Star Wars: The Acolyte official trailer

[Errorname]

Emphasis on could be. You've just described the Sith Inquisitor storyline from SWTOR, and that story is...absolutely in the middle of the 8 SWTOR class stories (4th or 5th by most assessments). More importantly, even if such a story gets everything exactly right, 'descent into villainy' has real marketability problems.

Spoiler: Visions Season 2

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Their pitch was reminding me of the "Screecher's Reach" short from the second season of Visions. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, that was probably my favourite one, but I would note that the reason that short works is because once you recognize "Oh, that's not a Jedi", the story requires no further elaboration because the audience knows exactly what's going to happen to that kid.

That's 1 great (Andor), 2 good (Mand 1+2), 3 meh (Mando 3, Obi-Wan, and Boba), and 1 bad (Ahsoka). As far as things go, that's a pretty decent record. The problem is that the trajectory is downward, not that the actual productions have been disastrous too date.

Eh, I would say that Mando 3, Kenobi and Boba were all bad. That Andor is one of the best things the franchise put out doesn't help much either, because it's obviously a fluke that they aren't going to be able to replicate

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Errorname

Spoiler

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Their pitch was reminding me of the "Screecher's Reach" short from the second season of Visions. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, that was probably my favourite one, but I would note that the reason that short works is because once you recognize "Oh, that's not a Jedi", the story requires no further elaboration because the audience knows exactly what's going to happen to that kid.

Exactly so.

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That was one of my favorites from that season, from the studio who gave us Song of the Sea, and both the animation and the emotion were outstanding. It goes from lightly adventurous to piercingly tragic, and leaves you with a lingering ache which few other entries in the franchise have ever come close to achieving.

Originally Posted by Errorname
That Andor is one of the best things the franchise put out doesn't help much either, because it's obviously a fluke that they aren't going to be able to replicate….

Not a fluke, but the consequence of top-tier actors (notably Fiona Shaw, Andy Serkis, Anton Lesser, and Stellan Skarsgård) and a superlative director with decades of experience at telling complex and emotionally powerful stories.

Contrast that with Dave Filoni, whose professional niche before Ahsoka was primarily childrens’ animation with a built-in audience, and who was clearly both out of his depth and allowed to indulge himself without meaningful oversight.

Originally Posted by Errorname
Eh, I would say that Mando 3, Kenobi and Boba were all bad.

I enjoyed Mando S3, but Book of Bobalorian was vapid and terrible (apart from a strangely excellent second episode) and Kenobi was pointless and tedious throughout. Neither of them added anything meaningful to the franchise, or even to their own stories. Book of Bobalorian barely had an impact on Tatooine, and Kenobi repeatedly undercut established canon for no real purpose. Neither of them needed to be made.

As noted earlier, the trajectory has definitely been on a steep nosedive, but it started earlier and the angle of descent has been sharper. It doesn’t help that Ahsoka was both one of the very worst (if not the worst) and the latest, which tends to color perceptions of D+ Star Wars as a whole.

I can’t see Acolyte correcting either the trajectory or the perceptions. Unlike Tony Gilroy, who is devoted to making excellent movies, Leslye Headland seems to have different priorities, and the themes she prefers to explore don’t seem to be well-suited to the Star Wars galaxy. The phrase “cultural vandalism” keeps coming up in relation to her work, and that doesn’t sound promising for a foray into a struggling franchise.

[Trafalgar]

Just watched the trailer and, as trailers go, was pretty meh. It didn't get me excited to see the show and left me with a bunch of questions. I really have not been following the news about this show at all so I am going into this pretty blind.

-Who is the main character? My impression it is Carrie Ann Moss and the Jedi Master teaching the younglings. I like Carrie Ann Moss and see her in it makes me kind of want to see it. But I have a feeling that is a bait and switch and that she will be in it just for the fight that's in the trailer.
-There is kung fu. Which is cool, I guess. I always felt like a powerful enough force practitioner wouldn't need a light saber. I kinda thought Ezra in Ahsoka was going to emphasize this.
-When does this show happen? I thought it was supposed to be set 1000 years before the prequels but someone told me that it's more like 100. I would like to see more star wars that avoids anything to do with the OT or anyone named "Skywalker". But if it's only 100 years before, you can expect Yoda and maybe a few others will make an appearance. Which is a turn off for me. I also don't want to find out who Schmi Skywalker's grandfather is.
-What is the meaning of the O in the Acolyte title? It's emphasized like the ring that becomes the O in Lord of the Rings.

A trailer should leave you with questions. The problem with this trailer is that it leaves you with questions that don't make you want to see the show. Compare it with the Trailer to "The Force Awakens". That at least establishes Rey, Finn, and Kylo as major characters and leaves you with a sense of mystery.

I will watch it if the reviews are good but I am not going to watch it when it drops.

[Infernally Clay]

Except this cycle doesn't actually exist, especially at the moment he's at. The Sith are dead. The Emperor has not returned, yet. What happened was the Republic and Jedi won for a thousand years. The Sith and Empire won for twenty and now they're dead. That's not a cycle--that's a blip! Now, we know that the Republic will only last for ~30 years and then the new Empire will only last for ~1, which admittedly sure looks like a rapidly accelerating cycle from the outside (next New Republic only lasts a month! Soon we'll be cycling between governments multiple times a second!) but from his point in time...there's not really any cycle to talk about.

It's nonsensical.

The fall of the Jedi at the hands of the Sith and the fall of the Sith at the hands of the Jedi both happened within Baylan's lifetime. Nothing suggests he's wrong about this cycle or that it doesn't exist.

