The Big Picture: Stars, Worn

omega 616

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Without sounding like a troll, am I the only one (shaddap!) who is just "meh" about star wars? I remember thinking "what films have loads of love but I haven't seen" and obviously star wars was one, I sat down and watched, in order, all of them and was left very underwhelmed.

The happened with Indiana Jones and then lord of the rings, they are all HUGE franchises and they don't do a thing for me.

Though I guess star wars was ruined for me, as I just naturally picked up that darth vader was Anakin Skywalker and he was actually Luke's farther but the only thing I like about them was Maul and he seems kind of hated, I also didn't mind Jaja but I know how much everybody loves him!
 

Arnoxthe1

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unacomn said:
If Kyle Katarn isn't in this movie, it will fail! Give us the bearded wonder!


He doesn't even need to make a full appearance but even an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of him would make my day.
 

Caostotale

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Sheo_Dagana said:
I'm not terribly interested in a new set of Star Wars movies, but it was pretty inevitable. I'm all for the original cast being in the movie, but yeah, cameos would be best. The ironic part about 'giving fans what they want' is that if they REALLY wanted to give Star Wars fans what they wanted they would just adapt the Thrawn trilogy into the new movie trilogy, but the prequels shit all over a lot of the extended universe anyway so I lost all hope where that was concerned a long time ago.
Though I think I enjoyed those while I was reading them, I didn't come away feeling like Zahn's books were even close to Episodes VII, VIII, and IX material. For one, the new characters in those books were simply awful. I don't remember much about the new villain Admiral Thrawn, except that he had blue skin and could somehow look at a civilization's great works of art and immediately discern the tactical weaknesses of said civilization's space military (i.e. yeah sure, okay...I guess artists and military strategists are two sides of the same coin). The insane Jedi clone was similarly tiresome and cartoonish, as was Luke's new foe/friend Mara Jade (especially when she would reiterate her promise to kill Luke again and again...).

Secondly, if I recall, none of the three Zahn books seem to end with much along the lines of a cliffhanger or series low-point. At the end of each book, the good guys get lucky at the points when all hope is lost, to the point where each book has the arc of an Inspector Gadget episode (with Thrawn flying off waving his fist like Dr. Claw).

What ultimately turned me off of the Expanded Universe was an idea that it wasn't 'expanded' at all. Even dozens of years after the Battle of Endor, the books were STILL piling on new adventures with the same half-dozen characters, none of whom could ever possibly be killed off (i.e. due to iron-clad rules by Lucasarts) and replaced by newer, younger characters. In some of the books, you could almost tell that the writers were struggling to work within these limitations, desperately squeezing the same old characters dry, only being able to kill off the EU characters (basically all red-shirts by default).

Time will tell how things will turn out but after seeing Star Trek: Into Darkness I have a feeling that Abrams will get too lost in the 'nostalgia' and fail to make an interesting movie. I just hope we won't have to see any way-to-choreographed, over-the-top lightsaber battles that we saw in the prequels.
I feel like that's an area where Abrams and co. will probably do a solid job. I didn't like the Star Trek reboots, but the one-on-one fight scenes in those films seemed to work pretty well. Even so, who knows what's going to happen. I'm assuming the studio will push to have more lightsaber acrobatics.
 

TallanKhan

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unacomn said:
If Kyle Katarn isn't in this movie, it will fail! Give us the bearded wonder!
Funny you should say that, I was having a discussion with a colleague of mine just this morning about the new Star Wars movies and whether any of the characters who have appeared in the video games might show up. We ended up having a 20 minute "wouldn't Michael Fassbender make a great Kyle Katarn?" conversation. I don't think he should be a main character but it would be kind of fun for him to show up.
 

ramela

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In regards to killing of one of the original cast, Han Solo is the obvious frontrunner due to Ford's dislike of the character. For the purposes of narrative, it might be Luke that gets it, though.

The fact that he either is or at least should be near-omnipotent as a Jedi Master is kind of a problem in terms of creating meaningful conflict for the movie plots.

I just hope that the bad guys are something different than Sith/Dark Jedi this time. I'd even take Ssi'Ruuk (or whatever they were called) over another Sith bad guy.
 

Kyrian007

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immortalfrieza said:
Kyrian007 said:
I'd say that there's plenty of room in there for both the new movies and the EU if Disney bothered to put some effort into it, at least taking cue from it as to what works and doesn't.
I really think that's exactly part of my problem with the idea of using the EU in further episodes. I don't really trust Disney (or anyone they'd hire) to put as much effort into researching and developing the EU as the fans of the EU would require. I don't want to step on anybody's favorites here, this is just my opinion: but I wouldn't mind a movie screwing up "The Black Fleet Crisis," but what if Disney thought Shia Lebeouf was "perfect" for Kyp Durron? That would bug me a little.

I just don't know if it's worth it. Almost nothing would actually please hardcore EU fans (myself included there.) And it's such a small bunch compared to A: more "casual" Star Wars fans, and B: people who may be new to the whole thing, that I'm not sure I'd blame Disney for not going with EU material.

