Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

Ouch! Those Jedi are going to need some Beskar.

 

Certainly they've had a pretty awful track record so far, with Rogue One and the Mandalorian arguably being the only live-action successes in general (and the latter I'll only watch if it ever arrives on DVD, because I'm voting with my wallet against streaming services, and from what glimpses of it I've seen it doesn't look particularly good). I personally liked Solo, but not as much as Rogue One and of course I know it was financially one of their biggest failures, if not the biggest one.

Also a personal gripe is that I really dislike how they've handled the merchandise since the Disney takeover - before it got its grubby mouse-sized hands on the franchise, the quality of Star Wars figures was excellent - a great amount of poseability for an affordable price (£7-8 in the UK), and in the latter years each one came with a battle game card and dice, which I thought was a nice extra touch that showed they were putting the effort into it. Then after the takeover that all went out of the window, and the one affordable line that had everything was replaced with two different ranges of 3.75s, one a terrible-quality range for about the same price as the previous Lucasfilm line figures, the other a line with high-POA figures as per the original range (and sometimes even better), but only the bare minimum accessories and each figure costing a huge amount, £15 over here when not reduced, rarely the kind of money that children can afford.

I'm holding out hope for Andor and Obi-Wan though, but only because those feature Rogue One content and Obi-Wan respectively which is thoroughly my kind of Star Wars. If they ruin those with Ahsoka content, wokeness or inserting clearly non-Star Wars stuff into Star Wars (I'm looking at you Power Ranger Speeders in Book of Boba Fett) then my faith in Disney's Star Wars will be all but lost.

You don't need Tom to teach you that, all fans know Episodes VII-IX are drivel. Indeed I'd be more sceptical at the fan status of those who like Episodes VII-IX than those who don't

 

This is fantastic.

 

Spoiler: Book of Boba Fett

 

Although I know there are some negative connections with merchandising, I LOVED the old Star Wars toys as a kid. I only casually kept up with the newer figures. It's a shame they were priced out of the more everyday kid's/parent's range. I feel the "age of the action figure" has been over for a while.

Rogue One wasn't a perfect movie, and it rode hard on Star Wars nostalgia. But for all of that (or perhaps b/c of all of that?), I still liked the overall story and visuals. There are parts of the story I dislike, but I try to disregard them. I thought the cinematography and pacing, especially of the last battle felt very vintage Star Wars to me. Naturally, the Vader hallway scene was terrifically menacing and had more contemporary swordplay and force use without looking "over the top with" with twirling, spinning sabers and Force pushing every 5 seconds.

I'm able to sponge off of a family member for Disney+. Mandalorian is actually pretty good. The first season is stronger in my opinion, but even it gets a little cheesy in the last half. Still, it makes a good Star Wars serial show. For me, the second season turns into Mando slightly becoming a background character to "guest stars" in a few too many episodes. Plus, a bit of deus ex machina. The overall story is good though. So, I think it's worth the watch to round out your Star Wars catalogue... or fuel your Disney rage. Ha ha ha.

I found Andor kind of so-so in Rogue One, but I know you like him, and I can see some potential for a show... if Disney will commit to even a bit of seriousness similar to the first several Mando episodes. I don't think Kenobi will be good, but that's because (in general) I don't like how Disney has handled most of the legacy Star Wars characters. I'd like to think that McGregor coming back means a more effort, so we'll see.

 

Agreed, they are so afraid of going off script with these characters, that they tie themselves to redoing what we have already seen. Solo is the perfect example. They just re-did Han's character arch from the OT. They could have done a lot with the characters, but instead, Lando only has one outfit in different colors, and must wear a Cape. Solo isn't even Hans real last name? Why did his son get that last name and not Organa?

The Sequel trilogy was tragic. Jar Jar Abrahams should have had a full script for all 3 movies, and it shouldn't have been a rehash of what we already have seen. There are some things to like in those movies, but they should have been so much better.

If it wasn't for Favreau and Filoni, I am pretty sure Disney would have shut down further production of all Star wars properties. Clone Wars, Rebels, and Mandalorian were all great. They did have some time wasting episodes, which takes you right out of it, but for the most part they were fun to watch.

As far as the action figures and other merch goes, they really should have stayed the course, and hired collectors and fans as consultants. We could have hit a new golden age of Star Wars Merch. At this point it's as bad as Star Trek merch, which they just never seem to have been able to get right. Not that they were bad, it was always just too little, too late, with no marketing.

