Star Wars Merchandising (Or: "Disney, you suck.") (No spoilers)

Today I was in the stores, including The Disney Store.

They had action figures for most of the characters in The Force Awakens.  One was notably missing.  The main fucking character.

Her name is Rey, everything in the movie depends upon her.  I can't say much more without spoilers but, again, she's the main fucking character.  As you might imagine without her things default to:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Because that's what happens when you remove the protagonist from a story.

The Force Awakens drew heavily on Star Wars for its plot (how heavily?  Can't tell you, promised not to spoil.)  With that parallel in mind imagine her as Luke, but more important.  No damned figure.

Now this would be a problem in general but note that they were action figures.  She out actioned the people who did get figures.

Kylo Ren has two seperate figures (because it makes more money to sell two entirely different figures than sell one with a removable mask.)  Now I'm not going to insult Kylo Ren here, anyone who has seen the movie can tell you that he fills his part in the story with the utmost adequacy, but he can't hold a candle (or a triple bladed lightsaber) to Rey.

Any reasonable person, if told they could only make a figure of one of the characters of Rey or Kylo would choose Rey.  If you've seen the movie you'd kind of have to.  In fact, even if you just read a short plot summary that's the only choice you could make.

Hell, even from a "Fuck the plot, we want Cool Action Accessories!" standpoint she's got two melee weapons (one of them with historic and intrinsic value) and a blaster to Kylo's one dinky red saber.  Kylo's one dinky red saber that appears to have its power regulation somewhat fucked up (damn thing always looks like it's about to blow up and take Kylo's hand with it.)

But that wasn't the choice.  They could have made toys for both, and if they really couldn't be bothered to make one more figure than they did, they could have made one of her in place of the redundant second Kylo figure.

In fact, if anyone ought to have two figures, it's her.  Her mask is cooler and serves an actual fucking purpose.

Also of note is that you can buy her vehicle even though it's impossible to get her.  She's not just being erased, she's being erased in a way that makes the erasure unmissable.  Much more the Egyptian style of damnatio memoriae than the Roman one.  They want you to know that there was someone there, and be faced with the unmistakable fact that that person was intentionally erased with excessive animosity (remember, the bad guys were not erased, just like the Egyptians didn't chisel out those they waged genocidal war against, no the hatred necessary to do this is significantly greater than that you have for the people who killed your entire family, for only then do the Egyptians pull out the chisels.)

So, why the hell is Rey being erased from a movie that is, almost entirely, about her?

The answer is boobs.  Rey doesn't wear particularly gendered clothes so we can't talk all that much about what she presents as and nothing in the movie involves what's under them, so what we're left with is outward appearance and what sets her apart from the people who are allowed to have action figures is that she has boobs.

Stormtroopers in sensible armor (totally a thing) don't have visible boobs because: sensible armor.  Rey in clothes that involve the reason the word "cloth" is in "clothes" does have visible boobs.  From there it's a small leap for people to assume she's female unless otherwise stated (Han Solo does) and then we come the only reasonable explanation for the absence of Rey in the merchandise of Star Wars: The Story of Rey (in theaters now, available in I-Max 3D) apparently you can't have an action figure for a female character.

There's no other explanation.  There is nothing, save sexism, that can explain the absence of Rey.  The movie is her god damned story.  Of the characters in the movie she's the only one from the planet where the story starts, the only to go everywhere the story takes place, and the only one the plot fucking revolves around.

Don't get me wrong, Fin and Kung-Fu Panda Poe are great, but it's not their story.  The story begins when they end up (inadvertently, by the will of The Force, and lots of narrative handwavium as well) coming to Rey.

The reason that she was left out was that she was a boob-haver and we can't market them.

Beyond being stupid and evil, this is damnaging.

Do you want to know why Boba Fett became such a big fucking phenomenon that they ended up retconning the Clone Wars into being nothing more than the origin of Boba Fett?  (A kind of stupid an annoying origin story at that.)

He had a cool action figure.

That's it.  That's why he's so popular.

Boba Fett is The Star Wars Holiday Special personified and that thing is "Don't remind me" Anti-Canon on a level not even the Ewok movies have managed to pull off.  (For those who didn't know: Yes, there are Ewok movies.  Plural.)

In the original trilogy he does only one semi-competent thing.  Do you remember what it is?

He doesn't catch anyone, he doesn't win fights, he doesn't demonstrate combat or piloting prowess, he doesn't demonstrate a quick wit, he doesn't stop the person threatening to vaporize him with a thermal detonator, he doesn't do much of the actual work involved in his job (instead he watches Vader do it for him and acts like a spoiled entitled brat about it), he doesn't track, he show particular skills at investigation or hunting bounty.  So, do you remember what he does do?

He waits around to see if any clues turn up after everyone else leaves the scene of the crime.  Well, that's the charitable interpretation.  He could have just had his engine stall out.  But charitably he waits around, which allows him to see where the Falcon is going, calls up Vader, says, "I haven't done what you hired me to do, but how much will you pay for me to point you in the right general direction?" and that's where he stops doing anything of value.

At that point he doesn't even have a name.

In Return of the Jedi he gets a name right before he's defeated by accident by someone who doesn't even know where he is and isn't trying to beat him.

But he had a cool toy.

This created a sort of feedback loop.  People who played with the toy wanted to know more about him, to fill that need people put him in EU stories, which led to him being more popular, which led to more merchandise and people wanting to know more about him, and to fill that need her was put in more EU stories and so on.

And that's where the phenomenon came from.  He had a cool toy.

Rey doesn't have a cool toy because she doesn't have a fucking toy.

This is a problem.  A male character with two lines and less impact on the overall story than the person who said not to fire on the life-pod with not life signs in it gets a cool toy and is catapulted into being a cultural phenomenon.

A female character who one of the movies is actually fucking about is denied a toy and ... well that's where we are now.

Like I said, just think of it like leaving Luke out of original trilogy merchandising.

(Skip to 36 seconds if you want to get straight to the point.)

Various movies Star Wars things should have been

The Force Awakens is what we shall spoil first because it will make the most possible people not read this post and that's how you drive traffic (away.)

Photon points out that the super weapon could have been removed from the movie entirely and changed virtually nothing.

Even if The First Order weren't a galactic threat Leia would likely be involved in The Resistience because of the family ties involved and a misplaced belief that she's to blame.  Fin would still want to rescue Rey because she's the first person to look at him as a person, and Han would because he felt the connection he had with Rey.

Basically everything ends up happening in the exact same way.

That's, honestly, too little of a change.

I've already mentioned that Han, Chewie and Rey: Galactic Smuggling and Salvage would be a completely awesome and utterly watchable thing.

The First Order maintains control by stealing people as infants and constantly brainwashing them.  Fin likely isn't even close to the only one who wants out of that loveless shitty enviroment.  Speaking of shit, he works on the guidance sanitation system.

What if the way he got the sheilds down was to show up, say "Hey guys, I found a way out and all you have to do is help us break stuff, and we know how easily stuff breaks given that we're the ones who always have to fix it.

So they get to the important whatever room by rerouting the sewage flow so it backs up into said rooms attached bathroom and the people working in high clearance only area abandon their posts because they don't want to be ankle deep in shit.  Then the good guys can just walk in and do what they will.

"We need to do work in this area."

"You're a sanitation worker, you don't have clearance to -- What the fuck is that smell!"

"I warned you.  You know if you'd just granted us access to to section G6-B last week this whole thing could have been avoided, but no: you had do do the whole 'Restricted area' nonsense."

"Just get in here and fix... oh my god!"

"Honestly, as sludge flows go that's relatively tame."

Bad guys run away, good guys have unfettered access.

. . .

Star Wars: The Sanitation Workers

But beyond that, they keep on brainwashing people to keep them loyal.  What about a prison break --or a high speed prison-transport break where they free dissenting workers on the way to a reeducation camp?

Save the stormtroopers who don't want to be storm troopers.

Also since they're all kidnapped as infants, what about a more basic rescue mission?  "I don't care about your politics, I'm, just here to get by brother back."

Moving from stormtroopers to scavengers.  So staying in S here.

If they hadn't been a community of such assholes I could totally watch a whole series of stuff about scavengers who live in a given place because the remnants of a space ship battle are there and the ships haven't been picked clean yet.  First installment could be overthrowing the assholes there in movie and setting up some sort of shared collective where they all got their fair share.

When you first see a piece of an incomplete map to Luke you get the impression that this is going to be Star Wars: The Search for Luke which will involve scouring the galaxy for evidence of Luke, totally a movie worth of stuff there.  It's basically the whole scavenger hunt race thing that's done so often.

- - -

Let's talk about Episode 1.  Not what the original trilogy had to say about it, what was actually there.

Anakin was a slave.  Given that Republic credits don't count for shit on Tatooine an argument can be made that the Republic didn't have sway there and thus couldn't prevent it, but consider the story suggested:

Idealistic slave gains freedom, has to leave home (but promises to return) and is trained to use incredible magic
? ? ? ? ?
Same person, now an adult, will cross whatever moral lines it takes to defend the empire.

What's the most reasonable way to connect point A to point B.

The (future) emperor comes to Anakin and points out that for all his training he still hasn't been able to fulfill his original quest: to set his mom free.

The problem is the sluggish and corrupt government.  If they work together they can take over and end slavery everywhere.  Poverty too.  Hunger, homelessness.  They can make a better galaxy.

Sure, it'll involve some self sacrifice, maybe you won't be able to sleep at night so well and looking in the mirror won't be your favorite thing to do, but is your ability to sleep at night more important than the freedom of all those slaves.

It'll be much easier to get things through committee when the dissenting  voices are dead.