We're talking about something that far exceeds a human's lifespan here. For all we know the cycle is normally measured in millennia, not decades. Perhaps the Sith ruled the galaxy for a thousand years before they were defeated by the Jedi a thousand years ago and Palpatine seemed pretty confident in Revenge of the Sith that his new Empire would rule for ten thousand years.

We can't know what Baylan's goals are until we find out and he's an antagonist so obviously whatever he has planned can't be good, but that doesn't mean his recollection of history is in some way wrong. He'd know better than us if the galaxy used to change hands every thousand years or if it has done so with some frequency.

And sure, you can talk about prior canon and previous Sith-Jedi conflicts--but (1) it's not clear any of that is still canon and (2) he doesn't reference that and there's no reason to imagine he knows about it, assuming it even still is canon. Seriously, how much do you know about conflicts that happened a thousand years ago, let alone the previously mentioned 25 thousand years ago? The 'cycle' he mentions simply doesn't exist, except insofar as he is taking action to try to bring it about by bringing back Thrawn!

We're talking about an interstellar space faring futuristic society here. The only reason we don't know much about what happened a thousand years ago here in the real world is because of technological limitations. A thousand years ago our ancestors had forgotten how plumbing works. Twenty five thousand years ago mammoths still walked the earth and we lived in huts made of rocks. If they had the internet twenty five thousand years ago we'd be able to go on Instagram and find photographs of someone hugging a baby wooly mammoth, but alas the internet as we know it has only existed for a few decades.

The comparison doesn't bear fruit. The Galactic Republic has existed for twenty five thousand years, which means digital records have existed for much longer. Everything would have been catalogued. The entire lifespan of civilisations and cultures would be stored and recorded somewhere and there's a pretty good chance the Jedi Archives would have copies of such things because that's kinda their thing.

So yeah I'd argue the cyclical rise and fall of the Jedi and the Sith is probably very well documented. In a metacontextual sense the specific details themselves don't actually matter. Five thousand years ago there was a schism within the Jedi Order and some Jedi left to establish the Sith and for four thousand years the Jedi and the Sith did battle until the Jedi believed they secured their final and ultimate victory over the Sith one thousand years ago.

We don't really need to know more than that to understand what Baylan is saying and to respect the authority with which he is saying it. The cycle is real, Baylan seeks to end it and as far as we can tell it has nothing to do with Thrawn. As far as we can tell, Thrawn was just conveniently stranded on the planet Baylan needed to get to and the Imperial remnants were the most convenient way to get there.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Infernally Clay
The fall of the Jedi at the hands of the Sith and the fall of the Sith at the hands of the Jedi both happened within Baylan's lifetime. Nothing suggests he's wrong about this cycle or that it doesn't exist.

…He'd know better than us if the galaxy used to change hands every thousand years or if it has done so with some frequency.

Absolutely this. Baylan may be waxing poetic at some points, but he’s certainly the most contemplative, historically-minded antagonist we’ve seen in Star Wars so far, and there’s no reason to believe his understanding of galactic history isn’t essentially accurate.

Originally Posted by Infernally Clay
Twenty five thousand years ago mammoths still walked the earth and we lived in huts made of rocks.

Mammoths yes, rocks not always. Gravettian dwellings from this timeframe were often carefully constructed of mammoth bones overlaid with hides and furs, and it seems some huts had artistic patterns worked into the arrangement of the bones.

An excellent reconstruction of this type of mammoth-bone settlement can be seen in the movie Alpha (2018), although sadly the rest of the movie isn’t quite so historical.

Originally Posted by Infernally Clay
The Galactic Republic has existed for twenty five thousand years, which means digital records have existed for much longer. Everything would have been catalogued. The entire lifespan of civilisations and cultures would be stored and recorded somewhere….

The basic point is well-taken, but we shouldn’t assume that records from the early days of the Republic are automatically accessible, or anything more than digital static with a smattering of recoverable scraps.

I have stacks of 3.5” floppies I can’t access because I can’t find an external drive that isn’t cheap crud. I have old family movies stored on reels I can’t watch because I don’t have a working film projector. That’s in just a matter of decades: imagine the changes in format and technological turnover that must have occurred across tens of thousands of years. Even assuming the Republic eventually settled on a standard format, they probably have thousands of years of information stored on their equivalent of Betamax, or cassette tapes only readable by a TRS-80.

And digital archives aren’t immune to degradation across those timeframes, to say nothing of deliberate attacks. I could see a superweapon designed to cause a star to emit massive solar flares to wipe out all data storage in a centralized location, both as a psychological strike in itself and as a way of eliminating knowledge of all manner of things—histories, technologies, entire cultures and species erased. The opportunities for villainy would be virtually limitless.

[ecarden]

More broadly 'this has all happened before and will all happen again' is that tag line of a different SciFi franchise and until you get to the ST, which hasn't happened at the point Baylen is present for, there's basically nothing to the theory that this is cyclical. The OT is a very straightforward 'return of the king' style narrative, while the PT is 'end of an era.' There's nothing thematically or historically as presented which suggests a cyclical struggle in the main body of the Star Wars canon. The story is literally 'the destruction and resurrection of the Republic/Jedi' which happens once. That's not a cycle. To be a cycle, it has to happen more than once!

Now, a lot of old canon had endless struggles back and forth between Sith and Jedi, the Dark Side and the Light Side...but that's not really a thing in the main line films (except arguably the ST, which, as mentioned hasn't happened yet for Baylan to be reacting to).

