    I know this is outside of the scope of the movies but the Thrawn Trilogy already did “how the sausage gets made” in the New Republic in a much better way, with a scheming Bothan named Borsk Fey’lya pitting himself against Leia and Admiral Ackbar.

  44. Topher Corbett says:

    Your three pillars are spot on though. Fantasy Flight Games recognized this when they made the most recent version of the RPG with three core rulebooks: Edge of the Empire (crime/space western pillar,) Age of Rebellion (war/space opera pillar,) and Force and Destiny (Jedi/samurai pillar.)

  45. Mersadeon says:

    There are no robots suffering from Pinocchio Syndrome in the world of Star Wars, and so far nobody’s been dumb enough to mess with this rule. It would be a disaster if someone were to attempt a classic “robot uprising” story or a “I just want to be human” character arc within the world of Star Wars.

    Obviously, there has been that kind of thing in some of the old EU novels, because like any other such profitable franchise eventually must encompass as many possible genres as possible. I wanna highlight one good example and one bad from the same collection of short stories: Tales of the Bounty Hunters.

    Basically, every short story tells us about one of the bounty hunters in the “Darth Vader instructs the hunters” scene (plus one tale about a hunter that missed the meeting). These kinds of books were common – I even have one that tells the tale of each person that was in the Cantina the moment Greedo got shot. Basically just using the smallest hook possible for legitimacy and spinning off from there. Some are very creative, some are absolute trash, some are weird genre-bending non-canon.

    The Bad: the tale of IG-88. In short, there’s actually four IG-88s who share a common purpose, which is a robot uprising. This isn’t ever tied into anything sensible like “we may want rights” or “maybe we are sentient”, but instead is just… the thing the four killer droids want to do. Their plot is fantastical and deeply canon-feeling-perverting: they highjack an Imperial factory planet (there was basically just a dozen biological overseers on the planet) and from then on manufacture all droids with a code signal that, if activated, gives them all sentience (or maybe the personality of IG-88? The story is really weird about “unique” conscience). They end up manufacturing the big computer core for the Death Star and replace the actual one with theirs, into which one of the IGs has uploaded himself (instead of copying. For some reason. Even though copying is how they even got to be four IGs). IG-Death-Star then trolls the Emperor a bit and gets blown up, because it planned to start the droid revolution right after those pesky rebels are gone.

    It ends on a flat note, but more importantly, it’s so *desperate* to slot into canon while making it all about its own badly thought out boring character and ignores anything that would have actually been interesting, and the whole “Bounty on Han Solo”, which is supposed to be the touching point for all the stories, is barely even relevant to the story. Droids suddenly do want rights, but not really, they just want to murder all biological beings.

    The Good: the tale of Zuckuss (a Gand, basically omen-led hunters and explorers) and 4-LOM. The two have a specific bond – 4-LOM is a droid that, while unaware of his sentience like all “good” Star Wars droids, wants to *improve*, and he sees learning the ways of the Gand (and thus, the force) as the way to go. This is a far better droid-focused story: 4-LOM has a backstory that shows how his programming broke in a very Asimovian way, the two of them have a sort of complex, partially unspoken relationship and 4-LOMs goal is, while outlandish, *understandable* as a goal for a droid. It focuses on single characters instead of trying to have a galaxy-wide revolt as a possible outcome, its characters have actual weaknesses and can fail (IG-88s only seem to fail when the plot demands it in their story and there’s four of them anyway), the force is left vague and a personal thing (Gand use it entirely differently than Jedi). It ends on the possiblity that 4-LOM really has found some sort of force-meditation, maybe, and that’s totally fine as a one-off stinger in a small side story.

    1. Alex says:

      I share your opinion on both these stories. The IG-88 story is by Kevin J. Anderson of Dune prequels infamy, and was one of the things that convinced me that he was an author to avoid.

  46. Tizzy says:

    Vader was redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi when he finally turned on his terrifying master and gave Luke a hand in overpowering Palpatine.

    This is where we’re going with this? A hand being cut off joke?

    1. Nate says:

      That reminds me of the time Ponda Baba had one drink too many at the Mos Eisley Cantina and got cut off at the bar

      I’ll get me hat.

  47. John says:

    I distinctly remember a droid-rights subsubplot during either the Dark Nest Trilogy or the Legacy of the Force series.

  48. Alex says:

    Re: A Galaxy of Scum and Villainy

    My reading of the OT was that its worlds were outliers – they weren’t the hub of civilisation, they were the out-of-the-way places where fugitives, rebellious fleets and secret superweapons projects could avoid unwanted scrutiny. Alderaan was the only exception, its visibility making its destruction a more effective tool to terrorise the galaxy into submission.

  49. INH5 says:

    Star Wars showed us towns with dirt streets and beasts of labor that also had droids and flying vehicles. But then again… it only showed us one place like that. Is Tatooine this weird exception in an otherwise settled galaxy of stable infrastructure, or do most planets feature a few ramshackle towns carved out of a vast desolate wilderness?

    […]

    For me, this created the impression that the galaxy was mostly made up of small isolated communities. It was a whole universe of small towns containing dive bars, gambling dens, fight pits, pawn shops, and palaces for small-time warlords and crime bosses. It seemed like a dangerous world filled with liars, cutthroats, bounty hunters, smugglers, assassins, crime lords, mercenaries, scavengers, and thieves. Bespin – the most livable and stable community in the whole trilogy – comes off like an unusually successful hustle on the part of Lando.

    But… was this really an intended part of the setting?

    Luke Skywalker in the first movie: “Well, if there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.”