Either way in the end I'll judge Episode VII (and beyond) on it's own merits.
 

immortalfrieza

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Kyrian007 said:
immortalfrieza said:
Kyrian007 said:
I'd say that there's plenty of room in there for both the new movies and the EU if Disney bothered to put some effort into it, at least taking cue from it as to what works and doesn't.
I really think that's exactly part of my problem with the idea of using the EU in further episodes. I don't really trust Disney (or anyone they'd hire) to put as much effort into researching and developing the EU as the fans of the EU would require. I don't want to step on anybody's favorites here, this is just my opinion: but I wouldn't mind a movie screwing up "The Black Fleet Crisis," but what if Disney thought Shia Lebeouf was "perfect" for Kyp Durron? That would bug me a little.

I just don't know if it's worth it. Almost nothing would actually please hardcore EU fans (myself included there.) And it's such a small bunch compared to A: more "casual" Star Wars fans, and B: people who may be new to the whole thing, that I'm not sure I'd blame Disney for not going with EU material.

Either way in the end I'll judge Episode VII (and beyond) on it's own merits.
Personally I'd rather the EU be butchered over it being rendered for all intents and purposes nonexistent. If they use the EU and do well, that's great, if they butcher it, we've still got the original EU materials, if they don't use it at all it means that the entire EU will be ignored in favor of whatever continuity they throw in there instead. The former means the EU continues to exist and be added to, the latter means it dies.
 

Malisteen

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Our generation's complete refusal to accept or even face the realities of time and aging is just creepy and pathetic, and it will continue to rot everything touched by it.
 

demalo

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Two possible story routes - Time Travel or Jealous Robots

1. Time Travel - Luke sends a strong Force Projection into the past to change the future.

2. Jealous Robots - There is an AI in the Star Wars universe that cannot use the force and is desperate to understand and control it to become more human.

I have a feeling these three are just going to be 'Look at all these cool force things and light saber duals we can do now that we have money to throw at the screen.' We should be getting a Game of Galactic Thrones, we'll end up with a ridiculous Star Twilight...
 

Therumancer

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All I can say is that I think they are making the right choice if they want to at least have the old cast star for the first movie of the new trilogy. I think there is a lot of stuff to wrap up there to do a transition right. What's more I've honestly been concerned about the new trilogy being too kiddified, which was half of my problem with the prequel series, especially the first one where Anakin is a little kid running around. That kind of formula (children as heroes) is something Disney has made a lot of money from in the past, and is something George Lucas infamously cashed in on. It doesn't surprise me that they wanted to do something similar original, using the "EU" versions of children of the original heroes running around doing the hero thing. Something which the universe technically allows given how young padawans apparently start training when things go as intended, but at the same time I have no desire to see movies where I'm watching 12 year olds beat up adults, though I'd imagine among 12 year olds (I was that age once myself) there is a market for that kind of thing. I'd prefer they keep this more or less a work of serious space fantasy, with a largely adult cast. Thankfully the original actors are old enough now for their in-character children to believably be at least young adults, which is hopefully the direction they will wind up going in.

To be honest I like a lot of JJ's work, but I did not care for his work on "Star Trek" at all as I've said, and honestly that makes me concerned for his work on "Star Wars" as I don't think he's a director that really plays well with existing universes where he is a guest. He's someone who should largely be confined to his own creations, which are usually more "hits" than "misses" in my opinion, though he does need to work on being able to wrap things up in a satisfying fashion...
 

Therumancer

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demalo said:
Two possible story routes - Time Travel or Jealous Robots

1. Time Travel - Luke sends a strong Force Projection into the past to change the future.

2. Jealous Robots - There is an AI in the Star Wars universe that cannot use the force and is desperate to understand and control it to become more human.

I have a feeling these three are just going to be 'Look at all these cool force things and light saber duals we can do now that we have money to throw at the screen.' We should be getting a Game of Galactic Thrones, we'll end up with a ridiculous Star Twilight...
Well, actually I'm hoping "Game Of Thrones In Space" isn't what we get, that show has it's own appeal, but is kind of low on action, and "Star Wars" has always been about the action and space swashbuckling. What's more the heroes in Star Wars are *HEROES* in a very real sense, where the point of something like "Game Of Thrones" is that there really aren't any and things tend not to wind up going that way, on some levels subverting the expectations that come from something like "Star Wars".

That said, as I've mentioned before, if they want to keep the ideas inherent in the prophecy/destiny guiding the entire thing it's ultimately going to come down to a battle over free will, and to prevent a new cycle of darkness, it will probably involve having to seal "The Force" away. But that's a big rant that I've gone into before, but won't go into here.
 

GrimHeaper

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Zhukov said:
I will enjoy it waaaaay too much if they kill off Han.

The resulting ocean of tears would be glorious in that particular I'm-not-into-this-thing-and-can-therefore-view-the-passion-of-its=fans-with-utter-detachment kind of way.

Oh, I can just hear it now, "Bu... bu... but that's not... that's not what happened in the extended universe!"
Extended universe has Palpatine living and Luke having the power to nuke planets by himself.
Of course the movies won't measure up.
 

Don Reba

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Can I have my Deep Space 9 with the original cast back, please? It would be much appreciated.
 

nitrium oxide

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I wouldn't be surprised if Abrams uses his usual "parallel universe" thing so he can just reinvent everything (with added lens flare) but still shoehorn familiar faces into the proceedings. He was imo the worst possible choice to direct these films.