As for the argument regarding historical knowledge--there's two problems (1) Almost no one actually learns history, especially history from thousands of years ago at any level beyond the most general. (2) Star Wars is absolutely, famously, terrible at historical memory in universe! Everyone's 'forgotten' the Jedi within two decades! The Old Republic has faded into legend within the lifetime of basically everyone we see! Remembering stuff is basically not a thing in the Star Wars universe.

[Errorname]

Not a fluke, but the consequence of top-tier actors (notably Fiona Shaw, Andy Serkis, Anton Lesser, and Stellan Skarsgård) and a superlative director with decades of experience at telling complex and emotionally powerful stories.

I'm more saying it's a fluke in that Andor is good in spite of how upper management is directing the franchise and they will not be able to replicate it's success.

Now, a lot of old canon had endless struggles back and forth between Sith and Jedi, the Dark Side and the Light Side...but that's not really a thing in the main line films (except arguably the ST, which, as mentioned hasn't happened yet for Baylan to be reacting to).

It's probably important to note that Ahsoka is primarily Filoni's show, and of the current crop of creatives he is easily the one most familiar with the old expanded universe material and the one most eager to recanonize old EU material. That he took the show's other main villain from the old EU is a pretty clear tell to that.

[Mordar]

The Sith Warrior storyline, by comparison, is considered one of the best, and it's a rise to power tale (it was so much fun I did it three times ). The Imperial Agent one, meanwhile, is considered the best. If you're placing the Inquisitor as 4th, then out of the 4 best stories, 3 of them are Imperial, where players are operatives of a fascist, oppressive theocracy. The Darth Bane novels were also well-received, particularly the first. If you create a TV series whose main character is someone being conscripted into the Sith Academy and undergoing their training and the season ending by completing it and heading out into the galaxy on behalf of their master/the empire, people will watch that for the sheer novelty alone - and if it's good, they'll stay and get invested in the characters, because the protagonist isn't the only one on screen as there is a cast of characters and events unfolding around them. It depends on the writers and creators, and as I've professed, I don't think that level of quality is in Lucasfilm atm.

Certainly not sufficiently familiar myself, so I will ask - what is the possibility or proportion thereof that the affection for the "fascist, oppressive theocracy" falls with gamers being more anti-establishment, or significantly more "tired" of good guy stories than the mass market?

In short, how would you guys allocate actual quality vs gamer edge?

- M

[warty goblin]

Certainly not sufficiently familiar myself, so I will ask - what is the possibility or proportion thereof that the affection for the "fascist, oppressive theocracy" falls with gamers being more anti-establishment, or significantly more "tired" of good guy stories than the mass market?

In short, how would you guys allocate actual quality vs gamer edge?

- M

Approximately zero. Games, particularly those where you control a discrete avatar, are overwhelmingly stories of heroic violence. There's something the character wants, and ah shucks wouldn't ya know it, they just have no choice but to kill seven thousand people to do it. You'll meet some people along the way, they'll tell you how cool and amazing you are, and a couple hundred fights later, you get everything they ever wanted. It's Homer with the rough edges sanded off, just looted corpses and buddy hijinks forever.

Nowhere does this structure require the character to be morally right - there's a fairly short list of (mostly sexual) crimes they can't commit - but as long as they keep it zipped up, they can kill and steal from here till judgment day without any problem. Just so long as they look cool doing it - gotta get those one liners in -, and the targets are sufficiently dehumanized. The anti-hero is a hero sans moral justification, which makes them very slightly subversive of that morality (although very frequently they are framed as a return to traditional morality unimpeded by the effeminate norms of the degenerate and deluded present), but they are not subversive of the arc of heroism. If anything it's heroism in pure form, uncut by such weeny concerns as right and wrong, boiled down solely to the protagonist's capability for cathartic violence.

The only game I've ever played that is actually against heroism is Spec Ops The Line. It does this by having the protagonist do all the hero things, one liners, badass moments, going rogue because it's the only choice, lots of cool violence. It's an entirely normal hero game, except that the result of every single thing he has done is awful and he's a delusional maniac driven insane by the collision of reality with his heroic self image. Literally the protagonist of the game cannot handle not being rewarded for being the hero and invents an increasingly fragmented delusion where he is the hero, he has no choice, only he could do the necessary thing. Which works, up until reality catches up and his mind completely snaps.The final choices pretty much boil down to how his delusions literally kill him, dies he remain at war with reality, or is he actually capable of surrender to it. Which is window dressing anyway, because he's already dead.

Needless to say it was not a commercial success.

[ecarden]

I mean, Spec Ops the Line also famously took the view that the morally correct course of action was not to play the game you had paid money for. And utterly refused to give you any alternative paths than the one the game was explicitly condemning you for taking. As a general matter, people really don't like being blamed for being railroaded.

[Mechalich]

It's probably important to note that Ahsoka is primarily Filoni's show, and of the current crop of creatives he is easily the one most familiar with the old expanded universe material and the one most eager to recanonize old EU material. That he took the show's other main villain from the old EU is a pretty clear tell to that.

Filoni is the most familiar of with Legends of the various TV writers, but relentless plundering of Legends is common throughout other Disney canon media. The Dr. Aphra comics, for example, re-canonized and gave a prominent role to Domina Tagge of all people, a character whose origins are in the Marvel Star Wars comics that pre-date Empire Strikes Back (yes, really). Even a show like Andor, which is relatively uninterested in the greater canon, managed to get in on the action, by having Luthen mention the Rakata on-screen.

At this point the broad contours of Star Wars history as established in Legends have been ported over to the Disney canon. While specifics may differ, the overall thrust is the same.

