Lucas: "I sold Star Wars to White Slavers"
- Thread starter Tribble puncher
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And yet it strains credulity to the breaking point that the First Order would design and build an "oh-hey-this-again" weapon and make all the same mistakes in exactly the same way as the Empire did 30+ years prior. What, was installing the coin-operated self-distruct a necessary part of their Empire cosplay competition?
Starkiller was not as "easy" to destroy as the other two Death Stars. It took effort rather than a luck shot. The Resistance could brute force the weakness this time, but required both air and ground support, and a infiltration mission to get the shields down to make the attack possible. More effort than both Death Stars combined, but also without a fleet to back them up. Though I imagine Starkiller would have some impressive anti-ship weapons.
Unlike the First Death Star, they actually decided to launch all the fighters against the Resistance forces.
As for the reasoning for building the weapon itself? The ability to defeat the larger Republic with basically one shot. The mission goal for the Starkiller base was a victory, even though they lost it in the end. They managed to destroy the Republic Fleet, thereby allowing the First Order to now have an advantage they could not have if they had just spent it on more and more Star Destroyers.
We'll see if this advantage holds in the next film, but at present, the First Empire actually has capital ships while the Resistance and seemingly the Republic, do not. This is s a large advantage even if they only have a dozen or so Star Destroyers.
Unlike the First Death Star, they actually decided to launch all the fighters against the Resistance forces.
As for the reasoning for building the weapon itself? The ability to defeat the larger Republic with basically one shot. The mission goal for the Starkiller base was a victory, even though they lost it in the end. They managed to destroy the Republic Fleet, thereby allowing the First Order to now have an advantage they could not have if they had just spent it on more and more Star Destroyers.
We'll see if this advantage holds in the next film, but at present, the First Empire actually has capital ships while the Resistance and seemingly the Republic, do not. This is s a large advantage even if they only have a dozen or so Star Destroyers.
The First Order is the Heinz Doofenshmirtz of the GFFA.
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R5kpdNfZ4g[/yt]
At this point, with TFA going ballistic and goodwill (finally) returned to SW, the VAST majority of people are seeing him as the bitter, angry, twisted old retconning, misanthropic kook he is. Anybody who's been following Lucas' interviews for AT LEAST the last two decades (let alone since the late '70's) know he CONSTANTLY revises not only his intentions towards his films but also his VERY OWN reality.
If you trust Lucas at this point, quite frankly you're naive at best and a recalcitrant at worst.
Harlan's in a loony league all on his own!
How the MULTIPLE heart attacks caused by volcanic rage and anger haven't killed him YET is something the medical field should be studying before it's too late!
I put it down to the very anger causing said cardiac arrests that are fuelling his own unnatural desire to cling desperately to his wretched life.
Except there's no sign they did. The Starkiller Base pretty clearly is a distraction, not the centrepiece of their whole strategy as was the case with the Empire. Which is an indication that something different is happening here.
^ True.
Snoke didn't seem especially peeved at the loss of Starkiller. You'd think the investment of time and resources would be a major issue ... unless there's something much bigger at stake for Snoke than, simply, Starkiller.
Snoke didn't seem especially peeved at the loss of Starkiller. You'd think the investment of time and resources would be a major issue ... unless there's something much bigger at stake for Snoke than, simply, Starkiller.
So he's a Sith Lord?
as for what Snoke is doing, the background materials suggest the Empire was looking for the "source of the Dark Side" which was supposedly at the edge of or beyond the edge of the Galaxy. Maybe Snoke (or even Palpatine for that matter) was preparing for something larger than the Civil Wars they were fighting from the Clone Wars until present.
I guess if you want to argue that the perfunctory nature of everything about the Starkiller Base plotline was a feature and not a bug I can't stop you, but I sure would like some of whatever you're smoking. It must be wicked stuff.
Supreme Leader Snoke, doesn't seem to care all that much about Starkiller Base. He seems more concerned about matters of the Force. Letting Hux use the base seems to be more a way to get Ren to do something as Snoke seems to be playing Ren off Hux each time. There must be something else going on here, as this huge planet killing planetary base seems to not really matter all the much to Snoke even if the First Order spent a long time building it.
But then Palpatine built a second Death Star as a trap entirely to crush the hope in Luke Skywalker and turn him to the Dark Side while also ending the Rebellion at the same time. That he could use it to replace his first Death Star's purpose of ruling via fear seems to not be important to the Emperor. Only turning the last Jedi to the Dark Side matters.
