The Problem Of Disney Star Wars

[doctorbadwolf]

Solo didn’t do that well because they forced a 1/yr release schedule, rushed Solo out to theaters, and bc of its merits as a movie.

Meanwhile TLJ itself did just fine. Most fans like or love it.

 

[Eltab]

Han's piloting should qualify. His flying around the big asteroid despite not knowing the terrain was pretty darn uncanny.

IMHO (I may be reading too much into some details*) Han is an untrained Force adept. The famous "Solo luck" is him unconsciously tugging at probabilities to get better-than-average results. The Force gives him a leg up at piloting, plus made a career of Pilot. He had practice in the Falcon before the first movie happened, and in a few novels he was a fighter pilot for a while before he hooked up with the Falcon.

* Han "There isn't some all-powerful Force guiding MY destiny" Obi-Wan -smothers grin under sleeve-

 

[Umbran]

IMHO (I may be reading too much into some details*) Han is an untrained Force adept.

In the old WEG Star Wars game, the answer was simple - even those who didn't outright use the Force could spend a Force Point to double the number of dice they were rolling. Rolling 30d6 was not unheard of in that game.

More important, we must remember, we aren't looking at a real world. Or, at least, not *our* real world. We are looking at a genre world. And a normal human piloting that well is *in genre* for Space Opera, which generally celebrates competence.

Heck, if we are getting really picky, we might say, "Well, no human could do that!" Do you realize that Han Solo isn't human? At least, not terrestrial Homo sapiens sapiens. This is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. He's not from Earth! Goodness only knows what his reaction time and hand-eye coordination are like, compared to ours!

Which is to say, this is Space Opera. Don't think about it *too* hard. It is about morals and choices, not about how much training one *actually* needs to do a particular thing.

 

[Zardnaar]

In the old WEG Star Wars game, the answer was simple - even those who didn't outright use the Force could spend a Force Point to double the number of dice they were rolling. Rolling 30d6 was not unheard of in that game.

More important, we must remember, we aren't looking at a real world. Or, at least, not *our* real world. We are looking at a genre world. And a normal human piloting that well is *in genre* for Space Opera, which generally celebrates competence.

Heck, if we are getting really picky, we might say, "Well, no human could do that!" Do you realize that Han Solo isn't human? At least, not terrestrial Homo sapiens sapiens. This is a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. He's not from Earth! Goodness only knows what his reaction time and hand-eye coordination are like, compared to ours!

Which is to say, this is Space Opera. Don't think about it *too* hard. It is about morals and choices, not about how much training one *actually* needs to do a particular thing.

We still play D6 on occasion and I have a shelf of 40 odd books for it. hasn't aged to bad. I have a rough plotline for e new game set eithe rin the new timeline or the old EU involving the Sith Sisterhood via Darth Mauls secret apprentice since the male Sith keep screwing it up. Recycle some plot threads from SWSE The unknown Regions and the Rakata hiding out there.

 

[Istbor]

Yeah... I never really saw the whole Mary Sue thing. The force just makes you... good at stuff. That was the whole point behind it, you were availed insight and you could use this to enhance your reaction time and reflexes. It would help you understand the denizens of the galaxy better, and allow you to sense things a normal person could not.

They were children of destiny, they should be extra-ordinary, both Rey and Luke.

I also agree with the hose theory. The more you have pulling at the force, the less effect each individual can draw upon. Obviously experience and natural talent still play big roles, and one could argue, destiny as well.

Edited for grammatical errors.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah... I never really saw the whole Mary Sue thing. The force just makes you... good at stuff. That was the whole point behind it, you were availed insight and you could use this to enhance your reaction time and reflexes. It would help you understand the denizens of the galaxy better, and allow you to sense things a normal person could not.

They were children of destiny, they should be extra-ordinary, both Rey and Luke.

I also agree with the hose theory. The more you have pulling at the force, the less effect each individual can draw upon. Obviously experience and natural talent still play big roles, and one could argue, destiny as well.

Edited for grammatical errors.