[Errorname]

Approximately zero. Games, particularly those where you control a discrete avatar, are overwhelmingly stories of heroic violence. There's something the character wants, and ah shucks wouldn't ya know it, they just have no choice but to kill seven thousand people to do it. You'll meet some people along the way, they'll tell you how cool and amazing you are, and a couple hundred fights later, you get everything they ever wanted. It's Homer with the rough edges sanded off, just looted corpses and buddy hijinks forever.

The thing I come back to about game morality is how many people got pissed off about Dishonoured framing the 'murder a bunch of people' option as the bad guy route. The game barely punishes you for doing it either, High Chaos is still a fun power fantasy of being a terrifying assassin, but simply having people not praise you for killing everyone between you and your objective was too much for people apparently.

I mean, Spec Ops the Line also famously took the view that the morally correct course of action was not to play the game you had paid money for. And utterly refused to give you any alternative paths than the one the game was explicitly condemning you for taking. As a general matter, people really don't like being blamed for being railroaded.

Spec Ops is a pretty vicious critique of a specific genre of highly linear military shooters, so I don't think they could have really given the player actual choices and kept the genre pastiche intact.

Filoni is the most familiar of with Legends of the various TV writers, but relentless plundering of Legends is common throughout other Disney canon media.

True. I would say Filoni is the highest profile creative who is most obviously pilfering from the Legends canon, but yeah guys like Hidalgo and the comics people are also obviously inspired by and aware of a lot of the Legends stuff too.

At this point the broad contours of Star Wars history as established in Legends have been ported over to the Disney canon. While specifics may differ, the overall thrust is the same.

Exactly. Even if Legends isn't officially canon, it's definitely left a pentiment on the setting

[gbaji]

Ok. Gonna follow a theme here.

So yet another round of supposedly wise and precognitive Jedi being caught flatfooted by the mysterious Sith just holds no appeal.

To be fair, stories about how the Jedi used their wisdom and foresight to consistently thwart evil plots against galactic peace before they got very far, would be mindnumbingly boring.

For any story involving the Jedi Order to be at all interesting, the threat has to be significant enough to matter for the story (threat to the Order and/or Republic as a whole) *and* is has to be perpetrated by people who can avoid/bypass/confuse the Jedi so they can do it in the first place.

So yeah. That pretty much means "sith or sith-like force users doing <evil things>". Or, you know, set it in a time when the Jedi Order isn't in power.

Do we need a story about a functional Jedi Order? The Order as fundamentally broken gets played a lot because it makes sense, both as a logical worldbuilding consequence of the Jedi's tenets and because it creates a lot more narrative friction

Excactly. We can asume that all the times when the Order worked perfectly, and maintained peace perfectly, and stopped threats perfectly, all happened, and happened most of the time, but we're just going to write stories about the relatively few times when they weren't able to do so.

These are stories about when the Jedi were *not* able to precognitively detect and prevent something major going on. Right? Otherwise, there is no story.

An organization that has never been functional and is fundamentally broken, yet somehow lasts thousands and thousands of years, does not seem to make any logical sense to me.

Because the only stories worth telling (in the time frame/setting in question) are the ones where the Jedi order failed in some way. We can either assume that they did fail constantly, but somehow managed to maintain their position, power, and the Republic for thousands of years anyway *or* we can assume that they were quite functional, and that their philosophies and approach generally worked well (it's not about perfection, it's being less imperfect than the alternative), and that we have a skewed view of things becuse we're only shown the very very very rare cases when their approach failed.


BTW. None of this is intended to be interpreted as an endorsement of the specific show we're talking about, or many other SW shows in the past, for that matter. You can still write total garbage even if I don't have an issue with the core assumptions of the setting itself. And there's certainly been plenty of that, and I have a bad feeling this might be in that category as well (for... reasons).

I guess the lesson from Die Hard is that big wealthy businesses should never lock their valuables in a vault anywhere, cause bad guys will just get to them anyway...

"Perfect" and "better than the alternative" are two very very different things. Most story/adventure plots are about when the latter runs into the cases where their lack of perfection causes problems. Complaining because the very thing that makes the story possible in the first place actually exists is kinda silly.

And, as a tie in to your comments about Andor and the ISB, that's a great example of this. Those guys are scary efficient at their jobs, and willing/empowered to go to lengths to maintain security, but a huge plot point is that they are not perfect. There are gaps. And there is a bureaucracy in place that makes even those who spot those gaps have to work around the system to do something about it. I actually found those scenes the smartest in the series, precisely because it shows this sort of process going on. And that's saying something, since the series itself was pretty darn high on the "smart-o-meter" IMO.

[DaedalusMkV]

Spec Ops is a pretty vicious critique of a specific genre of highly linear military shooters, so I don't think they could have really given the player actual choices and kept the genre pastiche intact.

The big problem with Spec Ops is that it goes out of its way to specifically call out the player as reprehensible for enjoying the sort of game it is, while not offering the player any alternative to participating in war crimes. The only way to not be the person the game says is morally repugnant is to not play the game at all, or I suppose to hate every moment of playing it. Either way it's not exactly a recipe for a commercial success, and we shouldn't be surprised gamers stayed away from it in droves.

Anyone who actually played the darn thing is probably going to be upset at being repeatedly and explicitly insulted by the last two hours of the game. A better satire would have allowed the player to disobey the narrative. Far Cry 4 did this, allowing the player to consciously avoid violence and reach a bloodless and rational ending, if one that's devoid of any gameplay. And was deeply memorable for it. If Spec Ops had had an ending where the player refuses to use the white phosphorus for 15 minutes and gets an ending where the protagonist decides to cut his losses and pull out of Dubai, or maybe agrees to a truce? It wouldn't be a better game, but I'd be able to take its criticism more seriously.

