The "new republic collapsed in 2 days" really ruined ST setting

[Jokerz79]

It all comes down to execution in the end. And the Sequels just didn't have it.

Oh, I'm under the opinion that TLJ was like a bomb set in the middle of a trilogy that instead of building off what came before blew it up and TROS was a watchable IMO **** show that tried to resemble the mess TLJ made.

The Sequels Trilogy is the post child for how not to make a trilogy.

But I also think there is hypocrisy in some of the attacks the Sequels get.

[godisawesome]

Even Lucas was going to have Luke fall from grace in the Sequels trilogy. In his treatments Luke was going to be off training his New Jedi Order which would have been children because Lucas was determined to have Luke reinstate all of the flaws of the Old Jedi Order such as Jedi must be trained as children and no marriages. Lucas' Sequel Trilogy Luke was not EU/Legends Luke. His nephew world kill his students and Luke would go off to an island to live in seclusion until the protagonist of the new trilogy a young female tentatively named Kira in some of the treatments would convince him to come back. A lot of what we got in the Sequel trilogy with Luke as sloppy as it was also what Lucas had in mind for the character.

Actually, what I've seen suggests this:

- Lucas conceived of two Solo kids (he asked Abrams where Anakin's "grandkids" were in a public meet and greet), and another dark sider who acts as the Jedi Killer and seduces the Solo boy to the dark side (Hidalgo reported the initial male lead was split into Finn and Kylo/Ben, who was combined with the Jedi Killer, and later Darth Talon from Legends was revealed to be a version of this character), and apparently the Jedi Killer was working for another villain ("Uber" according to one report, Maul in one of Lucas's confirmed drafts), leading the Solo girl to find "Colonel Kurtz" Luke and be trained by him. There was also one other big thing I'll bring up later... but also, LFL seems to have tried to cover this up a bit, cancelling the Rinzler book about TFA's making, and obfuscating a lot of stuff n a clearly self-serving manner.

- Abrams was the one who divided the male lead role into Finn and Kylo, combined the latter with the Jedi Killer, and replaced Uber/Maul with Snoke... while apparently removing the female lead's Solo heritage in favor of a mystery box, and *maybe* suggesting making her Luke's kid instead, but still keeping the "she will be trained by Luke."

- Johnson then decided Rey should have no significant parentage, demoted Finn, decided that Luke wouldn't train her but instead just further his midlife crisis arc, killed off Snoke, and sort of tried to make Kylo a combination main protagonist and main villain. LFL supports him because they really don't care about anyone but Ben Solo, not even Rey.

- LFL panics at seeing no Ben Solo hero moment in Collin Trevorrow's script, demand another new villain, Trevorrow can't make it work, then Abrams gets brought back after Johnson refuses to make the last film himself, and brings back Palpatine, simultaneously to give Ben Solo a villain to turn against and to give Rey someone important to be related to.

But the biggest thing for this thread that changed was this:

- Lucas had the villainous faction be the criminal underworld merely supplemented by ex-Imperials, instead of a recreation of the OT conflict with a major Imperial faction. this part only got revealed with the reveal of Maul having been involved at one point, but fits with how the earliest, Lucas-commissioned concept art (which actually shows Darth Talon) didn't have major Imperial elements until later.

I still think LFL made/supported some decisions out of a "loyalty" to Lucas in their POV - especially regarding how Rey could have been a Skywalker, since Lucas had inconsistent issues with Luke getting hitched and having a kid, having supported it from a business perspective for the EU, but voiced personal dissatisfaction later.

...But I also think LFL also themselves rejected his general outline because they wanted an OT style Empire vs Rebels set-up - a stereotypically Gen X fan desire.

[Slowpokeking]

But it was very clear they wouldn't have been able to really go toe to toe with the fleet in a straight battle. They won because the fleet was a diversion to allow the ground forces to sneak in and take out the Death Star's shield.

They did, they destroyed more than half of the fleet there, and then the Empire crumbled.

If the fleet could destroy them, they would not retreat and there would be no celebration.