But then Palpatine built a second Death Star as a trap entirely to crush the hope in Luke Skywalker and turn him to the Dark Side while also ending the Rebellion at the same time. That he could use it to replace his first Death Star's purpose of ruling via fear seems to not be important to the Emperor. Only turning the last Jedi to the Dark Side matters.
For me the problem is not one of story logic, but rather that to my mind there was no good reason the movie needed to retread so closely the same scenarios from the original, and thus feel so unoriginal. Like a number of other franchise revivals over the past decade including Abrams' Trek, James Bond, The Thing, and to an extent Prometheus, it seemed to be fundamentally conflicted as to whether it wanted to be a remake or a continuation. It set itself up with the capacity to do pretty much anything it wanted with the source material including radically depart from it, to do its own thing, but in the end ultimately offered very little that was substantially new or different to what had come before. I guess that's what comes of trying to have their cake and eat it, too. [/grumble]
It has been almost 40 years since Star Wars came out, so a little (or not so little) retread might be warranted, instead of going for a full on reboot or remake. After that is done, and people are in the feel of things again like it was 1977 all over again, than the writers and directors can go on about making new stuff.
Hollywood's Nostalgia Problem:
Of course! Why didn't I see it before? That's how you establish a brand – by putting forth the derivative pablum first and saving your fresh ideas for later. It's so obvious!
So silly of Back to the Future, the original Star Wars trilogy, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy, Ghostbusters, and many, many others to display their ingenuity up front and capture the imagination of a generation by doing so. If only Internet commenters had been around to advise them that they needn't have bothered....
No doubt. But as a defense of the kind of warmed-over creative leftovers we've been seeing lately -- and that defense is pretty common around the Internet right now -- it's lacking. Just admit it's a thing the movie did that isn't hurting it, rather than acting like it was the only possible course of action they could've taken.
To be clear, I certainly didn't want a reboot or remake. But a sequel that simply repackages and repeats the same basic formula as the original with a few bits shuffled around is little better, IMO. I generally feel that way whether it's Star Wars we're talking about or anything else.
The Empire Strikes Back is a good sequel. The Godfather Part II is a good sequel. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is a good sequel. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a good sequel. The Color Of Money is a good sequel. The Two Jakes is a good sequel. They don't try to be the movies they are sequels to, nor replays or highlight reels of them. That doesn't mean they abstain entirely from making reference or drawing parallels to their predecessors. And it doesn't mean they don't have faults. But their faults and strengths are their own, and don't lie primarily in failing or succeeding to recapture the substance, the style, or even the spirit of the stories they followed.
I'm not necessarily decrying TFA as worthless or saying there was nothing about it that I appreciated and enjoyed. But I do very much feel that it fell into this trap that so many sequels so often do. (Or rather, I'm sure, deliberately walked into it. That it is being generously rewarded by audiences for doing so is undeniable, but in my personal opinion something of a pity.)
The Empire Strikes Back is a good sequel. The Godfather Part II is a good sequel. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is a good sequel. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a good sequel. The Color Of Money is a good sequel. The Two Jakes is a good sequel. They don't try to be the movies they are sequels to, nor replays or highlight reels of them. That doesn't mean they abstain entirely from making reference or drawing parallels to their predecessors. And it doesn't mean they don't have faults. But their faults and strengths are their own, and don't lie primarily in failing or succeeding to recapture the substance, the style, or even the spirit of the stories they followed.
I'm not necessarily decrying TFA as worthless or saying there was nothing about it that I appreciated and enjoyed. But I do very much feel that it fell into this trap that so many sequels so often do. (Or rather, I'm sure, deliberately walked into it. That it is being generously rewarded by audiences for doing so is undeniable, but in my personal opinion something of a pity.)
It's weird to see sequels like Ghostbusters II, The Hangover parts II and II, Men in Black II, and so forth get lambasted by critics and audiences for basically being rehashes of the first films in the series, but then TFA comes along and gets praised for doing basically the same thing. I guess it really helps to have steaming piles like the prequels come in between the original and the warmed-over leftovers, eh?
Some of the critics reviewing TFA may not have been alive when ANH was released. It's entirely possible that many of them never saw it in a theater or it may have been decades since they actually watched it. The fact that so many of them refer to it as a "reboot" tells me everything about the perspective they've brought into theater. To me, it indicates that they perceive it as a light remake. I've never seen the term reboot applied to a sequel before.
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