I actually think you're wrong about why solo flunked, People definitely care about and have in interest in things outside of the Jedi and the force. Solo flunked because the Last Jedi did poorly and everybody suddenly lost interest in Disney Star Wars.
Of course people (and certainly a lot of fans) care about things beyond just The Force and The Jedi. However, I think a lot of your more casual fans or average movie goers think of Star Wars as just Jedi vs Sith. That said, Solo failed for a number of reasons... and on that list would be some people just have no interest in that aspect of Star Wars.
In the early days of the internet, there was an article written by a very wise and astute fan who wrote about, at that time, the Classic Star Wars trilogy. He wrote about WHY the classic trilogy was so popular and exactly why it resonated with fans around the world so well. He talked about Joseph Campbell and the Hero with 1000 faces and the Hero's Journey. It was well before the prequels, but basically what he summarized was this: If Star Wars EVER went down the road of "episodism" (like how Star Trek is) where every movie becomes simply another bland episode that doesn't serve the overall story arc, it would cease to be special, and then cease to be Star Wars. Everyone....meet Disney. Disney...meet your completely alienated fan base and utterly destroyed IP.
TheCharlesJackson exactly...that’s the point. Star Trek was always more “scientific”, while Star Wars was pure fantasy. Plus Star Trek made episodic installments work because that’s how it was always set up. Star Wars was not. It focused specifically on a focal point: the Skywalkers. It was a familial story that had a clear story arc that could be tied up in 3 movies....not 9+.
Star Wars started out with a simple and moving story, then got more complex and layered with the Prequels, then tried to go back to a simple big bad vs small band of good story with the Sequels. It's not supposed to work like that. It should keep expanding the mythology.
Maybe if they went to a truly separated era to explore, like for example the old republic, that may have worked out (Albeit they would have to come with something a bit original).
A middle Trilogy that is game-changing and iconic with even more to give!-)+ a prequel trilogy that definitely has more to give!-)+ sequel Trilogy that is proving that this journey is capable of giving still!-)+
@@ShamanMcLamie Apparently they didn't even know who Darth Plageuis (mentioned clearly in ROTS) was. Nor seen Episodes 1 to 6 by the looks of TFA which didn't continue the story.
@Charr Aznable The thing is they pretty much spoilt the entire cake. Rogue One shows how great Star Wars could be managed. Whereas everything else has been well...not Star Wars. You can't continue the saga and not continue it. They could have used George's scripts and had a wonderful story. I mean not just foresight, they don't appear to have even watched Episodes 1 to 6 (or even just ROTJ) at all to have made TFA the 'what happens next.' It just seems to be like they thought putting a "Star Wars" logo on anything makes a Star Wars film. I think they KNEW that random Rey wouldn't sell on her own had they for instance set the film 1000 years in the future. So they had to bring in the old and leech off it whilst destroying it in the most senseless way possible. Oh what could have been (proper new characters). Recent news stories show that George Lucas (quite rightly) was disappointed with TFA.
@Char Aznable I CONCUR! They were stupid to throw out George's scripts. And as you say to add total insult to injury, they had zero plan. Who the hell would be so stupid to do such a thing. There story doesn't make any sense in TFA and the episode doesn't continue onward from ROTJ (let alone Episodes 1 to 6 as a whole). Unlike George's proposed new characters, the current sequel Rey, Finn, Poe etc are awful and don't hold up on their own. They have to leech off and tear down the original saga to promote themselves in a non-plot story connected by the loosest of coincidences and with lense flare. There is simply zero story. Glad there are still good people out there. Always a pleasure to meet a Jedi. It is bittersweet because as you say what a wealth of information, and barely gleaning the surface of what I'm sure would have been one hell of a trilogy, one hell of a CONTINUATION story and one hell of a wider saga with moral themes, a plot and wonderful characters (including proper new ones). George also wanted to give us new worlds, new vehicles, designs and starships etc. It is truly truly sad to see what has become of our beloved Star Wars, which the Force was so strong with. There are other concepts that I can garner, or guess such as (but not limited to): 1. The Episode 7 definitely explaining definitively the status quo in the galaxy. The Force ghosts being present and Luke beginning to "pass on what he had learned." 2. The seemingly immortal dark lord, formerly known as Darth Plageuis the Wise who the Senate (meaning Palpatine) spoke of in ROTS, being the "ultimate villain" who Luke is trying to defeat once and for all 3. The Whills using the Force to travel around, lifeforms virtually invisible to our plain of existence, but influencing events, and also perhaps being used by Plageuis to try and "leech" their energy to perpetuate life. However perhaps Plageuis is still unable to fully regenerate himself to become young again and not weaken. Unlike the Jedi he also fails to realise that you cannot drain the Force to continue life. Plageuis only takes life from others to maintain his own life force. 4. Ancient Jedi artefacts (perhaps even the first Jedi of old) and Force crystals. A portal into the heart of the Force itself, perhaps part of some climactic battle (akin to ROTJ) over Coruscant itself. Think of a black hole/blue storm in space creating a wormhole into the centre of the galaxy, from which the "Force" radiates out from. 5. Plageuis perhaps even using an army of Vong slave warriors discovered by him as he hid in the shadows. I would suggest that the name of Episode 7 could be "SHADOW OF THE FORCE" to explain a darkness descending on a chaotic galaxy and Plageuis being the darkness (much like the Phantom Menace of the Sith) needing to be uprooted once and for all to defeat the dark side. 6. Perhaps Plageuis doing a Palpatine, by this time, manipulating the criminal fraternity and warlords to attack worlds, proving the galaxy to be lawless and creating a situation where they cry out for someone to restore justice to the galaxy. Plageuis presents himself and his Outer Rim "voice of the people" movement as the saviours, lambasting the inefficient fledgling corrupt Republic (that has even sidelined Leia and the Alliance, as well as the Imperial Remnant) and the Jedi for failing to act. Plageuis convincing the Solo to join him by showing him the power to heal his wounded Jedi Knights, injured on a rogue mission to go and save a world from Pirate raiders (egged on by Plageuis). 7. The Twilek Jedi Hunter seducing/falling in love with the young Solo. This character would be modelled on Darth Talon from the Expanded Universe Comics (the servant of Darth Krayt). 8. Jedi students being hidden away to be awakened again by Luke. A new generation of Jedi put at risk by this unknown threat. Reluctant young Solo not fully dark, but merely tempted to impose order on the galaxy and live up to his ancestor's names. 9. Luke on a quest, trying to protect his family (Han, Leia and his daughter) and perhaps grief stricken by his wife Mara Jade (perhaps played by Hayley Atwell) having sacrificed herself to protect Jedi. Perhaps there is an Imperial Remnant connection with the Remnant seeing Luke as Vader's heir and thus the true Emperor of the Galaxy. 10. Leia using diplomacy, and doing a "C3PO chair" moment from ROTJ to convince neutral bickering systems to rally to a cause to defeat the forces of evil and show the good of the Jedi Order. 11. Kira either being hidden on a remote world as a mechanic, or else sent to her grandmother (Mara's mother) living as an Imperial style cadet. She will have a love interest either a rogue pilot or else a fellow Jedi student (perhaps the two are mind wiped and actually rediscover their powers and romance). This student/Kira find a clue to Luke's mission and discover him. He agrees to train her. 12. R2D2 being by Luke's side. New starships and technology. Possibly a super weapon might include a giant starship used by the numerically inferior Plageuis' forces that sends out a giant Ion wave totally disabling Star Destroyers/Alliance Cruisers power and rendering them defenceless to give a highly elite small fighting force of warriors and star fighter drones the upper hand. A stand off at Naboo. 13. There is some sort of link to Qui Gon, the Whills, the Force ghosts, Plageuis shocked at the "Jedi sorcery" of the Force ghost Jedi. Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One able to utilise the Force portal to help his son and daughter defeat the dark lord and his plan once and for all. Leia restoring a united galaxy (New Republic without the faults of the old) and Luke passing on what he had learned to a new generation of both Skywalker's and other Jedi students. I would advocate that Veronica Ngo be a Jedi student. 14. Some type of scene like the opening to Man of Steel on Krypton with a world under attack and starships battling it out in the sky. Galactic coups, and a logical continuation of the galaxy. 15. Han Solo being a General, perhaps helping the heroes (Luke possibly being arrested by a useless government) escape the world by taking the Millennium Falcon from the Galactic Museum and an escape run scene. 16. An adapted version to allow Han Solo a blaze of glory sacrifice should he wish not to be there until Episode 9. 17. Possibly all the spirits of all Jedi freed form pain at saga's end so that the Order 66 Jedi would appear as Force ghosts on the victory closing shot at saga's end. (Long live Aayla Secura and Mace Windu) 18. My possible theory is that Mace Windu MAY have returned as a vigilante Jedi who came across the plan of Plageuis and tries a different method to Luke's compassionate order. His vigilantes however soon realise they have been manipulated by Plageuis to further frame the Jedi as wrong doers. Mace Windu sacrifices himself to help students get to Luke, seeing he was right. 19. A scene back at the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant. A happy ending. And a Skywalker saga, not random characters. Possible suitable actors/actresses for this epic plot (in my view) would include Naomi Scott/Olympia Valance/Kristen Kreuk as Kira (Skywalker), Gal Gadot or Hayley Atwell as Mara Jade, Diana Lane as Kira's guardian, the original cast coming back, and perhaps classic actors like Denzel Washington as Han and Leia's ally, Anthony Hopkins (Mask of Zorro and Hannibal) as Plageuis. Suggested movie titles - "Shadow of the Force, Knight of the Whills and Rise of the Jedi." Oh what could have been!
It's ironic that the sequel trilogy has failed for the exact same reasons that the Jedi order failed: 1) Pride and hubris from past victories (Jedi defeat of sith, Disney with the Star Wars brand) 2) Too much connection with the political structure of their times (Jedi with the empire, Lucasfilm with SJW politics) 3) Consolidation of power into the hands of a singular individual who cares only for his own vision (Palpatine and Rian Johnson) 4) The heartless elimination of all the Noble and meaningful characters (Order 66 and Disney's treatment of legacy characters) Edit: 5) Oh and now Disney is sending out their social media and big news Inquisitors to snuff out any remaining loyalists to Good Star Wars lore. Coincidence or prophecy?
It’s a shame Disney couldn’t evolve the universe further. They only winded it back. I would’ve rather taken a journey into exploring the Whills then rehash the OT and PT again for no good reason.
How I wish we had a continuation story and REAL sequels from George Lucas (like what he left them to produce). We might have had an actual continuity from ROTJ, an explanation of the galaxy within Episode 7 itself (i.e. a proper Episode 7 unlike TFA), proper new characters like Kira Skywalker, the Whills, Darth Plageuis the Wise, Darth Talon (or a similar character that Lucas envisaged which sounds cool) and an actual, you know, plot! Oh what might have been! I will always be grateful to George for CREATING STAR WARS and love Episodes 1 to 6. And Rogue One. May the Force be with us all!
One of the fandoms. There isn't just one. That's the big mistake people make - they think their opinion is somehow the true opinion for any cavalcade of reasons. That's why peoples' opinions on each new release is like do or fucking die, it's like gangs fighting over turf.
@Un-broken and victorious Exactly. We already know that the Force runs stronger through certain bloodlines and we already are told in TPM that Anakin is part of the prophesy. Literally the only thing they contribute is giving us a vague power meter... which we don't need because we're shown how powerful he is elsewhere.
Agreed! I like midiclorians (sp?) they are not The Force, it was a means to communicate just how much stronger was Anakin related to other Jedi. I see no problem with them.
@@jcdenton2187 So is your objection to midichlorians or the fact that we are given a specific number that compares to Yoda? Because the latter is just a small nitpick that I don't get why people are so up in arms about. And the former is the logical explanation on how certain bloodlines ("the son of Skywalker would be a powerful ally") are stronger in the Force than others. That implicitly hints at a genetic/biological cause, not a latent telepathic/willpower/training-based ability present equally in all beings that everyone keeps citing as the reason why midichlorians destroy the original films. TLDR = Midichlorians make sense if you accept the central premise of ESB and RoTJ. Only purists who think ANH is the only Star Wars should be upset.
@@pspublic13 My objection is to midichlorians and that they are simply unnecessary. The purposes they serve in the prequels are redundant to information we receive anyway, and they remove some of the mystery of the Force in a bad way. I'm all for explaining some elements of it, but midichlorians felt like a cop-out. We already get that the Force runs stronger in the Skywalkers. It also dimishes some of the special qualities of the Force for lack of better terms, in my opinion at least. In the OT, you could think that anyone could possibly believe in the Force and learn to use it if they study it and whatnot. Just maybe. We still understand that the Force is stronger with certain bloodlines but that doesn't exclude the possibility of others using it. Midichlorians straight up remove that possibility and instead turn the Force into something you can only use if you have a high enough count of some things floating around in your bloodstream, otherwise nah, you can't use it. Or you can use it, but if Mr. Joe here has a higher amount of these things than you do, chances are he'll have an easier time/do better. Anyway i rambled a bit but my point is I'm fine with explaining some things about the Force but midichlorians did not feel like a good explanation and they remove some mystical elements of the Force in a bad way. Story wise, the purpose they serve is minimal and redundant. They serve as a power scale we didnt really need, and Anakin was already part of the prophesy, and Palpatine could have easily just said Plagueis learned how to use the Force to create life instead of manipulating the midichlorians to do so. But... it's whatever. It's a part of the canon now. And frankly they're barely even mentioned so you can safely ignore them outside of the maybe 3 cases they are mentioned. But if that's the case it makes you wonder if they were ever neccessary in the first place.