 

I watched a Star Wars documentary with some commentary from Gareth Edwards about Rogue One not that long ago, and it's true that he does talk a lot about how he wanted to recreate the production techniques and aesthetics of the OT for the film, but one of the many things I like about Rogue One is that it doesn't sacrifice the storyline or its unique atmosphere for that. Compared to Episode VII, for example, which is clearly a soulless attempt to pay a tribute to the OT and an attempt to try and get fans to 'forget' the Prequels, Rogue One doesn't feel like a forced nostalgia trip, despite there obviously being plenty of references to the OT. Edwards doesn't hesitate to create something new and wholly different, through its darker atmosphere, its characters that are clearly 'different shades of grey' in morality and attitude and its attempts to show different sides to the Empire and Rebellion to make the two sides less clearly cut (through portraying Saw's sect as being little more than terrorists, Galen Erso pretending to collaborate with the Empire while secretly being a Rebel sympathiser, and Krennic being an Imperial character you can - almost - empathise with sometimes). Also Rogue One and its written expansion material don't attempt to erase memory of Episodes I-III as VII does, but instead does the opposite by being one of the first of many pieces to form a bridge between the two trilogies, by including hidden but evident references to the Prequels as well (the Clone Turbo-Tank being used to transport Jyn to a prison camp, flashbacks featuring Jyn and her parents on Coruscant, Cassian's background as a Separatist before the Empire emerged, Saw originally being a character in the Clone Wars CGI series, K-2 being made by the same manufacturers who designed the B-1 and B-2 Battle Droids and Bail Organa having a cameo and being the first port-of-call to talk about Obi-Wan aiding the Rebellion, a nod to their comradeship at the end of Episode III). Indeed in my view Rogue One actually feels more like a Prequel Trilogy film set at the time period of the Original Trilogy - probably the reason why I like it so much!

I am a fan of the Prequel Trilogy Lightsaber fights, but the Vader hallway scene didn't need many twirls or force-pushes given Vader's enemy was just a regiment of non-Force-sensitive Rebel Troopers. The swordsmanship he displayed still had some of the skill and finesse of the Prequel Trilogy fights which I liked, but it had the right level of that for the job at hand. Too many twirls would have been unnecessary, and also inconsistent with Vader's nature as a slow, internally-damaged cyborg by this point in time.

I liked that scene as much as practically anyone else, in particular given I had been hoping they'd make a scene like that, and for me it has redeemed Vader's character somewhat, because in the OT we never really got to see him at his prime (in V he was purposefully toying with Luke and in VI Luke had grown strong enough, or Vader had grown weak enough, for the former to beat the latter). Rogue One remedied that magnificently.

Certainly the way Andor has been presented so far suggests it's going to be a more serious kind of series, which is what I'm hoping for. Rogue One itself was more of a serious and dark film as mentioned above, one of its finest qualities, so to produce a prequel series to it that presents any other kind of atmosphere would look disjointed and wouldn't feel right. Surely even Disney wouldn't do something so stupid?

Also I'm impressed by the fact that they have actually made the step forward to build on the backstory of a less well-known character in the first place - people complain at a supposed 'lack of character development' for Cassian in Rogue One, well this series will provide that development, so long as they don't try and draw in fans with cheap marketing tactics that diverge from that character development, like Grogu (something unnecessarily cute) and Boba Fett (a cult fan-favourite character) appear to do in The Mandalorian.

Solo, being a prequel, has to give its characters certain traits so that viewers can see how those characters ended up the way they became in the OT, so it makes sense for Lando to have developed a taste for gaudy clothing and cloaks, and Han to have that cocky wannabe pilot attitude, otherwise the characters would be completely unrecognisable from their later incarnations. However, that's not why I like Solo. I liked Solo because again, like Rogue One, it makes its characters morally dubious and gives them all 'different shades of grey' personalities. I also liked how things didn't always go Han's way (he gets sent to the Star Wars version of the Battle of the Somme instead of the Imperial Flying Academy, he contributes to mucking up Beckett's heist and gets punched in the face for it, and loses his first game of Sabacc against Lando), and that he can still make mistakes as normal people can, as opposed to the Original Trilogy where he always manages to find a convenient way to get out of trouble. We also see some hero mortality too, with various characters getting killed off throughout the film, and it's the only film where we really see the Millennium Falcon getting bashed up and damaged, as it should when it starts picking fights against military vessels. I personally thought Solo had a good amount going for it, and it was a shame that the backlash against Episode VIII was used to undermine its performance at the pictures.

While I'm all for new storylines, I can understand keeping to certain personality traits with regards to different characters, because otherwise the new incarnations of those characters will be inconsistent with the media they are already portrayed in. It certainly wouldn't make sense for Obi-Wan to start doing Deathsticks and going sexually rampant during his stint on Tatooine in the Kenobi series, for example.

