The Star Wars Saga

[Zuleikha]

I can. Padme's death didn't need to be a huge part of Anakin's story because it happened after he turned. IMHO, it would have been more powerful for Anakin to lose Padme simply because of his own actions and to have had to have lived knowing she was alive but not wanting to be with him. Also, Padme losing the will to live when she had two healthy children to care for is horrible. The romance was unhealthy and poorly written, but nothing about Padme suggested that she would really want to die rather than live without Anakin. Meanwhile, Anakin did seem like he would happily kill himself rather than live without Padme, so her death makes his willingness to keep going as Darth Vader at the end of RotS seem weird to me.

 

OTOH, it would have been kind of crappy of Padme to have essentially chosen to mother only one of her children. On the other other hand, that is what ROTJ seemed to establish. 

Edited January 14, 2016 by Zuleikha

[Perfect Xero]

I think that Padme going in to hiding on Alderaan as a servant in the Organa house would have been a fitting way to close her story. It would have mirrored the way she'd disguised herself as a hand maiden in TPM. And, if we assume that she survives to ANH (the mother that Leia talks about remembering could have been her adoptive mother, who Leia believed to be her real mother), you add the irony that Vader and Tarkin would have actually killed her when they destroyed Alderaan in ANH.

[benteen]

In the Star Wars The Annotated Screenplays book (published about 1997) Lucas said he wanted at least one of the kids to have memories of their mother.  So Leia's memory was about her "real" mother, Padme.  But Lucas is notorious for not holding himself to his own continuity and I think that's a serious creative flaw of his.  I agree, Padme's death had to be done on-screen but still, it creates an issue with this moment in the original trilogy, the only moment where Luke and Leia's mother is ever mentioned. 

 

Dave Filoni of The Clone Wars one said GL said to him "Continuity is for whimps."  Given the way GL tells a story in his movies, I really believe he said that to him.

 

The one thing I couldn't believe was that Lucas actually had Padme die in such a weak way.  Died of a broken heart...that's the way you kill off a strong female character?  Absolutely embarrassing and it made her look terrible that she didn't care enough about her kids to live for them.  I'd rather she had been seriously injured and then I can buy that the added stress of what had happened to Anakin contributed to her death.

[moonb]

In the ROTJ novelization - NOT the movie - there are only two mentions of Padme besides Luke and Leia's conversation about her: redeemed Anakin's remembering her as "his dear wife" before moving on to memories of Obi-Wan right before his death; and ghost Obi-Wan telling Luke about Leia being his sister, "when your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant..." and their subsequent decision to separate and hide the twins from the Emperor and Vader. Poor woman, she doesn't even have a name. :)  

Obviously, this was all revised for the prequels. But it's interesting only because it implies that Padme and her pregnancy didn't play a big part originally in Anakin's turning into Vader. 

[Danny Franks]

I just decided that when Leia talks about remembering her mother, she's talking about Bail Organa's wife. There's nothing in the original trilogy that suggests Leia knows she's adopted (other than that "I think, somehow, I've always known" that Luke is her brother bit), so when she's asked about her mother, she would think it was Mrs. Organa. She said there was a sadness in her, which still makes sense because if her husband was Bail, then it stands to reason she'd share his loyalties with the Republic and the Jedi, and mourn their loss and the rise of the Empire.

 

The efforts to tie the prequels into the original trilogy in terms of continuity were pretty laughably bad, which makes sense if Lucas genuinely doesn't care about continuity. That's a knock against him as a storyteller, if you ask me. Obviously, when the original trilogy was made, there was nothing about 'possessive relationships' being outlawed to Jedi, so Anakin having before he turned evil wasn't particularly shocking. There was no taboo in it when Obi Wan was telling Luke about his father, there was no indication that Luke thought a Jedi having kids would have been odd. You can pick at it endlessly, and keep finding new bits that don't tie together. Lucas just made things harder for himself, with his tortured, forbidden romance crap.

 

I already outlined a version of the prequels I might have enjoyed better a couple of pages back, but to offer up another suggestion: Have Jedi able to marry. Have Anakin marry some nice girl who isn't a senator that's not allowed to love. Have him turn to the dark side out of jealousy or fear or paranoia, or whatever, and have that nice girl run from him and seek sanctuary with Obi Wan and, eventually, Bail. She can survive and fall in love with Bail, giving her a few years of happiness instead of the absurd moment of a medical droid telling us that she's dying of a broken heart. Because in Star Wars, medical droids have poetic programming, apparently.