@Anson Hartzler TFW was only decent because it's a copy of A New Hope. The last jedi is different from the rest because it sucks as Captain Marvel and I even liked some of the deleted sences to be fair but TLJ subverted my expectations just like GOT Season 8.
The suspension of disbelief is one of the reasons I think Rogue One was so good. It was the first Star Wars movie in a while you could just sit back and enjoy the ride, including some lore add ons like that force order the blind dude was a part of. For some reason, you could take all that in stride in that movie and it was a great ride all the way through. Idk what this is. But whatever it is, the rest of Disney Star Wars has really been missing it
Argh! True, my dad who grew up with Star Wars loved rouge one more than the prequel Star Wars since he felt they kept the old Star Wars magic without having to rehash anything from the OT or the prequels. He cares little about the sequels now thanks to TLJ.
In this exact moment there some person frantically coding - think Musk and paypal - on what will be the next superunicorn company and with the secret goal to buy SW from Disney and make it right.
Hell yes. In that universe we had a proper continuation story, with Darth Plageuis, Darth Talon, Luke Skywalker and his Jedi order including Kira Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker, his wife. We had a proper cast playing characters. An actual plot with explanations of the galaxy and exposition. It made way more money than the fake sequels in our universe and there was no Rey, no First Order, no Resistance and no problems.
I don't like them, but I do like that there's some reason not just anybody can be Jedi. If anyone can do it, it makes the entire struggle of the Jedi vs the Sith pointless because it raises alot of questions about why everyone doesn't just train to join a side.
@@vietnamd0820 I don't hate them, like I said I think there is a reason for them. I think they just weren't really necassary to mention. I think it was already pretty clear in the OT that not just anyone can be a Jedi and I think once you start trying to get more technical with it, it starts to lose a little about the mystery and the magic around it. I do think people over emphasize it when they don't come up often, misunderstand it and think the midichlorians are the Force, and that sort of thing, but I don't think it's a completely unfounded gripe to have with the prequels. I like the prequels, but I'll admit when I have an issue here or there.
I think the writers of the sequel trilogy thought the prequels were still considered the worst things ever (maybe even felt that themselves), and so tried to keep as far away from it as possible. The results speak for themselves.
Gen Y Entertainment extremely. JJ himself said he was a massive fan of the plinkett PT reviews and yet TFA made the exact same kind of mistakes with the story and even worse ones. Not to mention the raththars are CGI ass and they wasted the martial arts guys from the Raid movies that could’ve provided some neat choreography instead of just copying moves from the older movies for the lightsaber fight
For a long time it was more about the force and the lore. That’s why I enjoyed the prequels and Clone Wars so much. They both expanded on what I enjoyed about Star Wars the most. When Rogue One was initially announced and we were told that there would be no Jedi or lightsabers. I was a little disappointed. But after seeing the trailers I got more into the War aspect of the overall story. I guess binge watching Clone Wars helped as well. Now I look forward to shows like The Mandelorian. Because there is still a lot going on in the Galaxy outside of the force. But to your point I don’t feel that the sequel trilogy has delivered on expanding the lore or world building. Outside of the Force Skype, Rey’s Force download, and force ghost Yoda bringing down lightning. We haven’t learned anything new about the force or the lore.
Rebels was also good with expanding the force and how other beings interacted with it and it touched upon the time before the Jedi's with the ancient temples on Lothal. I also agree with you on the ST. It sucks and I doubt I'll go and see episode 9.
I find it amusing that in the few times midichlorians are mentioned, 1 (the scene where they're introduced) is hated, yet another is considered 1 of the best scenes in the prequels (the opera house scene). So I guess it really does depend on your POV! ;)
Midichlorians are unnecessary as hell but I can live with them because all they really do is show that Skywalkers have great force potential which is an OT idea in the first place. Doesn’t even come close to how fucked up the ST portrays the force.
I never had a problem with them. There microorganisms that feed off of the force. The more you have, the more force you have. It never replaced the mysticism of the force.
@@VulturePilot Its crucial to the plot of the TPM and the PT in general. Its what gives the strong compelling evidence that Anakin is the Chosen One and it is what causes the Jedi Order to reluctantly allow Anakin to be trained. But yeah, not really necessary to the lore in general.
@Felipe M Wonderful way to put it. I have thought the same way. Look at Yoda and Obi-Wan. They were extremely strong in the Force due to their discipline and training. In Rogue One we see Chirut, who was not even a Jedi, and possibly not even Force sensitive, at least not in the traditional way. He worshipped the Force, and trusted its will. His faith in the Force was so great that he was able to tap a little bit into the Force's power.
If Lucas were in charge of the Sequel Trilogy, which he should’ve been, he would’ve delved much deeper into the midichlorians leading up to the Whills. I think it would’ve paid off in the end and make the Prequels even more relevant past just setting up the OT. In any case, it would’ve been better than what we ended up getting.
You know, one thing I love about Darth Sidious is that he never denied arrogance was his weakness when Luke pointed it out when many others would have.
Debatable. There are much better writers the series got who are severely underlooked. Timothy Zahn, John Ostrander, Chris Avellone, Drew Karpishyn, James Luceno to name a few.
Indeed, instead of expanding on the lore with the ST and both returning and new characters, they instead make very similar stories that do no capitalize on potential, and shit on the Star Wars legacy in favour of their own... "kill the past" and all.
When a story is complete, it usually fails when you try to add to it. George Lucas had some plan (however small and barely thought out) about the 6 movie arc that is the George Canon of Star Wars. The sequels had no plan, and the story of 6 was complete. Likewise, Terminator 2 completed that story, and subsequent entries have had to work around that completeness to create a story - which for me, hasn't worked. Harry Potter too, was complete with 7 books, and Rowling has not succeeding in adding to it.
I genuinely love midi-choloreans. That information answered a question about Star Wars that nagged me for decades. I'd rather have a lackluster answer than no answer at all.
I'll admit that I'm a prequel era fan, revenge of the sith was the first star wars film I was old enough to see in theatres But when it comes to midichlorians I've come to the conclusion that the orders over reliance on midichlorian counts was another sign of them lossing their way(especially given that there are species that are highly force sensitive despite not having as high a mc count as other races)and not to be weird about it but as a religious person you hear "well we have a scientific explanation for that" all the time but in truth from a religious perspective(which I only bring up because the Jedi are ment to be) a scientific explanation doesn't and shouldn't supersede the "God did it" explanation(to clarify I'm meaning it in a "just because we know why it rains doesn't mean we don't thank god for the rain" type of way) So watching 1-6 in chronological order is like rediscovering true faith after getting caught up in stuff they shouldn't have been anywhere near(keepers of the peace becoming generals and all that)
I disagree, one of the best lines in the Original Trilogy was Ben talking about the Clone Wars in a New Hope... at least until we actually saw the Clone Wars for ourselves, and it could never live up to that mystery. Sometimes no answer is better
I was always most interested in the Ships. I started designing my own and drawinging shipyards, space stations, and planetary systems. Probably an early sign I was going to ended up in Aerospace. Jedi were neat, but Han was my favorite character when I was a kid, and Even now I perfer the blaster wielding Kyle Katarn style Jedi more than Luke.
Audience expectations are also a factor. In 30 years the way that audiences consume entertainment has changed. Especially with the Advent of streaming and long-form storytelling, people now expect more complex motivations and character psychology and more sophisticated endings to people storylines. This is another reason why arguments based on how they did things 30 years ago (such as the emperor vs. Snoke lack of background) do not work...
Eh Snoke vs Palpatine are written completely different though. In ANH palps is barely relevant. The main baddies are Vader and tarkin and the Death Star. Palps is mentioned and you can feel his presence because he’s the one pushing for the Death Star strategy by dissolving the senate but he’s not the main reason for the plot happening. In the ST SNOKE IS BEHIND IT ALL. He single handedly embarrassed luke by force corrupting kylo from the womb(it’s Disney canon), and through Skype sessions. He long distance eradicated Luke’s academy by doing so. He somehow United the remnants of the empire and created a bigger stronger fleet somehow despite not having the empires manufacturing yards of old and all that. SNOKE invalidated the victory in ROTJ and TFA is a SEQUEL to 6 movies. It is not the very first movie in the franchise. That’s why snoke getting zero backstory or motivations or character sucks in comparison to the slow but still there reveal of the emperor in the OT and he becomes a full fledged character in ROTJ anyway. It’s got nothing to do with audience demand. One is written and executed well and one is not.
Disney's first screw up was not having Luke, Leia, and Han all together at least once....then the Last Jedi happened and Disney basically nuked Star Wars and turned it into Spaceballs Wars.
The OT was like Homer's Iliad, it starts out in the middle of a scenario and expects you to keep up. It's what made Star Wars so engrossing and immersive. Great vid and great explanation.
I hate how the sequel trilogy TAKE, instead of GIVING, they got rid of the new republic, burned down luke's jedi academy (killed all potential for new jedi characters) , they've broken and killed legacy characters, they didn't expanded or did anything with snoke, Resistance/First Order = Rebellion/Empire (but dumber), Rey is no one and Kylo is not a sith, etc... The irony is Rogue One GIVE new thing and expand the lore, without TAKING away (or ruining) the legacy characters, you have Vader, Tarkin, Mon Mothma, Bail Amidala, even Gold and Red leader, they also give us new hero that belong in star wars, exploring new territory, the blind monk, who is able to use the force in limited use in order to see and fight; Jyn, daughter of the one responsible for the construction of the death star; Cassian, a rebel soldier doing questionable thing, showing us a darker side to the rebellion, etc... And so much world building and fun cameo (and a damn good fan service scene with Vader killing rebels left and right, ending were the original movie begins)
I would have much rather seen a trilogy about a Jedi padawan in the new Jedi order and maybe some of his friends completing their training and exploring stuff like ancient Jedi or Sith temples, and then next thing you know they get mixed up with the resistance maybe one of the padawans gets kidnapped by Snoke and turns to the dark side (this story would provide *actual* backstory).. who knows? It would have been far more interesting than the shit we got.
I think Disney and Lucasfilm missed a golden opportunity with the original EU. They could have used it as a general story outline and kept the best aspects/characters/story arcs while leaving what didn’t work that well. In the same way the MCU adapted Civil War; there were certain aspects that couldn’t work, others that needed to be changes, but the major points and story were kept for the cinematic universe they were creating.
I didn’t find a problem really with mediclorians, mostly because I played the West End Games Star Wars RPG and an item The Empire had was a hand held device that could sense the Force in individuals.
The original trilogy was a basic morality story that was more of a children's story than most people will ever admit. That is what made it great. Look at the Dark Crystal-a great story of good, evil & balance.
I admit that the original trilogy is kinda childish if you compare it to The Clone Wars. The OT is written in a way that the heroes have "the high ground" a lot of times, this is called plot armor.
star wars ended with ep 6 rotj. the EU is cannon, piss on what KK, jarjar and Disney has to say. we the fans built star wars, we the fans dismiss Disney.
I honestly find it really comforting that a lot more people are getting into the EU. I've met too many people who just outright say it doesn't matter anymore because it's not canon. I've got a stack of Legends novels and comics on my shelf. Who's gonna stop me from reading them, the canon police?
If they wanted to remake the OT, they should've just had the courage to remake the OT. Cut out the incest and the plot holes and change the ewoks to woolies... all that. Disney does remakes all the time, I don't understand what the hell they were thinking
When you create a franchise, or a setting, the way to maintain it is to either add to the overall world by telling epic stories that further expand upon it, or deal with smaller and more personal events of the main protagonists in a way that remains respectful of the setting as a whole. All Disney Lucasfilm had to do with the sequel trilogy was close out the stories of the OT heroes, allow them to pass the torch on, and let them have one final hooray! If they'd done Cobra Kai, we would've been heading into this December with tremendous excitement and certainly wondering when the next trilogy with the newly introduced characters of Rey, Poe and Fin would arrive to our big screens. They would've even been free to set the next trilogy in any Star Wars era, with the story of OT characters being just one of many in this vast universe. Instead neither the old characters got a deserved sendoff - rather, they were all demeaned by how they were portrayed in the new trilogy - nor were the new characters introduced in a compelling way and allowed to gain broader acceptance on their own merit. One place where Disney Lucasfilm could've added to the lore were the planned Star Wars Stories. Granted, Rogue One simply expanded upon the info in the opening crawl of the original movie, but as the first of what should've been a bunch, it was expected to be somewhat of a safe bet. Still, once the concept was proven, Lucasfilm failed to capitalise on the opportunity to experiment with types of stories that were different from the main saga. Rogue One did show us how the war part of Star Wars looks to ordinary people more than the main saga would've allowed, but a movie dealing with the criminal underworld not involving Han, Chewie, Darth Maul and The Rebellion would've fared much better than Solo because it would've been something fresh. The fact that they blindly stuck to established characters for telling stories that would've done just fine without them, while at the same time ruining said characters in the main trilogy, just proves that Lucasfilm (and Disney) don't have any creative people at positions that demand creativity and vision. That is the sole reason Star Wars has gone from being the preeminent franchise with epic narrative continuity to a joke left in a cloud of dust by the likes of Marvel.
The primary problem with the sequel trilogy is it's a financial endeavor now rather than an artistic one. It's about compromise rather than taking chances. The OT is as good as it is because it never had this problem or constraints. It wasn't made because of money but in spite of it. Especially the first film because they had no idea if it would even make any money so they were free to experiment to their heart's content. SW today is a corporate entity made even more corporate by Disney's ownership. It had nowhere to go but failure because all of it's artistic merit has been wiped away in favor of it's financial benefit. That is the true tragedy of what SW has become. They're now (Including Lucas) the very villains' the story said needed to be defeated in the first place.