[Mordar]

To be fair, stories about how the Jedi used their wisdom and foresight to consistently thwart evil plots against galactic peace before they got very far, would be mindnumbingly boring.

For any story involving the Jedi Order to be at all interesting, the threat has to be significant enough to matter for the story (threat to the Order and/or Republic as a whole) *and* is has to be perpetrated by people who can avoid/bypass/confuse the Jedi so they can do it in the first place.

So yeah. That pretty much means "sith or sith-like force users doing <evil things>". Or, you know, set it in a time when the Jedi Order isn't in power.

These are stories about when the Jedi were *not* able to precognitively detect and prevent something major going on. Right? Otherwise, there is no story.

Because the only stories worth telling (in the time frame/setting in question) are the ones where the Jedi order failed in some way. We can either assume that they did fail constantly, but somehow managed to maintain their position, power, and the Republic for thousands of years anyway *or* we can assume that they were quite functional, and that their philosophies and approach generally worked well (it's not about perfection, it's being less imperfect than the alternative), and that we have a skewed view of things becuse we're only shown the very very very rare cases when their approach failed.

PLEASE NOTE: All, of course, IMO, and should be considered to be "at" gbaji. Response is as much to general commentary in this thread and elsewhere.

Jedi precognition, in my opinion, is extremely over-credited. Yoda even talks about it being difficult to see because the future is always in motion. Sure, maybe Vader "clouded" it more than usual, but the ask was about Han and Leia, so that would be spillover at worst. The precognition most frequently evidenced is very short window during combat...and Jedi still get dead in combat, and not just from Vader. ("It's funny because the Jedi got dead!" - Dug the Sithlord) "Guided premonitions or warnings" can be a two edged sword. See also: Tragedy, Greek. Adversaries who know of the precognitive ability can build it into their planning (just have to be careful to not Xanatos it up!) and develop fork attacks.

Further, just because it is a movie and/or has Jedi (particularly in-universe ages past) doesn't mean it has to be worldgalaxy-shaking events. Tons of great Super Hero stories featuring *very* high powered super heroes that didn't impact beyond a very small sphere, and small scale stories can be great.

So yes, I believe we can have non-Sith, even non-Force user, adversaries in localized Jedi-centric stories, and have them be very engaging and "believable". I also believe we can have non-Jedi stories, but it is going to take something significant to make them "feel" Star Wars rather than just generic Sci-fi, and the answer can't be "nostalgia" or "another character prequel or origin story".

So, I want fallible Jedi because the adversary is clever and skilled (not because we needed someone to hold the idiot ball), with small scope but significant risk, with clear Star Wars trappings, that isn't excessively gritty or nihilistic, and the good guys win, because I root for heroes. Too old to be edgy.

- M

I wonder what a Clancy Jedi story would look like...

[Infernally Clay]

As for the argument regarding historical knowledge--there's two problems (1) Almost no one actually learns history, especially history from thousands of years ago at any level beyond the most general.

I feel that's an over generalisation that ignores the fact that the Jedi literally have multiple vast archives and there are people in charge of not only maintaining them but having an expert knowledge of the information archived. Remember that the Jedi are so certain of the accuracy and breadth of their archives that the very idea of a planet not being in their records was preposterous.

Baylan Skoll had access to these archives both as a Jedi Knight and after the Order fell. It's how he learned about Peridea. I don't see why it's so difficult to believe the Jedi have records of ancient history or that Baylan Skoll would access them.

(2) Star Wars is absolutely, famously, terrible at historical memory in universe! Everyone's 'forgotten' the Jedi within two decades! The Old Republic has faded into legend within the lifetime of basically everyone we see! Remembering stuff is basically not a thing in the Star Wars universe.

This isn't really accurate either. Not everyone forgot the Jedi and how could they when, twenty years before A New Hope, Palpatine very publicly charged the Jedi with treason? Luke not knowing what a Jedi was is hardly surprising when he lives on a very isolated farm on a backwater desert planet in the Outer Rim and his uncle and aunt were specifically trying to stop him from learning about them because they didn't want him to know his father was a Jedi who fell to the dark side and became a tyrant.

You couldn't get more isolated from the galaxy than Luke was on Tatooine and that was entirely the point of sending him there in the first place.

This is all beside the point, though. Baylan Skoll was not a moisture farmer from Tatooine. He was a Jedi Knight and a general of the Republic Army. He says himself that the destruction of the Jedi Order didn't make sense to him at the time, but that if you look at history you realise it was inevitable because it keeps happening. The Jedi and the Sith have taken each other out over and over again for thousands of years.

[Sapphire Guard]

It'd essentially work like the way the Witchers do in Sapkowski's famous series, just with less gloom and grit. Given that the Jedi were heavily based on Eastern Ronin and wuxia, it'd fit much better to have small independent Jedi Temples that each value different aspects of the force. All committed to doing good, but interpreting the mission in their own way. Like the Bantha Temple might be about fostering community and thus the members embed themselves in growing towns to support and defend them, while the Temple of Harmony considers all life connected through the Force and thus killing is the ultimate sin, so they eschew use of lightsabers and lethal techniques entirely. Another might act more like the Jedi we're familiar with, rushing to be proactive in stopping threats. I think that'd give us a canvas where we could have multiple Jedi characters with clear values that don't all look and act the same.

A decentralized Jedi wouldn't necessarily be better for stopping galaxy-wide threats, but we probably don't need to see more stories about superweapons and empires for a while either. Mostly I want to break the terrible canon where almost all the Jedi dress and act as close to Old Obi-Wan as possible. It also fits better. The galaxy is huge and the Jedi are as much a religion as anything else. A religion doesn't stick around for thousands of years without fracturing into a multitude of different branches

That would be a good story, but it wouldn't be a better version of the Jedi Order, it would just just be a different one with different strengths and weaknesses.

