The Empire Strikes Out - Inside the Battle of Hoth

[jimmy olsen]

 That's just great!

[C.C.R.]

It's the 1st comment on the 1st article the one that takes the prize. 

Have you even served with the Imperial forces? Sure it's easy to take potshots from your military blog in some no-name star system while the fleet and its legions fight the rebel insurgents, but combined space/air/ground operations are a lot messier than any infographic could ever portray.

Even with the Empire's full spectrum dominance of the battlespace, you can't just leverage fleet assets which are optimized for ship-to-ship combat into a large scale ground invasion force. A Star Destroyer might have more firepower than the entire militaries of less advanced worlds but you still need a proper ground assault ship to support infantry landings.

Unfortunately, the do-nothing blowhards in Coruscant couldn't get funding for the promising alternative designs from Sienar Fleet Systems and we ended up (as usual) with Kuat Drive Yards' overpriced, overdue, and underperforming AT-AT mess.

Ironically, the older "Victory" class ships were far superior orbital bombardment platforms...

[Berkut]

This entire study would be so much more interesting if Lucas didn't shit out those goddamned prequels.

True, although the "Luke matters" chick made me really sad about how shitty the prequels were, given that they had the material for something grand.

Indeed.

The prequels may be the greatest failure in movie history, given their potential from a story-telling content, and the resources available to realize that potential.

A great potential story combined with basically unlimited resources to tell it resulted in Jar Jar Binks and whiny brat.

It really is quite sad.

[CountDeMoney]

A great potential story combined with basically unlimited resources to tell it resulted in Jar Jar Binks and whiny brat.

It really is quite sad.

You forgot the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Flying Jew.

But yeah, talk about the absolute destruction of a concept of so much promising material.  They'll still be talking about it 80 years from now. 

[grumbler]

Indeed.

The prequels may be the greatest failure in movie history, given their potential from a story-telling content, and the resources available to realize that potential.

A great potential story combined with basically unlimited resources to tell it resulted in Jar Jar Binks and whiny brat.

It really is quite sad.

I agree that the potential was there, but would argue that the third movie had already shown that Lucas was unable to comprehend the potential of his own creation.  The end of that movie left me with no desire to see more, quite the opposite of how I felt at the end of the first and (especially) the second movie.

[Ideologue]

Open question to those who were disappointed with Return of the Jedi: if the original plan to use Wookiees and Kashyykk (or however that's spelled, I am emphatically not looking it up), instead of Ewoks and Endor, had been followed, but the same general plot structure remained, would you have been okay with it?  If so, are you valuing appearances--conceding that Wookiees look way cooler than Ewoks--too greatly?  Or is there another aspect to the Ewoks that grates, i.e. their primitiveness, a problem that would not have been present with the incomprehensible but technologically advanced Wookiees?

Discuss, bearing in mind that we did see the Wookiee homeworld in the filmed Star Wars universe long before Episode III, and the results were intensely disturbing.

Indeed.

The prequels may be the greatest failure in movie history, given their potential from a story-telling content, and the resources available to realize that potential.

A great potential story combined with basically unlimited resources to tell it resulted in Jar Jar Binks and whiny brat.

It really is quite sad.

Fully agreed; however, with the transfer of the Lucasfilm properties to Disney, I would not be wholly surprised if they remade the prequel trilogy within the next ten or fifteen years.  I expect there's a huge market for it, and it would be both easier from a logistical standpoint and subject the brand to less overexploration if they remade the PT instead of Random Star Wars Movies 14-16 (which, with the absence of Lucas' restraining hand, we must accept as inevitable--there's already like FIVE new Star Wars films in pipeline, mere months after the sale).

[Syt]

I wouldn't put it past them to do a re-boot, or go to The Old Republic for fresh stories. I've always looked at The Old Republic (4000 years before the movies) setting (the comics and later the games) as an alternative version of the "classic" Star Wars story and universe. You have the same places and concepts, but are free to do completely different things with them. Of course, several comics, novels, and games in this is starting to get crowded, too. But nothing to keep people from going further back, or slightly forward.

[derspiess]

Discuss, bearing in mind that we did see the Wookiee homeworld in the filmed Star Wars universe long before Episode III, and the results were intensely disturbing.

Dead wrong.  It was pure awesomeness.  Life Day FTW!

[PDH]

Discuss, bearing in mind that we did see the Wookiee homeworld in the filmed Star Wars universe long before Episode III, and the results were intensely disturbing.

Dead wrong.  It was pure awesomeness.  Life Day FTW!