[Zuleikha]

The PT wasn't just Anakin's story, it was Padmé's story Obi-Wan's, too. Ending her story off-screen wasn't structurally possible. After following her story from young Queen to Senator to wife to mother, to have a post script that said, "oh she died. of smallpox (or something) a few years later" would have been anticlimatic.

 

I wish the PT was Padme's story, too, but I don't think it was. She barely exists as a character outside of Anakin's love interest. That's why I think it would have been fine to have her death be some years later off screen (no post script needed). She filled her structural role when she rejected Anakin on the lava planet.

[absnow54]

I just decided that when Leia talks about remembering her mother, she's talking about Bail Organa's wife. There's nothing in the original trilogy that suggests Leia knows she's adopted (other than that "I think, somehow, I've always known" that Luke is her brother bit), so when she's asked about her mother, she would think it was Mrs. Organa.

Luke pointedly asked if Leia remembered "[her] mother. [Her] real mother." which seems like an odd question to ask someone who doesn't know she's adopted.

 

 

 

I think that Padme going in to hiding on Alderaan as a servant in the Organa house would have been a fitting way to close her story. It would have mirrored the way she'd disguised herself as a hand maiden in TPM.

This is what I would have preferred. Padme didn't have to lose her will to live. After becoming disenchanted by Anakin and Palpetine, she could have gone to Obi Wan for help, realizing the threat Anakin posed to her children. Realizing it was too dangerous to keep the twins together, they could have faked Padme's death and had her go into hiding on Alderaan as a royal servant where Bail could protect her and she could watch over Leia, while Obi Wan looked over Luke under Owen's care.  

Edited January 14, 2016 by absnow54

[SeanC]

They were in an unfortunate spot with Padme, in that she's one of the three main characters of the prequels, but unlike Obi-Wan and Anakin she's not in the OT. I can see the desire to give her a definitive ending within the PT - it was just a bad one.

[ulkis]

The Force Awakens may move up into second after I see it again. Because while it's very much influenced by A New Hope, the acting and writing is better, and there is more of a sense of fun. It's a more modern picture but still holds to the old fashioned adventure roots of the originals.

 

I guess a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I thought the acting was good in the originals for the most part. I mean, yeah, Luke's/MH's "nooos!" were pretty nasally, but I don't know if he could really change that.

 

Personally, I don't think so. I think it is unlikely that Vader would never have visited Shmi's grave, checked in on how Owen and Beru were doing (and then learned they had a son exactly the age his child with Padme would have been but apparently no other children), or looked for Obi-Wan. Also, wasn't Tatooine strategically important as Jabba's base?

 

I don't think Vader would have cared how Owen and Beru were doing, but everything else I agree with.

[ulkis]

I'm curious as to the tv rights of the first six movies. I remember when Spike TV used to run a marathon every time there was a holiday weekend. It's been a few years since I've seen Star Wars on tv. I'm surprised that one of the Disney owned channels did not show the old movies prior to the new movie's release. With all of this winter finale stuff that the networks do anymore, ABC could have easily scheduled a week's worth of movies with one movie a night for the people who have never seen Star Wars and don't want to spend the money on the DVDs.

But that's the point, they want to force people to buy them.

It is pretty freaking criminal, to charge 20 fucking bucks for the prequel trilogy, let alone the original.

[VCRTracking]

Find Out Why Uncle Owen Really Doesn’t Like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars #15

[Kromm]

Star Wars Episode 8 faces more bad news: Crew strikes could delay next instalment of sci-fi saga further
Nine major productions filming in the UK, including Wonder Woman and The Mummy, face disruption.

[Joe]

So, it was inevitable. Rogue One costumes on display. More pics here. I'm not sure how I feel about a gun that requires some kind of ammo belt. On the one hand, it's a total war movie thing, and I love it. On the other, it just doesn't feel very Star Wars. While the Clone Wars happily ran through all the war movie tropes, and there's been more Clone Wars than actual movies, it still just doesn't seem like a great fit.

[Perfect Xero]

It looks like an armored cable connecting the gun to a larger power pack on the back of the costume.

[Joe]

Okay, fair enough. But my point still stands. Super-duper ultra shooty guns don't feel like Star Wars to me.

