[QUOTE=ChrisIII;5752733]BTW even after Disney bought SW they didn't really fully shift the EU around until Fall 2014[/QUOTE]
I feel like I have so much to catch up on. But it's been a lot of fun, really digging into this universe again after being ambivalent to it for so long. And my thanks to you good folks for filling in the blanks for me too. :D
Seems like Filoni and Fav are pretty popular, yes? Everyone seems to like their contributions to the franchise?
[QUOTE=Ascended;5752991]I feel like I have so much to catch up on. But it's been a lot of fun, really digging into this universe again after being ambivalent to it for so long. And my thanks to you good folks for filling in the blanks for me too. :D
Seems like Filoni and Fav are pretty popular, yes? Everyone seems to like their contributions to the franchise?[/QUOTE]
Favreau’s first forays into the franchise were as a voice actor in The Clone Wars, playing a nice sub-villain named Pre Viszla, while his first contributions as a producer was The Mandalorian, so his credit is *good* with the fanbase. In general, he’s unimpeachable among Star Wars fans.
Filoni has a more prolific Star Wars career, since he was Lucas’s #2 when making The Clone Wars, then was handed Rebels when Disney bought out the franchise, and now The Mandalorian and it’s spin-offs. His reputation wasn’t always great, but was usually positive, and has only rapidly improved - both TCW and Rebels saw marked improvement as time went on, he’s clearly got a great chemistry with Favreau, and even his latest stuff like Bad Batch is a hit.
Really, only Resistance didn’t find an audience… and he wasn’t hands on with that at all, and was popular enough that people kind of excused it from his “stats.”
Both dudes have become popular enough they might even be receiving “unintended accolades” - that Luke scene in The Mandalorian has been taken as a salvation of the character by critics of TLJ, and thus Filoni’s later-revealed new placement in LFL as the highest ranking story-dude has gone over very well.
Wasn't Filoni one of the people who pitched Luke as a hermit in the first place? Kind of compared him to post-Mt.Doom Frodo, although Frodo was always not quite happy with his situation during it, whereas Luke has a sense of optimism during most of the OT; and Frodo had no more enemies to fight whereas the First Order was a pretty big deal.
I'm not against the idea of Luke becoming a hermit at some point. Plays nicely with Yoda and Obi-Wan's time in exile. I just want Luke to accomplish something beforehand, not just fail his nephew and immediately give up on the thing he spent his whole adult life working towards.
I filed the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy the same place I put the Joel Schumacher Batman Films and Superman Returns
"I try to forget they happened"
If that Jigsaw puppet kidnapped me, put me in a "game" and said the only way I could get out would be to name one good thing about that Trilogy...I'd be dead.
[QUOTE=Godzilla2099;5755392]I filed the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy the same place I put the Joel Schumacher Batman Films and Superman Returns
"I try to forget they happened"
If that Jigsaw puppet kidnapped me, put me in a "game" and said the only way I could get out would be to name one good thing about that Trilogy...I'd be dead.[/QUOTE]
The return of Yoda as a puppet and the conversation he had with Luke was pretty good...so I atleast could survive off of that.
The scene where the Rebel ship goes lightspeed and rips through the star destroyer was really well done. I'm not talking about the quality of the story, but that scene looked real damn pretty.
Luke's final battle is pretty badass if you ignore the story around it.
[QUOTE=Ascended;5755382]I'm not against the idea of Luke becoming a hermit at some point. Plays nicely with Yoda and Obi-Wan's time in exile. I just want Luke to accomplish something beforehand, not just fail his nephew and immediately give up on the thing he spent his whole adult life working towards.[/QUOTE]
That was the main problem I had with where TLJ took his story arc. The Force Awakens suggested he went into exile to serve a strong purpose, something required in order to help stop what he helped create. Instead it just turned out he gave up and went there to die. That was where they screwed up. The simple idea of him going into seclusion though, while not an absolutely necessary direction, always tied nicely to his own two teachers and what they had to do as you say. They just fudged up the motivation royally.
His reluctance to teach Rey could still have been utilized even with Luke not having given up and having some sort of plan. The fear of a new apprentice, and the thought that he could achieve his goals without having to put her in danger. Essentially not wanting to have to burden her with being sent out to the front line in his stead the way he was the lone weapon sent out against Vader and The Emperor all those years ago. Give some depth that while he was willing to do it, while he's still proud to have done it, that he understands in his older age the massive weight that was and not wanting to put it on someone else. Then you could have had the talk with Yoda the where the discussion lies on his hesitancies on those grounds. As opposed to it having to be a talk about not giving up and moving forward entirely.