Then Star Wars would be set in an apparently utopian post scarcity society, except that, you know, dissenting voices are killed off, getting rid of the Jedi means strong restrictions on religious practices.  And you come to realize that seeming utopia is really, really not utopia when it comes to things like freedom of speech, press, and religion.

Probably a surveillance state with no privacy whatsoever and draconian punishments.

But some of the people on the rebel side would be people who just want to go back to the days when they had slaves.

- - -

The Clone Wars

Just think about that.  Would you clone one random bounty hunter?  No, you'd clone all the great military strategists, you'd clone your best sniper to be all your snipers, you best rifleman to be you riflemen, your best ...

Your best wizards to be your damned embedded Jedi.

Your best star-fighter pilot to be a star-fighter pilots.  (Well, you'd clone your best [fighter name] pilot to pilot all your [fighter name]s.)

You'd have lots of models of people cloned.  And you'd have six versions of Alexander the Great standing around a table working together to create the best strategy for using your infantry on such and such planet against superior numbers with that river over there in the way.

If plucky heroes kept on foiling your damned plans you'd get some DNA and brain scans and unleash armies of those same plucky heroes on your enemies.

It would be a confuddled mess (a word so unsure and mixed up it doesn't know if it's confused or befuddled) but it would be interesting.  Which the actual Clone Wars movie was not.

- - - 

There were other thoughts and other things, but I'm not doing the best job at keeping thoughts in my head.

An even more spoiling spoilery post on my reactions to The Force Awakens.

So, again, damned spoilers be here.

This is basically a play by play of what happened and my reaction to it.

Opening crawl tells us things like the fact that there are now three factions in the galaxy: The New Republic, the New Empire The First Order, and The Resistance.  We aren't given any decent details, but it appears to work like this: The First Order took over evil duties of evil, rebel alliance split into two groups: The New Republic is a governing body that pays attention to governance and uses it's military to protect its territory which happens to include The Resistance strongholds, The Resistance actively opposes The First Order.

So The First Order and the New Republic aren't technically at war, but The New Republic is a state sponsor of terrorism and the terrorists in question are used to count on their ability to hide behind The New Republic's military so it's effectively an undeclared war in which The New Republic's military is divided into the official defensive military and unofficial, autonomous, offensive military of The Resistance.

Got all that?  Good.

Luke disappeared and Leia, resistance general, sent her best pilot to find the only clue that's turned up in the time since he disappeared.

Already I'm throwing up a bit of a "whut?" because why would you send your best pilot on a mission to make contact with an informant.  Why not top spy or most trusted aide?

But ok, that's what happens and instead of a mere clue it happens to be a map piece that makes no sense which shows exactly where Luke went but because it doesn't show where he started (I think it's trying to be the map with no names from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where once you find the point of origin the map is extremely useful) and is the only piece of the puzzle either side is lacking.  Though The Resistance don't realize they don't have the rest of the puzzle because plot.

What makes no sense about the map is that it covers too large of an area of the frequently traversed from end to end galaxy for it to be believably uncharted and it's showing Luke's course in spite of no one but Luke knowing what that course was.

It could have made sense.  After being repeatedly stolen by a variety of people, the Millennium Falcon ended up on the same planet, so it could easily have been that, while Luke's whereabouts were secret he transmitted his journey to the Falcon where it was stored on some secret encrypted hard drive or other but, due to the Falcon being stolen, the right people never managed to look it up.  The movie's droid could have had the keys needed to open the encryption.

Thus the clue could have been an actual clue, a lead on the whereabouts of the Falcon.

Or, alternatively, the planet in question is filled with scavengers because there was a battle there, leaving random spaceships all around for people to pick shit out of.  The empire already has much of the map, so maybe maybe some of the imperials who had been involved in the battler had been tracking Luke, explaining why they had much of the map, they never transmitted it until the ship was going down because they were afraid the rebels would find Luke if they did, but one of the vital pieces got separated at the time of the transmission thus the final puzzle piece that drives the plot.

I like the Falcon as the macguffin more, though.

Regardless, old guy who you wonder if he's someone you're supposed to remember from the original trilogy (he's not) hands off the map to the hotshot pilot and then stormtroopers come and kill everyone except for one who apparently tries to comfort one of his colleagues when he/she dies and then doesn't do any shooting.

Guy with the scary lightsaber (as in I'm pretty sure it functions the way it does specifically to be scary because I see no way that the ripply pulsing blade could actually be more useful than a normal one) Kills the old guy himself.

The droid is sent to hide in the desert for safety, the pilot is captured.  They search him with a pat down.  Seriously.  Don't they have technology on the level of those wands at airport security?

Cut to female lead, Rey.  I was totally ready to love the character the moment of her introduction just because she's a scavenger who is looking around a crashed star destroyer for useful parts.  Very little in the movie gave me reason to like her less and she is the awesome.

 She goes to a scavenger place and trades her goods for a food ration and it appears that she's being shortchanged.  Back at home she rescues the droid from someone who wants to use it for parts.

Pilot, Poe the Kung Fu Panda, is interrogated.  The torture technology doesn't work, but evil guy, Kylo Ren, uses the force to pull the information from Poe's mind.

Wait, what?  They can do that?  I honestly don't have much of a problem with the idea but given that Ren apparently can't live up to his grandfather Vader (Ren is Han and Leia's son) then . . . if this ability is possible why didn't Vader use it on Leia in the original Star Wars?  Either he would have gotten the location of the Rebel Base or he would have learned that Leia's a potentially powerful force user.  Either way, win for the forces of evil.

Ok, but that happens, which means that the bad guys now know they're looking for a droid, as well as what type of droid they're looking for. Poe is left in the interrogation room.

The Stormtrooper who didn't kill anyone shows up, bluffs his way into taking Poe with him and they steal a tie fighter.  Why?  The stormtrooper wants to run away but he can't fly.  Poe is a pilot, they need each other.  On the way out the stormtrooper is given a name, Fin, which he never had before because he was taken from his family as an infant and refered to exclusively by his serial number,

He also demonstrates a total lack of concern for the lives of his colleagues who might, just like him, be waiting for an opportunity to run away.  His total lack of conflict over killing swaths of the people he grew up with will persist throughout the movie.

Fin and Poe end up crashing on the planet.  Fin separates himself from his ejector seat and runs to the smoking remains of the tie fighter which may or may not contain Poe.  (It doesn't.)  The tie fighter sinks into the lighting sand which burps after devouring it.  Ain't fire swamp random desert grand?

Fin assumes Poe is dead even though if he had an ejector seat wouldn't it make sense that the pilot did too?  Regardless, he does get Poe's coat.

The droid has taken to following Rey around and people try to buy it and steal it from her.  During one of those attempts Fin sees Rey up against superior numbers, goes to help, but she's kicked ass before he gets there.  The droid recognizes Poe's coat, Rey chases Fin down and whacks him with her preferred weapon (a big metal stick) but he manages to convince her that he was with Poe (true) and he's with The Resistance (false.)

At which point the imperials First Order arrive.  Apparently the droid, in spite of being a model everyone can recognize, has a one of a kind appearance which is why whenever they go anywhere everyone immediately knows that it is the droid they're looking for.

Fin is very grabby, instead of just saying, "Run," and demonstrating by example, he always grabs Rey by the hand.  This pisses her off greatly (she even points out that she's fully capable of running without some jerk holding her hand.)

They try to get to a ship to outrun the bad guys, Fin asks what about another, off screen, ship and Rey tells him it's a piece of junk.  Intended ship blows up.  "The junk will do."

The junk is, of course, the Falcon.  And here we get our first hints that Rey is in tune with the force.  She's a pilot, but she's never flown anything like the Falcon before yet it comes to her as if by magic.  Fin meanwhile has to stumble through learning how to use the Falcon's guns in spite of just learning how to use an extremely similar system which he had found wasn't that different from the on the ground shooting he'd been trained in doing.

A nice touch as there's a battle going on is that we see one of the tie fighters shot down and scavengers immediately going to collect the fresh wreckage.

Soon after they get away, they're caught in a tractor beam and assume they'll be boarded by stormtroopers.  It's Han and Chewie.

Han and Rey operate on the same wavelength to the point of finishing each other's sentences while Chewie seems to like her too.  (And she can understand wookie-speak perfectly)

Han's luck has gotten worse since the original trilogy.  Remember when his debt to Jabba the Hut was the only major fuck up hanging over his head?

Well for this job he's double booked with people who don't like him very much on account of his past failures, and the acquiring the deadly cargo he's got (so he did in fact get the job done) ended up killing off the larger crew he had been working with leaving it so it's just him and Chewie again.

Both of the people he's working for show up.  The droid is noticed as the one the bad guys want, and things seem like they're going extremely badly.

Rey and Fin are in hiding in a service area under the walkway where the confrontation is taking place.  Pulling fuses would trap both gangs but ... wrong fuses, oops.  The creatures of doom escape and both gangs end up getting what they paid for, if not in the form they wanted it.  All of our intrepid heroes flee Han's not-falcon ship for the Falcon.

Chewie was wounded which led to the first time in all the time he's known Chewie that Han used Chewie's weapon.  Which... huh?  Even disregarding all of the myriad reasons this makes no sense, it's a fucking energy crossbow.  How do you spend decades living with an energy crossbow as close to you as your best friend and never once think, "Energy crossbow sounds at once nonsensical and extremely cool, I should really try it at least once.

Han is very impressed with Chewie's weapon.