[absnow54]

My impression of that costume isn't that it's an ultra shooty gun, but an improvised weapon from a small band of spies who don't have access to heavy artillery, which to me, is very Star Wars where everything looks broken in and lived in (at least the OT and ST have.) Although, if anything, that costume is giving me major Ghost Busters vibes.

[Joe]

I can see that. It's possible you're right. We'll just have to wait and see. :)

 

But you know what's funny? I'm complaining about a big shooty gun in Star Wars. For a long time I've felt that SW guns, especially regular Stormtrooper blaster rifles, just looked too small and puny. This seems like an attempt to compensate that goes too far in the opposite direction. Sometimes I'm just hard to please, I admit that.

[Kromm]

All Star Wars fans (and most Sci-Fi fans, heck most fandom as a mass in general) are. We get to feel entitled and that the burden of creative judgment has somehow shifted to us. It's something I hope there's started to be a pushback against in younger fans, where they're more self-aware of that than us oldies have been for the past few decades (where there's been a creeping progression to this problem, bit by bit). 

 

It's why I've been okay with the whole ditching of the EU stuff. The expectation that stuff could somehow be magically folded into new films was such an expression of fan entitlement. 

 

For me it's enough if there's seemingly some sense to a design decision like what's going on with that gun, even if it means we have to adjust our expectations of an aesthetic. If it just LOOKS like an ammo belt but we see normal laser bolts out of it, yes that will disrupt our sense of in-universe reality for it. But I, for example, wouldn't be at all adverse if it turns out to be a projectile weapon. There's nothing about the Star Wars Universe that says that projectile weapons can't exist.  Or as has been suggested, if it's just some kind of power cable? Well that could be neat. But I don't really need it exhaustively explained by the film. I think the idea of it can be communicated simply by seeing how it operates, as long as that makes sense.

[absnow54]

Well that could be neat. But I don't really need it exhaustively explained by the film. I think the idea of it can be communicated simply by seeing how it operates, as long as that makes sense.

That's what the Visual Dictionary and 15 other pieces of supplementary reading material will be for! It always marvels me how intricate even the most insignificant background character's backstory is. I'm sure this weapon will look cool in the movie and have an interesting story behind the scenes.

[VCRTracking]

I always hear how complicated and hard to understand the politics in Episode I are from people who watch movies with plots way more complex and involved.

 

I get that a five year old isn't going to understand and it's going to go over a kid's head but someone who's gone to college like a lot of fans by the time TPM came out should have been able to figure it out. There are 4 things in TPM that everybody over the age of 25 should have already known through education and experience.

 

-Corporations don't like paying ANY taxes.

 

-If a corporation can get away with doing something shitty or illegal they will.

 

-Bureaucracy slows down any action.

 

-Leaders perceived to be "weak" are deposed and replaced by those who are deemed "stronger".

 

That's it. That's all you need to understand all the "complicated" political machinations of The Phantom Menace.

 

I get that fans don't want any politics at all. "If I want politics I'd they'd watch "The West Wing! At least it's entertaining!". Or it needs to be explained in a fun rap like in "Hamilton". But I get tired of fans complaining about how Lucas dumbed down Star Wars with the prequels even though they throw a fit whenever something's just a little complex.

Edited January 29, 2016 by VCRTracking

[SeanC]

I agree that the criticisms of there being too much politics in the prequels is, to me, very over the top, and probably a misdiagnosis of the problem.  Telling the story of the rise of the Empire is necessarily going to involve politics.  The problem is, akin to my earlier comment, that Lucas just couldn't make his political drama interesting.

[Zuleikha]

That's it. That's all you need to understand all the "complicated" political machinations of The Phantom Menace.

As someone who does not understand the "complicated" political machinations of The Phantom Menace, I disagree. I've seen it twice and neither time caught what the Trade Federation was in relationship to the Republic, what exactly the tax dispute was about, or how/why invading Naboo would solve any of it.

 

I also will note that while corporations on Earth do illegal things to dodge taxes, they generally don't formally invade countries (support a military coup... perhaps). They also do their worst things in marginalized areas. If Naboo was so inconsequential that the Trade Federation expected the Senate wouldn't care about Naboo being invaded, why would Padme be so shocked that the Senate didn't react quickly? Why would she expect the Senate to care? Also, if Naboo was so inconsequential, how could Palpatine have enough support to be elected Chancellor? Generally, Palpatine having that kind of support would also indicate he had the kind of influence that would get the Senate to care about his home planet being invaded (or at least that Padme should have been very suspicious of him not being able to do so).