    Tatooine was always intended to be an exception. See also the concept art for Coruscant painted by Ralph McQuarrie back during the production of the OT. The reasons why we never saw probably settled space are likely half because the special effects would be too expensive (Blade Runner demonstrated that you could depict a futuristic cityscape on film at the time, but Blade Runner was already about as expensive as TESB or ROTJ without any of the space battles and so on) and half, well, it just makes sense that fugitives and outgunned rebels would operate out in the wilderness and on the outskirts of civilization. Lucas’s inspiration was almost certainly the Vietcong hiding in small villages and tunnels in the jungle, but we also see that today in civil wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan, etc.

    Of course, a consequence of only showing one sort of thing is that the audience will tend to assume that that’s the norm, so I’m not surprised that people like you got that impression.

    Personally, I was introduced to Star Wars in the 90s when there was already plenty of expanded universe material that included depictions of more “civilized” locales, so the visuals of Naboo didn’t surprise me at all.

  50. Groboclown says:

    I know I’m late to the game here, but I just want to add that, to me, there has only ever been one movie called “Star Wars”. ESB is still “Star The Empire Strikes Back Wars.”

  51. Zeta Kai says:

    Okay guys, seriously, what is going on here. As of this writing, there are 227 other comments already. I don’t normally post when I’m three days late to the conversation.

    But no one, not ONE PERSON, has mentioned the music of John Williams as being an integral element to the Star Wars formula. This is, in my opinion, a grave oversight, one that simply must be corrected. The soundtrack of Star Wars is so iconic, so distinctive, and so quintessential that it can be credited as an indispensable part of the success of the franchise as a whole.

    John Williams’ score begins at the first frame of the first film, and carries us through the entire saga to the end credits. Every video game, cartoon spinoff, and toy commercial related to the series uses one of his songs from the first movie. I’m not even an audiophile, but I can clearly see the tremendous impact that John Williams made on Star Wars, and nothing will ever feel Star Wars-y without it.

    1. Shamus says:

      Fun fact: I actually did have a bit about this in my original draft. Here it is:

      John Willaims
      So far, it seems like everyone agrees that Star Wars should be scored by John Williams, or by people imitating his style. Nobody has been crazy enough to hire Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, Daft Punk, or assembled a soundtrack of trendy pop music. I think that regardless of our other differences, we all agree that Star Wars music should be timeless and orchestral rather than timely and trendy.

      I’ll add here that composers Gordy Haab and Stephen Barton did a really wonderful job of making the SWJFO soundtrack fit with the existing universe. It’s the one part of the game I can’t criticize or nitpick.

      However, I realized that The Mandalorian doesn’t use this style of music. And I’m not sure how Clone Wars / Rebels are scored. And I haven’t played any of the recent games. So I wasn’t sure if this point still held up, and it seemed like this point would either be overburdened with qualifying asterisks, or a nitpick magnet. So I chickened out and cut it rather than doing the research.

      But I agree. All you need to do is play the first 0.3 seconds of the original score and everyone immediately pictures those giant yellow letters.

  52. Delachruz says:

    I realize I’m way late to the party, I especially regret missing the TLJ discussion, because that was genuinely the only civilized discourse on the movie that I’ve seen on the Internet.

    On the risk that nobody will ever read this, there are two things about the above commentary I want to mention:

    First, the whole “Hive of scum and villains” type. I actually really liked this, because as opposed to many other settings, it always seemed sensible to me that the galaxy would lean towards being a more lawless place. It’s huge, after all! You travel such titanic distances, that the whole idea of even having a governing body that somehow manages to keep it all in check would be ludicrous in my eyes. It’s something it has in common with 40k, and which is a strength of both. because I feel it actually acknowledges the sheer scale you would be operating on when we are talking about galaxies and space in general. The different little hotspots of crime lords, backwater planets and such really give it a feel like the whole setting is an arrangement of scattered civilizations with only a few core points of “order”, and it made the whole thing feel more interesting to me, as opposed to treating galaxies like continents, and planets like cities.

    The other thing, and this I actually tend to hate, dips into “Quirky droids / quirky Aliens”. I strongly dislike the fact that there are so many cases of a character talking “gibberish” and then having another character talk back normally. It’s nonsensical and overused. Why is every ( at least of the ones I seen ) scenario where somebody talks to a Wookie or other species / droid one where somebody makes comical noises and the person they are talking to sticks to english? Would it not be incredibly rude if you spoke to somebody in french, and they kept responding in english, even though they clearly understand you? And if everybody speaks Star Wars equivalent of the common tongue, why do certain aliens never use it?

    I realize this is petty, but I’m annoyed every time it happens. BD-1 gets a pass, simply because in his case he s just the receiver so Cal can talk without seeming like a loon. But even then, ther were certain cases where they had an interaction where I would have loved to actually KNOW what BD said, as opposed to Cal just going “I agree BD!” “That’s funny, BD!”. The Wookies on Kashyyyk annoyed me extra, because there they literally have to haul a convenient translation NPC around so the audience knows what the Wookies are saying.

    1. Alex says:

      Verbal communication is a physical process. Wookiees might literally not have vocal chords capable of producing Galactic Basic speech, despite being able to hear and comprehend it, and the same might be true of humans and Shyriiwook.

  53. Jaythree says:

    I just have to disagree with the idea that the whole of the Star Wars galaxy is dirty sci-fi because of Tatooine and the Millennium Falcon. The Death Star is clean. Stormtroopers are in pristine white armour. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Imperial worlds are also this level of clean. The Tantive IV is also clean, although it doesn’t have the nice wide corridors and gloss finish of the Empire, so we can safely assume that the Republic was also clean sci-fi.

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