Everything has a cycle. There is no true rise or fall, beginning or end. Star Wars may be in a recession, but it will rise again. I don't make many promises, but this is one I will certainly keep.
There's a lot of dead franchises out there that will likely never be what they were. In this case I honestly hope you're right but I don't see it happening. Not with the way it's been going.
Considering how after the prequels, which everyone thought was the worse thing ever and felt Star Wars was over, but we got a ton of lore books and clone wars to keep the franchise stable. The sequels or movies won't have the pull they used to but i believe the shows will be able to stabilize things again.
The difference is GL didn't come out and accuse anyone who didn't like the prequels of being homophobic misogynist racists. Di$ney can go fuck themselves, who do they think buys the toys that children play with.
7,8,9 shouldve been the rise of the sith and create a compelling story of a man or woman that for very good reasons brings the sith back. Like a person that went through so much turmoil youd think theres a bright future for them somewhere and ends up the complete opposite and becomes the real villain and 10,11,12 couldve been the redemption of skywalker or new era jedi, bringing back a new generation of jedi academy with maybe sith academy in the shadows. And there you have nostalgia and new together (bringing in the era of kotor but modern)
I really feel bad that I only appreciated the EU long after it was removed from the canon. I would love to see movies on certain specific time periods such as the Great Hyperspace War, the rise and fall of Darth Bane, and the Yuuzhan Vong War. It just feels like Disney would rather rehash the OT with surface level differences in order to not look like the Prequels, and haphazardly add elements and characters from the EU to appease those fans no matter how neutered or ridiculous they end up.
For me what made the original trilogy great was that it was a very simple story of good vs. evil set against a science fiction backdrop, but it was a story that was told very well, and the ending wrapped up the entire story in a very satisfactory manner. When Lucas was talking about doing six more movies, we were all excited because we thought we would get two more trilogies like the first one, but of course we didn't. The prequels could have become great. He simply reversed the idea, telling us once again a tale of good vs. evil, but instead of the good triumphing over evil because the evil remembered the good inside of it, we instead got evil triumphing over good as it forgot the good inside of it. It was a great idea, but Lucas forgot how to tell a story in the mean time, and the end result was executed very poorly. The sequels were always going to be more problematic. We always assumed back then (since they were supposed to come out sooner rather than decades later) that they would follow our heroes into the future as they fought the civil war that would inevitably arise and finally defeat the Empire once and for all, or that the movies would skip ahead until after that, and show our heroes facing down some new threat that had arisen from the power vacuum left by the end of the Empire while the new republic was being formed. And instead we got, well, we all know what we got.
Ding ding ding. You have hit the nail on the head. All anyone wanted from something called part 7, 8, and 9 was for the story to have a reason and intentionally continue. What we got could have been done outside of the saga and been very well received. Not losing any fans but at least gaining some.
I will die on the hill that while certain parts of the prequels were executed badly, NOTHING in those movies comes remotely close to the complete bastardization and destruction that the Sequel Trilogy under Disney have done to the brand. Force ghosts calling down lightning strikes, the force making strong dark side users and strong ‘light????’ Side users whenever one lives or dies despite the way the last two trilogies went. The complete ignorance of universal rules, galactic history, lore and laws and stakes etc.
Thank you! That pretty much sums up my feelings on the sequel and prequel trilogies and why I enjoy one and hate the other. The Last jedi was interesting, I'll give it that much, if you take it out of context of episode 7 and the fact that it had that stupid timer on it to force us to see how much Rey improved in a week or something which is completely unrealistic. Not to mention, if Rey and Kylo are the new chosen ones, why was Anakin chosen in the first place? Wasn't it his responsibility to create balance? Again, what harm is there to look at the old EU books and look at the stories that were told and successful and build the new canon around some of those aspects? The creatures from beyond the galaxy would've been a great trilogy maker, not to mention with how rebels ended you can reintroduce old characters from the shows and old canon and put them into new canon, tying the lore together. Just my thought on it. Of course I would like to see the original rise of the jedi and sith to see where their dogma's came from since it takes different ideas as to what the force is (as I would assume the old jedi had their own thoughts on it before canon period), and why the jedi and sith split.
I love the whole idea of the midi-chlorians. Which by the way where they since Lucas originally wrote the first draft of Star Wars back in 1973. It adds so much to the Force. Like Yoda says "life creates it" hench the midi-chlorians. I always wondered why some could use the Force and some can not. They don't take away anything from the mystery of the Force. I love the everything about the PT. It added so much more to the overall story. Last thing I wanted to see was a remake of the original trilogy, I'm so glad Lucas did it the way he did, what we got was something original in a familiar galaxy. Unlike The Farce Awakens which was nothing more then a bad remake of the original trilogy. I don't know what the Hell TLJ was. And the contradictions not just in TFA & TLJ but in the upcoming thing. The biggest contradiction is the Sith cannot achieve eternal life after death! Disney and Kennedy have really destroyed Star Wars I can't wait for the ST to be over with and long forgotten. But back to the question at hand, I'm really interested in the aspects of the force and the Jedi. As well as the politics and Palpatine's machinations. I thought it was brilliantly handled! Qui-Gon Jinn is the epitome of what all Jedi should be. We really got to see how the Force works and Jedi fit into the overall mystery. And of course the Clone Wars added even more to that lore. Disney and Kennedy should have never FUCKED over Lucas! They should have went with his story and kept him on as a consultant. Like was part of the deal. We would have got a rich original story that added more the the other 6 films and the Force. It's sad that we'll probably never know what could have been.
It’s essentially the x gene from X-men. Some people have it and others don’t but it is usually carried in bloodlines. Some people have more capacity to grow in strength and others do not. They all still need training and can’t just ‘download’ everything (glares at TFA novel)
They are an explanation for why the Republic could identify force sensitive children so easily when the Republic had millions of systems it had to keep track of. It would be impossible for the Jedi Order to find everyone as a infant if they had to go around and "feel" the force sensitive infants. By introducing the midichlorians as a symbiotic organism, it allowed the Republic to test all births for Force Sensitivity without requiring the Jedi Order to actually spend all of its (wo)manpower just looking at recruits. The Jedi Academy required the initiates to be very young children.. no more than 3 years old (or species equivalent) so that they could start training the younglings in proper emotional and thought patterns required to unlock their full potential without falling to the darkside. Mace Windu called Annikan Too Old to start training... and he is an example of why the Order doesn't like training older kids... they don't know how to influence the young one properly and the young one doesn't think like the others. Disastrous for all concerned.
@@darthqui-gon5986 , Yep. I believe the best book to show why having older children join the academy is a bad thing is Rogue Planet (Legends). The first three chapters goes into detail about how a 12 year old former slave makes droids to distract himself from his emotions and when his fear that he is only being trained because he's the "chosen one" and not "Anikan Skywalker, a Child" overwhelms him he goes off and tests the Jedi.. specifically, his master. "Do they come to me save me or not"?
I love the SW movies. I was never a big EU fan but OT, PT and Clone Wars really enthralled me. TFA pulled in new fans and had enough "mystery box" things that kept fans wantng for 2 years. All I really want is a good trilogy of films that tell one coherent story. SW fans come to expect that. Actually any fan of any film franchise will want that. That is what this trilogy required...careful planning for 3 movies to keep old fans and bring in new ones. It is not difficult. We get better theories from RUclipsrs than what Lucasfilm is shelling out these days.
For me, the Skywalkers always served as the window through which we viewed this universe... and, as a result of who they were, the Force, the Jedi/Sith, and the galactic government would also prominently factor into the equation. Even so, I see no reason why plenty other elements of the universe couldn't also find their way into a SW narrative in the context of these aforementioned items.
First comment ever. Long time viewer, new subscriber. I just want to point out what I feel is a common misread of midi-chlorians. At 4:40 you conflate midi-chlorian counts with 'power.' I have seen many fans make this claim, but I have never seen a citation to support this. Jinn mentions communication with The Force and it's life giving attribute. I think the distinction between Jinns claim of "knowledge" from midi-chlorians and the salient absence of any claim of 'power' is significant considering Anakin/Vaders arc, and the established Jedi way of "knowledge and defense." "Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that ... communicates with the Force...Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force...When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to you."
By being a sequel, its suppose to expand the story, not do it again. Had they separated from Lucas' work in the beginning, it wouldn't be as bad. One could simply say that it's a cycle that the galaxy goes through every 5 thousand years or so. Look at the Legend of Zelda and its story. At their core, most are the same story but they're different because they take place thousands of years after the last one as that one has become legend or completely forgotten. Thus the story is the same, yet different.
Star wars was once great and had people who understood the canon why Extended Universe is pure gold. And Original movies were epic and the pre were also good I had np with them they didn't break any canon they just help build up the original characters and movies and then Disney and SJWs got there dirty hands into Lucasfilm and now we get this shit. Now episode 9 is going to use RIP of characters to try and sell us there worthless characters and steal stuff from Extended Universe kinda and just make it worthless
Yeah on this one I just agree with you, I think the more detail the story has the more invested I become and the more interesting I find it. Because when you try and tell a story with as little detail as possible over many movies or many a trilogy it leads to way too much speculation and very little clarification, which of course in turn leads to tandem in fighting and arguments over what every little thing means (........ The Last Jedi.........) I just want to add that my point is you need balance, you need to have plenty of detail and specification so people clearly understand what the point is and for greater context of the show or movie but... obviously leave enough mystery and some vague storylines for people to speculate and have fun with.
As a kid Star Wars was about the adventure! What as a grown up I've come to know as the hero's journey. And also the cool ships, racers etc and the epic battles. As a grown up I was drawn to the family drama of it. The battle between good and evil both outside and inside of us. The idea of fate/destiny. And as a son and now a father, that amazing unshakeable faith of Luke in his father. The brother and sister and the scoundrel lover. A father redeemed by his son. And the backdrop of all those willing to die for others. ... a bit of a stream of consciousness post there. There is so much more in episode 1 - 6. None of that seems present in a gripping way in 7 and 8.
Thor, your reasoning why the EU was dropped makes perfect sense. I don't like it though because I consider the old good EU far superior to the new stuff. I think Disney should have done was to turn into films Zahn trilogy and then introduce new characters in another era. Old republic. Or like 250 years ABY. This would give Lucasfilm the opportunity to bring the original cast back together, milk some money from it. I dare say the fans would happily accept it. If there was demand for more, animated series like e.g. the rebels could cover more stories from EU. But instead we got the new stuff and Disney got itself with it in the situation that they have a new vast canon and they are slowly getting in the same position like with the old canon, exactly as you said.
Favorite part is definitely The Force. I'm a big fan of the OT and Prequels but am only just now starting to explore the EU. I loved how we got to see more of the cababilities of force users, how truly powerful these beings are (both light and dark). I was behind on the news though that it had all been expelled from canon and had essentially become meaningless. With TFA though I got excited by Keylo Ren, stopping a blaster bolt mid air, holding people in place and sheer, raw, unchecked anger. But then they deflated all of his power in the same movie. So we have Rey and Kylo, who are supposed to be super powerful but they feel like some of the weakest force users now. Keylo because apparently he can't win a single saber fight and Rey because all of her abilities feel foney. Two of my favorite characters who were truly powerful are Darth Bane and Darth Zana. I wish we could have seen something like that in TLJ. For me the movie could have almost been saved if we had actually seen Luke throw down and seen how truly powrful he had become, instead of going out with a whimper.
My favorite thing about star wars is their world building. All the different species in their ecosystems coexisting with technology or the lack of it in places like the Degobah system is super interesting to me. Also if you know who Ralph Mcquarrie the illustrator of original Star Wars it’s basically that in a nutshell
I’m just gonna say that I really appreciate you giving a heads up for potential spoilers. Part of my initial problem with TLJ was that I had watched all the theories, analyses, and potential spoiler videos and my expectations were so high that I couldn’t even enjoy the movie outside of a SW context. I have hope that TROS will be good but I’m trying to avoid anything that might raise my expectations. I, like you, just want a good story at the end of the day
See, I'd say that The Clone Wars and Rebels explored The Force more in depth than the film's ever did and actually made it all even more mysterious. The World Between Worlds and the Mortis Gods felt so out there and mysterious (not to mention the hinted at connection between the two that is not even really touched on). The Loth Wolves in Rebels, the Bendu, etc. I think it's entirely possible to delve into the great mystery of The Force and learn more but still come away with more mystery and questions that keep us coming back for more.
You make a good point about star wars being explained and not being mysterious. But it kind of seem like if they are to do this, it should be done in the new format through serials. And having answers for everything is something the Star Trek universe has always done and it works for them. For Star Wars though, it should be slower in that progression
My favorite aspect of Star Wars is the great characters. From Han Solo, to Padme Amidala, to Nomi Sunrider, to Jacen Solo, to Darth Krayt, to Ahsoka Tano, and everyone in between. Hell, even Disney’s canon has some good characters! Like Hera Syndulla, Chopper, and Finn (only pre-TLJ though).
The thing I like most about Star Wars is the asymmetric rebel war against a superior force in space. Basically I like the war and the stars part of Star Wars.
I love the Jedi and the Sith, but I also really enjoy the space battles, smugglers, criminals, and politics in Star Wars. My favorite characters in the EU are Talon Karrde and Leia Organa-Solo, a smuggler and a diplomat/politician who is ALSO a badass Jedi. Rogue One is an amazing movie. The Force should not be the driving force behind the stories. That’s another reason why Johnson’s story wasn’t good, the entire story relied on the Reylo connection and Luke’s Force projection to save the day. Everything else was filler designed to give characters something to do. Take every scene with Finn or Poe out and the movie functions exactly the same.
