• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers The Controversial Star Wars Opinion Thread

Total cipher that is best forgotten.
Which is fine, because that's exactly what they were supposed to be for the purposes of an RPG's player character; A cool and memorable design to obscure their identity for the twist, with the rest of the character left up to the player to define based on their own choices.

As someone that played though KotOR with a female character, I was always annoyed that they chose to define a . . . well "canonical" isn't the right word for anything EU, but let's just say an agreed upon set of traits for Revan to be depicted in other media. Which is why the character really feels like a nothing character; they're not supposed to exist on the page, but in the individual experiences of each player; just like Commander Shepard, just like Link. All ciphers by design.

If they ever show up in actual canon (no, I don't really count a passing easter-egg mention in a reference book as substantive enough to note), I'd rather they keep it as vague, mysterious and potentially contradictory as possible. Less the character of Revan the person, more the legend of Darth Revan the mytho-historical figure from a lost chaotic age from before the fall, about which many tales are told, some of them true, most of them seemingly mutually exclusive.

Oddly enough, I was totally fine with The Exile getting defined as Meetra Surik. At least they gave her a name of her own, and the more complex nature of the second game's plot and themes lends itself to a more nuanced character and to a certain ambiguity. Plus the game itself gave her backstory way more depth than KotOR ever gave Revan, in accordance with the much more standard plot.
 
Last edited:
Revan is overrated

Part of the fanbase love to prop him up… but he’s not really a character.
Revan is awesome. But you're not wrong about them not being much of an actual character. They are a great (iconic even) visual and a badass mystique and that's pretty much it by design.

The rest of Revan is what the player brings to them. Which is why Revan is awesome. Revan is whatever the player wants them to be. I have a Revan, that isn't going to be your Revan. And yours won't look like the next player's and so on.

The mistake was trying to lock down a singular "canon" Revan. The character isn't meant to work that way, and it does both the character and the fans a disservice to even try.
 
Revan is referenced by name in a couple of current canon works. Hopefully they don't really expand upon that and just keep it vague.
 
Oddly enough, I was totally fine with The Exile getting defined as Meetra Surik.
Man, that name did not go over well at the time, from what I saw. It does sound a bit Trek-y. I said to one guy: "What did you want her name to be, Alison Smith?" He was like "yes, Alison Smith would have been better" :rolleyes:
 
One thing that's always been a minor peeve for me is how Luke and Ben's looks in ANH became the Jedi Standard in the Prequels (and Sequels). Though I guess it started with Anakin's Force Ghost in ROTJ. Luke is already dressing like a Jedi at the start of ANH. Ben is wandering in the desert in full Jedi regalia. Though that tracks with Ben. This is the guy who thinks using his real name while in hiding is a good idea. And giving a kid the name "Skywalker" and sending him to live on Tatooine is another one. :lol: Other characters we see on Tatooine are wearing "Jedi Chic" as well. (Uncle Owen. The Bartender). Though once Luke begins to begin his training he's never in robes again. Instead he wears military looking uniforms. Then the sequels come around and every Jedi looks like they summered on Tatooine as a moisture farmer and had their Coruscant tailor whip up something nice based on their recollections.
 
I mourn the Acolyte's cancellation but celebrate and eagerly await Ahsoka season 2 and I don't care what the internet tells me I should think.
I agree. But then I think a lot of controversial things about Star Wars and that the Acolyte was a decent show is among them and Ahsoka Season 2 is just behind Mandalorian and Grogu in my excitement level because Season 1 was so intriguing.
 
I don't know that I'm all that excited about the Mando/Grogu movie, but I am excited for Ahsoka season 2 and loved the Obi-Wan series and found quite a bit to enjoy about The Acolyte.

Then again, I loved TLJ too.

I know, I know: "HOW DO YOU EVEN LIVE WITH YOURSELF?!?!?" Very easily, thank you. :)
 
I don't know that I'm all that excited about the Mando/Grogu movie, but I am excited for Ahsoka season 2 and loved the Obi-Wan series and found quite a bit to enjoy about The Acolyte.

Then again, I loved TLJ too.

I know, I know: "HOW DO YOU EVEN LIVE WITH YOURSELF?!?!?" Very easily, thank you. :)
Positivity?! In this day and age. How dare you not hate absolutely everything. Anything too similar or too different must be attacked until nothing new is ever made again and then we can complain about that.
 
