Solo: I've got a pretty good feeling about this!

[Zevox]

Well some interesting news coming out of Disney.

Supposedly Kathleen Kennedy has been all but officially fired, but there's a catch - they can't find anybody else willing to take the job.

ALLEGEDLY JJ Abrams flatly refused to take the job.

Interesting if true. I know some people who would definitely be happy to hear that if it gets confirmed. Personally, I don't know much about her myself, so it doesn't make a ton of difference to me until and unless it leads to them making better movies. (Or at least taking away EA's exclusivity to Star Wars licensed video games so that we can get some good ones there.) Until that time... *shrug* whatever.

For what it's worth, RE: the old EU, I understand them deciding to throw it out when they did, since for all its good, it had a lot of bad as well, and would be difficult to work around with films. But I'd say what they've put in its place is worse overall at this point, and in any case they would've benefited from selectively keeping known good/popular bits (the Thrawn trilogy, KotOR, X-Wing series, etc).

[Scowling Dragon]

Here's where I disagree.

The Sequel Trilogy had four of the best ideas in Star Wars. 1) The perspective of a Stormtrooper. 2) Separating Force from family lines. 3) The moral ambiguity of the supporters of the Dark and Light side struggle. 4) Questioning the Hollywood fetishization of the suicidal sacrifice.

All of those, I think are more interesting than anything presented in the prequels.

Il disagree and list what I found good about the prequels

Il say that even #2 was done terribly. Because Ben is still Mcchosen one inheritor of the force, whome the entire plot revolves around him starting.
You decopled the idea of a CHOSEN ONE from Family lines, but still aggressivly empowered the Chosen one cliche and made it even worse.

Here are the ideas I really liked about the Prequels:

1: How Subtly the nature of Power and control can be used against you. The thing that gets the clones killing off all the jedi is just a beurocratic loophole. But its the sort of thing thats really fascinating about power plays and beurocracy. Especially relevant in modern times.
2: Complete inversion of the chosen one idea. Anakin is the chosen one and behaves entitled and literally has the universe warp around him to support his ambitions. So in the end he becomes corrupted by this very nature.
3: Palpatine playing both sides made for a really neat overplot
4: I found how the jedi where portrayed as arrogant and disconnected done pretty neat if executed sloppily
5: Good design frameworks. I like how the ships look both more and less advance then the ships that would follow.

[Sapphire Guard]

How much did the PT really retcon, other than fan expectations?

What we knew: Something called the Clone Wars happened.

PT: Happened differently than we implied.

OT: Boba Fett is a guy in a suit of nice armour.

PT: He's a Clone that inherited his armour.

1,000 generations v a thousand years? Generations of what? Humans? Mon Cal? Wookiee? Messy, confusing calendars based on different dates is extremely realistic.

Obi Wan dialogue has been unreliable since ESB.

[Olinser]

Interesting if true. I know some people who would definitely be happy to hear that if it gets confirmed. Personally, I don't know much about her myself, so it doesn't make a ton of difference to me until and unless it leads to them making better movies. (Or at least taking away EA's exclusivity to Star Wars licensed video games so that we can get some good ones there.) Until that time... *shrug* whatever.

For what it's worth, RE: the old EU, I understand them deciding to throw it out when they did, since for all its good, it had a lot of bad as well, and would be difficult to work around with films. But I'd say what they've put in its place is worse overall at this point, and in any case they would've benefited from selectively keeping known good/popular bits (the Thrawn trilogy, KotOR, X-Wing series, etc).

To my mind Kathleen Kennedy was responsible for 2 MAJOR bad decisions (apart from the decision to completely jettison the EU, which WAS a bad decision but not made wholly by her, so IMO she doesn't get the primary blame for it).

1) Not maintaining ANY kind of control over the actual content of the movies. By explicit account, Rian Johnson completely scrapped the draft script that JJ Abrams had left him and totally rewrote the movie because Kennedy had given him total creative control. That's LUDICROUS to me that you have a franchise where each movie is going in sequence and you just let a relatively low-tier director completely rewrite the middle movie to whatever they felt like doing.

You also saw this with Solo. The fact that the first directors spent over $100 million dollars and then got fired so somebody else could reshoot the movie tells me that Kennedy had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Which, again, is just ridiculous to me. If you don't like what they're doing how can you POSSIBLY allow them to throw that much money down the drain before you do something?

2) Allowing any number of prominent people working for her (or not working for her) to publicly smear the fan base as a whole with absolutely no push back from her or Disney. They smeared the general fan base as XXXists to act as a shield from criticism that resulted from bad decision #1, and it failed spectacularly, as it has every other time its been tried with every other movie/franchise. Pro tip - answering criticism with insults is not a winning strategy to build a franchise.


At this point I'm not even sure Disney CAN salvage it, as Disney has shown that they are aware SOMETHING is wrong but have shown no indication they're willing to actually make the major course correction necessary to make Star Wars successful again.

[Devonix]

How much did the PT really retcon, other than fan expectations?

What we knew: Something called the Clone Wars happened.

PT: Happened differently than we implied.

OT: Boba Fett is a guy in a suit of nice armour.

PT: He's a Clone that inherited his armour.

1,000 generations v a thousand years? Generations of what? Humans? Mon Cal? Wookiee? Messy, confusing calendars based on different dates is extremely realistic.

Obi Wan dialogue has been unreliable since ESB.

It's not that he retconned fan expectations. He retconed things that he had already stated and told people as well as things that others had written with his permission.

The Clone wars was never 100 percent set in stone. But as early as A New Hope it was established that the Clones were an outside force that the Republic fought using their military force and that Obiwan served Leia's father against them.


Prequels roll around and the Republic has no military and the Clones are their army

That wasn't a fan expectation, that was known by all of the writing staff when they were filming and writing the original trilogy as well as something all of the writers of the EU stuff knew.


The Prequels are what made me stop taking the whole. " Lucas Planned everything form the beginning " myth and made me start delving into the actual makings of the movie to find out what happened. Because I assumed that if Lucas was retconning this, what else had he done through the original trillogy.

[Jayngfet]

I think the big difference is that a lot of concepts were made for the EU then toyed with lightly in the prequels but then Lucasfilm is changing them again with no concern for context when expanding its own lore.

Holocrons were made for the expanded universe as a rare and valuable artifact that even the emperor had maybe one or two of on hand, and so Luke having even one of them and a small shelf of books was treated as a big deal. Then we see the Jedi had a huge library and had thousands of the things but it was already established that most of it was destroyed in the EU so it was just kind of a game of light retconning and adding more details going forward.

But now basically any Jedi can have one and the new material both wants to write Luke as having effectively dozens to hundreds of the things but then being reduced to a few books for the film, and those few books being all that matters while we see there are amazing holographic records Luke had but just kind of lost that just somehow don't count. It also makes this iteration of Luke less impressive because he had way more to work with but then failed utterly anyway despite basically being handed all he needed.