Look if The MCU can more or less follow the damn comics storyline and still have creative liberty when it wants then no one has any right trying to use "Expanded Universe was 'too' complicated" card. Please, has anyone even attempted to keep track of Marvel comcis on a month by month basis? Shits crazy. Starwars is laughably linear compared to the omniverse level catastrophes the Marvel deals with. It's all bullshit.
IMHO suspension of disbelief is always possible when establishing the boundaries of a universe. The magic of the original trilogy is that each movie better defines those boundaries but does not contradict or break our understanding of the universe while doing so. You want me to believe in hyperdrive, a mystical energy field that some can control or ally with, a corrupt, evil galaxy spanning empire, so be it. While not possible in the real world, all of these are meta points that are background in the story, left vague purposely because they only defined as much as needed to tell the story, (as you mention by us to "not worrying" about deeper meta). I think the prequels suffer from two problems; Lucas shifting perspective by compromising the story for demographics (he stated several times that he wanted the kids to grow up with the prequels) and not having enough critical counterpoints with him in the writing/directing/producing of the movies, however for all their flaws these movies still don't break my suspension of disbelief, only the new trilogy falls into that category. I have trouble liking even the Force Awakens now because when put in context with the Last Jedi, it makes it worse. Together these films break my disbelief only because while I can possible forgive character changes it is harder to look past characters that are compelled to act less intelligently and seemingly with less understanding of their universe (comparative to fans), story points that contradict its own scope (many of which feel contrived in TLJ: lack of competency of the FO, the size of the resistance being 400 in a galaxy of untold billions/trillions, the fleet chase, the Holdo maneuver and its timing, finding a willing hacker in the same cell that Finn and Rose are locked in), and socio-political agendas crammed sloppily in even though the SW universe offers solutions the contradicts some if not all the display, while not applying any of the nuance that show the difficulty of tackling those issues in the real world.
Despite all of the explanations and abilities we’ve learned about in the EU, for me, the Force is still very much a mystery, and is still very much limitless, as while an individual may have limitations based on the number of midichlorians they might have, there are a bunch of aspects of the Force itself that remain enigmatic, such as the nature of the Cosmic Force, and how it interacts with the Living Force. The number of Force Abilities is only as limited as your imagination and there’s plenty more to discover, and not only that, there’s creative ways to get around being a ‘weaker’ Force User. Corran Horn’s lineage has a weak telekinetic ability with the Force, but they excelled with Beast Control, leading to new solutions to similar problems or new solutions for new problems. You can also dive into how other cultures view the Force and how they used it, like the Jensaari Defenders or the Witches Of Dathomir or even the Ancient Sith with their sorcery, bypassing their limits by using runes, sigils, and rituals to use more destructive and powerful versions of Force Abilities. I don’t believe in the idea that the Force can ever be properly explained. The Will it has will always be a mystery as will where it’s limits are. By that metric, it wouldn’t be outlandish to say a Force user COULD do what Leia did in the Last Jedi, if it was properly set up and explained that they were powerful enough and knew how to create a protective Force Shield around them. I believe that is where the greatest problem lies. While the power itself doesn’t have to be fully explained, the user’s ability to do so does. If the most powerful Jedi at the time, Luke, has never done this or has been seen to do it, how can anyone else do something that would require incredible power, discipline, training, and fortitude to pull off? Some might point to the reference I made to Corran’s family having different specialities but that doesn’t work well as a defense as while they had a different proficiency, the child still only controlled bugs, not larger animals. A good set up might’ve been having Leia walk through fire unharmed, establishing this power as something that exists, and indeed wouldn’t be outlandish, and it establishes a Force user can protect their body from the elements. But even with all that said, well....Leia had frost on her face so....even that explanation wouldn’t work, since she’d have been dead within seconds of exposure to a vacuum which is what that frost implies, so....yeah.
Here is where, I feel, Disney screwed up with SW as a whole. It began when they bought the franchise. Lucas had an outline for what the Sequels should have been. What they should have done, is taken that outline, flush it out. Find filmmakers who could bring that to life and finish out the story the creator had envisioned. It is very, very simple. Then if it is wildly successful they could have taken the credit and if it bombed they would have had Lucas as a scapegoat. Instead, they arrogantly, took his outline and pitched it out the window. They thought they could tell a better tale. They got Abrams to tell TFA. Which was fine. He has a specific way he tells tales. The "mystery box" way and I would assume he had an outline for where his mysteries were supposed to lead. But then, they went with Johnson for TLJ, and again, arrogantly allowed him to throw the outline out the window. Johnson doesn't have a history of telling good stories. At all. He has a history of shooting beautiful movies and TLJ looked amazing. His history is doing movies that specifically you either hated it, or loved it. Also has trademarks that fit SJW criteria. Had Disney just let, either of the two accomplished, award winning, storytellers finish what they started we wouldn't have SW where it is today. My opinion for what it's worth.
For me, it's always been the story that was put forth in such a grand fashion. Because of this inkling the prequels we're thoroughly enjoyable because it shed light on what came before and that it had to follow the predestined course of the story was I think lost on a good many people. It is because of my love of the story that I'm so infuriated with the course that the sequel trilogy has sailed upon that has them quagmired in muddled waters that will only lead to complete stagnation.
For me, I love Star Wars because it is a genre bender. It blends elements of futuristic science fiction and westerns and purees them into medieval fantasy to create something distinct and unique. There are robots and spaceships, but it is set in the past. There are gangsters and mobsters, thieves and smugglers, knights and governments of different kinds, but some of them are also alien creatures and the worlds they live on have unique characteristics whether its the tall forest jungles of Kryshhk, the foggy swamps of Dagoba, the scorhing sands of Tatooine and its two suns, the city-scapes of Corellia, the canals and massive ponds of Naboo, the cold never-ending artic world of Hoth, the endless salt deposits of Crait, and many other strange worlds. There are furry cartoony critters and beasts like Ewoks, Porgs, and Wookies, but they are also set aside menacing machinery with great intrinsic and extrinsic detail. Star Wars can be exciting, with intense fight scenes with starships dogfights, lightsaber duels, and blaster shoot outs, but it can also be terrifying with giant monsters like Rancors, tentacled terrors like the Dianoga, and supernatural forces at hand as well. The worlds are not only abound with natural and mechanical phenomena, but a spiritual phenomena, the Force. And it is the spiritual phenomena, that really drives all these stories, because it is the force users who manipulate events behind the scenes. These stories are either morality tales, or contemplation on morality, with force users representing people with power. The crux of all conflict in the Star Wars universe is the never ending battle between the dark side and the light side of the Force. But all that is just one aspect of the Star Wars experience. It's the fact that these adventures are set to the riveting scores John Williams that makes Star Wars what it is. Even if I am reading a book or a comic, I could not imagine setting anything but a classical-style orchestrated track to it. Star Wars has a style that is unique and simply, Star Wars.
Midichlorians came off to me as genetics: in the genes, physical stuff. This then translated to strength in the Force being a genetic strength. Genetic superiority as a philosophy is literally "the dark side of the force" of human nature: to believe that some people are better and more entitled than others based on their genes. It doesn't get more evil than that. So when Lucas enshrined that into his story through the midichlorians, whatever his intent, he lost me for good. In the way that many Star Wars fans (including me) dismiss the sequel trilogy as "not my Star Wars", I did that to the midichlorians from first contact. The prequel trilogy is something I can enjoy only by rewriting the eugenics aspect in my head, pretending it isn't there, and trying to enjoy the rest of the story. "The Force" when it was a spiritual force was amazingly inspiring: "an energy field created by all life" is akin to soul or spirit. Midichlorians may have been INTENDED to be a physical manifestation of a spiritual force, but that is cognitive dissonance. Either genetics and physicality are the highest truth (and spirit is not real) or spirit is the highest truth (and genetics don't actually control a person's behavior, because their soul is not a PRODUCT OF their genes). Lucas blundered the very core of his own mythos. I forgive George Lucas for not understanding metaphysics deeply enough to write a consistent story across six movies, when he tackled the most ageless topic about the true nature of existence. I still love Star Wars. I believe he created the story in good faith and that the world is much better off for someone having tried their hand at this topic. He got so much right, he became a billionaire over his initial instinct to craft a science fiction story with a spiritual core behind it. Bravo. ... The sequel trilogy is, through two movies, a clinic in clueless storytelling and corporate incompetence.
You pretty much summed up exactly how I felt about the concept of midi-chlorians and the prequels in general, but you said it much more eloquently than I ever could.
Always appreciate the thoughtful take you have on things, even when I disagree. For me, I'd say I don't necessarily need lightsabers and Jedi and such, as proven by Rogue One, which is the only Disney Star Wars entry I've quite enjoyed. In fact, I think part of why I wasn't a fan of the prequels is because there was too much Force, too many lightsabers, and too many Jedi. It somehow took away from the special feeling the OT gave us regarding those who could wield the force. Similarly, the sequel trilogy has made the Force feel like something simple and sort of dull. Rey uses it so easily and quickly, with no effort required to learn or understand it, and so it becomes just another tool in her toolbelt, no different than a fancy blaster she might have picked up from a fallen foe.
My favorite part of Starwars is the mystery, the vast galaxy our hero's reside in and the heroic tale of good over coming evil. You were right that its the mystery that makes Starwars great. Just like in horror not seeing the monster is scarier than seeing them in Starwars having a mythical aspect to the force makes it intriguing and keeps me captivated while explaining too much pushes me away. The more lore that gets added the more I ultimately lose interest in Starwars. That said I yearn to see more Starwars, but its the building on that mystery that I want, not convoluted answers that ruin the mystery forever.
I feel that a lot of old fans have jumped off the wagon and...the new fans are hesitant to jump on especially now that the franchise is full of inconsistencies and shit. The Sequels have ruined Star Wars, they haven't brought anything new to the table and in the end the Sequels are just soft reboots of the OT. I loved the prequels more than the OT...to be precise I liked Anakin Skywalker's character and how he shows us that even the greatest among us can be corrupted and turned into the worst versions of ourselves which compliments Luke's character perfectly
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
For those wanting to see the deleted clip from A New Hope where the Sith are mentioned: ruclips.net/video/TfPvjWcAtSA/видео.html
I actually think you're wrong about why solo flunked, People definitely care about and have in interest in things outside of the Jedi and the force. Solo flunked because the Last Jedi did poorly and everybody suddenly lost interest in Disney Star Wars.
@@spartansquid5931 I believe both of you guys are right but just from 2 different point of views ✅
Your analysis perfectly summed the current situation up for Star Wars❗
Of course people (and certainly a lot of fans) care about things beyond just The Force and The Jedi. However, I think a lot of your more casual fans or average movie goers think of Star Wars as just Jedi vs Sith. That said, Solo failed for a number of reasons... and on that list would be some people just have no interest in that aspect of Star Wars.
Haha, the "Cosmic Force".
Fans: Say the line, Bart!
Thor Skywalker: *Now,*
This is the best comment I’ve seen in ages.
Amazing
I say it everytime the video starts
Now I’m not saying that .............
I didn't do it?
In the early days of the internet, there was an article written by a very wise and astute fan who wrote about, at that time, the Classic Star Wars trilogy. He wrote about WHY the classic trilogy was so popular and exactly why it resonated with fans around the world so well. He talked about Joseph Campbell and the Hero with 1000 faces and the Hero's Journey. It was well before the prequels, but basically what he summarized was this: If Star Wars EVER went down the road of "episodism" (like how Star Trek is) where every movie becomes simply another bland episode that doesn't serve the overall story arc, it would cease to be special, and then cease to be Star Wars.
Everyone....meet Disney. Disney...meet your completely alienated fan base and utterly destroyed IP.
Did you ever watch thet interview series with Joseph Cambell at Skywalker Ranch? Really good stuff. Amazing man.
Star Wars lives... through the EU.
Star Trek makes it work too tho. Star Wars just isn't meant to function like that necessarily.
TheCharlesJackson exactly...that’s the point. Star Trek was always more “scientific”, while Star Wars was pure fantasy. Plus Star Trek made episodic installments work because that’s how it was always set up. Star Wars was not. It focused specifically on a focal point: the Skywalkers. It was a familial story that had a clear story arc that could be tied up in 3 movies....not 9+.
Can you provide a link?
Star Wars started out with a simple and moving story, then got more complex and layered with the Prequels, then tried to go back to a simple big bad vs small band of good story with the Sequels. It's not supposed to work like that. It should keep expanding the mythology.
Maybe if they went to a truly separated era to explore, like for example the old republic, that may have worked out (Albeit they would have to come with something a bit original).
A middle Trilogy that is game-changing and iconic with even more to give!-)+ a prequel trilogy that definitely has more to give!-)+ sequel Trilogy that is proving that this journey is capable of giving still!-)+
Prequels still suck
You obviously haven't read any of the books.
Big purchases ya feel me Punjabi?????
Heaven forbid a writer should have to do actual RESEARCH before writing something for a subject.
Considering there is thing called the Internet you'd think it would be easier than ever.
@@ShamanMcLamie Apparently they didn't even know who Darth Plageuis (mentioned clearly in ROTS) was. Nor seen Episodes 1 to 6 by the looks of TFA which didn't continue the story.
There is so much Star Wars stuff released every year, Disney just wants to get everything out ASAP without pesky things like research.
