Star Wars Megathread

[celedhring]

Today's Kenobi episode was pretty good, that's the kind of show I wanted to watch. There's still some really lazy dumb stuff, like Vader and the GI leaving Reva for dead just because. Or GI's handwaved resurrection. Also, given the budget they have, and what they have done in other shows, I find it weird that they couldn't manage to make Christensen look more youthful in the flashbacks.

But Reva's character finally took on a life of her own, and there's cool Vader stuff. Plus the prequel-era flashback was nice, and not overdone..

I'm a bit wary of the cliffhanger, though.

[Syt]

Good episode, agreed. Liked the flashbacks despite the mediocre de-aging, but it was a nice throughline for the episode's story. Liked Reva's background though it was kinda what you'd expect after the first four episode (except her motive, maybe). Some nice action (really enjoyed Vader toying with Reva, showing just how much more powerful he is than her; reminded me of old kung fu movies where the hothead tries to challenge the old master who artfully dodges all attacks with minimal effort ). Not sure what will happen in Ep. 6 now, and I will probably not be able to watch it before Friday evening thanks to a company event ).

I agree that the show looks surprisingly low budget in many ways, compared to Mando and Boba Fett. There's some stuff that looks great, like the city in Ep. 2, but then you have this episode that gave me flashbacks to the 8v8 mines map in the recent Battlefront.

I did pause when Ben looked at the graffiti wall to see what I could decipher. There's names of three Jedi I didn't know but that were in Legends according to Wookieepedia, like the old RPGs, or the Star Wars Galaxy magazine and stuff. I'm sure it's Pablo Hidalgo adding those (he used to work on the Star Wars RPGs at Westend before joining Lucasfilm's story group and likes to add obscure stuff like that).

There's otherwise scribblings of "May the force be with you" etc., but one line stood out: "There is no death", with my mind immediately adding, "There is only the Force." Too much KotOR.

[celedhring]

I had a thought for you when Reva began revving up her lightsaber. Fortunately, they didn't have her take off.

[Syt]

Yet.

[CountDeMoney]

I often use The Empire Strikes Back like a Navage machine. Flush things out, get rid of the impurities.

[viper37]

People see Jedi and Sith flashing their lightsabers around.  They see them using the Force. 10 years BBY, there's still an active network to smuggle Jedi out of Imperial reach.

10 years after this, no one really believes in the Force, it's "hockey religion", "old superstitions" and Stormtroopers are so fascinated they leave their post to watch a duel.

[celedhring]

People see Jedi and Sith flashing their lightsabers around.  They see them using the Force. 10 years BBY, there's still an active network to smuggle Jedi out of Imperial reach.

10 years after this, no one really believes in the Force, it's "hockey religion", "old superstitions" and Stormtroopers are so fascinated they leave their post to watch a duel.

That was always going to be an issue, it's rather weird that in ANH Obi Wan talks about the "more civilized times" like it was centuries ago, when he's talking about something he saw 20 years ago (and that time frame is determined by Luke's age). Now, the prequels made Jedi so numerous and prominent that it made it even worse, and this show is throwing salt at that wound.

Rebels at least was sort of smart about it, in the way they use Ashoka Tano and how they ensure she isn't around during the OT. I also appreciate how Mando doesn't know about the Jedi himself, in The Mandalorian, and that's with the New Republic being around.

[viper37]

People see Jedi and Sith flashing their lightsabers around.  They see them using the Force. 10 years BBY, there's still an active network to smuggle Jedi out of Imperial reach.

10 years after this, no one really believes in the Force, it's "hockey religion", "old superstitions" and Stormtroopers are so fascinated they leave their post to watch a duel.

That was always going to be an issue, it's rather weird that in ANH Obi Wan talks about the "more civilized times" like it was centuries ago, when he's talking about something he saw 20 years ago (and that time frame is determined by Luke's age). Now, the prequels made Jedi so numerous and prominent that it made it even worse, and this show is throwing salt at that wound.

Rebels at least was sort of smart about it, in the way they use Ashoka Tano and how they ensure she isn't around during the OT. I also appreciate how Mando doesn't know about the Jedi himself, in The Mandalorian, and that's with the New Republic being around.

Exactly, the other shows are much much more careful about not breaking the lore.

[Syt]

Star Wars Explained on "How to Survive being stabbed by a Lightsaber"

Fennec Shand also survived a gut wound (though from a blaster, not a lightsaber). There's a lot of "fatal" injuries that people seem to survive in the universe. Maul getting chopped in half and falling down a shaft (and surviving on hatred), Gregor getting blown up (though it seems to have made him a bit "special" in the head?), Orn Free Taa being shot in the head by a sniper, Palpatine being thrown down a reactor shaft (though I guess that's technically more a case of the spirit moving to a new body?), Anakin being chopped to pieces and getting BBQ'ed, the Grand Inquisitor stabbed in the gut, Reva getting stabbed in the gut (twice!), Kylo Ren and Rey brought each other back to life after literally dying, Yoda took a pretty big tumble in the senate chamber, and Leia survived being blasted into hard vacuum by force pulling herself back to an airlock. 3PO was blasted to bits in Empire Strikes Back, and R2 had his head blown off by his former master in A New Hope.

