Star Wars - Impressions, no spoilers, just impressions!

[CountDeMoney]

Ah Return of the Jedi.

You ever notice how the first Star Wars trilogy and the BSG series both kinda went off the rails at the 2.5 mark?

[CountDeMoney]

Nerds

I bet you and your mother never even spoke about that time she walked in on you in the tub with your Skeletor action figure and her hair conditioner.  Some things just go without words, don't they?

[Ed Anger]

The joints on my C3P0 action figure are all sticky.

[Tonitrus]

[Ed Anger]

She can cure light wounds on me anytime.

[DontSayBanana]

All of that happened because Luke was there to distract the Emperor.  Without it, he would have kept using his battle meditation to thwart the effort of the Rebel Alliance.

Battle meditation is no longer canon, as it really only came up in the Thrawn Trilogy and KOTOR.

[viper37]

All of that happened because Luke was there to distract the Emperor.  Without it, he would have kept using his battle meditation to thwart the effort of the Rebel Alliance.

Battle meditation is no longer canon, as it really only came up in the Thrawn Trilogy and KOTOR.

You could still infer the Emperor was doing something, while sitting alone in his chair, deeply concentrated, and suddenly, while preoccuppied with Luke, the battle turns to his disadvantage.

Also, they brought back Thrawn, so anything is possible now

[jimmy olsen]

I think the failure of Luke's Jedi order and the rise of the Knights of Ren shows that he is definitely not a 6 foot tall Yoda. But to believe he learned nothing in all that off screen time is silly. Obviously, if they portray him as 6 foot Yoda, I will be annoyed as well, but to dismiss Luke as a whiny bitch past the first half of A New Hope is ridiculous.

Well, Yoda presided over the fall of the Jedi order as well. So not really seeing how that disqualifies Luke from being another Yoda.

[Syt]

The relation of people to the Force seems to be a big theme in the new Star Wars. It's kind of mirrored in Rebels, where Kanan (a Jedi with incomplete training) tutors Ezra (force sensitive, but untrained), and trying to find their way. Rebels has a lot more force spiritualism than, say, Clone Wars, despite the latter having an abundance of Jedi.

And to be honest, I find the Rebels Season 4 trailer more intriguing than the Ep. VIII teaser.

[celedhring]

The trailer played the same card as the TFA trailers - mystic mumbo jumbo! Spaceships! Old characters coming back! Nothing about the plot! - but without taking into account this is the third Star Wars in a row, and not the first one in 10 years.

[Sophie Scholl]

Of course Luke is naive and inexperienced.  He's a teenaged Podunk farmer turned galactic power player overnight - what would one expect?  Plus his enigmatic and somewhat dishonest mentor dies almost immediately, leaving thing alone to figure things out.  He then receives training from Yoda, whose own massive errors led to the Emperor taking over on his watch, and the liquidation of the entire Jedi Order he led.  It's really a miracle Luke succeeds under these circumstances - and IMO its telling that he does ultimately succeed by accessing his own emotions (for his fallen father) and then activating those emotions in Vader.  I.e. he succeeds by appealing to that which his training was supposed to suppress.

I've said this before, but the message of the first two trilogies is that the Jedi order was a fatally flawed project doomed to end badly.  A closed, secretive order (with evidence of eugenic teachings floating around to boot) that teaches its acolytes denial and suppression of one's basic humanity setting itself up as guardians of the galaxy - would could go wrong?  That can't be put on Luke - his teachers and mentors own that failure, and for the most part it seems like they never really learned.   I don't know what direction they are taking this new trilology in but if the idea is Luke finally figured out the Jedi project was fubar, and withdrew to "do no harm" that's a logical move that shows better understanding on his part then any other Jedi character in the series. 

*That* would be awesomely cool if they wrote it just like that, and I would totally agree then that Luke is pretty awesome.

But I am skeptical that the entire arc that was envisioned is that the Jedi are a complete disaster. I agree that that is the rational way to look at the story as a whole, but I suspect that rational people see it like that because the writing overall has been so inconsistent, not because that was ever the intent.

I love the idea though, and think it would make the story a lot more mature and nuanced.

I am just skeptical that they were ever going for any nuance when it came to the Jedi as the Good Guys.

For the EU, Karen Traviss gave a much more nuanced take on the Jedi.  She didn't portray them as the super heroic, always in the right type of characters that almost all other Star Wars sources did/do.  It's a shame her work got ret-conned and no one else took up the idea.

[Grey Fox]

The relation of people to the Force seems to be a big theme in the new Star Wars. It's kind of mirrored in Rebels, where Kanan (a Jedi with incomplete training) tutors Ezra (force sensitive, but untrained), and trying to find their way. Rebels has a lot more force spiritualism than, say, Clone Wars, despite the latter having an abundance of Jedi.

And to be honest, I find the Rebels Season 4 trailer more intriguing than the Ep. VIII teaser.

It is my opinion that you can glimpse the future of Star Wars tone & story by watching Rebel. These peoples are the future writers of Saga #3.