[Mightymosy]

Here's where I disagree.

The Sequel Trilogy had four of the best ideas in Star Wars. 1) The perspective of a Stormtrooper. 2) Separating Force from family lines. 3) The moral ambiguity of the supporters of the Dark and Light side struggle. 4) Questioning the Hollywood fetishization of the suicidal sacrifice.

All of those, I think are more interesting than anything presented in the prequels.

The problem is that the movies don't look at any of those things well. With arguably the exception of the separation Force from family lines. I truly like the reveal that Rey's parents were drug addicted losers, and the image of the child pretending to be a Jedi at the end of TLJ, still inspired by Luke was a beautiful image.

But the rest of it? The 4th was at best a terribly mixed message. The 3rd is little more than two sentences to bring up the idea. And the 1st. Well. I hate Finn. I think he's the worst thing in the series. The show does not expand on his ideas at all.

This is all sad, because I really really find those four points fascinating. If they were competently explored.

1. I wholeheartedly agree.
And I am super angry they trivialised that character in TLJ. Finn was my favourite character of the new bunch until TLJ.

2.Where does this idea come from?

A New Hope:
One Force user by heritage (Luke), two without (Darth, Ben) = 33% inherited force powers

Empire Strikes Back:
One force user with heritage (Luke), three without (Darth, Ben(only Ghost), Yoda. Four if you count Palpatine = 20-25% heritage
Return of the Jedi:
Two force sensitive people by heritage (Luke+Leia), 4 without (Darth, Palpatine, Yoda, Ben (ghost only) = 33% heritage

Phantom Menace:
NO Force user with heritage (Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Yoda). Anakin quite literally no inherited force powers. = 0% inherited force powers

Attack of the Clones:
Same as Phantom menace

Revenge of the Sith:
two force sensitive babies who didn't exactly do much on screen (Luke and Leia), plus the cast from the other two prequels.

I don't want to calculate the percentages, and I left out all the side characters, because we see several dozens of Jedi, for none of which heritage or inherited force powers are a thing.

As far as I know, it has always worked like magic in the Harry Potter stories: You can inherit force powers, and is more likely, the more powerful in the force your parents are. But nevertheless Jedi can get Muggle children and the most powerful force user can be born to a force-non-sensitive parent (oh, loooook, what happened in Phantom Menace!).

I really really don't know where people get the idea that Rey's non-inheritance was a new thing. I remember having that discussion with Psyren (and others) in the Last Jedi Thread, but really I don't remember ever getting a conclusive answer to why people think the abundance of force inheritance is something new.

Come to think of it, it really only mattered for Luke, and was implied to matter for Leia. Oh, and it mattered for Ben-Kylo, who, oh, he is in that new era where inheritance is all of a sudden no longer a thing, right?

Here's the entry about force inheritance from Wookieepedia:

he ability to use the Force could run in a family line. The twins Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker, children of the powerful Anakin Skywalker, were both Force-sensitive.[4] Organa would later bear a Force-sensitive child, Ben, with Han Solo, who was not Force-sensitive.[5] Despite this, most Force-sensitives—who were born during the age of the Jedi Order—came from those who could not use the Force due to the Jedi Code's stance against attachment and relationships.

This mentions Ben as non-sensitive. So, clearly before the sequels, I would think.
Note the text says most Jedi were born to non-Jedi parents.
Which makes sense.
Since Jedi were not allowed to have relationships with sex, the majority of new Jedi could not have come from pregnant Jedi, right?

3. We kinda had this with the evilness of some of the rebels in Rogue One, but if you're speaking of force users, fine. I don't think it was a good thing, and I don't think it was handles well at all, but I admit that it is something new.

4. Well, I guess we're on the same page here, so no argument.

Well, there's me.

Hooray! Good to know. At least then there are people who are currently happy with the state of Star Wars. The show must go on

Star Trek?

Oh, thank you! I knew I had forgotten some big one.

Yeah, Star Trek is awesome.

Also, Star Trek is a reasonable case for my argumentation. Because it, like Star Wars, paid reasonable attention to continuity, not messing up the narrative. (hardcore fans might disagree and find huge plotholes, but it sufficed for me, a fan, but not hardcore so)

And THEN, it got kinda-rebooted, the previous continuty thrown down the drain, and I think it recieved quite a lot of Flak for it. Personally, I really liked the new Star Trek movies, so maybe someone else can argue that point better than I can.

Reasons to love ASOIF (cna't tell about the TV show):
-excellent worldbuilding,
-Character development that doesn't feel forced,
-A critical look at fantasy tropes,
-Moral lessons that don't feel like they are being force-fed to you,
-A wide variety of characters than you can root for despite being on opposite sides,
-A solid plot with a tremendous attention to detail,
-Actual suspense. As in no (or very little) plot armor (isn't plot armor supposed to be a bad thing?)
and others

Like I said: You as well, top your list with worldbuilding and logical character development. Which are the things that make a good franchise and lures people coming back over and over again to watch it.

It's always nice to talk with someone that respects people who don't share their taste.

Sorry, my statement might have come across insulting, when in fact I didn't mean to.

What I was trying to say -albeit in bad sentences - was this:

People - including me!! - absolutely love when a show or a movie is well thought-through. If a show makes sense. If you get the idea that whoever creates it does so with passion and attention to detail. If they work in continuity. If the characters you love remain the characters you love. Basically what you said above for ASOIF.

So if a show does get basic storytelling right, people - again, like me - will throw dollar after dollar (or euro) into the hands of creators who give a sh*t.

I wanted to express how easy it is to capture your audience if you care for the right things- I realise my description reads very badly, and can be read as insulting the audience - which I did't want to. So I apologize for the wording.

Out of curiosity when is that point in time when continuity bacme a big deal, according to you?
Would you consider that Tolkien's Legendarium didn't care about continuity?
Or Return to the Future?
Or Harry Potter?

They did. And look, they also became huge successes!

Which time point exactly: hard to tell, I'm not a movie historian. I just remember that we get more and more franchises that do this right, while one of the first ones I noticed caring about a story somehow drops the ball.

Someone complaining that they didn't milk the Star Wars universe enough? Well that's a first.
So basically, don't even try to do anything new? Don't take any risk? Don't be creative?
I am not saying their choices where the best, but TLJ tried to do something rather than being a soulless cash-grab.

Why not? Storytelling, in this case specifically movie making, is a business. Special effects cost money. Actors cost money. All kind of stuff costs money.

So I say: Sure, you can make money. You can have my money. I just want quality products for it.


No one said that they shouldn't try anything new. Try something new but make sure you keep the old stuff people are clearly invested in.

TFA started on the right foot: the old heros show the new heros how it is done, and then the new heros take over.

Not that difficult. Tried and true concept.
Fans of Luke, Leia and Han get what they want, still we get fresh blood into the system.

I liked Finn.
I wanted to see Rey growing to become the first female Jedi.