[ChrisIII]

Think it's canon that most of the Imperial fleet survived (about 19 of nearly thirty assembled, we only see Executor and one other really destroyed on-screen) but with the Imperial leadership dead they kind of panicked a bit decided the best move was to withdraw.

[Slowpokeking]

Think it's canon that most of the Imperial fleet survived (about 19 of nearly thirty assembled, we only see Executor and one other really destroyed on-screen) but with the Imperial leadership dead they kind of panicked a bit decided the best move was to withdraw.

What canon?

The Essential Guide to Warfare made clear they lost over 15 destroyers.

If most of them survived, they would have directly pursuit Endor and occupy it again without any question. And there was command chain restored. Sloane ordered them to retreat to another system rather than fight back.

[ChrisIII]

Think it's the Aftermath but I will try to double-check.

However, Essential Guide to Warfare is no longer a canon source. It came out before Disney's sale and features several references to now Legends material.

[godisawesome]

Any of the numbers we'll be running with are highly dubious; source book material is notoriously ignored.

[Grunty]

The Zahn trilogy implied that the Emperor's death caused the fleet's defeat as well-that he was using the force to coordinate/control the fleet. He later has C'baoth use the technique to coordinate his fleet.

The basic technique (Battle meditation) is still canon (although mostly in the minatures games), although it hasn't been said Palpatine used it at Endor.

To be honest, that sounds like a quick and easy to digest explanation that anyone can understand, even if it sounds somewhat convoluted when examined, instead of a more reasonable but also more extensive to explain combination of factors which would explain the outcome.

Which is fine for Star Wars given the core audience, but does come across as sweeping something under the rug quickly.

Any of the numbers we'll be running with are highly dubious; source book material is notoriously ignored.

Especially when it's often noticable that the writers of the material had to make things up by themself either because of a lack of communication between them and the original writers and artist, or because they didn't actualy thought of details they had put into their works.

For example why is something so fragile and overly complex looking like the B-Wing a heavy robust fighter-bomber in canon?
Because someone at ILM designed a space fighter with a neat transformation design in mind and it was up to the toy makers and backround source material writers to give it a story and purpose and they came up with strike bomber to fill a role and because the visible "air intakes" on the front of the core looked like they could also be missile launchers.

Likewise inflation of numbers or constant changes in size of vehicles is also a rather common occurence with Star Wars backround source works for these reasons.

So yes the numbers are dubious and don't seem very reflective of the numbers and events depicted on screen.

[ChrisIII]

It's kind of funny, that even given the advance in FX tech the B-wing (Which wasn't used much in ROTJ due to it filming poorly due to it's thin profile) still didn't do too much in any of the new films, apart from having a resemblance to the Leia's transport in TFA (and the ship Finn and Rose use to get to Canto in TLJ) and later when it finally does show up in ROS, only shows up as much as it did in ROTJ and doesn't really do much except get destroyed. The Y-wing actually gets more to do (especially Zorri's).

Of course there's the one in REBELS but that doesn't seem to do much either afterwards with Pheonix Squadron mainly sticking with A-wings).


The old EU made it a powerhouse and a cool backstory in the X-wing series of games though.

[godisawesome]

To be honest, that sounds like a quick and easy to digest explanation that anyone can understand, even if it sounds somewhat convoluted when examined, instead of a more reasonable but also more extensive to explain combination of factors which would explain the outcome.

Which is fine for Star Wars given the core audience, but does come across as sweeping something under the rug quickly.



Especially when it's often noticable that the writers of the material had to make things up by themself either because of a lack of communication between them and the original writers and artist, or because they didn't actualy thought of details they had put into their works.

For example why is something so fragile and overly complex looking like the B-Wing a heavy robust fighter-bomber in canon?
Because someone at ILM designed a space fighter with a neat transformation design in mind and it was up to the toy makers and backround source material writers to give it a story and purpose and they came up with strike bomber to fill a role and because the visible "air intakes" on the front of the core looked like they could also be missile launchers.

Likewise inflation of numbers or constant changes in size of vehicles is also a rather common occurence with Star Wars backround source works for these reasons.

So yes the numbers are dubious and don't seem very reflective of the numbers and events depicted on screen.