Acolyte is peak SW.
fight-me-come-on.gif
 
I thought Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were fantastic, and that The Acolyte was good, but quite at the level of them. I'd put Skeleton Crew up there with Obi-Wan too, and even if we don't get a Season 2, I'm hoping that Jod or the kids might still pop up somewhere else, even just in the books or comics.
One thing that's always been a minor peeve for me is how Luke and Ben's looks in ANH became the Jedi Standard in the Prequels (and Sequels). Though I guess it started with Anakin's Force Ghost in ROTJ. Luke is already dressing like a Jedi at the start of ANH. Ben is wandering in the desert in full Jedi regalia. Though that tracks with Ben. This is the guy who thinks using his real name while in hiding is a good idea. And giving a kid the name "Skywalker" and sending him to live on Tatooine is another one. :lol: Other characters we see on Tatooine are wearing "Jedi Chic" as well. (Uncle Owen. The Bartender). Though once Luke begins to begin his training he's never in robes again. Instead he wears military looking uniforms. Then the sequels come around and every Jedi looks like they summered on Tatooine as a moisture farmer and had their Coruscant tailor whip up something nice based on their recollections.
Yeah, Obi-Wan might have been a great Jedi, but he was horrible at living undercover in hiding. At least Leia was adopted and given the Organa last name.
 
Possibly controversial opinion: In most stories set during the thousand years between the supposed disappearance of the Sith and The Phantom Menace, the Jedi shouldn’t be running into red-bladed Darksiders and having lightsaber duels. I say this despite having really liked The Acolyte. But TPM implies that a well-read Jedi can encounter a Sith and only speculate that that might be what it is, because none have been encountered in centuries — which further implies that the Jedi may use lightsabers, but presumably whatever criminals/etc they fight aren’t using them, since generally nobody else does onscreen. So pre-TPM stories where they run into imposing figures in black wielding red lightsabers are basically retcons. If anything, most Jedi adventures probably don’t involve much fighting at all — but when it happens, it shouldn’t be saber-vs-saber duels.
 
I've honestly never been a fan of that whole idea (see also: the EU's "No Girls Allowed!" Imperial policy), and for three basic reasons: -
1) It's pretty redundant considering the Empire and Rebellion were already both visually coded as supremacist all-white Imperialists and diverse, respectively. If you have to spell it out, you're missing the point!
2) It explicitly limits both the storytelling and casting potential if 99% of the characters on one side of a conflict *have* to be a specific ethnicity/gender. Representation needs to apply to heroes, villains and everything in-between. Evil has many faces.
3) Making it that specific form of evil diminishes the morality play aspect of the story. Again, evil comes in many forms after all, and making the villains in a morality play a direct 1-to-1 analogy to anything so historically specific makes it all too easy to pigeonhole and dismiss the underlying message as something as simplistic as "racism: bad!"

It needs to be more fundamental than that, and I think the clear message Star Wars gives when it comes to defining the ultimate villains is that they're always the ones that treat people as things. Evil takes may forms, like I said, but that's usually where it all starts, and the Empire most certainly does exactly that. Not just to the heroes of the tale, but even and perhaps most especially it's own people, which is itself a message carried over from Lucas's THX-1138. Is there a more dehumanised image in Star Wars besides that of Darth Vader and his Stormtroopers? You literally can't tell they're even people anymore.
Adding earth politics stuff I can do without changing it to no girls allowed when you had gunslingers like Leia and then there was Lando and they are all aliens. Not from earth. Despite their appearance. That was never the metaphor just basic good versus evil. I actually remember seeing black imperialists in the first two films when they before they focused mostly of the evil side of being a Jedi. I would not like that uniqueness to change. We do not need racism in this. Aliens vs. aliens is enough. Basic evil is enough. Something people can relate to and take a break from reality. Also, it may not be the same but there was always that type of attitude towards other whites in in Europe usually from the English. France, Ireland , Whales and Scotland.
 
So pre-TPM stories where they run into imposing figures in black wielding red lightsabers are basically retcons.
It is worthy of note that any character in The Acolyte who actually saw the red lightsaber in action ended up either dead, mind-wiped, or converted to the dark side. In other words, the series appeared to be fully cognizant of this issue.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top