Why so few Star Wars films/tv?

Or rather that since TELEVISED/MOVIE SW is only actually canon, they DO NOT actually care if they contradict the EU.

It would be similar to you planning your route from your car to the shop entrance by sidestepping and jumping over any bugs on the ground on the way.

It just wouldn't enter your mind.

Same here.

 

What I wish is that George Lucas would drop his fascination with the #^^><€^£!!! clone wars. Two movies and two animated shows have now covered the same manufactured war between 'good clones and bad droids'. Enough!!! This has to be the least interesting era of the SW universe by now, but he insists on dwelling on it. For goodness sake, the war was a shitty premise to begin with!

It would not surprise me if the live action series, if it does happen, is set during the cline wars as well.

 

Then, you'll be surprised.

He has always said that it's set between the two trilogies.

 

And Lucas never changes his mind, right?

 

About what? Luke and Leia, sure.

But, scripts have been written... So, I'm pretty confident that won't change.

Not that I'm confident that it will ever air...

 

The Clone Wars series has kind of gone beyond the Clones vs. Droids (And BTW neither are 'good'-the clones turn on the Jedi, remember?), such as the backstory of Boba Fett and the Mandalorians (Although contradicting previous EU stuff about them) and the latest arc dealing with the force.

 

They're insisting on using planets, groups, etc. from the EU while not bothering to research the source material enough to get the details right.

 

Or they're just changing the details to tell the stories they want to tell.

 

I don't know why he just doesn't comission it as CGI. Finding a buyer perhaps?

 

In many cases getting the facts right wouldn't have prevented them from telling the same kind of story they wanted to tell.

 

Considering how shitty the premise is, I'm amazed at how good TCW has turned out to be. I agree, clones vs droids is a bore and will always be a bore, the clones are utterly uninteresting as characters, and how can you root for either side in a war you know is completely manufactured?

But to the extent possible, TCW has done a great job solving the PT's other problems, namely: the politics don't make sense; it's hard to enjoy a story where the lead character is an off-putting creep; Obi-Wan seems "off" (too nannyish and priggish; where is the sense of curiosity, joy and impish fun Alec Guinness brought to the role?); and why is absolutely NO attention paid to the mystical side of the story besides a few tossed-off lines about some vaguely defined prophecy? The mystical plotline should be the core of the story, with politics and psychology serving only as minor contributions.

If you haven't been watching TCW, you should give it another shot. Just fast forward through the battle stuff (although much of that is a lot of fun in its own right) and skip the stories that focus just on the clones (snoooore).

 

That is true, the politics in TCW don't make sense. But then again I never saw the PT politics making sense as that much of a problem.

 

I actually thought the clone centric stories in the first 2 seasons were the only good episodes. I have since stopped watching because it's a horrible show and I have to disagree - the politics are still a silly mess.

 

Yeah, I have to agree, the politics still are a silly mess.

I still have no idea what the Separatists really want--well, ok, to be separate. But why? What drove them to that?

And why does the Republic care? What risk all of these lives to get worlds back?

 

If Lucasfilm were a publicly owned company with the usual profit imperative, no doubt we'd be seeing all sorts of Star Wars movies on a regular basis. And they might make the PT look like Citizen Kane by comparison.

Anakin's personality is totally different in TCW. He's headstrong and impulsive but in a heroic, charming way. He isn't an off-putting, immature creepy little twerp. They're simply two different characters. I think of Anakin as the TCW guy, not the PT guy, and I wonder if the PT guy was ever supposed to exist.

I suspect even Lucas would know better than to expect an audience to want to watch the story of an off-putting, immature creepy little twerp, and he just wasn't paying attention as a director to what Hayden Christensen was doing with the role. Christensen probably didn't have a clue what he was supposed to be doing (he's an actor, not a psychic), so he was just winging it, and the result was a train wreck.

All you need to do is watch the videos of Lucas on the set, sitting on his ass rather than interacting with the actors and directing them, to understand how that train wreck was inevitable.

Did you see the episode where they introduced Separatists who have valid motives, as well as the episodes (which weren't as good as stories, but got the point across) that establish that the Republic is definitely corrupt? Together these episodes imply that the Seppys might be right to drop-kick the Republic, which changes the interpretation of a whole lot of stuff in the PT that just seemed underdeveloped or dumb.

