Star Wars The Most Overused Tropes?

[Zardnaar]

What in your opinion are the most overused troops in Star Wars? Note some things to me such as Sith, Jedi and Mandalorians are part of the genre and by themselves aren't overused as such ymmv of course. How they're used can be fairly terrible.

Anyway here's a few I can think of.

1. New darkside villain of the week probably with some sort of new superweapon in tow or otherwise galactic threat. Am I talking about Dark Empire, Jedi Academy Trilogy, various video games, TFA or RoS here? Bonus points if the superweapon blows up planets. Of if one of Luke's students falls to the darkside.

2. Secret fleet conveniently pulled out of no where. Kinda done correctly in Thrawn trilogy but another old staple of the old EU they did it twice in the new Trilogy. Can be effective if explained well (KotoR, Katana fleet Thrawn trilogy). Bonus points if it blows up planets.

3. The baddie (warlord, darksider) has an even bigger or badder super/mega star destroyer. Bonus points if it has a super laser on it. That blows up planets. Vaders SSD was an Executor class but look it's an Eclipse/Sovereign/Mega/Assertor/Belator class that's even bigger and badder than an Executor!!!!. Well the Belator us more if a faster pocket ssd but you get the idea.

4. Darksider that is more powerful than Palpatine. Bonus points if they can blow up planets. Or depopulate a planet using the darkside.

Anyway anything I have missed?

 

[MarkB]

There was a tendency in the early EU which has echoed right on down to the Disney canon to extrapolate little one-off details into general truths and norms. It was understandable at the time since the writers were working off only three movies' worth of material for a long time, but it can still be annoying.

The one that always comes to mind for me is bounty hunters and carbonite. In The Empire Strikes Back there's a carbon freezing facility on Cloud City - a huge industrial machine which takes up an entire large room and probably more. Boba Fett's not interested in using it, he'd just as soon haul Han back to Tatooine in binders, but Vader needs a solution that can contain a Jedi, so he insists on field-testing it on Han, who is then frozen over Fett's mild protests.

Cut to pretty much any bounty hunter in the EU, and carbon-freezing is their standard capture technique. In videogames they'll have carbonite grenades, or sprayers built into their armour.

And from there we go to The Mandalorian, who's got a carbon-freezer and pallet rack built into his ship, and "bringing 'em in cold" is just standard practice.

There are other examples, like every gangster is a Hutt, and every Jedi wears the same robes Obi-wan wore when he was being incognito on a desert planet, but a lot of those wound up getting formalised by Lucas himself in the prequels.

 

[pukunui]

and every Jedi wears the same robes Obi-wan wore

Unless you're a Jedi like Luminara Unduli or Aayla Secura.

 

[Zardnaar]

There was a tendency in the early EU which has echoed right on down to the Disney canon to extrapolate little one-off details into general truths and norms. It was understandable at the time since the writers were working off only three movies' worth of material for a long time, but it can still be annoying.

The one that always comes to mind for me is bounty hunters and carbonite. In The Empire Strikes Back there's a carbon freezing facility on Cloud City - a huge industrial machine which takes up an entire large room and probably more. Boba Fett's not interested in using it, he'd just as soon haul Han back to Tatooine in binders, but Vader needs a solution that can contain a Jedi, so he insists on field-testing it on Han, who is then frozen over Fett's mild protests.

Cut to pretty much any bounty hunter in the EU, and carbon-freezing is their standard capture technique. In videogames they'll have carbonite grenades, or sprayers built into their armour.

And from there we go to The Mandalorian, who's got a carbon-freezer and pallet rack built into his ship, and "bringing 'em in cold" is just standard practice.

There are other examples, like every gangster is a Hutt, and every Jedi wears the same robes Obi-wan wore when he was being incognito on a desert planet, but a lot of those wound up getting formalised by Lucas himself in the prequels.

Thus woukd also apply to mono cultures as well like Greedos a
nd Bossk cultures are hunting.
It's somewhat understandable in early EU with 3 movies to work with buy Disney is still doing it.

Carbonite freezing somewhat majes sense in Mandalorian (hey it works) but shouldn't be default pre ESB.

 

[pukunui]

Another overused trope would be the WW2 style ship battles. Despite some handwavey attempts to make some battles look more 3D, hardly anyone ever takes advantage of the vertical plane in outer space. I mean, there's that one Clone Wars episode where there's a submarine style cloaked ship and another where everyone is astounded when Ahsoka tips her cruiser on its side and so on. There's also numerous scenes where ships are fleeing from an explosion that they could easily avoid if they went either up or down but it seemingly never occurs to the pilot so they continue to just try and outrun the explosion on a flat plane (this undoubtedly applies to Hollywood in general though - it's not just Star Wars where people stupidly don't change direction to more easily avoid the oncoming thing ...).

 

[Zardnaar]

Another overused trope would be the WW2 style ship battles. Despite some handwavey attempts to make some battles look more 3D, hardly anyone ever takes advantage of the vertical plane in outer space. I mean, there's that one Clone Wars episode where there's a submarine style cloaked ship and another where everyone is astounded when Ahsoka tips her cruiser on its side and so on. There's also numerous scenes where ships are fleeing from an explosion that they could easily avoid if they went either up or down but it seemingly never occurs to the pilot so they continue to just try and outrun the explosion on a flat plane (this undoubtedly applies to Hollywood in general though - it's not just Star Wars where people stupidly don't change direction to more easily avoid the oncoming thing ...).

Probably because more realistic would be boring.

Infantry war is hell everyone else presses buttons and something blows up miles away.
So WW2 dogfights (which were rare then tbh), and 19th century/WW1 infantry assaults.

How to kill Jedi 101. Use shotguns.

 

[MGibster]

Bad guys coming back from the dead. Boba Fett, Palpatine, and Darth Maul.

 

[Zardnaar]

Bad guys coming back from the dead. Boba Fett, Palpatine, and Darth Maul.

I'm fine with this if they're clones as it makes sense. Hell they did it twice with Fett.

 

[Haplo781]

Maul coming back was great. Fett and Palps should have stayed dead.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

There was a tendency in the early EU which has echoed right on down to the Disney canon to extrapolate little one-off details into general truths and norms. It was understandable at the time since the writers were working off only three movies' worth of material for a long time, but it can still be annoying.

In the novels I think part of the problem is that the movies just have such exceptional visual design, that a written description of a new ship or alien can't really contend with being able to just say "Star Destroyer" or "Wookie". In the video games the issue is probably more that people want an experience like the moves.

But yes, the exhaustive mining of every minute detail from the original films, and extrapolating there-from had some weird results that I suppose qualify as clichés, including the implied idea that most Twi'leks are dancing girls and the well canonized fact that all Hutts are crime lords (which I'm sure someone would label "problematic", but I find to absurd to take seriously enough to warrant the label).