My quibble with the hose theory is that I don't think that Anakin is less powerful than Luke or Rey, and there are thousands of Jedi when Anakin is still Anakin.

 

[Zardnaar]

My quibble with the hose theory is that I don't think that Anakin is less powerful than Luke or Rey, and there are thousands of Jedi when Anakin is still Anakin.

Its more of a Sith theory, the less Darksiders there are the more powerful they are.

Its doesn't seem to matter, it was mostly just easier to hide. Some of the ancient Sith were on par with Palpatine and Vader.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Its more of a Sith theory, the less Darksiders there are the more powerful they are.

Its doesn't seem to matter, it was mostly just easier to hide. Some of the ancient Sith were on par with Palpatine and Vader.

Yeah, I prefer to ignore the EU whenever possible. Especially the stuff on the Sith. Way too many attempts to make them sympathetic, way too much weird lore that doesn't make sense.

I like a lot of the early WEG Star Wars roleplaying supplements, like the Galaxy Guides, and a decent amount of what was published in the Saga Edition books, but trying to keep track of the EU as a whole is just...not worth it, IMO.

 

[Mercurius]

The biggest problem with Disney Star Wars, in my opinion, is that they lack George Lucas' visionary imagination. The original trilogy was truly visionary. The prequels, while crappy in other ways (mostly around Anakin's actors, lack of romantic chemistry, annoying details like the Fetts from downunda, Jar-Jar Binks, etc), still had the Lucas touch for world-building. They still felt like Star Wars, if the equivalent of a rock bands later albums that aren't as good anymore and lack the vitality of their youth, but still feel like the same band.

The Force Awakens was a fun movie, but to me it felt like the film version of fanfic. It didn't feel like Star Wars, but a fan's take on Star Wars. It felt over-produced, like it was the result of an AI algorithm assessing what people want out of Star Wars in today's cultural context. Still, it was overall it was enjoyable.

Rogue One was well done and also fun, although it didn't have the mythic quality of the Lucas films. But it did what it intended to do quite well.

As for The Last Jedi, I left the theater with the thought: "That was a bad movie, I didn't enjoy that very much." It was the first time I watched a Star Wars film and actually was glad when it was over. But I won't go into details, because it seems that any criticism of this film is automatically interpreted as based on some combination of misogyny, racism, nerdrage, alt-rightism, etc.

I will say that one thing that bothers me that I don't hear mentioned is the under-usage of Oscar Isaac, who in my mind is one of the best actors of his generation. He really could have been the Han Solo of these films, but seems too...tepid? It is almost like the directors said to him, "We kind of want the handsome, roguish thing like Han Solo, but don't be too roguish." I'm not saying he should try to be Harrison Ford, but he should certainly be Oscar Isaac. Maybe more of a melancholic brooder.

Solo was OK and probably overly maligned. I liked it better than TLJ. But the problem is not as much that it was a bad movie, it wasn't, but that it continued the process of "fanfication" of Star Wars. It didn't feel like the "real" Han Solo, perhaps because the actor didn't quite play him edgy enough.

One more thing. Disney Star Wars has crappy villains. I love Adam Driver in Indie films (e.g. Paterson, What if? etc) and he made Girls watchable, but he is terribly miscast and I can't shake the Darth Emo nickname. In fact, his best moment as Kylo Ren was in that SNL skit. Snoke was just a pale mockery of Palpatine. Compare them to Darth Vader, arguably the greatest film villain of all time (do you remember his sheer presence when you were a kid?!), and the truly malevolent Emperor - not to mention secondary villains like Jabba, Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters, etc.

 

[dragoner]

I've liked Star Wars since I was a kid, seeing the first one in the theater way back when, though I have to say the oeuvre is done, it's not anyone's fault. Maybe other one's can be done, I thought Rogue One was great as a standalone film. Nevertheless, sci-fi has moved on since the original production, as well as nothing will get back to the feeling of the original, the writing is going to be flat because there isn't much else to say about the franchise, it's reached the end of it's lifespan for the most part.