@Charr Aznable The thing is they pretty much spoilt the entire cake. Rogue One shows how great Star Wars could be managed. Whereas everything else has been well...not Star Wars. You can't continue the saga and not continue it. They could have used George's scripts and had a wonderful story. I mean not just foresight, they don't appear to have even watched Episodes 1 to 6 (or even just ROTJ) at all to have made TFA the 'what happens next.' It just seems to be like they thought putting a "Star Wars" logo on anything makes a Star Wars film. I think they KNEW that random Rey wouldn't sell on her own had they for instance set the film 1000 years in the future. So they had to bring in the old and leech off it whilst destroying it in the most senseless way possible. Oh what could have been (proper new characters). Recent news stories show that George Lucas (quite rightly) was disappointed with TFA.
@Char Aznable I CONCUR! They were stupid to throw out George's scripts. And as you say to add total insult to injury, they had zero plan. Who the hell would be so stupid to do such a thing. There story doesn't make any sense in TFA and the episode doesn't continue onward from ROTJ (let alone Episodes 1 to 6 as a whole). Unlike George's proposed new characters, the current sequel Rey, Finn, Poe etc are awful and don't hold up on their own. They have to leech off and tear down the original saga to promote themselves in a non-plot story connected by the loosest of coincidences and with lense flare. There is simply zero story.
Glad there are still good people out there. Always a pleasure to meet a Jedi. It is bittersweet because as you say what a wealth of information, and barely gleaning the surface of what I'm sure would have been one hell of a trilogy, one hell of a CONTINUATION story and one hell of a wider saga with moral themes, a plot and wonderful characters (including proper new ones). George also wanted to give us new worlds, new vehicles, designs and starships etc. It is truly truly sad to see what has become of our beloved Star Wars, which the Force was so strong with. There are other concepts that I can garner, or guess such as (but not limited to):
1. The Episode 7 definitely explaining definitively the status quo in the galaxy. The Force ghosts being present and Luke beginning to "pass on what he had learned."
2. The seemingly immortal dark lord, formerly known as Darth Plageuis the Wise who the Senate (meaning Palpatine) spoke of in ROTS, being the "ultimate villain" who Luke is trying to defeat once and for all
3. The Whills using the Force to travel around, lifeforms virtually invisible to our plain of existence, but influencing events, and also perhaps being used by Plageuis to try and "leech" their energy to perpetuate life. However perhaps Plageuis is still unable to fully regenerate himself to become young again and not weaken. Unlike the Jedi he also fails to realise that you cannot drain the Force to continue life. Plageuis only takes life from others to maintain his own life force.
4. Ancient Jedi artefacts (perhaps even the first Jedi of old) and Force crystals. A portal into the heart of the Force itself, perhaps part of some climactic battle (akin to ROTJ) over Coruscant itself. Think of a black hole/blue storm in space creating a wormhole into the centre of the galaxy, from which the "Force" radiates out from.
5. Plageuis perhaps even using an army of Vong slave warriors discovered by him as he hid in the shadows. I would suggest that the name of Episode 7 could be "SHADOW OF THE FORCE" to explain a darkness descending on a chaotic galaxy and Plageuis being the darkness (much like the Phantom Menace of the Sith) needing to be uprooted once and for all to defeat the dark side.
6. Perhaps Plageuis doing a Palpatine, by this time, manipulating the criminal fraternity and warlords to attack worlds, proving the galaxy to be lawless and creating a situation where they cry out for someone to restore justice to the galaxy. Plageuis presents himself and his Outer Rim "voice of the people" movement as the saviours, lambasting the inefficient fledgling corrupt Republic (that has even sidelined Leia and the Alliance, as well as the Imperial Remnant) and the Jedi for failing to act. Plageuis convincing the Solo to join him by showing him the power to heal his wounded Jedi Knights, injured on a rogue mission to go and save a world from Pirate raiders (egged on by Plageuis).
7. The Twilek Jedi Hunter seducing/falling in love with the young Solo. This character would be modelled on Darth Talon from the Expanded Universe Comics (the servant of Darth Krayt).
8. Jedi students being hidden away to be awakened again by Luke. A new generation of Jedi put at risk by this unknown threat. Reluctant young Solo not fully dark, but merely tempted to impose order on the galaxy and live up to his ancestor's names.
9. Luke on a quest, trying to protect his family (Han, Leia and his daughter) and perhaps grief stricken by his wife Mara Jade (perhaps played by Hayley Atwell) having sacrificed herself to protect Jedi. Perhaps there is an Imperial Remnant connection with the Remnant seeing Luke as Vader's heir and thus the true Emperor of the Galaxy.
10. Leia using diplomacy, and doing a "C3PO chair" moment from ROTJ to convince neutral bickering systems to rally to a cause to defeat the forces of evil and show the good of the Jedi Order.
11. Kira either being hidden on a remote world as a mechanic, or else sent to her grandmother (Mara's mother) living as an Imperial style cadet. She will have a love interest either a rogue pilot or else a fellow Jedi student (perhaps the two are mind wiped and actually rediscover their powers and romance). This student/Kira find a clue to Luke's mission and discover him. He agrees to train her.
12. R2D2 being by Luke's side. New starships and technology. Possibly a super weapon might include a giant starship used by the numerically inferior Plageuis' forces that sends out a giant Ion wave totally disabling Star Destroyers/Alliance Cruisers power and rendering them defenceless to give a highly elite small fighting force of warriors and star fighter drones the upper hand. A stand off at Naboo.
13. There is some sort of link to Qui Gon, the Whills, the Force ghosts, Plageuis shocked at the "Jedi sorcery" of the Force ghost Jedi. Anakin Skywalker as the Chosen One able to utilise the Force portal to help his son and daughter defeat the dark lord and his plan once and for all. Leia restoring a united galaxy (New Republic without the faults of the old) and Luke passing on what he had learned to a new generation of both Skywalker's and other Jedi students. I would advocate that Veronica Ngo be a Jedi student.
14. Some type of scene like the opening to Man of Steel on Krypton with a world under attack and starships battling it out in the sky. Galactic coups, and a logical continuation of the galaxy.
15. Han Solo being a General, perhaps helping the heroes (Luke possibly being arrested by a useless government) escape the world by taking the Millennium Falcon from the Galactic Museum and an escape run scene.
16. An adapted version to allow Han Solo a blaze of glory sacrifice should he wish not to be there until Episode 9.
17. Possibly all the spirits of all Jedi freed form pain at saga's end so that the Order 66 Jedi would appear as Force ghosts on the victory closing shot at saga's end. (Long live Aayla Secura and Mace Windu)
18. My possible theory is that Mace Windu MAY have returned as a vigilante Jedi who came across the plan of Plageuis and tries a different method to Luke's compassionate order. His vigilantes however soon realise they have been manipulated by Plageuis to further frame the Jedi as wrong doers. Mace Windu sacrifices himself to help students get to Luke, seeing he was right.
19. A scene back at the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant. A happy ending. And a Skywalker saga, not random characters.
Possible suitable actors/actresses for this epic plot (in my view) would include Naomi Scott/Olympia Valance/Kristen Kreuk as Kira (Skywalker), Gal Gadot or Hayley Atwell as Mara Jade, Diana Lane as Kira's guardian, the original cast coming back, and perhaps classic actors like Denzel Washington as Han and Leia's ally, Anthony Hopkins (Mask of Zorro and Hannibal) as Plageuis. Suggested movie titles - "Shadow of the Force, Knight of the Whills and Rise of the Jedi."
Oh what could have been!
It's ironic that the sequel trilogy has failed for the exact same reasons that the Jedi order failed:
1) Pride and hubris from past victories (Jedi defeat of sith, Disney with the Star Wars brand)
2) Too much connection with the political structure of their times (Jedi with the empire, Lucasfilm with SJW politics)
3) Consolidation of power into the hands of a singular individual who cares only for his own vision (Palpatine and Rian Johnson)
4) The heartless elimination of all the Noble and meaningful characters (Order 66 and Disney's treatment of legacy characters)
Edit: 5) Oh and now Disney is sending out their social media and big news Inquisitors to snuff out any remaining loyalists to Good Star Wars lore.
Coincidence or prophecy?
Oh shit
Justin Foster this is the most underrated comment I’ve ever read
dude, I think you just wrote Thor's next video (if he hasn't done mentioned this already). Well done.
Holy Cow this is good!
That means... We need "a new hope"
It’s a shame Disney couldn’t evolve the universe further. They only winded it back. I would’ve rather taken a journey into exploring the Whills then rehash the OT and PT again for no good reason.
Well said
But Chewbacca and the Falcon. Give Disney your money.
How I wish we had a continuation story and REAL sequels from George Lucas (like what he left them to produce). We might have had an actual continuity from ROTJ, an explanation of the galaxy within Episode 7 itself (i.e. a proper Episode 7 unlike TFA), proper new characters like Kira Skywalker, the Whills, Darth Plageuis the Wise, Darth Talon (or a similar character that Lucas envisaged which sounds cool) and an actual, you know, plot! Oh what might have been! I will always be grateful to George for CREATING STAR WARS and love Episodes 1 to 6. And Rogue One. May the Force be with us all!
Thor you echo the fandom’s thoughts perfectly. Keep it up!
One of the fandoms. There isn't just one. That's the big mistake people make - they think their opinion is somehow the true opinion for any cavalcade of reasons. That's why peoples' opinions on each new release is like do or fucking die, it's like gangs fighting over turf.
@@fuzzydunlop7928, that's just your opinion.
Midichlorians get a lot of hate bc people think it is the force. It is not the force, it is simply what makes those aware of the force.
Imo they're still unnecessary and kinda dumb.
@Un-broken and victorious Exactly. We already know that the Force runs stronger through certain bloodlines and we already are told in TPM that Anakin is part of the prophesy. Literally the only thing they contribute is giving us a vague power meter... which we don't need because we're shown how powerful he is elsewhere.
Agreed! I like midiclorians (sp?) they are not The Force, it was a means to communicate just how much stronger was Anakin related to other Jedi. I see no problem with them.
@@jcdenton2187 So is your objection to midichlorians or the fact that we are given a specific number that compares to Yoda?
Because the latter is just a small nitpick that I don't get why people are so up in arms about.
And the former is the logical explanation on how certain bloodlines ("the son of Skywalker would be a powerful ally") are stronger in the Force than others. That implicitly hints at a genetic/biological cause, not a latent telepathic/willpower/training-based ability present equally in all beings that everyone keeps citing as the reason why midichlorians destroy the original films.
TLDR = Midichlorians make sense if you accept the central premise of ESB and RoTJ. Only purists who think ANH is the only Star Wars should be upset.
@@pspublic13 My objection is to midichlorians and that they are simply unnecessary. The purposes they serve in the prequels are redundant to information we receive anyway, and they remove some of the mystery of the Force in a bad way. I'm all for explaining some elements of it, but midichlorians felt like a cop-out. We already get that the Force runs stronger in the Skywalkers.
It also dimishes some of the special qualities of the Force for lack of better terms, in my opinion at least. In the OT, you could think that anyone could possibly believe in the Force and learn to use it if they study it and whatnot. Just maybe. We still understand that the Force is stronger with certain bloodlines but that doesn't exclude the possibility of others using it.
Midichlorians straight up remove that possibility and instead turn the Force into something you can only use if you have a high enough count of some things floating around in your bloodstream, otherwise nah, you can't use it. Or you can use it, but if Mr. Joe here has a higher amount of these things than you do, chances are he'll have an easier time/do better.
Anyway i rambled a bit but my point is I'm fine with explaining some things about the Force but midichlorians did not feel like a good explanation and they remove some mystical elements of the Force in a bad way. Story wise, the purpose they serve is minimal and redundant. They serve as a power scale we didnt really need, and Anakin was already part of the prophesy, and Palpatine could have easily just said Plagueis learned how to use the Force to create life instead of manipulating the midichlorians to do so.
But... it's whatever. It's a part of the canon now. And frankly they're barely even mentioned so you can safely ignore them outside of the maybe 3 cases they are mentioned. But if that's the case it makes you wonder if they were ever neccessary in the first place.
Ep 1-6 felt like SW films...
Ep 7 and 8 just feels like another generic sci-fi film
Debatable on that last part.
@Anson Hartzler TFW was only decent because it's a copy of A New Hope.
The last jedi is different from the rest because it sucks as Captain Marvel and I even liked some of the deleted sences to be fair but TLJ subverted my expectations just like GOT Season 8.
Poorly written generic sci-fi films
More like cheap Star Wars knockoffs than generic Sci-Fi.
Lol, since when did the PT feel like star wars? They are cold, boring and static while the OT are fun and engaging
The suspension of disbelief is one of the reasons I think Rogue One was so good. It was the first Star Wars movie in a while you could just sit back and enjoy the ride, including some lore add ons like that force order the blind dude was a part of.
For some reason, you could take all that in stride in that movie and it was a great ride all the way through. Idk what this is. But whatever it is, the rest of Disney Star Wars has really been missing it
Why didn't they rehire that director?
Argh! True, my dad who grew up with Star Wars loved rouge one more than the prequel Star Wars since he felt they kept the old Star Wars magic without having to rehash anything from the OT or the prequels.
He cares little about the sequels now thanks to TLJ.
Maybe in 20 years, Universal will buy Disney and decanonise the Sequels
AMEN!!!!! Hopefully.
I wish it was their #1 Rival, Warner Brothers. I wish.
@@josueveguilla9069 but Warner is shit
In this exact moment there some person frantically coding - think Musk and paypal - on what will be the next superunicorn company and with the secret goal to buy SW from Disney and make it right.
@@splashnskillz37 So?
I wish I could go back to the parallel universe where George Lucas still owns Star Wars.