 

Also, since the Senate is supposed to be slow to action, how could Padme have gotten the vote turned into action so quickly? Again, even if Palpatine was greasing the wheels behind the scenes, why didn't that fact make Padme suspicious of Palpatine. She was young, yes, but she was supposed to be competent-beyond-her-years and a budding savvy politician. (also, why was she able to call for a vote of no confidence when she was just the Queen of Naboo? Wouldn't she have no rank in the Senate?)

 

The politics works much better for me in Clone Wars, but even there, I admit that I'm still confused about exactly why I'm supposed to hate the Separatists and cheer on the Republic. I'm in S2, and I keep wondering why free thinkers like Anakin, Ahsoka, and Padme aren't questioning the whole point of the war more, especially since I just finished the arc that introduces Satine. The Republic was on the verge of ignoring Mandalore's sovereignty and doing a forced occupation. I'm slightly spoiled for future events, so I know there will be some arcs coming up that do deal with it, but I feel like the above characters should already be questioning.

[absnow54]

-Corporations don't like paying ANY taxes.

-If a corporation can get away with doing something shitty or illegal they will.

-Bureaucracy slows down any action.

-Leaders perceived to be "weak" are deposed and replaced by those who are deemed "stronger".

I get all these bullet points, and I understand how 3 and 4 fit into the plot, but I can't for the life of me understand the conflict between the Trade Federation and Naboo. Was Naboo a strategic trade post? Did the Trade Federation stop paying taxes on services passing through Naboo? Was Naboo trying to enforce that they pay? Did the Trade Federation decide that they weren't going to pay and decided to cut off all of Naboo's supplies until they signed a treaty saying they could do whatever they wanted? Or was the Trade Federation the one over taxing services to the point that Naboo was indebted to them and the Trade Federation was trying to collect and cutting off their resources until they did? I don't think either of my understandings are correct. Do you know of any articles that explain the mechanics, because I want to understand it. I just don't.

 

I'm similarly confused with the separatist movement. Did they just decide that the Republic had no idea what it was doing and was wasting everyone's time so they peaced out? Or was there a deeper central conflict that I was missing? My general gist of the prequels was "oh, they're doing it because Darth Sidious is telling them to.." but I never understood Sidious's actual master plan.

[SeanC]

My general gist of the prequels was "oh, they're doing it because Darth Sidious is telling them to.." but I never understood Sidious's actual master plan.

Palpatine's plan is actually fairly simple, I thought.  He manipulated the Trade Federation to provoke a political crisis that would depose the sitting chancellor and, by creating sympathy for Naboo, make him the new chancellor.  Then he again used the Trade Federation and other similar groups to start a civil war that he could in time crush and use as a means of consolidating his own power and making himself a dictator.

[absnow54]

That's the part I understood. I don't understand what the Trade Federation/separatist were getting out of it other than to be a patsy. What motivation did Sidious give them to start a political crisis and a civil war?

[SeanC]

That's the part I understood. I don't understand what the Trade Federation/separatist were getting out of it other than to be a patsy. What motivation did Sidious give them to start a political crisis and a civil war?

Profit, one assumes. It's not coincidental that all of the organizations have names like the "Trade Federation" and the "Banking Clan".

[absnow54]

Ah! I've always been so distracted by that heavily CGI'd scene in AOC where the various organizations introduce themselves that I never really put two and two together that the Separatist were made up of government sectors who dealt mostly with outer rim worlds. Wookiepedia does a pretty decent job explaining it. Basically Palpetine made sure that the Galactic Senate would screw over outer rim planets so they would get pissed off and leave, and with Sidious's influence, decide they should control the galaxy instead of the Republic. I feel so much better now!

Edited January 29, 2016 by absnow54

[VCRTracking]

And I'm not saying it couldn't have been done better either. We should have been shown the people of Naboo suffering and dying under the Trade Federation instead of just learning about it through "pompous bearded British guy" saying it very via hologram. Maybe Lucas wanted Episode I not to be too violent for kids(saving the intense stuff for III) but you don't even have to get very bloody. Just a quick montage back on Naboo of people being pushed around and mistreated by battle droids would have shown the urgency of Queen Amidala's mission and you would have understood her frustration at the Senate's seeming indifference. As flawed as The Force Awakens is, having the First Order murder a whole village in the beginning shows how bad these guys are.