I like new stuff.
What I don't get is why you have to sacrifice, descerate and sh+t on the remains of the old stuff to celebrate the new stuff.

You mean like people rampged after

Spoiler

Show

Dr Strange handed over the Time Stone to Thanos because that is somehow the only way to defeat him, thus breaking his oath and indirectly killing countless people, both of those are completely out of character for him?

Also Luke didn't do that, that's the entire point.


[...]

Did Infinity War recieve as much criticism as TLJ? That is new to me. But if you say so,ok, I guess. I thought it had some issues as well (Gamorra, cough, cough), but not nearly as many as TLJ. But this may be because I am just slowly warming up with the Superhero Franchise, so maybe you know better.

Luke didn't do what?
Try to kill Ben?
Think to kill Ben?

Either he did something bad which was OOC
or he did not do something bad - then why the hiding?

But we had this discussion at length in the old TLJ thread........if you have new arguments, go ahead, but right now I'm to tired rehashing all of mine.

ETA:

To my mind Kathleen Kennedy was responsible for 2 MAJOR bad decisions (apart from the decision to completely jettison the EU, which WAS a bad decision but not made wholly by her, so IMO she doesn't get the primary blame for it).

1) Not maintaining ANY kind of control over the actual content of the movies. By explicit account, Rian Johnson completely scrapped the draft script that JJ Abrams had left him and totally rewrote the movie because Kennedy had given him total creative control. That's LUDICROUS to me that you have a franchise where each movie is going in sequence and you just let a relatively low-tier director completely rewrite the middle movie to whatever they felt like doing.

You also saw this with Solo. The fact that the first directors spent over $100 million dollars and then got fired so somebody else could reshoot the movie tells me that Kennedy had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Which, again, is just ridiculous to me. If you don't like what they're doing how can you POSSIBLY allow them to throw that much money down the drain before you do something?

2) Allowing any number of prominent people working for her (or not working for her) to publicly smear the fan base as a whole with absolutely no push back from her or Disney. They smeared the general fan base as XXXists to act as a shield from criticism that resulted from bad decision #1, and it failed spectacularly, as it has every other time its been tried with every other movie/franchise. Pro tip - answering criticism with insults is not a winning strategy to build a franchise.


At this point I'm not even sure Disney CAN salvage it, as Disney has shown that they are aware SOMETHING is wrong but have shown no indication they're willing to actually make the major course correction necessary to make Star Wars successful again.

This baffles me as well. Give one new guy complete control over part 8 of an ongoing saga??

The only reasonable explanation would be that they used the old thinking I outlined in my last post:

"As long as you use a couple lightsabres, blow up a couple spaceships, and have characters who are named Luke, Leia and Han, we can put the label Star Wars 8 on it. So, go nuts!!"

Instead of caring for creating a whole story universe, like Marvel, or Star Wars before the sequels. Or a couple other modern franchises that embrace the concept of one huge storyline.

[Olinser]

Yeah, Star Trek is awesome.

Also, Star Trek is a reasonable case for my argumentation. Because it, like Star Wars, paid reasonable attention to continuity, not messing up the narrative. (hardcore fans might disagree and find huge plotholes, but it sufficed for me, a fan, but not hardcore so)

And THEN, it got kinda-rebooted, the previous continuty thrown down the drain, and I think it recieved quite a lot of Flak for it. Personally, I really liked the new Star Trek movies, so maybe someone else can argue that point better than I can.

....

Did Infinity War recieve as much criticism as TLJ? That is new to me. But if you say so,ok, I guess. I thought it had some issues as well (Gamorra, cough, cough), but not nearly as many as TLJ. But this may be because I am just slowly warming up with the Superhero Franchise, so maybe you know better.

Star Trek got some backlash but were able to mainly deflect it by effectively saying, "This is a parallel continuity due to time travel". They didn't say 'NONE OF IT MATTERS'. And of course they left themselves a big opening to continue TV shows in the 'old' continuity if they wanted.

Star Wars just said, "NOPE. Into the trash bin it goes!".

........

And no. Infinity Wars has objectively received nowhere NEAR the criticism that Last Jedi has. There has been some argument over argued plotholes like Thanos' plan being stupid (and the response is - yeah it IS stupid, but he's the Mad Titan, the stupidity of the plan isn't relevant, the only thing relevant is that he wants to do it and is capable of doing it), but those are generally criticism coupled with acknowledgement that as a whole, Infinity War was a good movie.

Last Jedi has huge criticism over gaping plot holes, terribly written characters, utterly poinless side plots, and complete mangling of previously existing Star Wars characters, technology and lore, and a lot of people consider it to be just a bad movie.

[Mando Knight]

Star Trek got some backlash but were able to mainly deflect it by effectively saying, "This is a parallel continuity due to time travel". They didn't say 'NONE OF IT MATTERS'. And of course they left themselves a big opening to continue TV shows in the 'old' continuity if they wanted.

Star Wars just said, "NOPE. Into the trash bin it goes!".

Star Trek also has never considered any of its stories in licensed media (comics, novels, video games, etc.) to be canon to the TV series or the movies at all. In fact, the Animated Series was in canonicity limbo itself for a time.

[Fyraltari]

Hooray! Good to know. At least then there are people who are currently happy with the state of Star Wars. The show must go on

Let's not go this far. I liked the Last Jedi in itself, but as the 8th part of the Star Wars Saga... not so much.

As I said on another thread (maybe? We've got like three different SW threads right now, it gets confusing), I really don't like that they decided to turn the New Republic (and the Alliance) into failures so they can just erase the achievements of the Big Three to make room for the ST. It sucks the investment out of any post-Endor EU material ("yeah the grossly incompetent and doomed to fail government is saved. I am joy.") and when they will get around to introduce Luke's new Jedi Order, they will have to work uphill to give use a reason to care about its members.

Thinking of it, The Last Jedi critiqued the Star Wars Franchise and did so by taking cues from KOTOR II, but KOTOR II was a video game set in the distant past, that means it could "go nuts" with the SW concept without attacking people childhood heroes, something that SW8 couldn't.

Oh, thank you! I knew I had forgotten some big one.

Yeah, Star Trek is awesome.

Also, Star Trek is a reasonable case for my argumentation. Because it, like Star Wars, paid reasonable attention to continuity, not messing up the narrative. (hardcore fans might disagree and find huge plotholes, but it sufficed for me, a fan, but not hardcore so)

And THEN, it got kinda-rebooted, the previous continuty thrown down the drain, and I think it recieved quite a lot of Flak for it. Personally, I really liked the new Star Trek movies, so maybe someone else can argue that point better than I can.

I am not a Teekkie myself, so I can't really say.

Like I said: You as well, top your list with worldbuilding and logical character development. Which are the things that make a good franchise and lures people coming back over and over again to watch it.

Sorry, my statement might have come across insulting, when in fact I didn't mean to.