On the bad guy side we finally learn who Ren is when the news of the droid being on the Falcon with Han Solo reaches The First Order via one of the people pissed off at Han who didn't get eaten by the cargo.  Ren has some qualms, he can feel the lightside within him trying to get out.  He asks the beat up helmet of Darth Vader (remember, Vader was cremated while wearing that helmet) for help in quashing said feelings.  This is a weird kind of ancestor worship.  Vader was redeemed at the end so apparently he's trying to call out not to Vader but the idea of Vader before said redemption.

Notable that Star Wars has a thing with helmets.  In the prequels when Boba Fett's dad is decapitated the head goes one way while the helmet another.  Young Boba goes to the helmet.

Anyway, back to the good guys.

With Chewbacca injuried, Rey takes over as copilot and there's even more evidence that she and Han are in sync with each other and she'd be perfect working on the Falcon.

Anyway, Han claims that the Falcon, now that it's in the air/in space, is easy to track (note how quickly he found it) and thus takes the to Bespin someplace we've never heard of so Lando someone we've never heard of can procure them a ship that's less easy to track.

The only way to make sense of this is that Han was lying his ass off and just wanted to be rid of the kids in a way that wouldn't get them killed.  The Millennium Falcon is actually hard to track without a tracking beacon (how it was tracked in Star Wars) and in this movie they will take it to a rebel base without it being tracked there.

"Someone we've never heard" of is Maz Kanata who is an awesome character.

They have a conversation in which Fin points out that, since they just walked through a crowded establishment, The First Order will know they're there (they do, the only people who weren't called with a, "The droid is here," message were, "Random Unnamed Third Parties.)  He points out that they'll kill everyone.  He says that they should run away, very fast.

The other's aren't so big on the run away plan, which is ok, but that they're not down with the "Run" part of the plan is a different matter entirely.  It's ok to disagree on direction, but they should be with him on velocity.  They should totally be running, they aren't and they don't.

Of course them not running allows for an important force experience.  Maz Kanata has Luke Skywalker's original Saber (the one Obi Wan took from Anakin to give to Luke) in an unlocked box.  I really want to know if she also has Luke's severed hand.  Why?  I don't know.  I just do.

The saber calls to Rey, and she goes down to the room in which it is kept, opens the box, and then has a force induced vision when she touches it.

As I said in the other post, I think I can see what's going on here, but the movie never even tries to make sense of it.

What makes sense is that after Maz got it, however she got it, she's been leaving it in a secluded but easy to access part of her establishment and waiting for someone to come and find it.  She's been waiting on this precise moment.  Why didn't she give it to Solo given that it did belong to his friend?  Because if Solo were meant to have it the saber would have called to him and he'd have found it on his own.

Unfortunately the visions terrify Rey and she runs away.  Way too much of the rest of the movie will be spent with everyone in the audience thinking, "Can we just get Rey the fucking lightsaber already?"

This is when the super weapon of the movie is used.  It fires an incredibly slow beam that somehow (it must speed up when we're not looking) manages to blow up planets in another system.  It takes out the seat of government of the New Republic, definitely wipes out the senate and most of the fleet, and probably decapitates the entire government.  So that's fun.  This is visible from wherever the hell Maz lives.

Fin, moments away from leaving on a ship to the outer rim as part of his "run and hide" plan, runs to Han to tell him exactly what happened.  Fin worked on the weapon, you see.  Given that the weapon is made out of a gutted planet, a lot of people worked on the weapon.

The bad guys come, Maz entrusts the saber to Fin to give to Rey.  Not a bad idea because after Rey gets captured (what with her being defenseless against a petulant darkside user with an overcompensating lightsaber.)

Maz gives Fin the lightsaber to give to Rey.  This is a very good plan.  Then he asks for a weapon and she points out he's holding one and what the fuck?  He does make use of the saber, but becomes significantly more effective once he has a blaster, which he's actually been trained to use.

Rey as noted, is unarmed.  She also has no force training.  So movie antagonist Ren has little trouble capturing her.  When he realizes that she's seen the map he just takes her and calls off the search for the droid.  Just after he's taken her, the cavelry come.

They're led by not-dead Poe.  I was expecting him to be back since there was never any reason to think he was still in the tie fighter when it sank into the sand.  You know what's great about the cavalry?  They're not all human.  They're not even mostly human.  Most of them come from a diverse set of alien races.  Finally the fighter pilot fantastic racism has ended.  Aliens in X-wings, woo!

This leads to a reunion of Leia and Han as well as a reunion of Poe and Fin.  Fin says Poe can keep the jacket.

They stand around a holographic display of the new superweapon and Han suggests just blowing it up since there's always a way to do that.  Since the superweapon functions by sucking a sun into a planet as its power source that's actually a completely reasonable thing to suggest.  Suns are bigger and hotter than planets.

Someone points out that to contain that power they must need a technobable, Fin can point to where it is.  The problem is it's sheilded.  Fin says he can take down the shield but he needs to be physically present on the planet to do so.  Han says he can get Fin there and Leia would really rather not know how he'll pull it off. with all the pieces in place Han and Leia have some reconciliation (after their son turned evil and killed off whatever other non-Luke Jedi might have been in training, Leia and Han split, Luke ran away, and things have been kind of crap.)

Rey resists force interrogation which leads to Ren realizing that she's extremely strong in the force and leads to Rey getting into better touch with her forceyness.  Add to this that she's a total fangirl of this stuff and it'll let her escape, but first Ren reports to his dark master the giant Gollum (because, what with this being a long time ago, Gollum hasn't fallen into mount doom yet) that the girl is really damned strong and he'll need master's help.

Master says, "Sure, bring her to me."  Also, since they let the droid get away it is assumed that The Resistance probably has the map and that's bad.  In one of the conversions before this he said, "There's been an awakening, have you felt it?" which... no.  Nope.  Didn't happen.  No.

If it had then the whole focus on the importance of Luke would make perfect sense.  Jedi training as seen in the original trilogy works fast.  So maybe the force just has some kind of Jedi to Jedi mind connection going on during training.  So if there had been an awakening and there were all of these force users but no one to train them, but if someone did train them they could quickly become a superpowered army for good, then it would make sense.

The resistance wants Luke because he'll be able to give their force users the guidance they use to actually put their powers to use, the bad guys want a lack of Luke because most people are not all that enamored with the idea of evil and probably most of their stormtroopers justify their actions to themselves via appeals to the greater good or some such instead of the embrace of evil that it takes to really be a dark sider.  Thus the awakened force users are very much Republic/Resistence Skewed and all they need is a Jedi to mind meld with link to train them.

That would make all of this make sense, as the last Jedi Luke is the last one who can super-quick-train people.

Granted that is entirely new bullshit that isn't attested elsewhere, but it's entirely new bullshit that could fill some plotholes while contradicting nothing.

Back to Gollum, who might actually be normal sized given that all we ever see is a hologram of him.

So we've got, "The girl with the information we need is really strong in the force, bring her to master," and, "The Resistance probably has the same information by now, that's bad."  Proposed solution is to simply blow up the resistance.  And, points to the script on why everyone is trying to blow everyone else up at the exact same time.

The resistance responded to the New Republic seat of power getting blown up by wondering, "What the fuck was that?" so they located the superweapon (it eats suns, so it's not hard to find) and sent a reconnaissance vessel to gather what data they thought they could get away with getting.  It wasn't much, but apparently it was too much because the reconnaissance vessel was spotted and tracked back to the rebel base.  Thus the same trip that led to the rebels --excuse me, The Resistance-- learning about weapon lead to the people with the weapon learning about the Resistance.

Granted it's the same trick used in Star Wars (the ship the death star plans are on is the one they follow to the rebel base) but if you can't handle them doing the theatrical equivalent of playing Star Wars in a different key signature then the movie won't be for you because they recycled so much.

Rey, meanwhile is doing the aforementioned putting her fan-girl knowledge together with the revelation that the force is using her to escape.

It takes her three times to get the Mind Trick to work, the first two of which end up amusing and annoying to Storm Trooper, but on the third time it does work and she's loose.  And the scene works in part based on being funny, which is a very Star Wars thing to do.

Anyway, Leia asks Han to bring their son home.  Han figures he can't if Luke couldn't, Leia thinks that a father might be able to succeed where a Jedi failed.

Han, Chewie, and Fin get through the shield by waiting to come out of lightspeed until they're on the other side (the shield doesn't block light or things moving at the same pace.)  Mind you this involves slamming the Falcon into the ground, the trees, and pretty much everything else.  So you do see why the X-wings couldn't have used the same trick, they're not rugged enough and would have been destroyed on impact with nice Star Wars explosions.

At around this point Fin reveals that he worked sanitation and has no idea how to take down the shield, he was just trying to get there because that's where they'd be holding Rey.

He does, however, know who knows how to take down the shields, and that's good enough.

Mind you we do get some interesting dialog

"We'll just trust the force." - Fin after he reveals he has no idea what he's doing.
"That's not how the force works." - Han

"The longer we're here the less luck we'll have." - Han

When they get the shields down and the fighter pilots start shooting the technobabble one complains that it's not blowing up the planet while another points out that, yeah, incredibly vital component is armored so they'll have to bomb it a lot to make a difference.

After everyone meets up Fin doesn't give Rey the lightsaber because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

Han realizes that the fighters need help, they have explosives, to they try to put them to good use.

[Added] And at this point Rey pulls the right fuse and gets them easy passage where they want to go. [/Added]

I loved:
Han: We'll put a charge at the bottom of every other pillar
Chewie: Wookie noise
Han: You're right, that's a better idea.

That Ren murders Han is hardly surprising.  It's really frustrating because in the brief time that they were together Han and Rey had great chemistry.  Apparently Rey noticed this because on of the things that Ren did managed to pull out of her head was the fact that she was thinking maybe Han could be the father figure she never had.