Hell yes. In that universe we had a proper continuation story, with Darth Plageuis, Darth Talon, Luke Skywalker and his Jedi order including Kira Skywalker and Mara Jade Skywalker, his wife. We had a proper cast playing characters. An actual plot with explanations of the galaxy and exposition. It made way more money than the fake sequels in our universe and there was no Rey, no First Order, no Resistance and no problems.
ruclips.net/video/1-RYgLsX7jE/видео.html
You would go back to fans like them?
Midichlorians never bothered me...it’s barely mentioned and I didn’t think too much about it
Same here. There are worse elements in the series.
That was one of the worst ideas in prequels
I don't like them, but I do like that there's some reason not just anybody can be Jedi. If anyone can do it, it makes the entire struggle of the Jedi vs the Sith pointless because it raises alot of questions about why everyone doesn't just train to join a side.
ventrexx
What’s there not to like about midichlorians? You just made a strong case for appreciating the idea of midichlorians
@@vietnamd0820 I don't hate them, like I said I think there is a reason for them. I think they just weren't really necassary to mention. I think it was already pretty clear in the OT that not just anyone can be a Jedi and I think once you start trying to get more technical with it, it starts to lose a little about the mystery and the magic around it. I do think people over emphasize it when they don't come up often, misunderstand it and think the midichlorians are the Force, and that sort of thing, but I don't think it's a completely unfounded gripe to have with the prequels. I like the prequels, but I'll admit when I have an issue here or there.
I think the writers of the sequel trilogy thought the prequels were still considered the worst things ever (maybe even felt that themselves), and so tried to keep as far away from it as possible. The results speak for themselves.
@@VulturePilot Practical effects, digital effects. The effects don't matter if the story sucks. ST writers forgot that. Ironic isn't it?
Gen Y Entertainment extremely. JJ himself said he was a massive fan of the plinkett PT reviews and yet TFA made the exact same kind of mistakes with the story and even worse ones. Not to mention the raththars are CGI ass and they wasted the martial arts guys from the Raid movies that could’ve provided some neat choreography instead of just copying moves from the older movies for the lightsaber fight
The ST writers thoughts betrayed them, only now, at the end, do they understand...
Chase Blackmoon I don’t think they understand. They seem to be doubling down if anything
@@VulturePilot JJ said he was a fan of plinkett? The nerve of that guy!
Now.....Thor Skywalker is the BEST !!! You always make super interesting vids!!! Odin approves.
For a long time it was more about the force and the lore. That’s why I enjoyed the prequels and Clone Wars so much. They both expanded on what I enjoyed about Star Wars the most. When Rogue One was initially announced and we were told that there would be no Jedi or lightsabers. I was a little disappointed. But after seeing the trailers I got more into the War aspect of the overall story. I guess binge watching Clone Wars helped as well. Now I look forward to shows like The Mandelorian. Because there is still a lot going on in the Galaxy outside of the force. But to your point I don’t feel that the sequel trilogy has delivered on expanding the lore or world building. Outside of the Force Skype, Rey’s Force download, and force ghost Yoda bringing down lightning. We haven’t learned anything new about the force or the lore.
Rebels was also good with expanding the force and how other beings interacted with it and it touched upon the time before the Jedi's with the ancient temples on Lothal. I also agree with you on the ST. It sucks and I doubt I'll go and see episode 9.
I find it amusing that in the few times midichlorians are mentioned, 1 (the scene where they're introduced) is hated, yet another is considered 1 of the best scenes in the prequels (the opera house scene).
So I guess it really does depend on your POV! ;)
Midichlorians are unnecessary as hell but I can live with them because all they really do is show that Skywalkers have great force potential which is an OT idea in the first place. Doesn’t even come close to how fucked up the ST portrays the force.
I never had a problem with them. There microorganisms that feed off of the force. The more you have, the more force you have. It never replaced the mysticism of the force.
@@VulturePilot Its crucial to the plot of the TPM and the PT in general. Its what gives the strong compelling evidence that Anakin is the Chosen One and it is what causes the Jedi Order to reluctantly allow Anakin to be trained. But yeah, not really necessary to the lore in general.
@Felipe M Wonderful way to put it. I have thought the same way. Look at Yoda and Obi-Wan. They were extremely strong in the Force due to their discipline and training. In Rogue One we see Chirut, who was not even a Jedi, and possibly not even Force sensitive, at least not in the traditional way. He worshipped the Force, and trusted its will. His faith in the Force was so great that he was able to tap a little bit into the Force's power.
If Lucas were in charge of the Sequel Trilogy, which he should’ve been, he would’ve delved much deeper into the midichlorians leading up to the Whills. I think it would’ve paid off in the end and make the Prequels even more relevant past just setting up the OT. In any case, it would’ve been better than what we ended up getting.
"The film-material has become...immaterial."
Nice call to Lord Cutler Beckett :D love me some obscure POTC reference !
@Trey Stephens well said gentleman! Hehe
I understood that reference
You know, one thing I love about Darth Sidious is that he never denied arrogance was his weakness when Luke pointed it out when many others would have.
Charles Soule and Dave Filoni are the keys to bring this franchise back to its former glory.
Cuz Chucky got SSSSSSOUL!!!
The puns, powerful they are...
what about favreau
Tell me how will you use your keys when there is no door
Debatable. There are much better writers the series got who are severely underlooked. Timothy Zahn, John Ostrander, Chris Avellone, Drew Karpishyn, James Luceno to name a few.
Jar Jar is the key to all this...
"Guardians of the Galaxy" is still the best Disney Star Wars movie...
Indeed, instead of expanding on the lore with the ST and both returning and new characters, they instead make very similar stories that do no capitalize on potential, and shit on the Star Wars legacy in favour of their own... "kill the past" and all.
ZanFear Han, Luke, and Leia are treated like cameos. Wasted potential.
When a story is complete, it usually fails when you try to add to it.
George Lucas had some plan (however small and barely thought out) about the 6 movie arc that is the George Canon of Star Wars.
The sequels had no plan, and the story of 6 was complete.
Likewise, Terminator 2 completed that story, and subsequent entries have had to work around that completeness to create a story - which for me, hasn't worked.
Harry Potter too, was complete with 7 books, and Rowling has not succeeding in adding to it.
I genuinely love midi-choloreans. That information answered a question about Star Wars that nagged me for decades. I'd rather have a lackluster answer than no answer at all.
I'll admit that I'm a prequel era fan, revenge of the sith was the first star wars film I was old enough to see in theatres
But when it comes to midichlorians I've come to the conclusion that the orders over reliance on midichlorian counts was another sign of them lossing their way(especially given that there are species that are highly force sensitive despite not having as high a mc count as other races)and not to be weird about it but as a religious person you hear "well we have a scientific explanation for that" all the time but in truth from a religious perspective(which I only bring up because the Jedi are ment to be) a scientific explanation doesn't and shouldn't supersede the "God did it" explanation(to clarify I'm meaning it in a "just because we know why it rains doesn't mean we don't thank god for the rain" type of way)
So watching 1-6 in chronological order is like rediscovering true faith after getting caught up in stuff they shouldn't have been anywhere near(keepers of the peace becoming generals and all that)
I disagree, one of the best lines in the Original Trilogy was Ben talking about the Clone Wars in a New Hope... at least until we actually saw the Clone Wars for ourselves, and it could never live up to that mystery. Sometimes no answer is better
I was always most interested in the Ships.
I started designing my own and drawinging shipyards, space stations, and planetary systems. Probably an early sign I was going to ended up in Aerospace.
Jedi were neat, but Han was my favorite character when I was a kid, and Even now I perfer the blaster wielding Kyle Katarn style Jedi more than Luke.
And you found time to be Captain America? Damn
Audience expectations are also a factor. In 30 years the way that audiences consume entertainment has changed. Especially with the Advent of streaming and long-form storytelling, people now expect more complex motivations and character psychology and more sophisticated endings to people storylines. This is another reason why arguments based on how they did things 30 years ago (such as the emperor vs. Snoke lack of background) do not work...
Good point. Some stories are so big and sprawling, they can only be properly told with a series or miniseries. A movie narrative leaves it lacking.
Eh Snoke vs Palpatine are written completely different though. In ANH palps is barely relevant. The main baddies are Vader and tarkin and the Death Star. Palps is mentioned and you can feel his presence because he’s the one pushing for the Death Star strategy by dissolving the senate but he’s not the main reason for the plot happening.
In the ST SNOKE IS BEHIND IT ALL. He single handedly embarrassed luke by force corrupting kylo from the womb(it’s Disney canon), and through Skype sessions. He long distance eradicated Luke’s academy by doing so. He somehow United the remnants of the empire and created a bigger stronger fleet somehow despite not having the empires manufacturing yards of old and all that. SNOKE invalidated the victory in ROTJ and TFA is a SEQUEL to 6 movies. It is not the very first movie in the franchise. That’s why snoke getting zero backstory or motivations or character sucks in comparison to the slow but still there reveal of the emperor in the OT and he becomes a full fledged character in ROTJ anyway. It’s got nothing to do with audience demand. One is written and executed well and one is not.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...
Disney's first screw up was not having Luke, Leia, and Han all together at least once....then the Last Jedi happened and Disney basically nuked Star Wars and turned it into Spaceballs Wars.
The OT was like Homer's Iliad, it starts out in the middle of a scenario and expects you to keep up. It's what made Star Wars so engrossing and immersive. Great vid and great explanation.
The Prequels are better than the sequels
I hate how the sequel trilogy TAKE, instead of GIVING, they got rid of the new republic, burned down luke's jedi academy (killed all potential for new jedi characters) , they've broken and killed legacy characters, they didn't expanded or did anything with snoke, Resistance/First Order = Rebellion/Empire (but dumber), Rey is no one and Kylo is not a sith, etc...
The irony is Rogue One GIVE new thing and expand the lore, without TAKING away (or ruining) the legacy characters, you have Vader, Tarkin, Mon Mothma, Bail Amidala, even Gold and Red leader, they also give us new hero that belong in star wars, exploring new territory, the blind monk, who is able to use the force in limited use in order to see and fight; Jyn, daughter of the one responsible for the construction of the death star; Cassian, a rebel soldier doing questionable thing, showing us a darker side to the rebellion, etc... And so much world building and fun cameo (and a damn good fan service scene with Vader killing rebels left and right, ending were the original movie begins)
I would have much rather seen a trilogy about a Jedi padawan in the new Jedi order and maybe some of his friends completing their training and exploring stuff like ancient Jedi or Sith temples, and then next thing you know they get mixed up with the resistance maybe one of the padawans gets kidnapped by Snoke and turns to the dark side (this story would provide *actual* backstory).. who knows? It would have been far more interesting than the shit we got.
I think Disney and Lucasfilm missed a golden opportunity with the original EU. They could have used it as a general story outline and kept the best aspects/characters/story arcs while leaving what didn’t work that well.
In the same way the MCU adapted Civil War; there were certain aspects that couldn’t work, others that needed to be changes, but the major points and story were kept for the cinematic universe they were creating.
I didn’t find a problem really with mediclorians, mostly because I played the West End Games Star Wars RPG and an item The Empire had was a hand held device that could sense the Force in individuals.
The original trilogy was a basic morality story that was more of a children's story than most people will ever admit. That is what made it great. Look at the Dark Crystal-a great story of good, evil & balance.
I admit that the original trilogy is kinda childish if you compare it to The Clone Wars. The OT is written in a way that the heroes have "the high ground" a lot of times, this is called plot armor.
The plot armor also helps to show the main idea of the OT, the victory of the good guys.
I'll never get tired of these.
star wars ended with ep 6 rotj. the EU is cannon, piss on what KK, jarjar and Disney has to say.
we the fans built star wars, we the fans dismiss Disney.
GamingPro1003 is you like Disney’s bullshit?
I honestly find it really comforting that a lot more people are getting into the EU. I've met too many people who just outright say it doesn't matter anymore because it's not canon.
I've got a stack of Legends novels and comics on my shelf. Who's gonna stop me from reading them, the canon police?
"Because a lot of us just wanted Episodes 7-8-9, well... Episodes 7-8-9..."
WORD!
It's sad to see SW go down like this..
If they wanted to remake the OT, they should've just had the courage to remake the OT. Cut out the incest and the plot holes and change the ewoks to woolies... all that. Disney does remakes all the time, I don't understand what the hell they were thinking
I like your videos a lot! They are balanced and explain storytelling and marketing aspects of Star Wars.
When you create a franchise, or a setting, the way to maintain it is to either add to the overall world by telling epic stories that further expand upon it, or deal with smaller and more personal events of the main protagonists in a way that remains respectful of the setting as a whole.
All Disney Lucasfilm had to do with the sequel trilogy was close out the stories of the OT heroes, allow them to pass the torch on, and let them have one final hooray! If they'd done Cobra Kai, we would've been heading into this December with tremendous excitement and certainly wondering when the next trilogy with the newly introduced characters of Rey, Poe and Fin would arrive to our big screens. They would've even been free to set the next trilogy in any Star Wars era, with the story of OT characters being just one of many in this vast universe. Instead neither the old characters got a deserved sendoff - rather, they were all demeaned by how they were portrayed in the new trilogy - nor were the new characters introduced in a compelling way and allowed to gain broader acceptance on their own merit.
One place where Disney Lucasfilm could've added to the lore were the planned Star Wars Stories. Granted, Rogue One simply expanded upon the info in the opening crawl of the original movie, but as the first of what should've been a bunch, it was expected to be somewhat of a safe bet. Still, once the concept was proven, Lucasfilm failed to capitalise on the opportunity to experiment with types of stories that were different from the main saga. Rogue One did show us how the war part of Star Wars looks to ordinary people more than the main saga would've allowed, but a movie dealing with the criminal underworld not involving Han, Chewie, Darth Maul and The Rebellion would've fared much better than Solo because it would've been something fresh.