The first part of this line I disagree with, because I agree with the second part. The Sequel Trilogy should definitely have avoided being a rehash of the OT, but Abrams was the reason it became that way in the first place, because he was a dyed-in-the-wool OT purist who heavily disliked the Prequels and wanted to pull people away from them and back to the OT. Giving him the right to script all three films may have dropped some of the outright stupid parts of the Sequels, but it would have rendered the whole thing even more of a soulless rehash of the OT. Indeed I think the reason Rian Johnson tried to change so much in Episode VIII was because VII was so much of a rehash of Episode IV that it was cringeworthy as a set-up film, and he wanted to salvage some sort of a different storyline out of it for the trilogy. Doing that in the middle of an established trilogy, however, was not the best idea as we have seen.

I agree with this too, and personally I blame Abrams for not making full use of the potential the Sequel Trilogy had. I was concerned even before I first went to see VII, after seeing a picture of the new Stormtroopers, discovering that Stormtroopers were still going to be in a trilogy set 30 years after the original and not being able to deny the fact they looked so similar to the original versions.

They should have gone with a completely different director for all three, someone who was wishing to push boundaries and move forward while remaining faithful to the universe. I'd have been interested to see what ideas Colin Trevorrow had in mind before he was kicked off the set of IX and replaced with Abrams. Perhaps he might have had some more original storyline ideas, and could have done a better trilogy, but of course we'll never know.

Clone Wars certainly has some excellent storylines, I just wish Filoni hadn't made Ahsoka an insufferable Wesley Crusher-type who seems to be able to succeed at everything, or made Grievous the Star Wars Bad Luck Brian. However there are some parts of the series that don't feature her (such as the vast majority of the Mandalore arc and Darth Maul's resurrection) which are superb. I agree that it certainly enriches the world of the Prequel Trilogy and the background of the Clone Wars conflict. I'd be interested to watch the Bad Batch as well, that certainly looks promising as a sequel series.

Rebels I didn't care for at all, in part because it also looked to be a rehash of the OT but with kids as protagonists rather than young adults, which makes all the escapism even more of a joke.

Rat-face Ezra = Luke 2.0
Kanan = Obi-Wan's little cousin thrice removed
Hera = Female Twi-lek Han
Chopper = R2's grumpy half-brother
Sabine = Leia on meth
Zeb = Chewie after having an all-body waxing

However, despite this griping I agree with you in that at least Favreau and Filoni know largely what to do with Star Wars. They make mistakes, but overall they still produce decent content that is generally accepted by everyone and is faithful to existing media that came before it.

Certainly I'm sure any of Favreau, Filoni or Edwards could definitely have directed a way better Sequel Trilogy, but instead we have to put up with one of the worst possible iterations of what it could have been.

Certainly I feel that the period from 1999 to 2013 was the golden age of Star Wars figures, and Disney have since seen that age come to an end. It does bewilder me to be honest because when I was young, in the early 2000s, Disney actually presented itself as a name of quality, with Disney DVDs being 2-Disc editions with heaps of bonus features alongside the original content, very much like the Lucasfilm editions of the first six (I have the Lucasfilm 2-Disc Editions of the Prequel Trilogy ). Now all you get is a single disc with just the feature on it, no deleted scenes which I think are particularly important for a live-action film like any of the Star Wars films, and no other features that anyone might want to enjoy. They have thoroughly adopted the term 'megacorporation' in their ways and actions now.

Star Trek has merchandise? I've certainly seen practically none of it other than Attack Wing, probably because most of it was before my time at the height of popularity of the main series in the 80s and 90s.

I do plan to watch it and give it a fair trial if it ever arrives on DVD. The scum-and-villainy atmosphere it inherits from Solo gives me hope that it might be good, but other aspects of it less so.

 

@Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl Those are some interesting points and I like to hear your take on Star Wars. The final fight in Phantom Menace is great and energetic. But most of the lightsaber battles in the following movies were WAY too twirly and sword-spinny for my taste. I think some of that can be fun and cinematic, but I feel there was just too much of it. The one thing I do like about them (especially the Maul battle), is that more of the strikes were actually deadly and it wasn't just "clashing swords together". Still, the sword fights in the OT were less about the spectacle of the fight, which is where I think the PT lands for me (more style less substance).

I feel like Ahsoka is kind of the hero character through whose eyes the audience follows the Clone Wars story. I think the audience also gets to do that through the troopers in a way. We already have some interesting established characters, so maybe we don't need her. She is rather earnest and has "hero armor", but few of the Jedi really fail in the show.

Also to be fair...
Jyn = Luke
Andor = Han
K-2 = Chewie
Chirrut & Baze = C-3PO & R2-D2
Galen Erso = Obi-wan

But that's mostly b/c these are character "types" and not necessarily re-hashes of the characters themselves. It's why I'm not opposed to Rebels b/c decent writing/direction can still take the characters on different adventures and in different directions. I agree that some of the characters are more "on the nose", but the series draws inspiration directly from the OT and its concept art. Of course the characters are also heroes, so some of the paths will be familiar.