I think it’s completely rational and understandable to treat source books as “over-writable” or ignorable by other “higher-ranking” material… to a point. Past that point, if someone is just ignoring everything, willy-nilly, then it begs the question why you can’t just ask them to be either a little bit accommodating (which can sometimes be done by a few simple exchanges of dialogue), or maybe just don’t both creating ancillary material that will be ignored.

The ST saw this happen on a fairly grand scale - TLJ so arrogantly ignored everything it didn’t care about from TFA that it sort of burned multiple characters and spin-off material away, like that Poe comic, while TROS then did something similar to the developments of stuff like Bloodline.

With the Imperial fleet at Endor, the only thing we know is they lost the battle and didn’t avenge the Death Star’s destruction. They’ve at least been consistent on that. Why they retreated or failed to avenge Palpatine, we don’t know, and is subject to change.

Similarly, we know that there was apparently a thread-bare, if effective, garrison on Starkiller Base in TFA, and that in TROS, the First Order lacks the strength to conquer the Galaxy unaided… but somehow in between there, TLJ showed a First Order large and strong enough to supposedly be “weeks” away from securing major systems while objectively being so stupid they Three Stooged their way into losing half their now much larger fleet.

The Story Group was supposed to help deal with stuff like this…

[Bruce Wayne]

Even Lucas was going to have Luke fall from grace in the Sequels trilogy.

His nephew world kill his students and Luke would go off to an island to live in seclusion until the protagonist of the new trilogy a young female tentatively named Kira in some of the treatments would convince him to come back. A lot of what we got in the Sequel trilogy with Luke as sloppy as it was also what Lucas had in mind for the character.

That's not true. The whole idea of Luke's student becoming the Jedi-Killer, which later became Kylo Ren/Ben Solo was from when Arndt and Abrams were working on the movie and by that time Lucas was off the film. The Star Wars Archives. 1999–2005 book which has interviews by Lucas regarding the sequels has none of these plot points. The main takeaways from that book was that the "Darth Vader" of the Lucas's sequels was "Darth Talon" from the Legacy Comics and that the Snoke/Palpatine figure was Darth Maul running the Shadow Collective and from the Art of TFA book, there were already Jedi presumably trained by Luke emerging in the New Republic with Darth Talon going after them. In addition, Lucas really seems to frame the ST focusing on Leia as the key figure trying to stitch back the Galactic Republic as its leader.

The Story Group was supposed to help deal with stuff like this…

Because Abrams wouldn't listen to them so they basically got cut out in TFA/TROS and in TLJ they were basically yes-men for Rian Johnson. Overall the Story Group was just a bunch of middle managers like the Marvel Creative Comittee (that had Quesada and Bendis and Perlmutter as members) at Marvel Studios that Feige later cut out.

[Grunty]

It's kind of funny, that even given the advance in FX tech the B-wing (Which wasn't used much in ROTJ due to it filming poorly due to it's thin profile) still didn't do too much in any of the new films, apart from having a resemblance to the Leia's transport in TFA (and the ship Finn and Rose use to get to Canto in TLJ) and later when it finally does show up in ROS, only shows up as much as it did in ROTJ and doesn't really do much except get destroyed. The Y-wing actually gets more to do (especially Zorri's).

This is likely a combination of being more difficult to put in scene and not meeting the "nostalgia quota" as much as the Y- and A-wing.

In terms of being more difficult to put into scenes. The vast majority of space fighters in Star Wars not only stick to a center cockpit design, but moving parts like those of the X-wing are actualy quite rare and tend to be rather simple.
Which makes the B-Wing's much more awkward and therefor potentialy more bothersome to put into scene, even with the help of modern FX not requiring the handling of the fragile physical model anymore.

And since it didn't have as many memorable scenes as the A-wing in ROTJ or appeared in the previous 2 movies, there is less "pressure" for the creators to bring it back for the sake of nostalgia, which then creates a bit of a vicious cycle.

Of course there's the one in REBELS but that doesn't seem to do much either afterwards with Pheonix Squadron mainly sticking with A-wings).