Lightsaber battles.  Fin vs Ren because what the fuck?  He loses, though not nearly as badly as you'd expect.  Never underestimate the fencing training of sanitation workers.

Rey vs Ren because we've been waiting for this the whole fucking movie.

Ren falls victim to the classic darkside blunder: he tries to convert Rey.  In the time that gives where, when he doubtless thinks she's considering her options, she manages to get a much better connection to the force with concentration and clear mindedness and all of that shit Jedi need.  So she wins.

Everybody not dead returns to their respective sides.  The story ends with Chewie and Rey taking the Falcon to find Luke.  I think Chewie prefers to be co pilot because he clearly outranks Rey on the Falcon.  Note that earlier Han had offered Rey a job with them (which would have been fucking awesome.  Han, Chewbacca, and Rey: Galactic Smuggling and Salvage.)

Fin is unconscious.

Dark master has order that Ren be brought in to complete his training.

When Luke is found Rey offers him his lightsaber with the blade side facing him.  Granted it was off, but still bad form.  Blade toward yourself, not the person you're handing it to.

And blah.

Spoilery Spoiling post in which I spoil Star Wars: The Force Awakens, spoilers

Did I mention that there will be spoilers, because there totally will be.  In a week or a month or whatever this will seem like overkill, but right now a lot of people are avoiding any news.

So, first off, I liked it.  Though it should be noted that people who are simultaneously human, female, and non-white continue to be very hard to find in Hollywood in general and in space in particular.

As near as I can tell if you want a woman of color in space in a movie you have to either have your inner Trekkie crushed to see new-Uhura or suffer through the black guy dying first and "I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I--Urk" to see Zoe.

That aside, so far aside that we totally ignore diversity or lack thereof for this paragraph, I found myself thinking that, while I did like the movie, I would have rather watched Han, Chewie, and Rey (female lead) saying, "Fuck the galaxy," and having wonderful criminal adventures together on the Falcon.

So, questions:

1 Why the hell do you think finding Luke is going to accomplish shit?  He ran away and never came back.  Everyone good and bad is assuming that finding a map to Luke will accomplish something but Luke is in SELF IMPOSED exile so severe he didn't even bring R2 with him.  Luke always brings R2 with him.  Unless you've got really fucking good reason to believe that the reason he didn't come back was that he was stranded, this is not the savior you're looking for.  Move along.

2 Why wasn't Leia trained?  Yes, she has work to do as an important leader person, but fucking designated survivor rule.  And she's already Jedi approved.

Yoda seemed convinced that if Luke went to Bespin and died/turned to the dark side Leia would be a good potential replacement (and apparently was convinced that if Luke walked into the trap it would give Leia the chance to get out regardless of what fate Luke met.)

3 They should never have transferred Fin out of sanitation.  There's no evidence that he disliked his work in sanitation, but one mission killing innocent people without decent cause and he's trying to jump ship.  This implies that their brainwashing isn't nearly as effective as they think.  I was expecting him to at least try to sway the other stormtroopers by pointing out that you don't have to do this, you can totally get out, and if it weren't for these jerks repeatedly pulling him back in he'd be beyond the bad guys' reach by now.  Why did he just remorselessly shoot the people who were just like him instead?

But rewind a bit they had the black guy be a storm trooper.  Let's think about that for a bit.  It's never been any secret that the Empire is composed of space Nazis and the name stormtrooper is a part of that.  It doesn't hearken back to the WWI units of the same name, it's all Nazi all the time.

So lets talk about the Nazi stormtroopers from which the Star Wars ones take their name.  Stormtroopers were early adopters of the whole Nazi thing to the point that other Nazi organizations looked up to them.  This was especially true in the SS who modeled their rank structure on stormtroopers and eventually took over all of the stormtrooper duties when the stormtroopers became defunct.

So when we're thinking Final Solution we're thinking SS and the SS are thinking, "Damn we wish, were stormtroopers.  We stole their ranks and their duties, but we never did get the name.  It would be so awesome if we get the name."

And this is one of those wonderful places where connotation and denotation meet and say, "That's what the word unambiguously means."

So, naturally, the black guy is a stormtrooper.  The black guy.  Our only example of a black guy.  It would have been fairly easy to have the role stormtrooper plays in the story taken by the hotshot pilot instead, and then the black guy (why was there only one?) could be in that role instead of the, "We specifically named them after white supremacist fuckheads who genocidal white supremacists want to be like," role.

4 The map: what the fuck?

The map is in two pieces, one of which is had by everyone in the galaxy except for the ones who are trying to find Luke and contains the entire fucking galaxy except for one section.

The other contains the vital endpoint and a really fucking huge section of the galaxy, the galaxy our heroes repeatedly go from one end of to the other, which is completely uncharted because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?

When Han said that the area on the map piece that is the plot device in the movie was uncharted I assumed that it was small.  Then we see how big a swath of the galaxy it takes up and . . . did they just fail to notice that one quadrant of their galaxy existed?

Hell, if they did then they could have said, "Well it's got to be in the uncharted section so we'll just go around there at random until we find some of the stuff on the map," and it would have worked.  The map fragment covered to large of an area for it not to work fairly quickly.

5 Is light-saber fencing an important of storm-trooper training.  Did Fin pick it up in his time at sanitation?  Or does the bad guy just really, really suck?  I was kind of annoyed (read: very fucking perturbed) that Fin didn't give Rey the lightsaber a lot sooner because, "Give the obvious fucking Jedi to-be who can apparently pull knowledge straight out of the force the god damned lightsaber already."

Fin has difficulty picking up the art of shooting shit when it's not that different from his training in shooting shit, Rey is already god damned fantastic with melee weapons (see: her and her staff) and is able to pick up, "I know how to fly a space ship," faster than Neo learned Kung Fu.  Fin should have given her the lightsaber the moment they met up with each other again.  Hell, the only reason he was carrying the lightsaber in the first place was to deliver it to her.

6 Um, about that lightsaber. . . part of me really, really wants to know if wise old alien woman with coke bottle glasses also has Luke's severed hand.  A bigger question, though, is why she didn't give some sort of explanation to the others about why Rey should be given the lightsaber.  It would have taken one line:

"I've been keeping that saber here for over three decades, waiting for it to call out to someone.  Until today no one heard a whisper, it shouted to Rey."

Ok, I used two sentences, but you get the idea.

7 People are really annoyed with the saber with the cross guard, I'm honestly not sure why.  Granted the guy who wields it can't sword-fight for shit, but if a blow were going to cut off one of the secondary sabers then with a normal saber said blow would cut off the user's arm so it's still providing more protection (where the blades of the secondary sabers are) than a normal one.  granted it would be easy to make a design without that flaw, but someone would have to hit it just right to exploit that flaw which is a lot better than, "Anywhere between the wrist and ... the entire rest of the body," we see in traditional sabers.

8 Why is our not-Sith antagonist so really, really under-trained?  Is there some rule that you have to get your ass kicked in a light-saber duel before the evil boss will teach you the fun stuff?

9 R2 woke up when he did why?

10 Han seriously didn't see the double-cross coming?  It wasn't even a double-cross, it was exactly what you'd expect.  A single cross?

Granted being completely vulnerable might be a necessary part of trying to get bad kid to turn good kid since you can't really do the whole spiel if you're trying to kill him, but surprise was totally uncalled for.

11 Did the force wake up?  Someone said, "There's been an awakening," in a pseudo title-drop but nothing in the movie really seemed to imply that.  There's one force powerful person who starts doing forcey force related stuff.  Hardly a sign that an omnipresent thing that flows from, through, and around every living thing in the entire galaxy (and possibly universe) has ended it's nap.

If the omnipresent super-powerful thing is waking up should the results be more omni and less isolated?

12 Bad guy can stop a single blaster bolt in mid air and can block shit with his saber.  Why is no one trying some laser Gatling gun on him?  Or, you know, orbital bombardment.

13 In a movie that played up the space Nazi angle so god damned much that they almost "Sieg Heil"ed and they did implement what they thought was a final solution (even if it was far less surgical in its killing than the actual final solution) why the fuck was the only black guy starting out on the Nazi side?  Yes, I know this was three too, but seriously, they really pulled out the stops on Nazi-esque imagery with, in particular, an evil rally of evil that was clearly meant to evoke, "Nazis!" in the mind of the viewer.

14 Han never tried out Chewie's crossbow before?  Seriously?  If nothing else you'd think the fact that it's a damned energy crossbow would evoke some interest given that that makes no sense and thus has high novelty factor.

15 How the fuck is Luke a threat or a hope?  The resistance doesn't seem to have an army of, "We'd be Jedi if we just had a teacher," lying about the place.  Ignore the points I raised in one about Luke being in self imposed exile and thus apparently not wanting to be found.  Say that he really wanted to return but his ship was broken and the map thing makes sense, which it doesn't.

All of the motivation and finding related plotholes disappear.

Even then, what difference does he make?  Everyone's all about saying he's game changer who will, depending on your point of view, bring salvation or destruction because as the last air-bender Jedi he can resurrect the order.  But how?

Unless Korra throws a wrench into the way things are that actually awakens the force so that Jedi start popping up all over the place, what's Luke going to do?

There don't seem to be any would-be Jedi waiting to be trained, thus there's no way that a teacher could resurrect the order.  Instead Rey is the only one we see and she only showed up after competing attempts to find Luke ended up thrusting her into the middle of things.

But ... without her, and neither side knew about her, there's nothing much Luke can do and thus nothing much to suggest that either side should have finding him be a priority.

