Star Wars Universe Thread

[Deadpulse]

1 hour ago, Outpost31 said:

Two episodes in on Rebels and not a fan.  Disliked Clone Wars at the same point, so I’m gonna try powering through.  Really just want to get the background and basics of characters for their inevitable introduction on The Mandalorian.  
 

Dislike who I think is main character Ezra. 

Ezra is kinda lame, but he gets better. The show starts getting good around episode.... 5 or 6 I want to say. Especially when the stakes start getting higher. 

[JBURGE]

12 hours ago, Outpost31 said:

Two episodes in on Rebels and not a fan.  Disliked Clone Wars at the same point, so I’m gonna try powering through.  Really just want to get the background and basics of characters for their inevitable introduction on The Mandalorian.  
 

Dislike who I think is main character Ezra. 

I watched the first 2 seasons I think? Honestly didn't love it. 

Still haven't seen Solo. I just can't bring myself to

[naptownskinsfan]

19 minutes ago, JBURGE said:

I watched the first 2 seasons I think? Honestly didn't love it. 

Still haven't seen Solo. I just can't bring myself to

I came into Rogue One and Solo wanting to hate them, but I came out pleasantly surprised.  Rogue One was very good, Solo was a fun ride, like a B action flick.  

[JBURGE]

10 minutes ago, naptownskinsfan said:

30 minutes ago, JBURGE said:

I watched the first 2 seasons I think? Honestly didn't love it. 

Still haven't seen Solo. I just can't bring myself to

I came into Rogue One and Solo wanting to hate them, but I came out pleasantly surprised.  Rogue One was very good, Solo was a fun ride, like a B action flick.  

I liked Rogue One a lot! My favourite Disney Star Wars flick

I'll go in to Taika's moving expecting so much, I expect that to be my favourite. I hope they deliver

Edited May 25, 2020 by JBURGE

[naptownskinsfan]

2 minutes ago, JBURGE said:

I liked Rogue One a lot! My favourite Disney Star Wars flick

I'll go in to Taika's moving expecting so much, I expect that to be my favourite. I hope they deliver

Rogue One is also my favorite Star Wars Disney movie.  

I went into it hating it, because I played Dark Forces religiously as a kid.  I had gotten the Death Star plans probably 20 times over in the opening level, and played some other games where the "other" part of the plans were acquired.  But they ended up doing a fantastic job with working it all out, and I loved all of the cameos including Red and Gold Leader and Red Five.  

So I went into Solo feeling the same way, knowing that they were going to change how Han acquired the Falcon, changing the Kessel run and not including his cousin Thracken Sal-Solo, who was an antagonist over parts of the EU.  And yet again, I was pleasantly surprised by Solo.  

[THE DUKE]

Solo was a lot of fun, even on the rewatch. After all the crap Ansel whateverhisnameis got during production, I thought he did a great job carrying the movie and making the character his own a bit without butchering what Ford had built.  Worst part of that movie was Lando and his droid love.  Donald Glover did what he could, but that part was so terribly written. 

[THE DUKE]

21 hours ago, Deadpulse said:

Ezra is kinda lame, but he gets better. The show starts getting good around episode.... 5 or 6 I want to say. Especially when the stakes start getting higher. 

Mid season 1 it starts picking up. I'm on mid season 3 now and the filler episodes are hit or miss but the main storyline has been solid.  I'd say more consistent than Clone Wars outside of season 7.

Edited May 26, 2020 by THE DUKE

[naptownskinsfan]

3 minutes ago, THE DUKE said:

Solo was a lot of fun, even on the rewatch. After all the crap Ansel whateverhisnameis got during production, I thought he did a great job carrying the movie and making the character his own a bit without butchering what Ford had built.  Worst part of that movie was Lando and his droid love.  Donald Glover did what he could, but that part was so terribly written. 

Agreed 110%.  It was just foolishly shoe-horned in there and changed a backstory to a character they had no business touching.  Not even having Billy Dee on set helping out was going to save that.  

[naptownskinsfan]

One thing that has always bothered me about The Rise of Skywalker is how The Senate was able to build and hide that kind of fleet with no one knowing about it.  I'm still on the fence about crewing all of them- the First Order couldn't have kidnapped that many kids and they didn't even know about the Final Order- so the Final Order had to do that further into the Unknown Regions.  

The theory that the temple on Exegol is a buried Star Forge is something I could buy for at least building the fleet.  Now for crewing the ship, I'm waiting for clones or the Katana fleet "slave circuitry" so they could be crewed by less people.  My guess would be cloning for most of it.  

[Deadpulse]

32 minutes ago, naptownskinsfan said:

One thing that has always bothered me about The Rise of Skywalker is how The Senate was able to build and hide that kind of fleet with no one knowing about it.  I'm still on the fence about crewing all of them- the First Order couldn't have kidnapped that many kids and they didn't even know about the Final Order- so the Final Order had to do that further into the Unknown Regions.  

The theory that the temple on Exegol is a buried Star Forge is something I could buy for at least building the fleet.  Now for crewing the ship, I'm waiting for clones or the Katana fleet "slave circuitry" so they could be crewed by less people.  My guess would be cloning for most of it.  

considering all the clones of Sids himself, you gotta imagine he was heavy handed in that for the fleet as well. 

[MacReady]

I’m not gonna lie, the Lando and robot love angle was so weird, so wrong, so dumb, so gross, so creepy, so ill conceived and just 100% the worst thing in Star Wars ever.  I just ignored it.

[naptownskinsfan]

8 hours ago, Deadpulse said:

considering all the clones of Sids himself, you gotta imagine he was heavy handed in that for the fleet as well. 