The hypocrisy is self-evident

Then it should be easy to explain, right?

The true test of the functionality of the Jedi Order isn't how well they fight the Sith but what they do when they're not fighting at all. Forget their performance during times of war, what about their performance during times of peace? How good are they at maintaining peace, how good are they at remaining neutral and objective, how good are they at maintaining deep connections with cultures all over the galaxy, how good are they at finding and training potential Jedi, that sort of thing.

A thousand years of peace is quite a good record.

Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker showed up on Tatooine, walked into Jabba's Palace and killed the number one crime boss in the galaxy and then he just... left. Seven whole dang years later you've still got criminal organisations trying to fill the power vacuum Jabba the Hutt left behind and where is Luke during all of this? Has he even come back to Tatooine once since he killed Jabba? It's literally his home world and yet it does not appear Luke has any vested interest in preventing other criminal organisations from taking Jabba's place.

Much like the Jedi Order itself it would appear Luke Skywalker is great at killing bad guys but terrible at cleaning up the mess afterwards.

Leia killed Jabba. How come you're not blaming her, or Han or Lando? Of all of those involved, why blame the Jedi alone, and ignore everyone else that could have done something?

You know, the Jedi are a pretty good subversion of heroic violence. Anakin's quick to battle approach is the incorrect one, Luke wins by showing mercy to a defeated opponent. They really are benevolent and avoid violence, which leads the audience to go 'what's the catch?' and start looking for flaws.

Unless Baylon has seen Rise of Skywalker or read the EU, his mindset doesn't make sense. As far as anyone knows, the Sith are gone. That is the problem, the audience expects the characters to use meta logic to justify their decisions.

Remember that the Jedi are so certain of the accuracy and breadth of their archives that the very idea of a planet not being in their records was preposterous.

One librarian said that once, and even though Obi Wan and Yoda obviously didn't believe her and kept hunting for the planet in question, why does she represent the Jedi as a whole when they don't?

One line someone said once doesn't mean much. He could simply be wrong.

I'm not sure how much of our datas will be around in a thousand years. One war with data centres being bombed could take out a lot.

Regarding gaming, it's not like subversions are uncommon. Leaving aside stuff like Stardew Valley, say, all kinds of stealth games reward non-violence and avoiding casualties while being very successful.

Edit: Here's the thing, it's an easy win for a star war writer to talk about the faults of the Jedi, but as soon as they try to address them, the story falls hilariously flat, which is why no one has been able to do it yet. They just skate around addressing the criticisms a la Baylon's vague allusions, because they've got nothing else. We've had plenty of stories vaguely skirting the Jedi flaws, but nobody has ever been able to actually do anything differently, because that's much more difficult to write than vague, insubstantial complaining. As soon as anyone tries to do anything concrete, the criticism immediately starts to break.

[ecarden]

I mean, the person I was thinking of was Han, not Luke.

But again, the key fact isn't that Baylan may have historical knowledge that exceeds that of the audience, that's almost certainly a given, in universe. It's that his whole thing about cycles isn't actually supported by the evidence given in the films/TV shows and he doesn't actually explain or address it, which, to me, makes him come across more as a lunatic/conspiracy theorist than anything else.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

That would be a good story, but it wouldn't be a better version of the Jedi Order, it would just just be a different one with different strengths and weaknesses.

I think we're using different definitions of "better." Would it be a more effective Jedi Order? Not at all. I think it'd make for a more interesting vehicle for storytelling, though. My main issue with current Star Wars canon is that it's boring and predictable, not necessarily that the Jedi Order needs to be perfect in every way. A Jedi Order structured as a loose fraternity would both make for better stories and create more plausible reasons for its weaknesses and failures.

As it stands, a monolithic Order that somehow has the logistical capacity to manage itself across a whole galaxy for hundreds of years, yet fails to notice or act against obvious threats, ends up feeling driven by writer fiat instead of natural behavior.

[Zevox]

For any story involving the Jedi Order to be at all interesting, the threat has to be significant enough to matter for the story (threat to the Order and/or Republic as a whole) *and* is has to be perpetrated by people who can avoid/bypass/confuse the Jedi so they can do it in the first place.

I don't think that's true at all. The threat just needs to matter to the main characters, not to the wider setting, for a story to be interesting. A story about a Jedi that was deeply personal rather than being about a wider threat would be a great change of pace compared to the usual Jedi/Sith stuff.

There's actually one instance of this that I can think of: the novel "I, Jedi." Which is entirely about Corran Horn trying to find his missing wife, and undergoing Jedi training he'd previously been hesitant to undertake even after learning he was force-sensitive as part of that journey. Been a while since I read it, but I certainly remember it more fondly than most what Disney's done with the franchise.

[Mechalich]

I don't think that's true at all. The threat just needs to matter to the main characters, not to the wider setting, for a story to be interesting. A story about a Jedi that was deeply personal rather than being about a wider threat would be a great change of pace compared to the usual Jedi/Sith stuff.

There's actually one instance of this that I can think of: the novel "I, Jedi." Which is entirely about Corran Horn trying to find his missing wife, and undergoing Jedi training he'd previously been hesitant to undertake even after learning he was force-sensitive as part of that journey. Been a while since I read it, but I certainly remember it more fondly than most what Disney's done with the franchise.