16 Where the hell did the god damned map that drives the entire plot of the movie come from?  No one knows where he went because he just disappeared but there happens to be a two piece map that shows his entire journey from start to finish that both the new empire and R2 have the vast majority of and a random other person has the missing piece of?

It would have made a lot more sense if the Millennium Falcon had been the macguffin.  Luke's whereabouts were transmitted to the Falcon, which was planned, and automatically stored in its databanks but the ship had been stolen so many times that no one knew where it was anymore.  (Seriously, the people who stole it the final time had no idea it even was the Falcon.)


17 There was more but I should have been to bed hours ago and all of the more has leaked out of my tired brain.

"It was remarkably non-terrible for something involving JJ Abrams."

- Lonespark

Two Skywalkers and a Vader, and other prequel era stuff (The mother skywalker's weapons, Anakin and Darth after a battle)

Somehow this never ended up here.   Maybe because it's so short, but I've done shorter.  Anyway, take my non-Jedi-Truth fix for the whole "Vader betrayed and murdered your father, wait, he is your father" problem that the original trilogy had, and Darth (name, not a title) and Anakin were two different students of Obi-Wan who may well have been friends before Darth turned.  So, rewind to the clone wars, and we get the following.

-

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

[If] we retain the original idea that Anakin and Vader are separate people by having Anakin steal Vader's identity, and we give [unnamed Skywalker mother] her own story as a Jedi and the third of Obi Wan's apprentices. Then I have a Clone Wars era scene in my head:

The three of them backed up against a wall while a large fighting force approaches

[unnamed mother]: It looks like ten contubernium: 80 soldiers.
Anakin Skywalker: A full centuria, I'm impressed.
Darth Vader: Eighty soldiers against two Skywalkers and Vader? They don't stand a chance.

Vader lights his red (which does not represent evil, damn it) lightsaber, [Unnamed mother] her purple one, Anakin Skywalker his whitish blue one.

Cue epic fight scene.

-

Since I wrote that I've had more thoughts about [unnamed Skywalker mother] and also the dynamic between Anakin and Vader.  By the way, the reason I still say [unnamed mother] is that if I did a Star Wars rewrite I'd try to tell the story of the prequels as indicated in the original trilogy, which is so divergent from the prequels as produced that it kind of seems like an outrageous stretch to use them to claim her name is knowable, known, and "Padme".

For [unnamed mother] I like the idea that she's the tinkerer of the group.  Of note is that she tinkers with lightsabers.  She's just never been satisfied with one or two of normal design and length.

She tries various things, saber plus a parry dagger, bulky but short bladed things with three blades designed to be as Sai like as possible without cutting of your own fingers.  Attemps to make a light weapon weapon that can be used like a staff (don't try at home you'll cut yourself in half.)

Then she gets taken with the idea of tonfa (no, not a tonfa that a saber blade randomly comes out of for no apparent reason, actual tonfa.)  To go up against a lightsaber, or indeed against blasters, the stick would have to be replaced with lightsaber-like blades.  Obviously this requires guards as long as the two blades so one doesn't cut off one's own arm.  That was easy.  They're simple mechanical things that fold up when not in use.  No, the hard part was making it so that the blades would go at right angles to the grip because any non-blade portion of the "stick" portion would be vulnerable to, you know, getting your weapon chopped up.

Once she figured out how to do that, though, she'd found her ideal weapon.

The purple light tonfa of [unnamed mother] would come to be feared by the forces of evil throughout the galaxy.

-

After a battle I picture Vader being upbeat and happy, "We were awesome, we lived, we won, what's not to celebrate?" while Anakin is more sullen, "We killed a lot of people, we should have found another way with less death involved," and Obi Wan pointing out that they're both right.  Anakin should take joy in the fact that he's alive, his best friend (Vader) is alive, his wife ([unnamed mother]) is alive, but Vader should tone it down a bit and remember that while living is good, killing is not, and thus, really, the two of them should both find a middle ground that celebrates life without overlooking the death.

After a battle [unnamed mother] tends to go to her workshop and tinker, so she's not involved in the boys amateur philosophizing and she'd agree with Obi-Wan anyway.  We lived=Good; we killed a lot of people to do that=bad.  War sucks, but we can still recognize that another day alive is a good thing.

Star Wars Redux: No Jedi Truths

Luke left Yoda's hut, and walked back to the X-wing.

"I can't do it, R2," Luke said to the droid that had always been there for him.  "I can't go on alone."

"Yoda will always be with you," came Obi-Wan's voice.  Luke looked around and saw Obi-Wan in blue spirit form.

"Ben!  Why didn't you tell me?" Luke said. "You told me Vader betrayed and murdered my father."

"I didn't know, I thought what I said was true," Obi-Wan said.

"How can you not know the difference between 'Betrayed and murdered' and 'Is the same person as'?"

"When your father was seduced by the dark side, it was as if he became a different person--"

Luke turned away in disgust, "That's your excuse!?  That he's a different person now?"

"No, Luke.  Please allow me to explain."

Luke turned back, "Fine."

Obi-Wan sat on a log and gestured for Luke to sit beside him.  Luke didn't.

"Anakin was a good friend," Obi-Wan said.  "When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot.  But I was amazed hos strongly the Force was with him.  I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi.

"He was my first, but soon I had three students: your father, your mother, and Darth Vader.  I thought I could instruct them as well as Yoda.  I was wrong."

"But Darth Vader is my father," Luke said.

"No, Darth Vader is dead," Obi-Wan said.  "He did betray your father, as I told you before, and he did attempt to murder him.  After the battle the only survivor was mangled and burned beyond recognition.  When the Empire's servants came, he introduced himself as Vader and has used the name ever since."

Luke finally sat down beside Obi-Wan.

"I assumed that Vader had succeeded in killing your father.  I was wrong.  I encountered him several times after that, as the Clone Wars drew to a close, and not once did I sense he was really Anakin.  The dark side had twisted him until he was unrecognizable."

"There's still good in him," Luke said.

"Has he ever shown it, Luke?" Obi-Wan asked.  "I wouldn't have sent you to live with your Aunt and Uncle if I'd know the man calling himself Darth Vader was actually Anakin Skywalker because it placed you at risk.

"To keep our families safe, we never spoke of where we came from.  Only Anakin and I knew about Beru and Owen so I assumed you'd be safe there.  Skywalker is a common enough name near Tatooine.

"But I was wrong, and you were at great risk.  What if Anakin had stopped in to see his family and discovered you?  Imagine being raised by Darth Vader if he took possession of you, or he might have simply killed you to avoid a potential future threat.

"But it never happened.  He never looked up his family, he has never shown love, he has murdered people without hesitation or guilt.  What good could be left in him?"

*silence during which Luke is uneasy*

"And my mother?" Luke asked.

"The Emperor knew as I did that if Anakin were to have any offspring they would be a threat to him, even more so since your mother was a Jedi too.  So when she became pregnant I arranged for her to go into hiding.  By the time you were born the war was over, and we had lost.

"She wanted to raise you, but the Jedi purges continued after the war, and there was a chance she might be found, so to keep you safe she had me take you to Anakin's family.  That's what she told me, at least.

"She died --of natural causes-- a few years later.  I'm sorry I don't have better news for you.

"You should know that Yoda did plan to tell you about your father, when he felt you were ready for such devastating news.  You left before then."

"I know how shocked and hurt I was when Yoda told me the truth.  The pain was worse than when I died.

"But right now, what matters is that Anakin and the Emperor are still out there.  Your friends experience with Anakin should prove to you that they cannot defeat him on their own."

"I can't do it, Ben," Luke said.

"You cannot escape your destiny," Obi Wan said.  "The future is always in motion, but certain future events are fixed in place. You must face Darth Vader again."

"I can't kill my own father!" Luke shouted.

"When was he there for you?" Obi-Wan asked.  "He killed Beru and Owen.  The Anakin I knew would never do that.  He loved them both too much.  But he did.  He killed the people who raised you.  He's changed Luke.  He's nothing like the man who loved your mother.  He's nothing like the man who constructed a new lightsaber in the middle of a war just so he could bequeath his original one to you.  He's nothing like the man who would have loved you."

"It doesn't matter," Luke said quietly.  "I can't kill my own father."

Obi-Wan hung his head.  "Then the Emperor has already won.  You were our only hope.

Luke remembered something, "Yoda spoke of another."

"Yes, another of the surprises Yoda had for me," Obi Wan said.  "But it is a secret best kept."

"He said there was another Skywalker," Luke said.  "I think I deserve to know about my own family."

Obi-Wan sighed, "I was told that the reason your mother delivered you into my arms to bring to live with Beru and Owen was that she was afraid of being found in the ongoing hunt for Jedi, and that concern was true, but there was another reason.

"You are one of twins."

Luke was too shocked to say anything.

"Yoda felt that it would be safest if you were separated.  You were sent to live with your father's family, your twin sister remained with your mother.  Because of your mother's death, even your sister doesn't know her heritage, and it is best that way.  Her anonymity has protected her since her birth."

Luke thinks about this and then his eyes light up, "Leia!  Leia's my sister."

"Your insight serves you well," Obi Wan said.  "Bury your feelings deep down, Luke.  They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor."

-

Or something like that.

-

[Added]

When looking up the canon conversation I found this:

[Added]

Oh, hey, a less cynical one (only Obi-Wan's Star Wars description, not RotJ certain point of view):

How I would do it: Star Wars (the first one)

First off, casting.  A bunch of white guys and one woman isn't exactly what I'd call representative.

We should fix that.

Han Solo gets to be a woman.  C3PO and R2D2 (yes, someone did play R2) will have undefined gender and can thus be played by anyone.  Luke, Obi Wan, Vader, and Tarkin all remain male.  Leia remains female.