And those are just off the top of my head.

[HVC]

If you were going to get stabbed in the gut a weapon that self cauterizes would be ideal, would it not?

[Syt]

If you were going to get stabbed in the gut a weapon that self cauterizes would be ideal, would it not?

That's been a bit inconsistent throughout the series. In New Hope, when Ben cuts off Ponda Baba's arm in the cantina it looks like this:



Yet Luke's hand (and the Wampa's arm IIRC?) in Empire seems to get cauterized nicely. 

[HVC]

Maybe Pondas species is naturally flame retardent 

[viper37]

3PO was blasted to bits in Empire Strikes Back, and R2 had his head blown off by his former master in A New Hope.

And those are just off the top of my head.

Droids, I can excuse, they are machines that can be rebuilt, as long as their memory core and backups are intact.

[viper37]

The actor playing the third sister is being attacked by vile online racist scum.

Long rant on that:
https://www.thegamer.com/star-wars-fans-expectations-abuse-racism-reva-moses-ingram-obi-wan-kenobi/

Reva seems to address all the "valid complaints" Star Wars fans had about previous female characters, but it's still not enough. What do they want?


The Star Wars sequel trilogy suffered from an identity crisis right out of the gate. Each new instalment seemed to try and make up for the "sins" of its predecessor. And in turn, the portion of the fanbase that screamed the loudest kept moving the goal post.

The Force Awakens premieres, and it's labelled a "New Hope clone". So they make a huge departure from the originals in The Last Jedi, but then it's an "insult to the fans". Then it all culminates in The Rise of Skywalker, an awkward two-and-a-half-hour retcon/apology tour. Towards the end, neither side of the divide was happy with the trilogy.

Even putting that split aside and assuming that the majority opinion is that Rian Johnson's take on the series sucked, I don't even think this crowd knows what it wants anymore. It knows what it doesn't want, but that's about it. And a loud part of this crowd has quickly become one of the worst, most abusive fandoms out there.

First, they were mad that Finn was a Black Stormtrooper. They tried to justify their racism with lore by saying that the Clone Troopers aren't Black, but that didn't work because Finn clearly wasn't a Clone Trooper. Then it was "I'm not racist, it's just forced diversity", whatever that means.

Then in 2017, Kelly Marie Tran and Laura Dern were the targets. The abuse directed at Tran in particular was so horrific that she was driven off social media. Again, it was all "I'm not racist, I just didn't like Rose! Her sister was cool!" Y'know, the one who had no lines and died ten minutes into the movie? That's the appropriate amount of diversity, I guess.

With Disney seemingly caving in to their demands, Rose's role was significantly smaller in The Rise of Skywalker. In her place, we got awkwardly stitched together Leia scenes (either using old footage or bad CGI), and a fuckton of fan service. In other words, this crowd got exactly what they had been asking for - Rey being related to another main character, Palpatine somehow returning, force ghost shenanigans, Chewie getting his goddamn medal, etc - and it still wasn't enough. And in their defence, yeah, it sucked. Because a movie without any vision that is purely made to address every nitpick that Reddit had is a bad idea. But has that stopped fans? Of course it hasn't.

Even the fans that don't use slurs seem to spend a lot of time defending those that do. Consistently, the fanbase has been more outraged with actors disavowing racists than the racists themselves. And the response isn't just an indictment of how disgusting this fandom can be, it also shows that they are happy to move the goal post around if it means they can keep attacking anything they deem "woke". Star Wars, the anti-facist saga where the enemies are literally Stormtroopers, is now woke. Answers on a postcard for what it might have been in the first place.

Recently, Reva actress Moses Ingram shared that she has received hundreds of racist messages and even death threats from Star Wars fans. Since then, numerous actors have backed Ingram, including Ewan McGregor. Much like the last two examples, fans are justifying their hatred of the actress with lore. But that doesn't hold up when the abuse had already started before the show's premiere. It also doesn't work when so many of the comments are about her and the character's skin colour. One YouTube video that made the rounds before the show's premiere called Ingram a "darkie". Ingram herself has received messages that call her a "diversity hire" and the N-word.

moses ingram reva obi-wanvia Disney
One tweet that encapsulates this reads: "The people who believe this narrative that #StarWars fans are racist seem to be forgetting the fact that [there] have been beloved black characters and actors in the franchise for decades with no issues at all." Illustrating their point, the fan attaches images of John Boyega, Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Dee Williams, and Donald Glover. Ignoring the fact that this argument is just "I have Black friends!", it again shows that fans have no idea what a "good" Black character would be by their standards. Mace Windu, for example, is brilliant - but plays a fairly minor role in the original trilogy. The main stars of the three films are all white. The same can be said for Lando in both of his iterations. And we've already been over the fact that Boyega was bombarded with racism as soon as his role was announced.