While I’m always going to be someone who instinctually rolls his eyes at just about [I]anyone[/I]( except Lucas*) thinking that Luke should be the Frodo-like character without a new family (which feels like a completely [B]pretentious[/B] limitation for most of the creators who want to impose it), or who thinks that Rey shouldn’t have been a Skywalker (the reason given always comes off as unnecessary or hypocritical bull-honkey to me)… hermit Luke felt like a good idea to me with two caveats - he would have a good reason to be in exile, and he would then train Rey on screen.
The motivation was important, and to me, not that difficult to construct, so long as someone remembered this was Luke Skywalker and that the Galaxy had lost billions of people - I can accept a Luke who is terrified of being a Jedi for the situation because he thinks he screwed up, but I can’t accept a Luke who literally wants to do nothing and is completely, selfishly consumed by a pity party. It… honestly makes him a loathsome jackass. Even a completely broken Luke would try and be a medic or something.
Training Rey on screen, though, felt to me like it was the [B][U]only[/U][/B] reason Luke should even be on screen in the ST - he fulfilled his duty as a main protagonist, and now Rey was the main protagonist, and if there weren’t going to be any other established Jedi in the ST, than it could only be justified by combining Luke’s final “charge” from ROTJ (refounding the Order) with passing the torch to Rey an serving as her supporting character. When Johnson dumped that idea, he screwed over Rey and the larger ST more than anything else - even Luke at least gets the OT, while Rey’s stuck having lost the entire second part of her story and playing background noise to Luke’s pity party, or arm candy for Kylo Ren (who [B]rocks[/B] as a villain to hate… but [B]sucks[/B] as any kind fo male lead.)
Giving him successful students feels imperative to at least justify the time they wasted with him in the ST, and to potentially take pressure off Rey.
*Lucas only kind of gets a pass because I know he saw some of himself in Luke… and I still feel Lucas the businessman accepted a married Luke in the Legends EU because he knew it was $$$, even as Lucas the creator could stubbornly ignore it.
I'm not against the idea of Luke remaining single....as long as it's not because of the old Jedi code.
I'd prefer he get with Mara Jade, or get with a new male character (yes, I know). But if Luke is single his whole life because a relationship never came along, that's fine with me too. But I really don't believe that Luke would support or follow the old Jedi code of celibacy, especially knowing that Anakin's secret marriage to Padme was a huge factor in Anakin's fall to the dark side. Luke is supposed to build a new, better Jedi order, not just re-create the same one with the same flaws.
[QUOTE=Ascended;5758156]I'm not against the idea of Luke remaining single....as long as it's not because of the old Jedi code.
I'd prefer he get with Mara Jade, or get with a new male character (yes, I know). But if Luke is single his whole life because a relationship never came along, that's fine with me too. But I really don't believe that Luke would support or follow the old Jedi code of celibacy, especially knowing that Anakin's secret marriage to Padme was a huge factor in Anakin's fall to the dark side. Luke is supposed to build a new, better Jedi order, not just re-create the same one with the same flaws.[/QUOTE]
I remember there wa style fascinating period where you could tell the LFL novel groups were interested in tackling the idea back in Legends.
A New Jedi Order book had Luke debate the lack fo a celibacy rule with a surviving Old Jedi Order member, where if I remember correctly, they both wound up tacitly agreeing the emotional issues weren’t as big of a conundrum as the kind of “political” aspects of it - divided loyalties, de facto “dynasties,” etc.
The book left admitting there were issues with both sides, but it was notable that while the LFL books started becoming kind of [I]obnoxious[/I] in how much they tried to stick Prequel Jedi elements on the New Jedi a order (robes, a temple on Coruscant, etc.), they never took back that Order’s openness towards relationships.
[QUOTE=godisawesome;5758231]
A New Jedi Order book had Luke debate the lack fo a celibacy rule with a surviving Old Jedi Order member, where if I remember correctly, they both wound up tacitly agreeing the emotional issues weren’t as big of a conundrum as the kind of “political” aspects of it - divided loyalties, de facto “dynasties,” etc. [/QUOTE]
Oh that's a really good point, I hadn't considered that.
I wonder how monk orders in the real world (that don't forbid marriage and relationships) deal with that?