What I was trying to say -albeit in bad sentences - was this:

People - including me!! - absolutely love when a show or a movie is well thought-through. If a show makes sense. If you get the idea that whoever creates it does so with passion and attention to detail. If they work in continuity. If the characters you love remain the characters you love. Basically what you said above for ASOIF.

So if a show does get basic storytelling right, people - again, like me - will throw dollar after dollar (or euro) into the hands of creators who give a sh*t.

I wanted to express how easy it is to capture your audience if you care for the right things- I realise my description reads very badly, and can be read as insulting the audience - which I did't want to. So I apologize for the wording.





They did. And look, they also became huge successes!

So we agree then?
My apologies as well, for how flippant my post was, it so late as to be early around here.

Which time point exactly: hard to tell, I'm not a movie historian. I just remember that we get more and more franchises that do this right, while one of the first ones I noticed caring about a story somehow drops the ball.

I'd say it has to do with the internet and the widening accessibility of older material. You can't rely on continuity when you have no guarantee your audience has seen (or even remember) your previous episodes. Hence why you have "previously, on" segments in TV shows and why book series have always been more continuity-heavy than the rest

Why not? Storytelling, in this case specifically movie making, is a business. Special effects cost money. Actors cost money. All kind of stuff costs money.

So I say: Sure, you can make money. You can have my money. I just want quality products for it.


No one said that they shouldn't try anything new. Try something new but make sure you keep the old stuff people are clearly invested in.

TFA started on the right foot: the old heros show the new heros how it is done, and then the new heros take over.

Not that difficult. Tried and true concept.
Fans of Luke, Leia and Han get what they want, still we get fresh blood into the system.

I liked Finn.
I wanted to see Rey growing to become the first female Jedi.

So we agree, again?

I like new stuff.
What I don't get is why you have to sacrifice, descerate and sh+t on the remains of the old stuff to celebrate the new stuff.

Yup, there must be a some kind of balance... Hey, wait a minute!

Did Infinity War recieve as much criticism as TLJ? That is new to me. But if you say so,ok, I guess. I thought it had some issues as well (Gamorra, cough, cough), but not nearly as many as TLJ. But this may be because I am just slowly warming up with the Superhero Franchise, so maybe you know better.

No, it didn't, that was the point. Then again, Dr Strange is only one in a plethora of characters, had only one-movie before and that moment isn't told three times either.

Luke didn't do what?
Try to kill Ben?
Think to kill Ben?

Either he did something bad which was OOC
or he did not do something bad - then why the hiding?

No, see that's the point: Luke flirting with the Darkness but deciding against it at the last moment is completely in-character for him: see RotJ or the cave scene in ESB. But the fandom (myself included) forgot that. Take any EU material with Luke in it: he will be perfect.
Luke in TLJ acted like the fanbase, he forgot that was fallible which is why he didn't notice the drkness in Ben and when he did, his reaction was the worst possible. This time again he caught himself before commiting the worst, but this time not enough not to fall from someone's pedestal.

Luke's exile is because he recognize that he messed up and fears that should he try to intervene again, he will again make it worse for everybody.

But as Rey herself states ("You didn't fail Kylo, he failed you") Ben's fall was his own doing (attacking Luke? Understandable. Killing his classmates? Not) and Luke is beating himself up too much.

So Luke was in-character, just not the way people expected.

What infuriates me, however, is something that people don't seem to harp on as much: Luke didn't read the Jedi text. Just why? They had the perfect set-up. The old Jedi Order produced Vader, Luke's produced Kylo. Well there's something rotten in the land of Denmark. Let's go back to the source and find out what we got wrong, shall we?
Going into theaters, I expected the twist to be that Luke had started again again and Rey would find bunch of new Jedi at the Temple (or maybe they had left when they felt the planet going boom so the story isn't clustered with new characters) but Luke doesn't leave because
A) someone gotta keep an eye on the temple
B) Seeing him would just drive Kylo mad, if he wants to save him he needs to send someone else and clearly his parents won't do. Hey young lady, looks like he has an interest in you, wanna do it for me? I mean, that's how I became a knight.

[Dienekes]

Il disagree and list what I found good about the prequels

Il say that even #2 was done terribly. Because Ben is still Mcchosen one inheritor of the force, whome the entire plot revolves around him starting.
You decopled the idea of a CHOSEN ONE from Family lines, but still aggressivly empowered the Chosen one cliche and made it even worse.

Here are the ideas I really liked about the Prequels:

1: How Subtly the nature of Power and control can be used against you. The thing that gets the clones killing off all the jedi is just a beurocratic loophole. But its the sort of thing thats really fascinating about power plays and beurocracy. Especially relevant in modern times.
2: Complete inversion of the chosen one idea. Anakin is the chosen one and behaves entitled and literally has the universe warp around him to support his ambitions. So in the end he becomes corrupted by this very nature.
3: Palpatine playing both sides made for a really neat overplot
4: I found how the jedi where portrayed as arrogant and disconnected done pretty neat if executed sloppily
5: Good design frameworks. I like how the ships look both more and less advance then the ships that would follow.

Totally fair. But allow a retort.
1) Good idea done terrible, in my opinion. Mostly because they found a way to present politics in such a stagnant and boring fashion. Which is sad, since political machination stories are honest what I read most in my free time. When done well they're fascinating. The prequels were in no way done well.
2) Eh. This would have worked much better if we didn't already know Anakin was going to become Vader. As it was, we have people waffling about chosen ones while the whole audience knows they're talking nonsense.
3) Palpatine playing both sides against each other is fine. But the details of his plan often make no sense at all. This is at the worst in Phantom Menace, when he literally had no reason to do anything except start the trade blockade. Sending Maul added nothing to his plan. Trying to kill the Jedi added nothing to his plan. It was all nonsense.
4) Agreed.
5) No opinion. I remember thinking the Trade Federation donuts looked silly and the rest of the ships made no impact on me. Which holds true for the new series as well. Star Wars has never matched the unique designs of the OT, with X-Wings, the Falcon, Tantive IV all looking so lived in and real.

1. I wholeheartedly agree.
And I am super angry they trivialised that character in TLJ. Finn was my favourite character of the new bunch until TLJ.

2.Where does this idea come from?

A New Hope:
One Force user by heritage (Luke), two without (Darth, Ben) = 33% inherited force powers

Empire Strikes Back:
One force user with heritage (Luke), three without (Darth, Ben(only Ghost), Yoda. Four if you count Palpatine = 20-25% heritage
Return of the Jedi:
Two force sensitive people by heritage (Luke+Leia), 4 without (Darth, Palpatine, Yoda, Ben (ghost only) = 33% heritage

Phantom Menace:
NO Force user with heritage (Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Yoda). Anakin quite literally no inherited force powers. = 0% inherited force powers

Attack of the Clones:
Same as Phantom menace

Revenge of the Sith:
two force sensitive babies who didn't exactly do much on screen (Luke and Leia), plus the cast from the other two prequels.