It could be argued that Rebels actualy made it worse, by imply that the awkard shape is the result of being designed around a mini-death star style focus array laser cannon which could take out small capital ships in a single shot, but couldn't be put into mass production.

So for some reason the Alliance engineers then just slapped some regular blaster and ion cannons into the positions of the arrays and put the specialized design it into mass production anyway, even though the same effort could have gone into building a modernized version of the much more rugged and stable looking Y-wing by replacing the Clone War era components with those they would make for the B-wing.

Meaning that rather than just expand on the history of that odd looking fighter briefly seen in ROTJ, they gave it a backstory which marked it as failed special design pushed into service anyway.

The old EU made it a powerhouse and a cool backstory in the X-wing series of games though.

It was basicly marketed to sell the second expansion pack and rather than giving it players right from the start, they had to go through some difficult missions to secure the first batch for the alliance, after which the players could finaly fly them.

Ironicaly, by the time of Tie Fighter the B-wing became relatively "normal", especially once the absurdly overpowered Tie Defender and Missile Boat were given to players.

Meanwhile the stylish and impressive but overshadowed Tie-Avenger has yet to become canon.

I think it’s completely rational and understandable to treat source books as “over-writable” or ignorable by other “higher-ranking” material… to a point. Past that point, if someone is just ignoring everything, willy-nilly, then it begs the question why you can’t just ask them to be either a little bit accommodating (which can sometimes be done by a few simple exchanges of dialogue), or maybe just don’t both creating ancillary material that will be ignored.

The ST saw this happen on a fairly grand scale - TLJ so arrogantly ignored everything it didn’t care about from TFA that it sort of burned multiple characters and spin-off material away, like that Poe comic, while TROS then did something similar to the developments of stuff like Bloodline.

With the Imperial fleet at Endor, the only thing we know is they lost the battle and didn’t avenge the Death Star’s destruction. They’ve at least been consistent on that. Why they retreated or failed to avenge Palpatine, we don’t know, and is subject to change.

Similarly, we know that there was apparently a thread-bare, if effective, garrison on Starkiller Base in TFA, and that in TROS, the First Order lacks the strength to conquer the Galaxy unaided… but somehow in between there, TLJ showed a First Order large and strong enough to supposedly be “weeks” away from securing major systems while objectively being so stupid they Three Stooged their way into losing half their now much larger fleet.

The Story Group was supposed to help deal with stuff like this…

Indeed there is a differnce between disregarding secondary or tertiary information sources if they are in the way of writing a story for the "primary" sources and disregarding basicly any canon including on screen ones.

Furthermore the more secondary and tertiary sources are disregarded the more it harms the enjoyment of the dedicated fans who bother to read those and it's usualy these people who maintain IPs and keep them relevant between releases.

So at best any creator should weight on what should be disregarded and what should be aknowledged even if modified.

[godisawesome]

That's not true. The whole idea of Luke's student becoming the Jedi-Killer, which later became Kylo Ren/Ben Solo was from when Arndt and Abrams were working on the movie and by that time Lucas was off the film. The Star Wars Archives. 1999–2005 book which has interviews by Lucas regarding the sequels has none of these plot points. The main takeaways from that book was that the "Darth Vader" of the Lucas's sequels was "Darth Talon" from the Legacy Comics and that the Snoke/Palpatine figure was Darth Maul running the Shadow Collective and from the Art of TFA book, there were already Jedi presumably trained by Luke emerging in the New Republic with Darth Talon going after them. In addition, Lucas really seems to frame the ST focusing on Leia as the key figure trying to stitch back the Galactic Republic as its leader.



Because Abrams wouldn't listen to them so they basically got cut out in TFA/TROS and in TLJ they were basically yes-men for Rian Johnson. Overall the Story Group was just a bunch of middle managers like the Marvel Creative Comittee (that had Quesada and Bendis and Perlmutter as members) at Marvel Studios that Feige later cut out.

What do you think about the early ST stuff I’ve got in one of my posts up top? The one where it looks like Lucas *had* moved on to having Anakin’s grandkids as the main characters?