The fact that they blindly stuck to established characters for telling stories that would've done just fine without them, while at the same time ruining said characters in the main trilogy, just proves that Lucasfilm (and Disney) don't have any creative people at positions that demand creativity and vision. That is the sole reason Star Wars has gone from being the preeminent franchise with epic narrative continuity to a joke left in a cloud of dust by the likes of Marvel.
My favorite part of star wars is the force. I love the videos you made that try to explain the different aspects of how the force works.
The primary problem with the sequel trilogy is it's a financial endeavor now rather than an artistic one. It's about compromise rather than taking chances. The OT is as good as it is because it never had this problem or constraints. It wasn't made because of money but in spite of it. Especially the first film because they had no idea if it would even make any money so they were free to experiment to their heart's content. SW today is a corporate entity made even more corporate by Disney's ownership. It had nowhere to go but failure because all of it's artistic merit has been wiped away in favor of it's financial benefit. That is the true tragedy of what SW has become. They're now (Including Lucas) the very villains' the story said needed to be defeated in the first place.
the prequels definitely needed a moment where Qui-Gon Jinn tests Anakin and goes " Its over 9000! "
Disney were too eager to get the money machine up and running to bother reading the instructions. Wonder why it isn’t working anymore?
Everything has a cycle. There is no true rise or fall, beginning or end. Star Wars may be in a recession, but it will rise again. I don't make many promises, but this is one I will certainly keep.
Like my ⚽ team will be champion again one day
Hope my 🏀 is this year
Well you're entitled to believe whatever you believe but greed always destroys, it doesn't make things better.
There's a lot of dead franchises out there that will likely never be what they were. In this case I honestly hope you're right but I don't see it happening. Not with the way it's been going.
Considering how after the prequels, which everyone thought was the worse thing ever and felt Star Wars was over, but we got a ton of lore books and clone wars to keep the franchise stable. The sequels or movies won't have the pull they used to but i believe the shows will be able to stabilize things again.
The difference is GL didn't come out and accuse anyone who didn't like the prequels of being homophobic misogynist racists. Di$ney can go fuck themselves, who do they think buys the toys that children play with.
7,8,9 shouldve been the rise of the sith and create a compelling story of a man or woman that for very good reasons brings the sith back. Like a person that went through so much turmoil youd think theres a bright future for them somewhere and ends up the complete opposite and becomes the real villain and 10,11,12 couldve been the redemption of skywalker or new era jedi, bringing back a new generation of jedi academy with maybe sith academy in the shadows. And there you have nostalgia and new together (bringing in the era of kotor but modern)
I miss the days of the 6 films along with The Clone Wars.
Yeah... They didn't do what they should, that was to continue the story. Instead, they tried to begin a new story and failed in it as well. So...
can't tell a new story by doing ANH ESB and ROTJ copy paste hack jobs and calling it "bold"
@@AC-vw7qj Exactly.
I really feel bad that I only appreciated the EU long after it was removed from the canon. I would love to see movies on certain specific time periods such as the Great Hyperspace War, the rise and fall of Darth Bane, and the Yuuzhan Vong War. It just feels like Disney would rather rehash the OT with surface level differences in order to not look like the Prequels, and haphazardly add elements and characters from the EU to appease those fans no matter how neutered or ridiculous they end up.
Explaining everything about the force would be like explaining why a particular joke is funny. Explanation just takes the wind out of the sails.
For me what made the original trilogy great was that it was a very simple story of good vs. evil set against a science fiction backdrop, but it was a story that was told very well, and the ending wrapped up the entire story in a very satisfactory manner. When Lucas was talking about doing six more movies, we were all excited because we thought we would get two more trilogies like the first one, but of course we didn't.
The prequels could have become great. He simply reversed the idea, telling us once again a tale of good vs. evil, but instead of the good triumphing over evil because the evil remembered the good inside of it, we instead got evil triumphing over good as it forgot the good inside of it. It was a great idea, but Lucas forgot how to tell a story in the mean time, and the end result was executed very poorly.
The sequels were always going to be more problematic. We always assumed back then (since they were supposed to come out sooner rather than decades later) that they would follow our heroes into the future as they fought the civil war that would inevitably arise and finally defeat the Empire once and for all, or that the movies would skip ahead until after that, and show our heroes facing down some new threat that had arisen from the power vacuum left by the end of the Empire while the new republic was being formed. And instead we got, well, we all know what we got.
Ding ding ding. You have hit the nail on the head. All anyone wanted from something called part 7, 8, and 9 was for the story to have a reason and intentionally continue. What we got could have been done outside of the saga and been very well received. Not losing any fans but at least gaining some.
I will die on the hill that while certain parts of the prequels were executed badly, NOTHING in those movies comes remotely close to the complete bastardization and destruction that the Sequel Trilogy under Disney have done to the brand. Force ghosts calling down lightning strikes, the force making strong dark side users and strong ‘light????’ Side users whenever one lives or dies despite the way the last two trilogies went. The complete ignorance of universal rules, galactic history, lore and laws and stakes etc.
Thank you! That pretty much sums up my feelings on the sequel and prequel trilogies and why I enjoy one and hate the other. The Last jedi was interesting, I'll give it that much, if you take it out of context of episode 7 and the fact that it had that stupid timer on it to force us to see how much Rey improved in a week or something which is completely unrealistic. Not to mention, if Rey and Kylo are the new chosen ones, why was Anakin chosen in the first place? Wasn't it his responsibility to create balance? Again, what harm is there to look at the old EU books and look at the stories that were told and successful and build the new canon around some of those aspects? The creatures from beyond the galaxy would've been a great trilogy maker, not to mention with how rebels ended you can reintroduce old characters from the shows and old canon and put them into new canon, tying the lore together. Just my thought on it. Of course I would like to see the original rise of the jedi and sith to see where their dogma's came from since it takes different ideas as to what the force is (as I would assume the old jedi had their own thoughts on it before canon period), and why the jedi and sith split.
My favorite about Star Wars is the simple, yet complex battle between good and evil, and how the main and other characters fit in that story
1:25 "happens to be his greatest strength"
im in tears*
I love the whole idea of the midi-chlorians. Which by the way where they since Lucas originally wrote the first draft of Star Wars back in 1973. It adds so much to the Force. Like Yoda says "life creates it" hench the midi-chlorians. I always wondered why some could use the Force and some can not. They don't take away anything from the mystery of the Force. I love the everything about the PT. It added so much more to the overall story. Last thing I wanted to see was a remake of the original trilogy, I'm so glad Lucas did it the way he did, what we got was something original in a familiar galaxy. Unlike The Farce Awakens which was nothing more then a bad remake of the original trilogy. I don't know what the Hell TLJ was. And the contradictions not just in TFA & TLJ but in the upcoming thing. The biggest contradiction is the Sith cannot achieve eternal life after death! Disney and Kennedy have really destroyed Star Wars I can't wait for the ST to be over with and long forgotten. But back to the question at hand, I'm really interested in the aspects of the force and the Jedi. As well as the politics and Palpatine's machinations. I thought it was brilliantly handled! Qui-Gon Jinn is the epitome of what all Jedi should be. We really got to see how the Force works and Jedi fit into the overall mystery. And of course the Clone Wars added even more to that lore. Disney and Kennedy should have never FUCKED over Lucas! They should have went with his story and kept him on as a consultant. Like was part of the deal. We would have got a rich original story that added more the the other 6 films and the Force. It's sad that we'll probably never know what could have been.
It’s essentially the x gene from X-men. Some people have it and others don’t but it is usually carried in bloodlines. Some people have more capacity to grow in strength and others do not. They all still need training and can’t just ‘download’ everything (glares at TFA novel)
"i love the whole idea of the midi-chlorians" i need to get out of here
They are an explanation for why the Republic could identify force sensitive children so easily when the Republic had millions of systems it had to keep track of. It would be impossible for the Jedi Order to find everyone as a infant if they had to go around and "feel" the force sensitive infants. By introducing the midichlorians as a symbiotic organism, it allowed the Republic to test all births for Force Sensitivity without requiring the Jedi Order to actually spend all of its (wo)manpower just looking at recruits.
The Jedi Academy required the initiates to be very young children.. no more than 3 years old (or species equivalent) so that they could start training the younglings in proper emotional and thought patterns required to unlock their full potential without falling to the darkside. Mace Windu called Annikan Too Old to start training... and he is an example of why the Order doesn't like training older kids... they don't know how to influence the young one properly and the young one doesn't think like the others. Disastrous for all concerned.
@@aralornwolf3140
You get it. It's such a great concept to introduce in the saga, episodes 1-6. It adds even more deepth to the Force.
@@darthqui-gon5986 ,
Yep. I believe the best book to show why having older children join the academy is a bad thing is Rogue Planet (Legends). The first three chapters goes into detail about how a 12 year old former slave makes droids to distract himself from his emotions and when his fear that he is only being trained because he's the "chosen one" and not "Anikan Skywalker, a Child" overwhelms him he goes off and tests the Jedi.. specifically, his master.
"Do they come to me save me or not"?
My favorite aspect of Star Wars is the characters and the world building
I love the SW movies. I was never a big EU fan but OT, PT and Clone Wars really enthralled me. TFA pulled in new fans and had enough "mystery box" things that kept fans wantng for 2 years. All I really want is a good trilogy of films that tell one coherent story. SW fans come to expect that. Actually any fan of any film franchise will want that. That is what this trilogy required...careful planning for 3 movies to keep old fans and bring in new ones. It is not difficult. We get better theories from RUclipsrs than what Lucasfilm is shelling out these days.
Awesome video as always.
For me, the Skywalkers always served as the window through which we viewed this universe... and, as a result of who they were, the Force, the Jedi/Sith, and the galactic government would also prominently factor into the equation. Even so, I see no reason why plenty other elements of the universe couldn't also find their way into a SW narrative in the context of these aforementioned items.
Before the dark times. Before the mouse.
Now...that was another great analysis!
First comment ever. Long time viewer, new subscriber.
I just want to point out what I feel is a common misread of midi-chlorians. At 4:40 you conflate midi-chlorian counts with 'power.' I have seen many fans make this claim, but I have never seen a citation to support this. Jinn mentions communication with The Force and it's life giving attribute.
I think the distinction between Jinns claim of "knowledge" from midi-chlorians and the salient absence of any claim of 'power' is significant considering Anakin/Vaders arc, and the established Jedi way of "knowledge and defense."
"Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that ... communicates with the Force...Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force...When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to you."
Great synopsis, spot on.
Even if I don't always agree with you I think this was a great video. You bring up many points that I didn't consider before keep up the good work.
If they only adapted The Thrawn Trilogy, everything would have been fine.
They would be swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck!!!
By being a sequel, its suppose to expand the story, not do it again. Had they separated from Lucas' work in the beginning, it wouldn't be as bad. One could simply say that it's a cycle that the galaxy goes through every 5 thousand years or so.
Look at the Legend of Zelda and its story. At their core, most are the same story but they're different because they take place thousands of years after the last one as that one has become legend or completely forgotten. Thus the story is the same, yet different.
0:38 In which OT deleted scene was the word "sith" mentioned?
jbugg
I’d like to know the answer to that too
VietnamD0820 not in dialogue, just in the original opening crawl of A New Hope I’m pretty sure
ruclips.net/video/TfPvjWcAtSA/видео.html
@@thorskywalker Wow, thanks Thor. I had never seen that one before!
Star wars was once great and had people who understood the canon why Extended Universe is pure gold. And Original movies were epic and the pre were also good I had np with them they didn't break any canon they just help build up the original characters and movies and then Disney and SJWs got there dirty hands into Lucasfilm and now we get this shit. Now episode 9 is going to use RIP of characters to try and sell us there worthless characters and steal stuff from Extended Universe kinda and just make it worthless
Yeah on this one I just agree with you, I think the more detail the story has the more invested I become and the more interesting I find it.
Because when you try and tell a story with as little detail as possible over many movies or many a trilogy it leads to way too much speculation and very little clarification, which of course in turn leads to tandem in fighting and arguments over what every little thing means (........ The Last Jedi.........)
I just want to add that my point is you need balance, you need to have plenty of detail and specification so people clearly understand what the point is and for greater context of the show or movie but... obviously leave enough mystery and some vague storylines for people to speculate and have fun with.
As a kid Star Wars was about the adventure! What as a grown up I've come to know as the hero's journey. And also the cool ships, racers etc and the epic battles. As a grown up I was drawn to the family drama of it. The battle between good and evil both outside and inside of us. The idea of fate/destiny. And as a son and now a father, that amazing unshakeable faith of Luke in his father. The brother and sister and the scoundrel lover. A father redeemed by his son. And the backdrop of all those willing to die for others. ... a bit of a stream of consciousness post there. There is so much more in episode 1 - 6.
None of that seems present in a gripping way in 7 and 8.
Thor does it again 👏🏼 you need to do a workshop bro.
Thor, your reasoning why the EU was dropped makes perfect sense. I don't like it though because I consider the old good EU far superior to the new stuff. I think Disney should have done was to turn into films Zahn trilogy and then introduce new characters in another era. Old republic. Or like 250 years ABY. This would give Lucasfilm the opportunity to bring the original cast back together, milk some money from it. I dare say the fans would happily accept it. If there was demand for more, animated series like e.g. the rebels could cover more stories from EU. But instead we got the new stuff and Disney got itself with it in the situation that they have a new vast canon and they are slowly getting in the same position like with the old canon, exactly as you said.