I don't want to calculate the percentages, and I left out all the side characters, because we see several dozens of Jedi, for none of which heritage or inherited force powers are a thing.

Sure if you want to use percentages, I can see how that works out. But let me explain how I saw things.

The Original Series begins, Luke is picked up as just some guy that is trained by Obi-Wan. Who had a cool dad. That's really it.

By Empire we learn that Luke is the son of the villain, tying the entire story into focusing around one family of super powered individuals. We even have this punctuated by the ghost of Obi-wan exclaiming "That boy is our last hope." Followed by Yoda saying "No, there is another."

This other is then explained to be Leia in the Return of the Jedi. This places the entire impetus on the Force and the plot based on one family. They are the last hopes of the galaxy. Other than the old masters who's backstories are not explored in any meaningful way (Yoda, Obi-wan, the Emperor). There are no other kids throughout the galaxy that can be trained, no other potential for Force development. It is always either Luke or if he fails, Leia as the backup plan. Both tied to the family.

Then we get the prequels. And we learn that Anakin is some Jesus Christ force messiah super powered baby. Which is a terrible idea. But that reveal immediately colors the entire rest of the series. Yes there are other people with some Force abilities. But all the important ones stem from this spawn of the Force, Anakin. It's his lineage that is important. Everyone else is just window dressing, really. The countless Jedi that show up just to die? Unimportant to the central narrative. And the ones that are important, haven't changed from the Original Series. Obi-wan who we know gets killed by the all-powerful Vader. And the old masters who still don't actually have backstories: Palpatine and Yoda. We even have Palpatine throwing out lines "Vader will become more powerful than both of us!" followed by some Wicked Witch laughter.

Which is why I really liked the Rey reveal. She can match everyone else (a bit too easily, in my opinion) and is specifically pushing the idea that the main hero can come from anywhere. Not the descendant of the Force Jesus. But the unwanted child of some druggies can grow up to become important. That's great.

[Mightymosy]

Here's the thing though:

The force spawned the almighty Anakinjust as well as the almighty Rey.

They were both born in crappy circumstance, both tp parent(s) who did not have force powers.

In BOTH cases the force decided: Whelp, let's have the next super powered Jedi be this "nobody" from a backwater desert planet.

The only differences where that Rey had no prophecy (hard to have a prophecy with not prophets (Jedi) around, right? And that Anakin had no father. Yeah, that makes rings bells with religious people, I get that.

But if you are talking about super powered force users, BOTH were spawned by the force itself, unto people who had zero heritage!


Then we have Kylo, which is the main antagonist of the story. And whoopsie, he is -again- tied directly to the force user family of the OT that people think needs to take a step back.
In fact, Kylo is arguably worse than Luke before him and Anakin before that, since he ties back to all three main protagonists of the OT!

Luke, however, was not directly tied to Obi-Wan, for example

And again, Obi-Wan is also a nobody - nobody knows where he came from, and that's good! He could be anybody, really. And he arguably is the main protagonist of the Prequels.

[Peelee]

They were both born in crappy circumstance, both tp parent(s) who did not have force powers.

We don't know this, actually. Just because they weren't Jedi doesn't mean they didn't have the capability to be, if they were discovered and trained.

Of course, I'm a big proponent of "screw bloodlines, stop making the Jedi a damn 'privelege-by-birth' club" idea, but I'm just presenting a counter-argument here.

[Jayngfet]

Of course, I'm a big proponent of "screw bloodlines, stop making the Jedi a damn 'privelege-by-birth' club" idea, but I'm just presenting a counter-argument here.

Jedi haven't had that problem since the prequels. Ever since the Phantom Menace there've been almost no jedi-by-blood characters and basically everyone has been some kind of rando off the street. Yes, there were a lot of jedi who were jedi by blood in the Expanded Universe, but that's because the only real example people had any details on were Luke so they just went with what they had some understanding on.

The Last Jedi doesn't actually do anything new or innovative because any even semi-interesting idea it has was already explored by another Star Wars project before it.

The problem is that Rey want to play the "I'm a nobody" card while also playing the "I'm connected to the skywalkers somehow" card in the previous movie between her visions of Ach-To and having some connection with Anakin and Luke's weapon in a way literally no lightsaber has had before, while simultaneously bringing back Ewan McGregor to do a voiceover to imply Rey was important to the original cast, and generally having a hell of a lot of buildup for a resolution that doesn't actually make logical sense for what was on the previous film's agenda.

Hell you can't even say Johnson just ignored that because he actually kept referencing Rey having visions of Ach To and the jedi stuff on it. But when Luke asks the logical question of why this random woman is clearly important to the plot, the script deflects the question with a joke and Luke and Rey just kind of forget to talk about it seriously again ten seconds later, despite this being Rey's primary motivation.

If Rey was a delusional nobody who happened to use the force, I'd be ok with that. But that's very clearly not what Abrams was implying in 7. Because while the early EU writers could get away with a lot by that point Lucas had established how both nobodies and special people generally went through the process, and that was one of the few things actually kept in the reboot. You can't play the REY IS NOBODY card and also play the REY IS SPECIAL card at the same time.

[Cormac Mac Art]

The movie was pretty gosh darn good! But I'm partial to anything with Emilia Clarke in it. A clone of her is one that I would love to attack!!!

[Mightymosy]

The movie was pretty gosh darn good! But I'm partial to anything with Emilia Clarke in. A clone of her is one that I would love to attack!!!

Finally someone who shares my enthusiasm! She is easily in my top 4 of Star Wars characters :-)

[Darth Credence]

T
3) Palpatine playing both sides against each other is fine. But the details of his plan often make no sense at all. This is at the worst in Phantom Menace, when he literally had no reason to do anything except start the trade blockade. Sending Maul added nothing to his plan. Trying to kill the Jedi added nothing to his plan. It was all nonsense.

I'm with on the rest, but I had to address this point only. The details of his plan make no sense to an outside observer, sure, but once you add force visions into the mix, I can come up with reasons.
Sending Maul helped to keep the Trade Federation off balance. If Palpatine had a vision that they may try to achieve peace on their own, then sending Maul may have been necessary to stop that.
Alternately, he was looking to get rid of Maul, or even just set off the events where Maul would later become the head of criminal cartels. Maul and the cartels were not under the direction of Palpatine, but they certainly helped sow the chaos necessary for his plans to ultimately win. Palpatine had to know that the Clone Wars part of the plan would not work with Maul as his apprentice - he needed to make room for Dooku. So getting Maul killed off then would open up space for that. And it may be that Dooku would not have been turned had there not been some knowledge among the Jedi that the Sith were back.
Everything that Palpatine does in the prequels is to become Emperor, and the movies certainly imply that he has true visions of the future that he has used to guide him. He acknowledges Anakin as a boy in TPM, because he knows that he will be Vader one day. Knowing that, he may have sent Maul specifically to kill Qui Gonn, because he saw that if Qui Gonn trained Anakin, Anakin would never fall. There are just a ton of possibilities for why he did what he did, and the existence of force visions makes them plausible.