Edited January 29, 2016 by VCRTracking

[benteen]

Cloak of Deception, a book from the old EU, served as a prequel to TPM and explains the whole "taxation of trade routes" thing and why the Supreme Chancellor is so ineffective.

 

Let me see if I can remember.  Spoilers for a 15-year-old book.  Terrorists and pirates were attacking the Trade Federation and raiding their stuff.  The Federation they appealed to the Senate to allow them to build up their armies.  Palpatine advised Supreme Chancellor Valorum to allow them to do so in exchange for trade route taxation, which would help the Outer Rim.

 

The Republic sent a task force of Jedi and Judicial officers to deal with the terrorists and were successful.  Newly elected Queen Amidala told Palpatine to vote for the taxation issue however he saw fit.  Palpatine lied to Valorum and said Amidala told him to vote against the measure.  The measure passed and it was supposed to be a great victory for Valorum.  But shortly thereafter, it was discovered that money stolen from the Trade Federation raids was given to a shipping company that Valorum’s family owned.  Valorum was greatly weakened by the scandal and Palpatine, under his guise of Darth Sidious, told the Trade Federation to retaliate against the Naboo, because their senator (obviously Palpatine) was the one who proposed that their trade routes be taxed.

 

As much as I love The Clone Wars, the politics were at times confusing as hell in it.  In AOTC, we see the Trade Federation, the Banking Clan and the other commerce guild take up arms with the Separatists.  But in the Clone Wars series, they all still have representation in the Galactic Senate.  Some of them are openly taking both sides, like the Banking Clan giving out loans to both the Republic and Separatists.  It’s hard to explain…it’s like their military forces went rogue but the governments that represented them stayed (officially) with the Republic.  That was one aspect of the show that never made any sense to me.

Edited January 29, 2016 by benteen

[VCRTracking]

Thanks for that Benteen. Reading it does make a lot of sense and I like the Machiavellan chess playing by Palpatine. I would love a "House of Cards" version of all that!

 

Yeah the stuff involving the Banking Clans on The Clone Wars show did get way too complicated. On Game of Thrones you have the "Iron Bank of Braavos" which acts independently in the War of the Five Kings happening in Westeros. The Lannisters owe them a large sum and the Bank loans money to Stannis Baratheon.

Edited January 29, 2016 by VCRTracking

[nobodyyoucare]

He was upset because while a new Jedi-counsel title was made, Chancellor's representative, Anakin was denied the rank of Jedi Master, which all Jedi-counsel members were.  I just thought it odd because Anakin hadn't even finished his training, he was still a Padawan, not even a Jedi knight yet, so how could he be a 'master?'

 

Was there ever any explanation for the 3 (at least) inconsistencies between the first and second trilogy?

 

1. how Leia 'remembered' her mother, 'as a feeling' even though Padme died the day she was born.  Or is Leia supposed to be talking about Mrs. Organa?  but Luke sure seems to think she's talking about their birth mother.

 

2.  How in the first trilogy, Yoda says "there is another" because Obi Wan apparently forgot Luke had a twin sister even though he was there are their birth.  Maybe we're supposed to think Obi Wan didn't know Leia had force powers?

 

3.  Why Luke had the last night Skywalker, when he was supposed to be a secret from Darth Vadar.  Leia got a new last name, why not Luke?  Why not just really adopt Luke as a son, instead of keeping him as a 'nephew?'

 

Frankly, part of me still believes that Anakin can never really be redeemed because those that murder children should always go to  a special hell.  Depending on what exactly Kylo Ren did, he may be in the same boat, imo.

In regards to number 1 Jedi can see glimpses of the past or future. So Leia was just having flashes of the past.

 

2. Leia was untrained. Also there were several other people including Jedis who had survived along with other force sensitives. Yoda was stating that Luke was not only the force user.

 

3. Skywalker could be a common name. Anakin hated that planet. Why would he think he had a child there on an outer rim planet not in Imperial space? Now after the destruction of the Death Star and the time till the Battle of Hoth, Vader would have learned the name of the rebel credited, done some digging, then had spies etc confirm say by DNA that Luke was his son. When you look at this his actions at the Battle of Hoth make sense he wanted Skywalker to escape that way he could take Luke and not hand him over to the Emperor right away. Learning that the Emperor had lied Vader was planning to kill the Emperor and have Luke at his side. 