The Empire is made of space Nazis, they can stay white dudes.

[Added]

While not genocidal (the Death Star is akin to dropping a nuke; they've made no efforts to exterminate anyone) the Empire uses Nazi motifs too much for me to be comfortable casting, you know, people the Nazis tried to exterminate as Imperials.  Hence them staying white.

But Firedrake is definitely right about women.  Women can be Nazis.  Women were Nazis; women are neo-Nazis.  Star Wars is in a very different setting, there's no reason to assume sexism and there's already enough evil without it.  The Empire can be non-sexist evil.  Thus the Imperials should include as many women as men.

[/Added]

The Rebellion, the people in Mos Eisley, and so forth, are not made of space Nazis.  The human extras in these places are split 50-50 male appearing female appearing (though androgynous people would be nice too) and the aliens where equivalent gender is apparent have the same split.  In these places (looking at rebels in canon) there would be a sizable representation of aliens.  (The Rebellion is supposed to be inclusive, so it should visibly include different people.)

Ok, that's casting.

-

Epic movies now are allowed to have epic length.  Star Wars ran at almost exactly two hours.  The Fellowship of the Ring ran 57 minutes longer than Star Wars.

Added length allows for added depth.  More Owen and Beru, for example.  Also, rather than leaving their charred remains laying out in the light, bury them or cremate them (properly.)

The Death Star weakness makes no sense BUT if there were rebel infiltrators on the Death Star then it could make sense.  They've taken this exhaust port, quietly removed all of the safety measures, made a few modifications, and managed to get a straight line to the core.  Presumably they do it slowly and without raising suspicions.  Presumably it involved areas where you'd be checked for, you know, explosives, so they couldn't detonate it themselves.

It could even make the trench scene make sense.  If the saboteurs were only able to disable the defenses in a single area (approach vector for getting into the trench) then you'd need to stay low or be targeted by everything and definitely killed.  Why was it so distant from the target?  Even with the other safety features on the vent shafts (the ones the saboteurs disabled on the special one) the Empire still knew better than to leave the damn things unguarded and so the saboteurs had to settle for an approach vector at a distance.

Also, the "initiating firing sequence" thing.  It doesn't make sense either.  They know how long it takes to get in position, they should charge on the way so it's ready when they get there.

If, on the other hand, the firing was delayed because they had to repair sabotage, that makes some sense.

I'd have an explanation for why it came out of hyperspace on the wrong side of the planet and thus needed to circle.  For example: the jump of something that large is particularly taxing and leaves all defenses powered down so coming in close to potential planetary defenses or within range of fast but heavy hitting ships would be a bad idea, thus the trip around the planet.

This could be stated during the mission briefing on the Death Star.

Leia never mourns Alderaan.  What the fuck?  I don't pretend to know how people mourn in a galaxy far, far away (and certainly not how they did it a long time ago in said galaxy) but have her light some candles, say a prayer... something.

Blowing Alderaan up seems bullshit and stupid even by Imperial standards.  If it were pointed out that it was known to harbor rebels and hide behind its no weapons policy when called on it, then it would be an effective demonstration.  It would show that the post-Senate Empire wouldn't let bullshit stop it from holding rebel harborers accountable, even popular, traditionally immune from punishment planets were at risk, and the disproportionate nature of blowing up a fucking planet for allowing rebels safe haven (while not directly opposing the Empire) would encourage other planets to crack down hard on rebels for fear that if they didn't get rid of the rebels on their planet they'd be blown up too.

And Tarkin could say all of this in a menacing evil monologue, which would really make you understand how much of a game changer the Death Star is.

-

Honestly, rebellion on the Death Star could probably be a movie in itself, and the added time would only allow for so much of that, but it would be nice to see some of it because I refuse to believe that a population that large has no one who opposes mass murder.

Presumably most of them thought the station would be a deterrent, not actually used, and definitely not on a planet like Alderaan.

Which is to say, rebel agents should be only part of the people fighting against the loyalists on the Death Star.

-

I don't remember, did they say that they were giving Luke a ship because they needed them all in the sky and were short on pilots?  Because they should.  They should also have an explanation for why (e.g. a barracks at their last base was destroyed, really anything that would kill pilots while leaving the ships intact.)

Also, in some of the scenes that were cut, a friend from back home is featured (Biggs.)  He turns out to be a rebel pilot and the two are reunited when Luke comes to Yavin 4  He could vouch for Luke's piloting skill to help get him in a ship.

-

And that, sort of, concludes it.  Star Wars is a simple story simply told so it doesn't need any huge changes.

-

And, for those paying attention, yes, I did say that I'd try to have a Kim Possible decon post yesterday which is still not here today.  Sorry.

How history will remember the Star Wars that you used to know

George Lucas has gone on record as wanting to destroy the original trilogy.  He wants it gone.  There are precisely zero preservation efforts on the original film.  It decaying into nothingness is a part of the plan.

Once that happens all that remains will be the version he wants.  Not even the special edition, versions resulting from his non-stop tinkering that change every time it's introduced into a new format or rereleased on an old one.

He's even gone back and rewritten the scripts to match whats in said versions.  Lines that were famously improved?  They're now in what purports to be the shooting script.  His hope, again he has come out and said this, is that when this generation has come and gone and the film has gone bye-bye the only version of Star Wars that will exist, and indeed the only version that, so far as future people know, has ever existed, will be his newer better special special special changed-one-thousand-times special edition.

That hope is false hope.

In fact, what will happen if he gets his way is this:

There will be the Star Wars that people can see, the one that they can watch, the one everyone has access to.  And then there will be this other Star Wars.  Existing not so much as a thing but as an idea.  The Star Wars people learned about from their grandparents.

The Star Wars the cult of "Han shot first" tells you about.

It will be a Star Wars that exists not in physical form but as a memory.  An idea of an idea.

And that Star Wars will be awesome.  It will be better than we can imagine because we, more or less, know what Star Wars actually was.

These future generations will not.

They will be forced to imagine it, and it will be surrounded by mystery and the unknown.

All that they will know is that it was better.

They'll remember George Lucas as someone who got things right once upon a time but then couldn't stop tinkering and in the end laid low his own creation leaving only a tainted and imperfect echo of the wondrous past.

Places where we are forced to admit, "Yeah, that part of Star Wars always kind of sucked," will be places where those in the future will assume that George Lucas fucked up the original in his non-stop drive to change things and overwrite the original.

If the original really is lost to history than the original will be remembered as far better than it ever had any claim to be.

When someone says, "I don't like Star Wars," they'll be told, "That's just because you've never seen the right version.  If you'd seen the original, then you'd love it."

The fact that Lucas created Star Wars will be overshadowed by the fact that he destroyed it.  He'll be seen like a sculptor who created a masterpiece and then kept on chipping away at it until only a misshapen hunk of marble that suggests a work of art but utterly fails to do it justice remains.

He'll be remembered as someone who took wonder from the world because of his own arrogant belief that he could improve upon perfection.

Because with the originals gone, known only to the living population of the world via nostalgia, there will be no proof that the originals weren't perfect.

All of the flaws that we know so well?  There will be no proof that they existed in the original.

Without the original to point to, there will be no way to prove that the original had imperfections.

Ok, maybe people won't think that the original was perfect.  But what is true is this: if the original is lost to history as Lucas hopes then the end result will be that in the popular imagination there will be an idea that there was a better version once upon a time and now it's lost.

Without the ability to compare and say what is better about it, every individual will be able to apply their own personal meaning of "better".  The result will be that the original Star Wars trilogy will be remembered as better than it ever was and better than it ever could have been.

The prequels as they were described in the original Star Wars trilogy

It is worth remembering that the Star Wars movies never had a strong connection to the past and a result of that is that you can see the original trilogy already contradicting itself when it was produced, no need to look to the prequels to find a new Star Wars movie that ignores what was established in the old Star Wars movie(s).

That said, the purpose of this post is not to point out contradictions within the original trilogy.  It is instead to say what the original trilogy said about what came before it.  We have the prequels which flat out ignored what the original trilogy said, but what does the original trilogy actually say?  This post is to give an answer to that.

I'm using the theatrical versions of the original films here, as released on the no longer in print DVDs that had the theatrical cuts as bonus disks.  (Though out of print you can still get them, either as a set or individually: first, Empire, Jedi.)

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Yoda trained Obi-Wan.

Anakin, Beru, and Owen all knew each other.  Their relationship is never stated but if Beru and Owen are really Luke's aunt and uncle my best guess is that one of them is Anakin's sibling since they talk about Anakin but not [nameless mother].  They know Anakin well enough that they can talk to each other about his personality without ever describing it and have the conversation be perfectly sensible because each knows what the other means.

It is implied that they grew up on Tatooine (Obi-Wan says that Owen thought Anakin should have stayed here, "here" being Tatooine, and not gotten involved.  On the other hand: Jedi Truth.)

Regardless, the Clone Wars happened and that broke up the Anakin-Beru-Owen trifecta because Obi-Wan came by and Anakin followed Obi-Wan off to get involved.

At this point in time Anakin was already a great pilot and Obi-Wan was amazed at how strongly he was connected to the force.  Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train Anakin, thinking he could train Anakin as well as Yoda would have.  (This will mater later.)

Anyway, the "damned fool idealistic crusade" (Obi-Wan describing Owen's point of view) Anakin followed Obi Wan on was probably the Clone Wars since they both fought in them.  (Obi-Wan was a general who served under Leia's non-Vader father, Anakin's role isn't elaborated on much.)  Given that the dark times started with the Empire, and before the dark times peace and justice had to be guarded rather than perpetually restored, it's a fair bet that the almost undescribed Clone Wars represent the Empire's rise to power.