[Scowling Dragon]

Totally fair. But allow a retort.
1) Good idea done terrible, in my opinion. Mostly because they found a way to present politics in such a stagnant and boring fashion. Which is sad, since political machination stories are honest what I read most in my free time. When done well they're fascinating. The prequels were in no way done well.

Agreed. But them attempting something new and failing I see them much better at this sort of thing.

2) Eh. This would have worked much better if we didn't already know Anakin was going to become Vader.

As it was, we have people waffling about chosen ones while the whole audience knows they're talking nonsense.[/QUOTE]

Not really seeing the connection. Palpatine was also going to be palpatine but the knowledge of this stuff beforehand didn't really ruin his planning for me.

Now Anakins acting and performance? And general execution? Could be WAAAAAAY better. But this sort of thing I rarely see done in stories. So apreciated the attempt.

3) Palpatine playing both sides against each other is fine. But the details of his plan often make no sense at all. This is at the worst in Phantom Menace, when he literally had no reason to do anything except start the trade blockade. Sending Maul added nothing to his plan. Trying to kill the Jedi added nothing to his plan. It was all nonsense.

Id say most of it made sense to me. The entire point of the plan was to get the other senator out of power. He literally made the Trade Federation do all the wrong decisions in the long run.
The more of a cluster **** the events in Naboo Became the better it was for him. Ultimatly he had gotten just about everything he wanted out of episode I before it even began. He is the Phantom Menace if you may.
Maul was his laison on the Planet and there to make sure things ran smoothly.

Star Wars has never matched the unique designs of the OT, with X-Wings, the Falcon, Tantive IV all looking so lived in and real.

I disagree with this completly. I grew UP on the new generation of ships, and I found them pretty fantastic.

But that latter point is a different point. The Republic differentiates itself. Allot of it is bad CGI, but in general the new republic is supposed to feel allot more clean and refined. Its ships go much more after the Empires Ships just much more pretty. And as the war goes on the designs get much more closer to the pragmatism of the Empire. There is allot of attention to detail here.

It could have still been much better with better the CGI but I apreciated the designs still.

[Olinser]

I'm with on the rest, but I had to address this point only. The details of his plan make no sense to an outside observer, sure, but once you add force visions into the mix, I can come up with reasons.
Sending Maul helped to keep the Trade Federation off balance. If Palpatine had a vision that they may try to achieve peace on their own, then sending Maul may have been necessary to stop that.
Alternately, he was looking to get rid of Maul, or even just set off the events where Maul would later become the head of criminal cartels. Maul and the cartels were not under the direction of Palpatine, but they certainly helped sow the chaos necessary for his plans to ultimately win. Palpatine had to know that the Clone Wars part of the plan would not work with Maul as his apprentice - he needed to make room for Dooku. So getting Maul killed off then would open up space for that. And it may be that Dooku would not have been turned had there not been some knowledge among the Jedi that the Sith were back.
Everything that Palpatine does in the prequels is to become Emperor, and the movies certainly imply that he has true visions of the future that he has used to guide him. He acknowledges Anakin as a boy in TPM, because he knows that he will be Vader one day. Knowing that, he may have sent Maul specifically to kill Qui Gonn, because he saw that if Qui Gonn trained Anakin, Anakin would never fall. There are just a ton of possibilities for why he did what he did, and the existence of force visions makes them plausible.

The plan makes fine sense if you keep in mind his goal. He didn't care about Naboo and he didn't care about the Trade Federation. He wanted to be Chancellor and eventually Emperor. The only problem was the Chancellor stuffed it all up by sending the Jedi and Palpatine had to deal with them by sending Maul. He couldn't have the Jedi resolving the situation before he had gotten rid of the Chancellor.

Let's imagine for a second that the Jedi weren't involved at all. The plan is honestly pretty straightforward at that point.

Trade Federation blockades Naboo
Trade Federation invades Naboo
Either Queen signs 'treaty' or she doesn't, irrelevant to plan
Palpatine, as senator of Naboo, demands a resolution to this infringement of Naboo's sovereignty
Palpatine's blue minion manipulates Chancellor to do nothing, exactly as happened in movie
Palpatine presumably produces some variety of witnesses from the planet talking about how TF has imprisoned Queen/Governor and torturing populace to try and force a treay, Palpatine demands vote of no confidence in Chancellor's weak leadership
Palpatine elected Chancellor

I mean its really a pretty straightforward plan before the Jedi got involved. Everything else was just him pretty successfully manipulating events as they occurred to reach his initial end goal, exactly as was planned before.

[Dienekes]

Here's the thing, Palpatine is the representative of Naboo. If Naboo is conquered he at best becomes a government in exile and is no longer a Senator without a base of people.

Alright, let's say the Jedi do come. His entire goal is still to create a bunch of chaos and let the Republic know it's happening so he can use it to gain power. He needs messengers to send back to the Republic to say all this crap is going down. Those messengers are the Jedi. He needs them to get back to tell the government what's going on.

Alright so, let's say he planned that the Naboo guys would mess up killing the Jedi and they would get back to the Republic. Cool.

Then why did he send Maul? He is still completely separate from this. As of now, if the Trade Federation conquers Naboo and gets the treaty or whatever, then maybe he could use the situation to try and create an army to retake it despite not having a political body he represents anymore. And maybe he gets it back and uses Terence Stamp's lack of decisive action to rise to the Supreme Chancellor position.

But the easier option is to let the Jedi go and tell the Republic what's going down is actually happening. He can then use the political chaos to step into power, as he does.

Maul doesn't come into this. Unless there is some critical part of his plan that requires the Jedi to be dead. Which there isn't. So he reveals Maul for no reason, alerting the Jedi Council that the Sith are back for absolutely no gain. He plays his hand, which only works in his favor because the Jedi are written like idiots for the rest of the movies.

Now you can justify that with "presence" but that only works, when after the situation is done you see how everyone was acting rationally and according to their characters. So the presence makes sense in reverse. Instead, the Prequel Jedi are just morons who bumble toward their own deaths.

[Scowling Dragon]

Here's the thing, Palpatine is the representative of Naboo. If Naboo is conquered he at best becomes a government in exile and is no longer a Senator without a base of people.

So they don't conquer it but blockade it. Conquest was never the intent. And if they do try to conquer it he tells them to stop it or maul will dismember them.

Those messengers are the Jedi. He needs them to get back to tell the government what's going on.

Or not. He could conquer them and just let some information slide or have a billion easy ways to set it up.

Then why did he send Maul? He is still completely separate from this.

Again I assumed just as a laison. I didn't think he sent Maul to kill the Jedi he sent him to get Padme back.

But the easier option is to let the Jedi go and tell the Republic what's going down is actually happening. He can then use the political chaos to step into power, as he does.