[Watcher0363]

What is truly a shame is how much of the old EU has been totally erased. Part of the problem for many is grasping just how big a galaxy is. And also how large parts of it are still unexplored. The fact that it could take 100's of years to reach certain areas. In the old EU it was hinted at how long it took for an evading army to start attacking farthest planets know to the Republic. Also it put forth that the Emperor may have for seen the evading force and that is why he set things in motion for an army.

[nobodyyoucare]

 

Some of them are openly taking both sides, like the Banking Clan giving out loans to both the Republic and Separatists.  It’s hard to explain…it’s like their military forces went rogue but the governments that represented them stayed (officially) with the Republic

Simple Banking Clan was officially neutral but several leaders were not neutral and sided with the Sept. Look up human history and you see that often happening where a country was neutral but a portion of the leadership openly supported a side and even had their military fight while still being neutral. 

[Zuleikha]

The Republic sent a task force of Jedi and Judicial officers to deal with the terrorists and were successful.  Newly elected Queen Amidala told Palpatine to vote for the taxation issue however he saw fit.  Palpatine lied to Valorum and said Amidala told him to vote against the measure.

Yeah, all of that is simply not clear enough in the movie. I think this is a general problem with the Star Wars movies--Lucas seems to do a lot of supplementary worldbuilding but then he forgets that the people watching the movies only know the information he tells them. 

 

Although even seeing the explanation, I still don't understand why the Trade Federation would listen to Darth Sidious and invade Naboo. Why would they care about revenge against Naboo for a Republic-wide decision? It's not like it was Naboo's fault that Valorum embezzeled money. Had the Naboo invasion been successful, what was the Trade Federation's end game? 

 

I also think the prequel movies (and at least the early seasons of Clone Wars) suffer from taking a very gray conflict with no clear right/wrong and framing it as the Jedis are right and the Separatists are wrong. It feels like Lucas didn't trust his audience to be okay with a morally ambiguous story, but that's part of how everything ends up muddy. 

[Ravenya003]

The one thing I couldn't believe was that Lucas actually had Padme die in such a weak way.  Died of a broken heart...that's the way you kill off a strong female character?  Absolutely embarrassing and it made her look terrible that she didn't care enough about her kids to live for them.

 

 

This reminds me of the skit Robot Chicken did on this exact subject, with a droid doctor floating in as Padme was on her death bed and yelling: "She's lost the will to live?? What is your degree in, POETRY?? You sorry bunch of hippies, for goodness sake, don't use the billions of dollars of medical equipment around us!" 

 

Of all the things the prequels got wrong, I honestly think it was the weird retcon surrounding Padme's death/her relationship with Leia that ticked me off the most, if only because I've always loved the beautiful scene in which Leia/Luke discuss their mother. Even acknowledging that an off-screen death would have been a bit anticlimactic, I still would have preferred the original plan of Padme disguising herself, hiding on Alderaan and dying a few years later.  

[Bill1978]

My nitpick that I will never forgive or let go of is that John Williams didn't use the Luke & Leia theme from ROTJ when the twins were being delivered in ROTS. Instead it was some random 'cheery' kid melody reminisncent of Harry Potter. I know there are plenty of bigger issues with the Prequels, but that is the one that grates on my nerve the most.

[benteen]

Yeah, all of that is simply not clear enough in the movie. I think this is a general problem with the Star Wars movies--Lucas seems to do a lot of supplementary worldbuilding but then he forgets that the people watching the movies only know the information he tells them. 

 

Although even seeing the explanation, I still don't understand why the Trade Federation would listen to Darth Sidious and invade Naboo. Why would they care about revenge against Naboo for a Republic-wide decision? It's not like it was Naboo's fault that Valorum embezzeled money. Had the Naboo invasion been successful, what was the Trade Federation's end game? 

 

I also think the prequel movies (and at least the early seasons of Clone Wars) suffer from taking a very gray conflict with no clear right/wrong and framing it as the Jedis are right and the Separatists are wrong. It feels like Lucas didn't trust his audience to be okay with a morally ambiguous story, but that's part of how everything ends up muddy. 