One thing we can say about them is that they were multiple.  It's not, "the Clone War," but instead, "the Clone Wars."

Another thing we can say is that at some point Anakin went from being a great pilot to the single greatest pilot.

Fighting against the growing power of the Empire, which is, again, probably synonymous with fighting during the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan knew that if Anakin had any children they would be a threat to the Emperor.  So when [nameless mother] gets pregnant she goes into hiding, Anakin doesn't know where.  This happens early enough in the pregnancy that neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin realize there are twins involved.

Anakin leaves his lightsaber to be given to his yet to be born kid(s).  (Presumably he makes a new lightsaber to replace the one he left.)  The fact that Leia ended up with someone Obi-Wan served under as her adopted father implies that [nameless mother] went into hiding on Alderaan with the help of Obi-Wan's friend and ally.

Anakin falls to the dark side and helps the Emperor to hunt down and exterminate the Jedi. (This is implied to be a process, not as simple as going into the temple and killing a bunch of kids.)

Obi blames himself for this. Specifically he blames thinking he could train Anakin as well as Yoda, with the strong implication that he'd never taken on a student before.  In his mind, if he'd had Yoda do the training of Anakin things would have turned out better.  This is presumably also when Luke's father starts to become two people in Obi-Wan's mind.  The good man is Anakin Skywalker, the bad one is Darth Vader.  (His "certain point of view" had to start somewhere.)

The good side loses. Obi-Wan and Yoda go into hiding as the last of the Jedi.  I place this event here because Obi-Wan says he hasn't used the name "Obi-Wan" since before Luke was born.  I figure giving up his first name was a part of going into hiding.

There is, it should be noted, no evidence that either Obi-Wan or Yoda knew the other had survived.  Obi-Wan doesn't demonstrate knowledge of Yoda's continued existence until after he is dead which, I gather, gives a Jedi a better understanding of things.  Yoda and the dead Obi-Wan are already in contact before Yoda appears on screen.

The twins are born to [nameless mother] they're separated for further safety.  Luke is brought to Owen and Beru, who knew his father.  Leia stays with her mother.  This is done without Obi-Wan realizing there were twins (Yoda has to explain it to him, which then leaves him to explain it to Luke.)

Regardless of whether or not Owen and Beru have blood ties to Luke, they definitely knew his father, rather well no less, so this divide seems to be giving the male baby to those who knew the father, keeping the female baby with the mother.

I definitely think bringing Luke to stay with people who were, at best, childhood friends of Anakin, and at worst a sibling of Anakin and sibling's spouse, would have worked better if two things were true:
1 Tatooine was not their original home
2 Anakin didn't know they were on Tatooine

The reason is that if Vader obviously knew who they were given how they're able to speak casually and knowledgeably about him pre-name change.  If he knew where they were it makes a certain amount of sense for him to check in on them at some point, especially if one of them is really his sibling.  The result of that looking in would be, "Hey, I have a son!  Totally taking custody."

Bonus points if Owen is so bitter about Anakin's decision to get involved because Beru and Owen were forced to relocate in hiding to Tatooine as a result of being sibling and inlaw of Anakin.

Unfortunately, that's not the story the original trilogy tells.  The only indication of where they're originally from is when Obi-Wan says "here" is the place Owen thought Anakin should have stayed.  He says it on Tatooine, thus the implication is Tatooine is where the three originated.

Anyway, Obi-Wan relocates with Luke to Tatooine, bringing Anakin's lightsaber with him.  He does this without realizing that there were two children.  Yoda, on the other hand, does know.  Minor speculation would be that Obi-Wan brought [nameless mother] to his colleague on Alderaan for hiding and also called in Yoda for extra help.  Yoda was there when it was realized the pregnancy was twins and advised that the twins be separated for further safety. Thus Obi-Wan was given Luke to bring to Beru and Owen without ever being told there was another child.

Putting things in order for the story of Leia is difficult, if not impossible.  Here's what we know:
1 [nameless mother] lived long enough for Leia to gain some memories of her but not many.
2 At some point Leia becomes a part of the royal family.
3 At some point Leia has another mother (Luke has to explain which mother he's talking about when he asks Leia about her mother.)

There are six orders you can put those three events in (and that assumes none happen concurrently) and none of them would contradict what is shown on screen.

So, for example:

1. [nameless mother] dies after living long enough to have memories of her stay with Leia, Leia is then adopted by Obi-Wan's colleague from the Clone Wars, who becomes her not-Vader father and imparts on her the title of princess.  If not-Vader father already has a wife this is when she gets the not-biological mother.  If not then at some point down the road he marries a woman.
2. [nameless mother] dies after living long enough to have memories of her stay with Leia, Leia is then adopted by not-biological mother.  Not-biological mother marries not-Vader father adopting Leia into the royal family as a result.
3. [nameless mother] either thinking Anakin dead, knowing he turned to the dark side, or just not being big on monogamy, starts dating the non-Vader father of Leia.  They marry, thus adopting Leia in the process.  [nameless  mother] dies.  Not-Vader father remarries, thus giving Leia not-biological mother.
4. [nameless mother] either thinking Anakin dead, knowing he turned to the dark side, or just not being big on monogamy, starts dating the non-Vader father of Leia.  They marry, thus adopting Leia in the process.  Either the king/prince already has another wife, or marries one while still married to [nameless mother] (why should Alderaan care about monogamy?)  Thus Leia gains not-biological mother.  Then [nameless mother dies.]
5. [nameless mother] for reasons mentioned above (was getting too wordy), starts dating again.  Specifically not-biological mother.  Thus Leia has to mommies.  Then Leia's mother dies.  Not-biological mother remarries into the royal family, thus adopting Leia into it in the process.
6. [nameless mother] for reasons mentioned above, starts dating and ends up with not-biological mother.  The two of them marry into a polyamorous relationship with Leia's not-Vader father.  [nameless mother] dies at some point after that.
7. There are also possibilities that involve [nameless mother] giving Leia up for adoption which would have the result that Leia no longer being in her custody, above assumed to be connected to her death, was something that happened before [nameless mother died].  It's even conceivable that [nameless mother] didn't die, but then there's a major question of where she ended up that she never contacted either of her children

I like the idea put forward in the other thread that [nameless mother] was a Jedi too.  Anakin's lightsaber was put in safekeeping so it could be given to Luke, [nameless mother's] was put in safe keeping so it could be given to Leia.  But by the time Leia was old enough the Jedi were basically exterminated and those who had kept the lightsaber didn't think it wise to give it to Leia for the same reason Corran Horn of the Expanded Universe was never told he could be a Jedi: If Leia had been told she would have been so proud she'd have difficulty keeping it a secret and a single wrong move could mean death.

There's absolutely nothing in the original Star Wars to contradict this, but there's also nothing to support it.  Absolutely nothing.

So, tangent over, one of the seven things listed above, or something like it, happened for Leia.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obi-Wan clashes with Owen over how to deal with Luke.  Owen is afraid Luke will end up like his father (which whether you've heard the truth or the "certain point of view" is not a good way to end up) and tries to protect Luke from that.  Part of that involves telling Luke lies about his father, part of that involves keeping Obi-Wan away.  Part of it involves always finding one more thing for Luke to do around the farm before he can go away to make his own life.

At some point Obi-Wan, now Ben, determines that Luke is old enough to get his father's lightsaber.  Owen won't allow it.

Leia becomes a member of the Imperial Senate.

Rebel spaceships win their very first victory against the Galactic Empire during which rebel spies steal the death star plans.

Star Wars (the first movie) starts.

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And that's the story told in the original trilogy.

Working toward a grand unified theory of the the tonal changes in the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Star Wars, the original movie and original trilogy (1, 2, 3) as a whole, was sort of a singular story.  A comparison arises in my mind because something I've talked a lot about is too: Deus Ex.

Beyond the first level and a bit of the second I still haven't played any of Human Revolution because I don't have money, certainly not enough money to buy a videogame.  In spite of this I have been able to talk about continuity problems between Human Revolution and Deus Ex, to which it is allegedly a prequel.  (They're blatant to the point you can spot at least one thing that makes it impossible for Deus Ex to take place 25 years later on the same planet by looking at almost any still picture released of the game, and they were acknowledged and owned by the HR design team well before the game hit shelves.)

When I have talked about continuity I've been accused of various things.  Venerating the designers of Deus Ex as gods was one, but another one that has come up with surprising frequency is that I would not be satisfied unless the prequel was the exact same game just moved 25 years earlier and with different names for the characters.  That I find baffling.  The story of Deus Ex is one that changes the world in a way that prevents the story of Deus Ex from taking place again.  Telling the same story a quarter century earlier would fuck up continuity to no end.

And that's sort of like Star Wars.  To be consistent with the original requires a new story to be different from it.  To maintain continuity with Deus Ex any other game set in the same universe needs to tell a completely different story.  That's not all it has to do; that's merely necessary but not sufficient.  But it is necessary.  Star Wars is the same way.

You get that right from when Obi-Wan talks about the Jedi in the first movie.

They're living in what he calls the dark times, they're living in a fucked up galaxy.  And it's pretty damn fucked up.  To the point that in the first movie the rebels who are in theory supposed to be fighting to make things better are actually forced to fight against things getting worse instead.*  But it was not always so.

Obi-Wan reveals that within living memory things were good.  Not just good, but very good.  The Jedi guarded peace and justice within the galaxy for over a thousand generations in The Old Republic.  First off, so far as I know we haven't had a single generation in which peace was guarded in the history of this planet.  Second, a thousand generations is a long damn time.