Yep it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.  I'd still like to hear the current in-universe explanation.  Natural clones, or did he use the Dark Side or other methods to grow them quickly?  Gotta admit, the Star Forge idea is great, and gives them yet another bridge back to KOTOR.  Revan was a platoon name in Rise of Skywalker, and the Crusader pendant was in Luke's hutt in The Last Jedi and of course, there was the Darth Nihilus carving in the Exegol temple.  

[naptownskinsfan]

5 minutes ago, Outpost31 said:

I’m not gonna lie, the Lando and robot love angle was so weird, so wrong, so dumb, so gross, so creepy, so ill conceived and just 100% the worst thing in Star Wars ever.  I just ignored it.

Yep, just let it go right on by if you are watching it for the first time. 

[THE DUKE]

8 hours ago, Outpost31 said:

I’m not gonna lie, the Lando and robot love angle was so weird, so wrong, so dumb, so gross, so creepy, so ill conceived and just 100% the worst thing in Star Wars ever.  I just ignored it.

 

It all comes full circle

[THE DUKE]

I got through Rebels, and I have to say, I get all the hype behind Dave Filoni now.  They need to just let him become the Kevin Feige of all the Star Wars properties.  Rebels had some issues in seasons 1-3 but was always building the story, and I think Rebels season 4 was about as good as anything released since the original trilogy.  It was a lot like Rogue One, but with character development.  I'll go into a few more specifics in the spoiler section below.

 

• STAKES!  I love a show with stakes and while it's a sad moment, I love that they were willing to kill Kanan, and even when they opened the loop hole to possibly save him, they kept it closed because of what it would cost.
• Given that there was 5 years between Clone Wars seasons 6 and 7, I feel fairly confident that they are going to return to Rebels at some point in the search for Ezra.  We know Sabine doesn't even begin to look until after the events of Return of the Jedi and there is a long gap in the Disney canon between that and the start of Force Awakens, so there is a lot of room to play around with story wise there.
• The long term story writing for Kallus was excellent.  He starts the series as a loyal Imperial Agent and it takes over half the series for him to see what the empire is doing and eventually turn.  I thought he was a little under utilized in season 4, but there was a lot of characters to juggle and it correctly stayed centered around the primary crew of the Ghost.
• I liked how they incorporated some things from Clone Wars.  Hondu, Maul, Obi-Wan's single episode appearance (more on that in the next point), but what I liked most was the continued story of Rex. They even established in the last episode that he was part of the battle of Endor too (along with Hera), and his relationship with the few remaining clones was as good as ever.  The origin story for Wedge and his recruitment into the rebellion was a nice touch.
• For such a paper tiger Maul really was in Phantom Menace, Clone Wars and Rebels really did a great job fleshing out that character.  When he finally dies at the hands of Obi-Wan it's almost poetic.  Obi-Wan didn't even want to kill him and even gave him comfort at the end because he know all the things Maul has been through.  Had Maul not been hell bent on killing Obi-Wan, i'm not even sure if they would have fought then, which seems very much in character with who Obi-Wan is by the time we meet him in A New Hope.
• Hera was a well developed character from start to finish.  I'll be shocked if that's the last we see of her.  Tacking the kid on at the end of season 4 seemed a bit off from her story with Kanan was developed over the seasons, but everything else was handled superbly.
• Villains were a bit up and down throughout the series. Kallus was the main one in season one but at that point in time the show was still a little too geared towards younger kids so he seemed more comicly inept at first before they beefed up the character later on.  In inquisitors were some good villains, but they went away after season 2.  Their absolute terror of Vader was also well done though, and I was a bit surprised they used Vader in this series, but it was done to good affect.  It was a little weird that Vader fell off the map after season 2, but I guess he had other things to deal with.  Thrawn was a good villain, although the show kept piping up vague reasons why he had to leave.  I know Thrawn is a favorite amongst the book fans of the now "legends" expanded universe, so i'm curious how different the character is from books to Rebels.  It definitely seemed like he was "held back" a bit for as ruthless as he was supposed to be.  Governor Price was generally bad, but they at least acknowledged it by Thrawn talking about expecting her to fail.  I would have loved to seen this series a little less restrained that you get from it being animated.  Season 4 let the storylines be a little edgier, which is why it was clearly the best season of the series, but it could have gone a little farther.
• Zeb was a good supporting character and they gave him a few solid storylines, the best probably being the redemption of Kallus, but of all the main 5 characters, he really was a supporting character in a way the other 4 weren't.  The muscle really.
• Kanan was a very well developed character, but they made him a little too refined for a jedi apprentice who fled at Order 66 which was supposed to be 14 years after revenge of the sith.  He couldn't have been more than a teenager then, which would allow him to be pretty well trained, but he also seems to understand the force quite a bit for someone that young.  It was a very good mentor role though, and he had his own storyline in terms of how he survived after Order 66 and his love for Hera.  He didn't seem too concerned about that being a jedi no-no for all his talk about the ways of the jedi and the force throughout the series.
• Riffing off the last point, this series went pretty deep into the way of the force and how the Jedi of old used it and expanded upon its history.  I did enjoy that quite a bit.
• Don't want to go too much into Ezra now, as he is really the main character of the show, and this post has rambled long enough.

Summing up, if you are a Star Wars fan and don't mind animation, definitely give Rebels a shot.  Especially if you can binge it, because there are several long term story arcs that went together nicely.  There are going to be some growing pains and some juvenile spots early on, but it really comes together.  By season 3, even the filler/character development episodes are pretty good and the main storyline is pretty strong throughout the entire series.

Edited May 29, 2020 by THE DUKE