It hasn't been until S3 that they've gotten to work on shaping up the political angle. And they do still have a ways to go with it, but they're on the right track. If the Republic is corrupt, maybe Anakin is right not to want to stay a Jedi and fight for it along with all the other Jedi chumps. If the Separatists have valid reasons for starting the war (presumably it was they who started the war, not Sidious or the Trade Federation), then it wouldn't look suspicious that the war happened in the first place, so the Jedi and the good guys in the Senate are off the hook for looking as stupid as they did in the PT.

The Republic is corrupt, and may be unsalvageably so. That was the upshot of those rather boring political episodes we had to suffer thru earlier this season. (And that was enough for me - at this point, I'll take their word for it, the Republic is corrupt, gotcha, please don't do more episodes trying to convince us. ) It's a judgment call - do you stick with a possibly unsalvageable Republic or stick around and try to solve its problems? Maybe the Seppys did work hard to try to solve those problems and finally got fed up.

Because it's a judgment call - why allow the Seppys to run off with valuable worlds if you think they're wrong, everyone can work together and work their problems out? That's what Padme was trying to do with the friend she contacted, and why wouldn't intelligent people who want to best for everyone try to do that?

Padme and the other good guys probably realize the Trade Federation is just taking advantage of the chaos opportunistically. There's not much they can do about that other than try to do an end run around them. What nobody knows so far, or can know, is that a Sith is also manipulating things behind the scenes. The legit Seppys change the tone of the story from a stupid story to a tragic one.

 

Lucas is a control-freak, as you've noted, but I'm sure he was also disappointed by the reception of most of his TV-related Star Wars ventures. "The Star Wars Holiday Special" was a disaster which Lucas has attempted to destroy all traces of. Glancing at wikipedia, the "Droids" and "Ewoks" cartoons were better received, but still aimed squarely at children and short-lived (three seasons of 13 animated episodes between the two of them).

And then there's Young Indiana Jones, which was unsuccessful on TV. Lucas was very fond of that project. Perhaps it soured him towards the demands of television?

 

I've watched ALL the episodes... and it's still a mess. That Separatist episode didn't make anything clearer.

HOW is the Republic corrupt? The WHOLE thing is corrupt? What does that look like?

Let's just say, there's alot of saying rather than showing.

The politics are by far the weakest aspect of the show....

I can't say this season has been all that great, compared to previous seasons.

 

Showing the whole galaxy being corrupt would be a massive undertaking and probably boring enough to congeal lava. (How's that for a metaphor? )

The political episodes implied that the Republic simply isn't in control of all the shit that goes on. Businesses run amok and distribute poison drinks to kiddies. Customs officers take bribes. It would be a lot of stuff that's boring in comparison with what we expect from Star Wars - glitz and lightsabers and dogfights zooming across the cosmos - but if people saw it every day of their lives, it would have a huge demoralizing impact.

In comparison, most of them never see a Jedi, ever. The Jedi and the Senate are off somewhere in the clouds and who knows whether they know or care about the suffering of common folks? If that's what set the Seppys off, I can't say I blame them. I don't think the Jedi are capable of being the police force for a whole galaxy. Maybe a galaxy is just too big for any Republic, and the whole idea is stupid.

Okay, Star Wars doesn't do the nitty gritty details of politics or the lives of ordinary people all that well, but at least TCW is trying, which is more than I can say for the PT. The inherent weakness of any political storyline in Star Wars is why I keep saying, the mystical plotline (Anakin, the Prophecy, what it means, how it's interpreted or misinterpreted) should be the main plotline.

The PT completely ignored the mystical story, but TCW has introduced it as a seemingly central element, which would be a huge improvement. Mostly Star Wars should leave politics to Star Trek and just do the cosmic, hand-waving stuff.

 

I should note that Lucas's original concept for the Fall of The Republic was a bit different. Although it's very similar to what we have in the prequels, it's interesting that it sort of potrays the Emperor as a weak puppet ruler and people like Tarkin being the true power behind the Empire. But the stuff about the Republic getting corrupt, Senator Palpatine promising to 'fix' the Republic, and of course the Jedi purge are all there. It's found in the first few pages of the Star Wars novel (Which first came out roughly a few months before the film, leading to the sometimes misconception that the films are based on novels).

 

It's never been a problem for movies about the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire.

I guess it's always felt like the political motivations were an after thought of the creators (Lucas) and now they are trying to craft something... and for me, it's not working.