Though to back up your point about her, Darth Talon’s place as a “Jedi Killer” villain under Maul seemed to get far enough developed it even moved into some early “video game as a prologue” areas with Maul (which I’d bet you might know about, but I just love this demo):


And as to the Story Group stuff, I feel like they should get judged a little bit regardless of their place as middle managers, since the one real area where they *did* have power, in spin-off material, they seemed to suck at it. They let Marvel Comics follow up on Poe’s characterization from TFA when someone in the story group had to be aware of TLJ’s script - implying either apathy about the differences, or ignorance of them (which actually seems somewhat likely, given how LFL “subconsciously” discarding much of TFA’s stuff would fit better with their lack of forethought even with stuff they liked about TLJ.)

[ChrisIII]

There is an interesting publicity shot of a squad of B-wings blowing up a Star Destroyer (Implied I think to be Vader's from ANH and later Rogue One and Obi-Wan before he upgraded to Executor). I've read this was possibly based on a sequence planned for the film but left out because they couldn't make it work.

As noted the Avenger isn't really given much to do in canon, although it's prototype (and that of the Interceptor)- Vader's TIE has certainly been used many times, and the TIE silencer has a similar silhouette (Funny thing it looks closer to the lower-res versions of the Avenger than the upgraded versions that used X-wing vs. TIE fighter graphics.

[Bruce Wayne]

What do you think about the early ST stuff I’ve got in one of my posts up top? The one where it looks like Lucas *had* moved on to having Anakin’s grandkids as the main characters?

I think the only thing we can confirm is that it was about the grand kids. I frankly don't think Pablo Hidalgo knew the full details of what Lucas was doing for the development. For example his tweets never showed he knew that initially that Uber=Maul. He probably only knows about Talon because it was in the concept art, but Maul was never in the concept art. The only person who knew everything other than Lucas and the concept artist was probably Rinzler since he wrote the BTS TFA book that LFL canned.

The original Pablo tweet is: "The Jedi Killer morphed from Talon corrupting the son to becoming the son. Uber became Snoke.” "

The thing is from Abrams/Arndt we know that Jedi-Killer was not originally the son. Originally according to Arndt and Abrams, his origin was like Vader's in Episode 4/ANH that he was a fallen student of Luke's that destroyed his students and lead to the events that split up Luke/Leia/Han that lead into TFA.

edit: I think the tweet has a purpose like a lot of Disney backed PR during that time (like the artices arguing that Luke abandoning Han/Leia/Ben in TLJ was in the concept art) in that he's trying to push the message that there was continuity between Lucas's treatments and the TFA movie. But given how Lucas was upset that they dumped his pitches, I think in reality the TFA was built ground up by Arndt, Abrams and Kasdan independent of the Lucas treatments.

Though to back up your point about her, Darth Talon’s place as a “Jedi Killer” villain under Maul seemed to get far enough developed it even moved into some early “video game as a prologue” areas with Maul (which I’d bet you might know about, but I just love this demo):

Totally Lucas had a habit of using tie-in material to foreshadow/set up stuff in his movies:

And from the game developers here talking about what Lucas wanted:
https://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...ame-to-be.aspx

“He wanted these characters to be friends, and to play off of each other. He talked about the show Burn Notice as a reference point. He likened Darth Maul to Sonny from The Godfather, and he likened Darth Talon to Lauren Bacall."

And from the Star Wars Archives. 1999–2005 book

Maul eventually becomes the godfather of crime in the universe because, as the Empire falls, he takes over

It's pretty similar. And there's clear precedent of Lucas using the tie-in material to set up stuff in prior movies

Just some examples
-the Tales of the Jedi comicbook writers being told about the idea of the Sith rule of two in TPM with them doing comics on the Sith Lords with Exar Kun (https://www.starwars-union.de/sw/ein...seite/english/)
-the Clone Wars Multimedia Project introducing General Grievous in those early 2000s Clone War Shorts

Not to mention he used Filoni's TCW to set up the resurrection of Maul and him forming the Shadow Collective from Death Watch/Hutts/Pykes/Black Sun in the first place.