Maul doesn't come into this. Unless there is some critical part of his plan that requires the Jedi to be dead.

I assumed it was a case of him not wanting to spill the plan too early. If the republic got ahold of this infromation too soon that could jeapordize creating a crisis.

But is it generally unclear and not well presented? Yes.

[Darth Credence]

Here's the thing, Palpatine is the representative of Naboo. If Naboo is conquered he at best becomes a government in exile and is no longer a Senator without a base of people.

So? Naboo is a tiny planet, and he became Chancellor. He could have become Chancellor as part of a government in exile. When he becomes Chancellor, he is no longer the Senator from Naboo - that's Padme. There's pretty much no reason to believe that Chancellor doesn't work like the Speaker of the House in the real world - pretty much always elected from members of the government, but with no actual requirement for it to be so.

Alright, let's say the Jedi do come... [A bunch of stuff about why Maul shouldn't be sent.]

Sorry, didn't want to clutter up the whole thing, so I snipped it. Not intended to demean your comment.

Palpatine needed Maul out of the way. Maul would be useless in AotC. He couldn't lead the separatists, because he would either be a known Sith or an unknown quantity that would have no business running the CIS. Palpatine needed someone like Dooku to complete his plans. So he sends Maul out to fight the Jedi, knowing perfectly well that he wasn't up to the challenge and would be taken off the board.
Maybe Palpatine knew about Maul actually surviving and eventually running criminal cartels. That helped his plans quite a bit, so assuming he did foresee that, it is even more reason to send him out to be sliced up. Palpatine gets an apprentice better suited for the next stage (and he'll switch out one more time for the person he really wants, as indicated at the end of TPM), and he gets someone with an utter hatred of the Jedi running some criminal cartels.

[Sapphire Guard]

Palpatine's TPM plan is to cause a disaster on a fringe part of the Republic and make sure that the central Republic authority doesn't fix it.

He wants the narrative of 'the Core Worlds don't care about the fringe, we need to secede and take care of ourselves', without seeming at fault himself.

Plan:

1: Cause a disaster on a fringe world
2. Prevent the republic from fixing it.
3. Call them out on their failure, use sympathy vote to get elected chancellor and/or increase separatist sentiment.

He has his people in the senate to block any move it makes, but the plan nearly goes wrong when Chancellor Valorum secretly sends two Jedi to negotiate. There's a good chance that they can settle the crisis before it starts, 'these negotiations will be short', so he has to prevent that by escalating from a blockade to an invasion.

The treaty is a ruse for the purposes of the Trade Federation to make them believe they can get away with the invasion. Otherwise, they won't invade -'is that legal?' unless they feel they have a legal defence.

TF: Wait, won't the Republic strike against us if we invade?
Sidious: Relax, all you have to do is get that treaty signed, and I'll make sure the senate ratifies it. You'll be fine. (He's lying. If the treaty is signed, he will have the senate ratify it, then use the ratification of the obviously signed at gunpoint treaty as an example of the republic's ineffectiveness.)

Once the invasion kicks off, Palpatine's main goal is preventing the Jedi, as agents of the Republic, from solving the crisis. Even though he's allegedly after the queen, Maul goes straight for the Jedi every time they meet.

Padme getting to Coruscant wasn't part of the plan. Worst case scenario here is that she succeeds in persuading the Republic to help Naboo, so he manipulates her into calling no confidence in the Chancellor instead.

Then Padme goes back to Naboo, not ideal, but better than if she was going around drumming up support in the senate for helping Naboo. Whether she succeeds or fails doesn't matter here, but he has to prevent the narrative 'The Republic saved us.' So Maul is sent after the Jedi again.

Maul dying was not part of the plan, but he successfully prevented the Jedi from being part of the narrative of saving Naboo.

'Padme and the Gungans saved Naboo' is an acceptable if not ideal outcome, because ' Naboo had to save itself because the Republic didn't'. As long as they didn't get external help from the Senate/Jedi, the narrative can still be spun as 'The Republic doesn't care about fringe worlds.'

[Darth Credence]

...
Padme getting to Coruscant wasn't part of the plan. Worst case scenario here is that she succeeds in persuading the Republic to help Naboo, so he manipulates her into calling no confidence in the Chancellor instead.

Then Padme goes back to Naboo, not ideal, but better than if she was going around drumming up support in the senate for helping Naboo. Whether she succeeds or fails doesn't matter here, but he has to prevent the narrative 'The Republic saved us.' So Maul is sent after the Jedi again.

Maul dying was not part of the plan, but he successfully prevented the Jedi from being part of the narrative of saving Naboo.

'Padme and the Gungans saved Naboo' is an acceptable if not ideal outcome, because ' Naboo had to save itself because the Republic didn't'. As long as they didn't get external help from the Senate/Jedi, the narrative can still be spun as 'The Republic doesn't care about fringe worlds.'

Why was Padme making it to Coruscant not part of the plan? How would he have become Chancellor at that time, had there not been someone who could credibly call for a vote of no confidence? I think that Padme making it to Coruscant was absolutely part of the plan.

I am also still incredibly sure that Maul being taken off the board (he didn't die - that's even movie canon now) was a key part of the plan. Palpatine had to replace Maul with Dooku. AotC just doesn't work without someone like Dooku as his apprentice. He had to get rid of his previous apprentice at some point, so rather than risk doing it himself, he arranged for the Jedi to do it for him. And he eliminated Qui Gon in the process, who may have been the only one in the order that could have stopped him, by virtue of having a special connection to Anakin and to Dooku.

[Fyraltari]

Why was Padme making it to Coruscant not part of the plan? How would he have become Chancellor at that time, had there not been someone who could credibly call for a vote of no confidence? I think that Padme making it to Coruscant was absolutely part of the plan.

He could have called for a vote of no confidence himself.
The reason he didn't try before Padmée arrived was because he needed to stil be chancellor when the Clone War started and the Grand Army of the Republic was not even in the works yet. His plan, according to Lucas, was for the Naboo situation to last for years. Notice how, when the war starts he is at the tail-end of his mandate.

I am also still incredibly sure that Maul being taken off the board (he didn't die - that's even movie canon now) was a key part of the plan. Palpatine had to replace Maul with Dooku. AotC just doesn't work without someone like Dooku as his apprentice. He had to get rid of his previous apprentice at some point, so rather than risk doing it himself, he arranged for the Jedi to do it for him. And he eliminated Qui Gon in the process, who may have been the only one in the order that could have stopped him, by virtue of having a special connection to Anakin and to Dooku.

According to the Rule of Two, to get rid of Maul, Sidious should have killed him himself (definitely somethiing he can do) or, more fitting to his M.O., trick Dooku into killing Maul.

My headcanon is that Maul had orders to kill one Jedi an let the other escape without making it obvious which is why he did not just Force-push Obi-Wan down that pit. This way the Jedi would know that the Sith are back an start looking for them in the Outer Rim and pay less attention to what the Chancellor is doing.