 

 

Valorum wasn't the one who embezzled the money.  Palpatine arranged for the money to go to his family's company, thus creating the "manufactured scandal" that surrounds him (that line about the manufactured scandal was deleted from the TPM script).  I think the Trade Federation wanted to strike at Valorum but Palpatine as Sidious convinced them not to do it and instead to strike at the home of the senator who proposed the taxation, leading to his eventual rise as Supreme Chancellor.

 

You are absolutely right that GL did not explain the situation at all.  We know that civil war is on the verge of breaking out at the beginning of AOTC but we don't get the reason why this is happening.  We don't know how Dooku became the voice of the dissent.  Yes, we know Palpatine is manipulating everything but still...how can the Separatists complain about corruption in the Republic when they joined forced with that very same corruption, ie the Trade and Commerce Guilds?  Even the line in the Revenge of the Sith opening crawl saying "their are heroes on both sides" doesn't make sense.  All we ever see of the Separatists is that they are evil, slimy bastards.  The Clone Wars series did a better job in that regard showing that ambiguity in the conflict.

[Captain Carrot]

It's just a rumor, but this here's some possible good news for fans of the EU.

http://screenrant.com/star-wars-rebels-admiral-thrawn-expanded-universe/

 

Personally, I don't mind that the EU is non-canon now. (As long as Disney does cherry pick from it). We tend to remember the good parts, but there was a lot of hack writing in the EU.

[Joe]

Interesting. Pity it's Rebels. I tried, but I just can't get into it. It's like they looked at the worst aspects of The Clone Wars and decided that was the right path. But then they started bringing all the old TCW characters back, which seems to speak of a lack of faith in what they've created.

 

On another note, it's interesting seeing the large Heir to the Empire cover. I've never looked at it in that size before. Luke and Han's faces are seriously off.

[benteen]

Interesting about Thrawn if it's true.  He might work well there.

 

I do know that one of the storylines they were considering for a later season of The Clone Wars was to have an appearance by the Yuuzhan Vong.  They even did some concept art for a Vong and a Vong scout ship.

[VCRTracking]

I like Rebels a lot. I especially love Hera. She's awesome.

[Morrigan2575]

I like Rebels, they seemed to have found their groove in S2.

Would be cool to see Admiral Thrawn, loved the Timothy Zahn trilogy

[Watcher0363]

I like Rebels, they seemed to have found their groove in S2.

Would be cool to see Admiral Thrawn, loved the Timothy Zahn trilogy

I loved that trilogy also. Mara Jade quickly became one of my favorite female sci fi characters. Thanks to Zahn. I do not see any female characters in this Disney era rising to the level of Mara Jade. All I can say is, damn that family of internecining Skywalkers.

[absnow54]

Benicio Del Toro, Laura Dern, and Kelly Marie Tran announced for Episode VIII.

[JessePinkman]

YAY for more people of color, and women at that!

 

WHY MUST WE WAIT TWO YEARS? This torture.

 

eta: my spoiler cut isn't working so I'll take my comments to the Episode VII thread.

Edited February 15, 2016 by JessePinkman

[Watcher0363]

Laura Dern intrigues me. Could she be the new Mara Jade? Rey's mom? Luke's Baby Mama?

[JessePinkman]

My biggest takeaway from this clip showing the start of production of Episode VIII is that Luke's hair looks so bouncy and healthy, I'm envious.

 

Okay, I have more thoughts, I like that it looks like we're picking up from that moment, no time jumps. I love cliffhangers that return to the cliff.

 

Do you think the film might open on the island as opposed to space? That would be a change of pace that I'd be totally down for.

 

Also I hope by the time they get going on IX that they've replaced that hack Colin Trevorrow and just have Rian Johnson do both because he's the man.

[VCRTracking]

Episode VIII looks like it'll be the first Star Wars movie that picks up right after the previous one ended, even recreating the final shot of The Force Awakens. Usually there's a time jump between movies(not counting the obvious 30 year one between ROTJ and TFA) of at least a year.

[benteen]

I love getting Star Wars movie news!

 

Del Toro has been linked to the role for months and I'd been hearing rumors that two new female characters would be in the movie although Laura Dern's casting is a (pleasant) surprise.

[benteen]

Rian will be writing Episode 9 and co-producing it so he'll still be very much involved in it.