You just like them because the Ewoks didn't have whore pills.

[Ideologue]

I wouldn't put it past them to do a re-boot, or go to The Old Republic for fresh stories. I've always looked at The Old Republic (4000 years before the movies) setting (the comics and later the games) as an alternative version of the "classic" Star Wars story and universe. You have the same places and concepts, but are free to do completely different things with them. Of course, several comics, novels, and games in this is starting to get crowded, too. But nothing to keep people from going further back, or slightly forward.

My thing is that I've never really felt the Star Wars universe was as inherently interesting as a lot of people clearly do.  I don't think it ever matched Star Trek, for example, in terms of reusability and story modularity.  The overweening presence of the Force and the unninterrupted (and frankly hard to believe) thousands-year span of one-galaxy government and culture, at basically one technological level the entire time, homogenizes the Star Wars universe, regardless of era.  And you can't really add anything or change anything without it seeming bizarre and alien to the franchise (I think they tried some extragalactic invaders once, for example, which doesn't sound particularly interesting).  Which is fine--Flash Gordon stories don't have infinite possibilities, there's no reason Star Wars stories should.  Not all concepts should, in fact most concepts do not, lend themselves to infinite repackaging.

That's why I don't care that much about Star Wars outside of the core Skywalker parable (moral: "great, kid, [but] don't get cocky").  Like, wow, there were Sith and smugglers ten thousand years ago?  TELL ME MORE?

P.S. I'll still be disappointed if Thrawn doesn't show up somewhere in the new, post-Jedi movies.  That guy was probably the only concept from beyond the films that I ever felt had any legs whatsoever.

[Ideologue]

Discuss, bearing in mind that we did see the Wookiee homeworld in the filmed Star Wars universe long before Episode III, and the results were intensely disturbing.

Dead wrong.  It was pure awesomeness.  Life Day FTW!

You just like them because the Ewoks didn't have whore pills.

But they did have virtual interracial porno.

[C.C.R.]

P.S. I'll still be disappointed if Thrawn doesn't show up somewhere in the new, post-Jedi movies.  That guy was probably the only concept from beyond the films that I ever felt had any legs whatsoever.

Mara Jade's unshaven red bush.  Just sayin'...

[The Larch]

I wouldn't put it past them to do a re-boot, or go to The Old Republic for fresh stories. I've always looked at The Old Republic (4000 years before the movies) setting (the comics and later the games) as an alternative version of the "classic" Star Wars story and universe. You have the same places and concepts, but are free to do completely different things with them. Of course, several comics, novels, and games in this is starting to get crowded, too. But nothing to keep people from going further back, or slightly forward.

My thing is that I've never really felt the Star Wars universe was as inherently interesting as a lot of people clearly do.  I don't think it ever matched Star Trek, for example, in terms of reusability and story modularity.  The overweening presence of the Force and the unninterrupted (and frankly hard to believe) thousands-year span of one-galaxy government and culture, at basically one technological level the entire time, homogenizes the Star Wars universe, regardless of era.  And you can't really add anything or change anything without it seeming bizarre and alien to the franchise (I think they tried some extragalactic invaders once, for example, which doesn't sound particularly interesting).  Which is fine--Flash Gordon stories don't have infinite possibilities, there's no reason Star Wars stories should.  Not all concepts should, in fact most concepts do not, lend themselves to infinite repackaging.

That's why I don't care that much about Star Wars outside of the core Skywalker parable (moral: "great, kid, [but] don't get cocky").  Like, wow, there were Sith and smugglers ten thousand years ago?  TELL ME MORE?

P.S. I'll still be disappointed if Thrawn doesn't show up somewhere in the new, post-Jedi movies.  That guy was probably the only concept from beyond the films that I ever felt had any legs whatsoever.

You really need to get out more often.

[Syt]

The overweening presence of the Force and the unninterrupted (and frankly hard to believe) thousands-year span of one-galaxy government and culture, at basically one technological level the entire time, homogenizes the Star Wars universe, regardless of era.  And you can't really add anything or change anything without it seeming bizarre and alien to the franchise (I think they tried some extragalactic invaders once, for example, which doesn't sound particularly interesting).

You can still do a lot with the basic elements. Light side vs. dark side, Republic vs. Empire, Bounty Hunters, familiar worlds etc. without being weighed down by supposed canon or the expanded universe. Because the base building blocks are so elementary there's a lot of room to tell stories with them.

[Ideologue]

I'd argue that the base building blocks are so few that correspondingly few structures can be built from them.