Favorite part is definitely The Force. I'm a big fan of the OT and Prequels but am only just now starting to explore the EU. I loved how we got to see more of the cababilities of force users, how truly powerful these beings are (both light and dark). I was behind on the news though that it had all been expelled from canon and had essentially become meaningless. With TFA though I got excited by Keylo Ren, stopping a blaster bolt mid air, holding people in place and sheer, raw, unchecked anger. But then they deflated all of his power in the same movie. So we have Rey and Kylo, who are supposed to be super powerful but they feel like some of the weakest force users now. Keylo because apparently he can't win a single saber fight and Rey because all of her abilities feel foney. Two of my favorite characters who were truly powerful are Darth Bane and Darth Zana. I wish we could have seen something like that in TLJ. For me the movie could have almost been saved if we had actually seen Luke throw down and seen how truly powrful he had become, instead of going out with a whimper.
Best video ever! I wish YOU could write the movies and put them on the big screen. We would all be entertained!👍
My favorite thing about star wars is their world building. All the different species in their ecosystems coexisting with technology or the lack of it in places like the Degobah system is super interesting to me. Also if you know who Ralph Mcquarrie the illustrator of original Star Wars it’s basically that in a nutshell
I’m just gonna say that I really appreciate you giving a heads up for potential spoilers. Part of my initial problem with TLJ was that I had watched all the theories, analyses, and potential spoiler videos and my expectations were so high that I couldn’t even enjoy the movie outside of a SW context. I have hope that TROS will be good but I’m trying to avoid anything that might raise my expectations. I, like you, just want a good story at the end of the day
See, I'd say that The Clone Wars and Rebels explored The Force more in depth than the film's ever did and actually made it all even more mysterious. The World Between Worlds and the Mortis Gods felt so out there and mysterious (not to mention the hinted at connection between the two that is not even really touched on). The Loth Wolves in Rebels, the Bendu, etc. I think it's entirely possible to delve into the great mystery of The Force and learn more but still come away with more mystery and questions that keep us coming back for more.
You make a good point about star wars being explained and not being mysterious. But it kind of seem like if they are to do this, it should be done in the new format through serials. And having answers for everything is something the Star Trek universe has always done and it works for them. For Star Wars though, it should be slower in that progression
My favorite aspect of Star Wars is the great characters. From Han Solo, to Padme Amidala, to Nomi Sunrider, to Jacen Solo, to Darth Krayt, to Ahsoka Tano, and everyone in between.
Hell, even Disney’s canon has some good characters! Like Hera Syndulla, Chopper, and Finn (only pre-TLJ though).
The thing I like most about Star Wars is the asymmetric rebel war against a superior force in space.
Basically I like the war and the stars part of Star Wars.
I love the Jedi and the Sith, but I also really enjoy the space battles, smugglers, criminals, and politics in Star Wars. My favorite characters in the EU are Talon Karrde and Leia Organa-Solo, a smuggler and a diplomat/politician who is ALSO a badass Jedi. Rogue One is an amazing movie. The Force should not be the driving force behind the stories. That’s another reason why Johnson’s story wasn’t good, the entire story relied on the Reylo connection and Luke’s Force projection to save the day. Everything else was filler designed to give characters something to do. Take every scene with Finn or Poe out and the movie functions exactly the same.
Once upon a time Star Wars was a single movie, the perfect movie.
Look if The MCU can more or less follow the damn comics storyline and still have creative liberty when it wants then no one has any right trying to use "Expanded Universe was 'too' complicated" card. Please, has anyone even attempted to keep track of Marvel comcis on a month by month basis? Shits crazy. Starwars is laughably linear compared to the omniverse level catastrophes the Marvel deals with. It's all bullshit.
IMHO suspension of disbelief is always possible when establishing the boundaries of a universe. The magic of the original trilogy is that each movie better defines those boundaries but does not contradict or break our understanding of the universe while doing so. You want me to believe in hyperdrive, a mystical energy field that some can control or ally with, a corrupt, evil galaxy spanning empire, so be it. While not possible in the real world, all of these are meta points that are background in the story, left vague purposely because they only defined as much as needed to tell the story, (as you mention by us to "not worrying" about deeper meta). I think the prequels suffer from two problems; Lucas shifting perspective by compromising the story for demographics (he stated several times that he wanted the kids to grow up with the prequels) and not having enough critical counterpoints with him in the writing/directing/producing of the movies, however for all their flaws these movies still don't break my suspension of disbelief, only the new trilogy falls into that category. I have trouble liking even the Force Awakens now because when put in context with the Last Jedi, it makes it worse. Together these films break my disbelief only because while I can possible forgive character changes it is harder to look past characters that are compelled to act less intelligently and seemingly with less understanding of their universe (comparative to fans), story points that contradict its own scope (many of which feel contrived in TLJ: lack of competency of the FO, the size of the resistance being 400 in a galaxy of untold billions/trillions, the fleet chase, the Holdo maneuver and its timing, finding a willing hacker in the same cell that Finn and Rose are locked in), and socio-political agendas crammed sloppily in even though the SW universe offers solutions the contradicts some if not all the display, while not applying any of the nuance that show the difficulty of tackling those issues in the real world.
Despite all of the explanations and abilities we’ve learned about in the EU, for me, the Force is still very much a mystery, and is still very much limitless, as while an individual may have limitations based on the number of midichlorians they might have, there are a bunch of aspects of the Force itself that remain enigmatic, such as the nature of the Cosmic Force, and how it interacts with the Living Force. The number of Force Abilities is only as limited as your imagination and there’s plenty more to discover, and not only that, there’s creative ways to get around being a ‘weaker’ Force User.
Corran Horn’s lineage has a weak telekinetic ability with the Force, but they excelled with Beast Control, leading to new solutions to similar problems or new solutions for new problems.
You can also dive into how other cultures view the Force and how they used it, like the Jensaari Defenders or the Witches Of Dathomir or even the Ancient Sith with their sorcery, bypassing their limits by using runes, sigils, and rituals to use more destructive and powerful versions of Force Abilities.
I don’t believe in the idea that the Force can ever be properly explained. The Will it has will always be a mystery as will where it’s limits are. By that metric, it wouldn’t be outlandish to say a Force user COULD do what Leia did in the Last Jedi, if it was properly set up and explained that they were powerful enough and knew how to create a protective Force Shield around them. I believe that is where the greatest problem lies. While the power itself doesn’t have to be fully explained, the user’s ability to do so does. If the most powerful Jedi at the time, Luke, has never done this or has been seen to do it, how can anyone else do something that would require incredible power, discipline, training, and fortitude to pull off?
Some might point to the reference I made to Corran’s family having different specialities but that doesn’t work well as a defense as while they had a different proficiency, the child still only controlled bugs, not larger animals. A good set up might’ve been having Leia walk through fire unharmed, establishing this power as something that exists, and indeed wouldn’t be outlandish, and it establishes a Force user can protect their body from the elements.
But even with all that said, well....Leia had frost on her face so....even that explanation wouldn’t work, since she’d have been dead within seconds of exposure to a vacuum which is what that frost implies, so....yeah.
Here is where, I feel, Disney screwed up with SW as a whole. It began when they bought the franchise. Lucas had an outline for what the Sequels should have been. What they should have done, is taken that outline, flush it out. Find filmmakers who could bring that to life and finish out the story the creator had envisioned. It is very, very simple. Then if it is wildly successful they could have taken the credit and if it bombed they would have had Lucas as a scapegoat. Instead, they arrogantly, took his outline and pitched it out the window. They thought they could tell a better tale. They got Abrams to tell TFA. Which was fine. He has a specific way he tells tales. The "mystery box" way and I would assume he had an outline for where his mysteries were supposed to lead. But then, they went with Johnson for TLJ, and again, arrogantly allowed him to throw the outline out the window. Johnson doesn't have a history of telling good stories. At all. He has a history of shooting beautiful movies and TLJ looked amazing. His history is doing movies that specifically you either hated it, or loved it. Also has trademarks that fit SJW criteria. Had Disney just let, either of the two accomplished, award winning, storytellers finish what they started we wouldn't have SW where it is today. My opinion for what it's worth.
For me, it's always been the story that was put forth in such a grand fashion. Because of this inkling the prequels we're thoroughly enjoyable because it shed light on what came before and that it had to follow the predestined course of the story was I think lost on a good many people. It is because of my love of the story that I'm so infuriated with the course that the sequel trilogy has sailed upon that has them quagmired in muddled waters that will only lead to complete stagnation.
For me, I love Star Wars because it is a genre bender. It blends elements of futuristic science fiction and westerns and purees them into medieval fantasy to create something distinct and unique. There are robots and spaceships, but it is set in the past. There are gangsters and mobsters, thieves and smugglers, knights and governments of different kinds, but some of them are also alien creatures and the worlds they live on have unique characteristics whether its the tall forest jungles of Kryshhk, the foggy swamps of Dagoba, the scorhing sands of Tatooine and its two suns, the city-scapes of Corellia, the canals and massive ponds of Naboo, the cold never-ending artic world of Hoth, the endless salt deposits of Crait, and many other strange worlds. There are furry cartoony critters and beasts like Ewoks, Porgs, and Wookies, but they are also set aside menacing machinery with great intrinsic and extrinsic detail. Star Wars can be exciting, with intense fight scenes with starships dogfights, lightsaber duels, and blaster shoot outs, but it can also be terrifying with giant monsters like Rancors, tentacled terrors like the Dianoga, and supernatural forces at hand as well. The worlds are not only abound with natural and mechanical phenomena, but a spiritual phenomena, the Force. And it is the spiritual phenomena, that really drives all these stories, because it is the force users who manipulate events behind the scenes. These stories are either morality tales, or contemplation on morality, with force users representing people with power. The crux of all conflict in the Star Wars universe is the never ending battle between the dark side and the light side of the Force.
But all that is just one aspect of the Star Wars experience. It's the fact that these adventures are set to the riveting scores John Williams that makes Star Wars what it is. Even if I am reading a book or a comic, I could not imagine setting anything but a classical-style orchestrated track to it. Star Wars has a style that is unique and simply, Star Wars.
Midichlorians came off to me as genetics: in the genes, physical stuff. This then translated to strength in the Force being a genetic strength. Genetic superiority as a philosophy is literally "the dark side of the force" of human nature: to believe that some people are better and more entitled than others based on their genes. It doesn't get more evil than that. So when Lucas enshrined that into his story through the midichlorians, whatever his intent, he lost me for good.
In the way that many Star Wars fans (including me) dismiss the sequel trilogy as "not my Star Wars", I did that to the midichlorians from first contact. The prequel trilogy is something I can enjoy only by rewriting the eugenics aspect in my head, pretending it isn't there, and trying to enjoy the rest of the story. "The Force" when it was a spiritual force was amazingly inspiring: "an energy field created by all life" is akin to soul or spirit. Midichlorians may have been INTENDED to be a physical manifestation of a spiritual force, but that is cognitive dissonance. Either genetics and physicality are the highest truth (and spirit is not real) or spirit is the highest truth (and genetics don't actually control a person's behavior, because their soul is not a PRODUCT OF their genes). Lucas blundered the very core of his own mythos.
I forgive George Lucas for not understanding metaphysics deeply enough to write a consistent story across six movies, when he tackled the most ageless topic about the true nature of existence. I still love Star Wars. I believe he created the story in good faith and that the world is much better off for someone having tried their hand at this topic. He got so much right, he became a billionaire over his initial instinct to craft a science fiction story with a spiritual core behind it. Bravo. ... The sequel trilogy is, through two movies, a clinic in clueless storytelling and corporate incompetence.
You pretty much summed up exactly how I felt about the concept of midi-chlorians and the prequels in general, but you said it much more eloquently than I ever could.
Always appreciate the thoughtful take you have on things, even when I disagree. For me, I'd say I don't necessarily need lightsabers and Jedi and such, as proven by Rogue One, which is the only Disney Star Wars entry I've quite enjoyed. In fact, I think part of why I wasn't a fan of the prequels is because there was too much Force, too many lightsabers, and too many Jedi. It somehow took away from the special feeling the OT gave us regarding those who could wield the force. Similarly, the sequel trilogy has made the Force feel like something simple and sort of dull. Rey uses it so easily and quickly, with no effort required to learn or understand it, and so it becomes just another tool in her toolbelt, no different than a fancy blaster she might have picked up from a fallen foe.
The force, the jedi, and light sabers are my favorite parts of star wars!!!
The original trilogy and the prequel trilogy is Star Wars. Everything under Disney is just a sci-fi movie with a Star Wars label slapped on it.
Can't wait for the Prequel apologists having to deal with the Sequel apologists ten years down the line.
My favorite part of Starwars is the mystery, the vast galaxy our hero's reside in and the heroic tale of good over coming evil. You were right that its the mystery that makes Starwars great. Just like in horror not seeing the monster is scarier than seeing them in Starwars having a mythical aspect to the force makes it intriguing and keeps me captivated while explaining too much pushes me away. The more lore that gets added the more I ultimately lose interest in Starwars. That said I yearn to see more Starwars, but its the building on that mystery that I want, not convoluted answers that ruin the mystery forever.
I feel that a lot of old fans have jumped off the wagon and...the new fans are hesitant to jump on especially now that the franchise is full of inconsistencies and shit. The Sequels have ruined Star Wars, they haven't brought anything new to the table and in the end the Sequels are just soft reboots of the OT. I loved the prequels more than the OT...to be precise I liked Anakin Skywalker's character and how he shows us that even the greatest among us can be corrupted and turned into the worst versions of ourselves which compliments Luke's character perfectly