There are actually quite a few smaller and more personal Jedi stories, though you do have to calibrate 'small' to at least mid-level supers. Even I, Jedi ultimately involves Corran taking down a rogue imperial warlord and redeeming a bizarre and deeply confused cult of semi-independent Force Users. Legends had quite a few of them, ranging fromt he exceedingly mainstream like Yoda's arc of personal discovery in season 6 of TCW to the truly weird like that time Jaden Korr met time travelers and had his consciousness exchanged with a clone of him or something (Crosscurrent and Riptide).

In fairness, it's not like Disney hasn't tried to make at least somewhat smaller and more personal stories into TV series. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both involve a lot of character study, they just aren't very good or make huge and specific mistakes: Ahsoka, notably, would handle all character development regarding Sabine Wren (who is basically a co-lead) about ten times better if it includes a two-minute flashback in episode one showing her family get killed.

There are also some structural limitations. The problems of the PT Era Jedi Order, whatever those are diagnosed to be, have begun to set in as early as 100 BBY (if not earlier), and any story told during that period has the specter of the Order's ultimate fall to Palpatine hanging over it. That's manageable, but it is something that stories set during this period need to address. This is combined with the problem of the ST. Legends created a New Jedi Order and let its various members run around (this mostly focused on the Sky-Solo lineage, regrettably, but those kids did have a lot of adventures), Disney has resisted this. Sabine's much-maligned acquisition of Force powers in the final episode of Ahsoka might well make her the first post-ROTJ Jedi to emerge in the Disney canon, which is kind of crazy.

[Errorname]

Legends created a New Jedi Order and let its various members run around (this mostly focused on the Sky-Solo lineage, regrettably, but those kids did have a lot of adventures), Disney has resisted this.

The decision to have Force Awakens be a soft-reboot rehashing a New Hope continues to be the single most destructive decision Disney has made in their stewardship of the franchise.

[BananaPhone]

Certainly not sufficiently familiar myself, so I will ask - what is the possibility or proportion thereof that the affection for the "fascist, oppressive theocracy" falls with gamers being more anti-establishment, or significantly more "tired" of good guy stories than the mass market?

In short, how would you guys allocate actual quality vs gamer edge?

- M

They were genuinely entertaining and Star Wars-appropriate stories, they weren't just edgelord stuff, though I do agree that getting the chance to finally play the Sith in an RPG for real, would've drawn people in for the sheer novelty - as I think a TV series that would focus on a Sith character would, in the first season at least.

The Jedi Knight story is considered the best of the Republic/Jedi stories, and it's basically KOTOR III where the plucky Jedi Knight saves the day against the Sith Emperor. It's a tad predictable and by the numbers, but it's got that Star Wars heroes journey charm that makes it fun all the same. The word 'epic' is often used to describe it, and it certainly feels that way. It's the classic Star Wars Jedi tale from padawan to fighting the BBE Sith in the heart of his empire, A New Hope 'The Throne Room' playing in the background.

The Sith Warrior story is more of a Rise to Power from Sith conscript at the Academy on Korriban to right hand of the Emperor, and it's strengthened by a good cast of characters and companions. It's got a great master/apprentice dynamic with Darth Baras (himself a hilarious and great character) but there's twists there too, which I don't want to spoil if you haven't played it. I actually did my first Sith Warrior as a 'light side' one, an I'd say it's even better because it accommodates it.

The Imperial Agent story is legitimately just a great story. It's a spy thriller where you basically hunt down the Space Illuminati. Think Jason Borne/James Bond/Mission Impossible meets Star Wars. There are some great moral conundrums and seeing what it's like being a 'regular' person in the Sith Empire. Overall, there's a reason it's regularly rated the best story of the lot.

The Republic/Jedi storylines, in comparison, are considered the weaker ones, with the exception of the Jedi Knight for reasons mentioned above.

The other Imperial story is the Bounty Hunter. I actually played it through years ago, but it's so forgettable I can't remember a thing about it.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by mechalich
…Ahsoka, notably, would handle all character development regarding Sabine Wren (who is basically a co-lead) about ten times better if it includes a two-minute flashback in episode one….

A flashback would’ve been helpful to put Sabine in context; but we’d still be left with all the draggy, padded tedium in every episode, plus the pile of ill-advised creative decisions throughout the series.

My personal headcanon is that Sabine is the ex and the entire series is actually a breakup story. All the meaningful looks and sulky silences make more sense that way.

Originally Posted by mechalich
…it's not like Disney hasn't tried to make at least somewhat smaller and more personal stories into TV series. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka both involve a lot of character study….

Ahsoka is smothered with the personal angle (I’m running with “breakup story”) but even so, the external action involves a looming threat to the galaxy, so the show isn’t really confined to the personal story.

And Obi-Wan involves the survival of the future hero of Yavin and toppler of the Emperor (by proxy)—as well as his sister, a future leading figure in the Rebellion—so again, galactic-scale stakes in play.

A truly personal-scale story could sustain a tightly-scripted, well-acted series, and there are enough moral quandaries inherent in the setting to tie the personal drama into the Star Wars galaxy, without having to actually save the galaxy. But that would probably be far too much of a departure from the standard Star Wars template.

Originally Posted by BananaPhone
The Imperial Agent story is legitimately just a great story. It's a spy thriller where you basically hunt down the Space Illuminati. Think Jason Borne/James Bond/Mission Impossible meets Star Wars. There are some great moral conundrums and seeing what it's like being a 'regular' person in the Sith Empire. Overall, there's a reason it's regularly rated the best story of the lot.

Where is this now? Never heard of it, but sounds very interesting.