A thousand generations is longer than all of recorded history here in reality.  Multiple times over.  Now I think that that introduces some world-building (galaxy-building?) problems** but that's the story being told.

And in many ways I think that's what allows for the extreme idealism present in Star Wars (the original movie and the original trilogy) in spite of it being set in an extremely fucked-up galaxy where an evil oppressive government ruled the entirety of civilization and thought nothing of blowing up planets.

The extreme fucked-upness was an aberration.  Steady stable sustained good times were the rule.  In the original movie you learn that The Empire rose to power during the lifetime of Luke's father, in Return of the Jedi the Emperor is killed off along with his single greatest symbol of power in front of the assembled Imperial fleet.  During Luke's lifetime (and still during the lifetime of Luke's father.)

The Emperor, the cause of these aberrant dark times, was in power for all of one generation.  One generation of extreme bad times balanced against a thousand generations of extreme good times.

Going by the original trilogy there is absolutely no reason to believe that things wouldn't go back to the steady stable sustained good times.

That's the hope that's present in Star Wars.  Fix this one thing and everything will be good for a basically unimaginably long time.  That's pretty extreme idealism.

But that means you don't get to tell the same story again for at least (over) a thousand generations.  Otherwise the hope of the original is dashed.  It turns out to be a false hope, and the idealism shatters on the rocks.

Instead you have to tell different stories.  Specifically it would go like this: Stories of guarding peace and justice, rather than fighting to establish them, under a benevolent and extremely stable government.  Or stories that have nothing to do with that sort of thing (not all stories can be about Jedi) but are set in the same universe during the same period of sustained good times.  The fall of that government, the good times along with it, and the rise of the Empire.  The original trilogy.  Re-instituting the Republic and rebuilding the Jedi.  Stories set during a new period of sustained good times.

There's nothing wrong with these stories, and I think they could be quite interesting.  But they're different stories.  Sustaining good times is very different from fighting to get back to them.  Building a good government is different from overthrowing a bad one.

You don't get to have more stories of blowing up superweapons or needing to overthrow governments unless it takes place in what should be the relatively short period of mopping up after the Emperor is killed and before the Republic is fully reinstated because reversion to the mean, in the universe of the original trilogy, means that once the cause of the aberrant bad times is gone things will, or at least should, go back to stable good times.

So that's the thing.  You can't tell the same story again because the idealism and hope of the original rests on the idea that the story will not need to take place again.  Once the immediate problem (the Emperor and the Empire) is dealt with everything will be good for a very, very, very (over a thousand generations of very) long time.  If you try to tell the same story again what you do is make it so that the default is no longer over a thousand generations of peace and justice being guarded but instead much closer to the fucked up state of the galaxy shown in the trilogy itself.

Tell the same story again twice and you're really pushing things from idealism to cynicism.  Do it three time and even more so.

But by telling the story again and again you're actually not telling the same story anymore because the repetition itself changes the story.

Evil had to triumph for Star Wars to take place.  To rehash the same story evil needs to triumph again.  To rehash the same story repeatedly evil has to triumph always.  Even if every story ends with good beating back the the repetition of evil triumphant to set up those stories shifts the setting from a thousand generations of good times being the default scenario to one where good times can never last for long and evil will always be triumphant given time.

Star Wars began with evil having triumphed and all that was good and right in the galaxy being in a state of existential peril.  If you're not willing to branch out and try new and different stories you need to keep going back to that.  By keeping on going back to that you snuff out the hope that was present in Star Wars because the hope was that this situation would pass.  And once passed stay in the past.  It wouldn't happen again and again.  Because it wasn't the usual state of things.  It was a dark exception to the rule that the usual state of things is, hands down, good.

And I think that's part of the problem.  People weren't willing to let it go and try new kinds stories set in the same universe.  If you've read the "Tales from..." series of books you know that everyone in existence was either Hero or a Villain on a pretty much galactically significant scale all around.***  Smaller more personal stories didn't really get told much.  And even on the occasions when they were told there was always another superweapon coming down the line.  Or, if not a superweapon, an invasion.  Or, if not an invasion, internal corruption that screwed things over in a way external threats never could.  There is always something bad coming, no matter how good of an end an individual story might seem to have.

More than that, almost always something worse.  Which I think comes from a desire to differentiate works when combined with the desire to not really try much of anything new.  If all that is good and right in the galaxy is always in a state of existential peril, if evil is always turning out to be triumphant so that it will need to be overthrown by the underdog, if you're telling the same story again and again, how do you distinguish things?  It basically seems to come down to, "How bad it is this time?" and the answer always ends up being, "Worse," because if the answer is, "Well, not as bad as last time," it's treated as retreading the same territory.

Mind you it doesn't have to be.  The thing is, to distinguish the stories by more than degree of badness requires originality.  Which some EU authors do have.  As you'd expect they're usually the ones you find doing the smaller scale more personal stories instead of the "The Galaxy Is At Risk (again)" stories.

So instead you tend to get things like Newer Better Space Nazis (now with organic technology!) that via their death toll make the old space Nazis seem not nearly so scary by comparison.

You've now got stories set a century down the line.  Are they stories about what it's like when you're 100 years into those good times we heard about in 1977 that the original trilogy was to return things to?  No.  Not a fucking chance.

They're stories that by their existence show that the hope and idealism of the original was nothing more than a pipe dream because, turns out, rather than returning to the previous "over a thousand generations of good times" standard, a new standard of, "The galaxy is really fucked up and never stops being that way for long," has replaced the old standard that the characters of the original trilogy hoped in their idealism that they might return to.

And in this way the Expanded Universe has forced itself to go more and more to the cynicism side of the scale.  Nothing good ever lasts, nothing bright ever stands the test of time, the only constant is that evil will always be with you and war will never end.  "This, too, shall pass," doesn't apply to the general fucked-upness of the galaxy.  Or, if it does, applies to the bad as slowly as it did the good (maybe in over a thousand generations things will start to default to good again.)

And once you've driven from the extreme idealism of, "Fix this one thing and everything will get better and stay that way," to, "It never stays that way; get used to war without end," it's probably unsurprising that things went from campy fun to the equally unrealistic but completely opposite end of the spectrum: grimdark.

The currently longest gap between, "Even worse than last time," in the EU after the original trilogy takes place is merely an artifact of the fact that the books that don't skip into the future have yet to catch up to the comic books that skipped 100 years into the future.  The next no-timeskip book won't be out until July and will only venture one year closer to the comics.  Thus there's currently a 78 year gap during which the only things that are known are that: at the beginning of the gap things really sucked and were tending toward darkness, at the beginning of the gap it was foreseen that another great war was coming down the line within the generation, for the entirety of the gap and then some on both sides of it evil with a slow plan to take over the galaxy was prosperous and successful in its efforts (slow plan coming to completion is what the timeskip comics are about), hatred seethed among the worlds of the theoretical good guys so much that, given an excuse, they'd tear civilization apart just to settle scores almost a hundred years old (the beginning of them being given this excuse is what marks the end of the gap) and stuff like that.  (I'm getting the info off a wiki, so any more intricate details can't really be included.)

Hardly the visceral hope present in the original trilogy that once the problem at hand was dealt with everything would return to an extended period of peace and justice.

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And I think that's really it.  If you're not willing to try new and different (and the galaxy at peace where justice was the default rather than the exception that the original trilogy implied was to follow would be new and different for Star Wars) basically the only thing you can do to distinguish yourself from what's come before is to push a bit further in the same direction.  Star Wars was originally the story of the dark times, so as people push in that same direction it becomes the story of the darker and darker times.  The threats get bigger, the blows get more significant, the death tolls rise, the heroes become less pure in their goodness, and everything slowly marches from, "Idealistic campy fun," to, "Grimdark all the time."

No one can ever meaningfully improve things because if they do then that's a push back.  Back toward the less dark setting one had to pass through to get to the point things are in the story.  And that's something people telling the same story but pushed further (over and over and over again) won't do.

Even if every book ended with a happy ending (which... they don't) there would be no way for the overall universe to not get darker and darker as each new venture had things worse and worse.  Hope has to be killed off when you can see that, even if things seem to end well, what comes next will be even worse than whatever was just overcome.

The original trilogy's idealism can't really survive that.

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And I still don't think I've hit a grand unified theory as I probably haven't covered half of what was in this thread, which is what made me want to put things together to start with.  I wanted to put things together because when taken separately things that actually go together can seem contradictory.

"Star Wars is extremely idealistic" and "Star Wars requires triumphant evil" seem sort of contradictory until you put them together to get, "In the original trilogy triumphant evil was presented as a single exception to the rule that peace and justice can be maintained for multiple times longer than actual recorded human history and thus if evil's only triumph was dealt with steady stable sustained good times would return, which is an extremely idealistic stance to take."  Which is true, and I think tells you a lot about how the original trilogy was able to do what it did.

Anyway, the first two words in the title are, "Working toward," so the fact I didn't get there isn't too much of a problem.

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* The movie is about them not getting blown up and making it so the Death Star, which wasn't there last week, isn't there next week.  Those two things sort of go together since the Death Star was the thing that put them at risk of being blown up.  The movie doesn't end with them making strides toward restoring the republic but instead with them surviving.

** Specifically either technology has been completely stagnant for a very long time, or I kind of think a group that's been spanning a galaxy for a thousand generations would have better tech.  There's a reason that when I did a thousand generation thing I set it in a period before the rise of civilization.  That's a place where I can realistically believe that there would be a thousand generations of relative stability.  After civilization gets kicked off I don't see things remaining stable for a thousand years, much less a thousand generations.

*** It was this observation that led to the creation of the, so far as I know never finished, parody "The Jedi Who Sucked" which can now only be found on the internet archive.