[Darth Credence]

If he called for a vote of no confidence himself, he would be very unlikely to win the election to be the next Chancellor, I would think. It also may not have been successful. Having the young Queen from a planet under invasion call for it garners a lot more sympathy. Remember his whole discussion with her, seeming all sad that they may just have to accept TF control for the time being? He was manipulating her into calling for the vote. Sure seemed like a big part of the plan.
And he was at the tail end of his mandate, but he had to extend that at some point. It is much easier to extend it during a war, with the idea that you don't change the leadership during a war. He needed to be at the tail end when the war started.
As to Lucas saying that, he also said that Jar Jar was the key to all of this.
I don't know of anything in the rule of two requiring the actual Sith to do the killing. Getting the Jedi to take care of it seems like it would be in the spirit of the rule.

[Olinser]

If he called for a vote of no confidence himself, he would be very unlikely to win the election to be the next Chancellor, I would think. It also may not have been successful. Having the young Queen from a planet under invasion call for it garners a lot more sympathy. Remember his whole discussion with her, seeming all sad that they may just have to accept TF control for the time being? He was manipulating her into calling for the vote. Sure seemed like a big part of the plan.
And he was at the tail end of his mandate, but he had to extend that at some point. It is much easier to extend it during a war, with the idea that you don't change the leadership during a war. He needed to be at the tail end when the war started.
As to Lucas saying that, he also said that Jar Jar was the key to all of this.
I don't know of anything in the rule of two requiring the actual Sith to do the killing. Getting the Jedi to take care of it seems like it would be in the spirit of the rule.

No he wouldn't have called it himself, he probably would have had it called by one of the senators from another planet that 'supported' the Trade Federation in demanding an investigation. It was pretty heavily implied that big blue guy talking to the Chancellor when he conceded, and the Senators supporting the Trade Federation were already working for Palpatine.

If he had enough support to be elected Chancellor in the first place its pretty much guaranteed he had multiple supporters that would have been willing to call the vote themselves.

[Sapphire Guard]

I think 'I am the Senate' Palpatine can organise a proxy to propose a vote if he needs to.The risk of Padme is that she might have actually convinced the Senate to send support to Naboo if he didn't distract her with the vote of confidence.

Maul can't lead the Separatists, but he doesn't have to. He could be a bodyguard to the figurehead, who sits in on all the meetings discreetly, and can murder them all if the time is right.

If Palpatine wants to kill Maul, he can do it himself easily enough.

Re: "Jar Jar is the key to all this," the context of that quote is very important. It's in the making of TPM, in a segment about all the new technology they have to create to make it work. A prominent CGI main character made to work is the key to creating the heavily CGI'd Clone Wars convincingly.

[Darth Credence]

No he wouldn't have called it himself, he probably would have had it called by one of the senators from another planet that 'supported' the Trade Federation in demanding an investigation. It was pretty heavily implied that big blue guy talking to the Chancellor when he conceded, and the Senators supporting the Trade Federation were already working for Palpatine.

If he had enough support to be elected Chancellor in the first place its pretty much guaranteed he had multiple supporters that would have been willing to call the vote themselves.

I was replying to Fyraltari who said he could have called the vote himself.

But since you mention it, remember nothing got done in the Senate. Everything was held back by the bureaucrats. He needed someone specifically not part of the system to call the vote, or the vote probably wouldn't have been successful. The big blue guy, Mas Amedda, was also embroiled in scandal, so he couldn't have done it. The Chancellor didn't concede - he looked like he almost had a heart attack when the vote was called, but he didn't concede. He lost that vote, bringing up the new election. He also probably got at least some of the support he needed due to sympathy for Amidala. If he had already had enough support to win the Chancellorship outright, he could have waited a few months and won in the scheduled election.

I think 'I am the Senate' Palpatine can organise a proxy to propose a vote if he needs to.The risk of Padme is that she might have actually convinced the Senate to send support to Naboo if he didn't distract her with the vote of confidence.

Maul can't lead the Separatists, but he doesn't have to. He could be a bodyguard to the figurehead, who sits in on all the meetings discreetly, and can murder them all if the time is right.

If Palpatine wants to kill Maul, he can do it himself easily enough.

Re: "Jar Jar is the key to all this," the context of that quote is very important. It's in the making of TPM, in a segment about all the new technology they have to create to make it work. A prominent CGI main character made to work is the key to creating the heavily CGI'd Clone Wars convincingly.

"I am the Senate" Palpatine was from Revenge of the Sith, not from The Phantom Menace. He wasn't anywhere close to that level of power at the time of the no confidence vote.
He did, however have help from the bureaucrats to ensure they didn't send help to Naboo. The Star Wars Encyclopedia said that Mas Amedda was embroiled in scandal and thought to be working for the Trade Federation. He was the one who put a stop to any vote to help out Naboo.
Sure, Palpatine can kill Maul if he wants to. But why take the risk? If you can have the Jedi do it, why not? And having Maul as the discreet bodyguard means either you still have the leader in on the plans, or you run the risk of Maul having to kill the leader if they decide to do something crazy like negotiate with the Senate Loyalist Committee. So you are much better off having the leader actually be a Sith. And we know that even that one wasn't his final plan for an apprentice, Anakin was.
And for Lucas and his quotes - according to Lucas, he had 9 stories pre-planned. No, wait, it was six. No wait, he wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie but couldn't get the rights. No, he always planned that the whills were going to be in a sequel trilogy and that would be the fight against microscopic manipulators. No, wait, he was never going to make another Star Wars after the prequels.
Lucas doesn't know where he was going with things from one interview to the next, so taking what Lucas claims is a fool's game.

[Friv]

I think the more likely answer for Palpatine's plans at the time of The Phantom Menace is, "We'll never know."

The thing about Palpatine, even in the prequel trilogy, is that he wasn't the sort of chessmaster who had a carefully lined up 503-step plan that he worked through. He was a high-speed calculator who constantly shifted his plans in response to situations towards a clearly-defined end goal.

I suspect that inasmuch as there was a core plan for TPM, it was as follows:
1) Make inroads among the Trade Federation as Darth Sidious
2) Convince the Rim Worlds that the Republic will not protect them
3) Make the Jedi look like idiots for failing to resolve the thing they're supposed to resolve

When the Jedi did not die like they were definitely supposed to, and instead got Padme off-world, the plan became "Get Padme dead". When Padme reached Coruscant, the plan became "Right, speed things up, time to become Supreme Chancellor right away and then keep her around as a mascot."

And then Padme charged back to Naboo, and the plan became, "Shrug, let's send Maul in and it's pretty much a win-win." Palpatine didn't encounter Anakin and start planning for him to be his next apprenctice until after Maul was dead, after all, and the clone army plan was still in its embryonic stages. He just kept spinning his failures into successes.