So, what makes a good Black character? Going by this argument, they either have to have very little screen time, or wait long enough for another Black actor to be the focus of their abuse instead. Then they'll retroactively decide they were fine all along.

For the sake of argument, let's look at the justifications from fans who aren't bringing up Ingram's skin colour. Here's another tweet that bends over backwards to explain the fans' actions.

"One minute she can read minds, next minute she knows Anakin is Vader, she constantly breaks the rules like a child and isn't reprimanded by the GRAND INQUISITOR", comments a fan, adding a laugh crying emoji. "They've taken the leader of the inquisitors and made him also some robotic non imploding bad guy."

Alrighty, let's go through this:

Yes, she can read minds. Force users have been known to do this.
It's true, not many people know Anakin is Vader. But writers don't tend to tell the whole story in the first two episodes. We will have to watch the whole show to know the whole story. (post-episode 5 update: told you so).
"Breaks the rules like a child" is an interesting way to say "is frustrated that the job they're doing for their murderous boss who likes quick results is taking too long and therefore disobeys orders to get things done faster". Also, Sith don't always get along that well.
She was reprimanded by the Grand Inquisitor. In both episodes.
What do these fans even want at this point? They say they're fine with female characters, they just want them to be flawed. But Reva is flawed - she's just also very strong. Sometimes characters are stronger than other characters. It happens.

A still image showing Reva addressing Darth Vader through a hologram in the third episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi
Other points made about her are that she's one-note, one-dimensional and just angry all the time. The exact same thing can be said of Darth Vader up until Return of the Jedi. But it isn't said, because non-white characters, especially women, are held up to a much higher standard and have much more to prove. Rey's overpowered because she can kind of beat Kylo in a fight in The Force Awakens, but Anakin isn't for being a pro pilot at the age of nine. And that makes hyper-focusing on the performance of their actors totally okay, and getting abused is just part of that.

Unless the fandom acknowledges the abuse it has perpetuated, actors will continue to pay the price. Ahmed Best and Jake Lloyd bore the brunt of the abuse over the disappointment towards the prequels. But now, we've all decided that the prequels were good, actually, so they're alright. Doesn't undo all the damage though, does it? And now saying that Finn was a "good minority" doesn't erase all the racism tossed John Boyega's way. It's also racist in itself to act like Finn had to prove himself for Boyega to not be abused.

At the time of the abuse Ingram received, Obi-Wan was only two episodes in, and seemed to already be giving fans what they'd been wanting for years. A dark tone, a gloomy Ewan McGregor (just McGregor at all, really), and if we're being honest, a male lead. But because Obi-Wan is sharing the stage with a Black woman, it's hated. Instead of looking at the product as a whole, we're all hyper-focusing on two-second clips that look kinda silly. When we're nitpicking this much, it's clear we have no idea what we want from Star Wars anymore.

A still image showing the Inquisitors in Episode 1 of Obi-Wan Kenobi
I'll level with you, I think Kenobi is kind of mid too. It's well-acted, well-paced, and has some great scenes, but much like every project stuck in this time period, it feels uninspired. I don't have a grand plan for the franchise that could fix all of its problems. I have some things I'd like to see (new characters, new planets, something not set during the Skywalker-era, etc), but I don't have any story ideas to pitch Disney. And hey, Rogue One went against most of that and ended up being my second favourite film in the whole franchise, so let go of your expectations and just enjoy the ride. Even away from the racially-motivated criticism, The Mandalorian only exists because fans wanted Boba Fett so much, then they kept demanding Boba Fett, only to hate it. Buckle up for Ahsoka, because we might be in for more of the same.

Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega, and Moses Ingram are not boogeymen hellbent on destroying your childhood. They are creatives working on movies and TV shows which you might not like. They are also human beings who do not deserve the abuse you're throwing at them under the guise of 'criticism'. Going into each Star Wars outing with a checklist of things it has to do to get your approval just guarantees you're going to hate it.

No one is forcing you to like what they're doing, but as we see yet another figure suffer abuse from the fandom, have a look at yourself. Do you actually know what you want from Star Wars? Because if the last few years have proven anything, the biggest fans are all far more confused and directionless than anyone at Disney.

[Solmyr]

Obi-Wan finale was really, really good.