 

To be honest I think the Prequel fights still have plenty of substance, in particular the Maul fight with Qui-Gon's death and especially the duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin on Mustafar. The latter is particularly deep because it reflects the broken bond between the Master and Padawan who were once brothers in arms. The lava on Mustafar could easily be seen as symbolism of the shattering of their friendship, with the main river they flow down the rift between the light and the dark sides of the Force. The duel between Palpatine and Mace Windu also sets the stage for Anakin's fall, one of the key moments of the saga.

Need I go on?

We do already have the established main three characters from the Prequel Trilogy (Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme) as well as the other main Jedi master characters and, as you say, the Clone Troopers who serve alongside them. Personally I don't think she was necessary.

It is true that the main three characters and most of the Jedi rarely fail, but they are all either seasoned veterans of conflict by now or . Ahsoka is only a Padawan yet she manages to succeed a lot more than most of the other Jedi characters when they were Padawans - Obi-Wan is almost killed by Darth Maul, Anakin consistently gets captured and loses his Lightsaber, and later his hand, and even Luke fails several times during his training (and also loses his hand). Personally I think Ahsoka was a bit of a proto-Rey, though not as blatantly obvious a Mary Sue as the latter, evidenced by:

• She single-handedly saves the ship she is travelling on and everyone on board from mind-controlling brain-worms
• She near-single-handedly foils Prime Minister Almec's scheme to control Mandalore through a covert alliance with Death Watch
• She survives Order 66 when 90% of the Jedi Order don't
• She survives a duel against Darth Maul, a seasoned Jedi-killer
• She survives a duel against Darth Vader, an even more seasoned Jedi-killer by the time she fights him
• She survives the Galactic Civil War and probably continues sometime into the Sequel Era

And plenty of other stuff from episodes and scenarios I can't remember. She certainly has the favour of Filoni on her side, that's for sure.

Not at all. Your equations simply equate characters upon vague similarities toward their role in the cast, the characters themselves are incredibly different:

• Jyn cares very little for the Rebellion throughout the opening half of Rogue One and doesn't even oppose Imperial oppression initially, simply viewing it as something to take on the chin. She initially believes her father was the cause of her mother's death and that he was a collaborator, and likes to think he's dead, only changing her mind when she finds he was secretly collaborating with the Rebellion. Luke on the other hand aspired to join the Rebellion throughout much of his life, and idolised his father Anakin before finding out he was a Sith Lord, and even afterwards trying to redeem him. Also Jyn isn't Force-Sensitive and knows very little about the Jedi, highly contrary to Luke's destiny as one of the greatest heroes of the Jedi Order.
• Cassian is nothing like Han. He is a ruthless, highly-trained silent assassin determined to complete his mission for the greater good of the Rebellion no matter the cost, while Han is a cocky extroverted smuggler on the run from gangsters who initially thinks only of himself and trusts his gut and a basic blaster more than advanced technology.
• K-2 and Chewie is probably the closest similarity of the pairs you've picked given they both have a great amount of brawn, but again they are still very different, K-2 is a cold, sarcastic ex-Imperial Droid capable of extracting inside knowledge from Imperial computer systems and skilled with Imperial weapons as well as his own, while Chewie is warm, affectionate and loyal, a survivor of a persecuted people who sticks to his own people's traditions and has had to learn mechanical knowledge from his friend Han.
• Chirrut and Baze are definitely nothing like C-3PO and R2. For a start both can handle themselves in fights without the need for artistic licence or plot armour. They also have much more in common with the Jedi, being worshippers of a religious offshoot, than the Rebellion.
• And Galen has very little in common with Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan was a devout Jedi throughout his like who taught Anakin and Luke everything he knew, while Galen was an Imperial scientist haunted by his collaboration with Krennic to develop the Death Star's superlaser who used some of his inside knowledge to provide the Rebellion with all they needed to destroy the space station.

My equations between the Rebels and OT characters were developed because the Rebels characters were very much closer to their counterparts in the OT 'team':

• Ezra = Luke because both are kids aspiring to join the Rebellion because they think it's cool, who find out that they're Force-sensitive and train to be Jedi.
• Kanan = Old Obi-Wan because they're both veterans of the old Jedi Order who escaped its destruction and ended up in exile, meeting the protagonist and training them to be a Jedi
• Hera = Han because both are avid pilots who own rickety freighters that they've learned pretty much to pilot themselves
• Leia = Sabine because both represent the 'tough girl archetype' who can fight their way out of trouble, despite (or because of) being daughters of a privileged elite (the Alderaan nobility and Clan Wren respectively)
• Chopper = R2 because both are astromechs capable of piloting ships.
• Zeb = Chewie because they both have a lot of brawn and not all that much brain, one of the last of a defeated people who preserves their warrior culture and retains their technology.

I get your point, but as evidenced by my breakdowns, the Rebels characters are pretty much a carbon-copy of the OT characters, whereas the Rogue One team were highly different characters from the start.