[KorvinStarmast]

a bunch of actors doing their best Alec Guinness impressions while spouting flaccid proverbs

There's a nicely turned phrase. +1

https://youtu.be/jKHi__DaplU

A pre review ... take with a grain of salt. His closing point closely mirrors something expressed upthread by warty goblin.

I watched the trailer and realized something. I have attained a state of Star Wars related tranquility. Oh look, they made some more Star Wars. This is simply another sense-object in my perception, and I have transcended the period when that would command any particular feeling. I'm not excited, or angry, or bored, or disappointed, it's just a thing that exists. At last, I have released my attachment to Star Wars, and have freed myself from all lightsaber related suffering.

This is truly a joyful state.

The way that CD put it was "just accept it. The Star Wars you grew up with is never coming back."

Some day I intend to Watch Andor. My problem is that Disney + doesn't appeal to me (I might give it a try for a month?) ... however Andor is apparently worth it.

[Rodin]

I don't think that's true at all. The threat just needs to matter to the main characters, not to the wider setting, for a story to be interesting. A story about a Jedi that was deeply personal rather than being about a wider threat would be a great change of pace compared to the usual Jedi/Sith stuff.

There's actually one instance of this that I can think of: the novel "I, Jedi." Which is entirely about Corran Horn trying to find his missing wife, and undergoing Jedi training he'd previously been hesitant to undertake even after learning he was force-sensitive as part of that journey. Been a while since I read it, but I certainly remember it more fondly than most what Disney's done with the franchise.

One of my favorite pieces of Star Wars media comes from the OG Clone Wars micro-series. It's Anakin, some clone troopers, and an R2 droid vs. a Sith Apprentice in the jungle. The troopers get assassinated one by one, the R2 droid gets wrecked, and Anakin loses his freaking mind. He unleashes the fury on the Sith and strikes them down with all of his hatred.

It's a better showcasing of how a "good" Anakin could turn to the Dark Side than the entire prequel trilogy managed. And I think the whole thing is about 10 minutes long.

The Sith Apprentice may have been a wider threat if left alive, but that isn't focused on. It's about Anakin.

[KorvinStarmast]

. It's about Anakin.

At least the prequels did capture that bit.

[gbaji]

I don't think that's true at all. The threat just needs to matter to the main characters, not to the wider setting, for a story to be interesting. A story about a Jedi that was deeply personal rather than being about a wider threat would be a great change of pace compared to the usual Jedi/Sith stuff.

But if there is no threat to something bigger, why bother making the character a Jedi? That's kinda what I was getting after here. The Jedi have all of these powers. This makes them seriously overpowered for just about any minor thing that only matters to a small number of people. Yes. I suppose you could do a story about a Jedi protectig his family farm from some evil cattle rustlers or something, and while that might be interesting, I don't think it'll be interesting enough to enough people to justify the cost of a live action show/film.

And it raises the point I just made: Why bother making the character a Jedi in the first place? Heck. Why bother setting this in the SW universe at all? Just write a western and be done with it (Half of John Wayne's films have some variation of this plot already, right?). If you're not going to make use of the things in SW that make it SW and that draw audiences to it (which yeah, most of the time means "Jedi"), then why bother setting this in the SW universe at all?

And yes. Andor has no Jedi, and is fantastic. But that's a case where the events are very very tightly entertwined with significant events and actions already established in the SW universe. Take those elements away, and it's a generic story. It's Rob Roy in space, I guess?

This is why I think that if you are going to include elements from SW to make it a "SW film", you kinda have to tie it in at least somewhat to other things already in the SW universe. Viewers expect it. They want references to other things. They want the name drops. They want to see lightsabers. They want evil imperial officers and stormtroopers and/or Sith/<evil force users>. And while we can certainly conclude that it's entirely possible to include those things in a SW story and have it be absolute garbage, that does not support the conclusion that what's wrong is that they include those elements and if only we wrote a SW story without the Jedi (or without some galactic conflict involving them), or without Imperial (or Imperial like) bad guys, or wiithout Sith (or Sith like) bad guys, that this is the "case cracker" that will solve all the problems and make for a fabulous SW film/show.


I think that the answer is both obvious and difficult at the same time: Write good scripts. Write good characters. Add a dollop of good dialogue and pacing as well. Done. You can absolutely do that *and* include the stereotpical and expected SW tropes. But you have to start with thoses "good things" first.

But that seems to be what Disney has somehow forgotten how to do.

[InvisibleBison]

Why bother setting this in the SW universe at all?

Why not set the story in the SW universe? There's no rule that you can't set a story in a setting unless the story doesn't work in other settings. If someone wants to make a western but in Star Wars, why shouldn't they be able to do so?

[Mordar]

But if there is no threat to something bigger, why bother making the character a Jedi? That's kinda what I was getting after here. The Jedi have all of these powers. This makes them seriously overpowered for just about any minor thing that only matters to a small number of people. Yes. I suppose you could do a story about a Jedi protectig his family farm from some evil cattle rustlers or something, and while that might be interesting, I don't think it'll be interesting enough to enough people to justify the cost of a live action show/film.

Not all Jedi are Obi-wan, or Mace. Some of them are nameless, faceless, not-ever-going-to-be-on-the-council, aren't they? So not as potent, but still Jedi. Yes, Mace is OP for Durn Cattle Rustlers...but maybe Gin the Rookie might be appropriate. And I think we'd be better looking at the spy/intrigue land for ideas rather than just the Old West.

Winter Soldier was the best Marvel movie, and would have been better without the heli-carriers. Important stakes, but less flashy and making use of one of the lowest powered Avengers. Use this model and we could finally see tales of the Jedi from when they were an effective peace keeping force of not-Generals.

- M