Star Wars: The Acolyte official trailer

[LibraryOgre]

Marcia Lucas was a good film editor.

Not Paul Hirsch, or Richard Chew, or George himself?That's a lot of confidence in who edited what in 1976-77.

Hirsch, Chew, and Marcia Lucas are the credited editors. Marcia is widely credited, including by Hirsch, with having given the film much of its tone.

[Errorname]

Nah, Disney's struggles in this region are primarily traceable to specific writer choices. JJ Abrams is a massive hack, and a number of the YA-based writers they allowed to write Disney canon novels are similar because the modern YA space is a hack-zone that trend chases brutally (don't believe me? watch Divergent some time). Rian Johnson, by contrast, is not a hack, but he also has no respect for pre-existing franchise material. Dave Filoni, by contrast, has neither problem, he simply is not a very good episode-to-episode writer (he's an excellent project manager) and he's also far too busy at the moment to give all his projects the attention they need - Ahsoka's problem isn't that it doesn't feel like Star Wars, it's just badly written.

Johnson stepped in a few avoidable landmines, but I also say he wound up getting the bill for a lot of Abrams' bad choices. Frankly if Trevorrow (also a hack, for what it's worth) had directed the third film as planned I think Abrams would have gotten away pretty clean in the public eye despite bearing the most blame.

Hirsch, Chew, and Marcia Lucas are the credited editors. Marcia is widely credited, including by Hirsch, with having given the film much of its tone.

It's kind of infamous how much of the tension and drama of the Trench Run is owed to Marcia's work in the editing room.

[Sapphire Guard]

It's infamous, but is it true? Most people seem to cite that 'Saved in the Edit' video on Youtube, but the best thing you can say about that one is that it is very misleading. Editing a feature film is long and complex, it would be hard to even remember who did what, so when someone on the internet says that with confidence, I am suspicious.

[ecarden]

It's infamous, but is it true? Most people seem to cite that 'Saved in the Edit' video on Youtube, but the best thing you can say about that one is that it is very misleading. Editing a feature film is long and complex, it would be hard to even remember who did what, so when someone on the internet says that with confidence, I am suspicious.

I actually once watched an almost 2 hour debunking of that 'Saved in the Edit' video (https://youtu.be/olqVGz6mOVE) which I found fairly convincing, though I'm not sure it needed to be as long as it was. What I came away thinking was that anyone who thought any individual person was 'responsible' for saving, or making Star Wars great/popular, was almost certainly oversimplifying.

[Sapphire Guard]

I mean, that's pretty obvious once you think about it for like ten seconds. Filmmaking isn't a one person show. There will always be somebody on the crew people will say is the real mastermind, just like any other conspiracy theory. The people like JW Rinzler or Paul Duncan, who wrote books about the production of the films and have to do inconvenient things like actually check their facts, don't have any time for this nonsense.

Star Wars fandom really really really doesn't want George to get credit for anything, or failing that as little as possible, so they come up with all these crazy stories.

'George needed to be told no, he was surrounded by Yes men' Oh? Who were they, what did they say yes to, what did they say no to? No one knows, they just heard it on the internet and blindly repeated it.

'Star Wars was saved in the edit'... by the normal editing process that applies to every other movie. But no other movie has people try to sell the idea that the story was saved from the director by the editor. And it's always Marcia, because it makes a better story if it is his ex wife, ignore the contributions of Paul, Richard, and George himself because it complicates the narrative (Don't forget to leave out John Jympson, the initial editor who was fired, because we want to sell the narrative that the editors fixed up George's mess and it's hard to sell that if we have to mention that the initial cut was edited by someone else entirely)

[pita]

Back to the trailer - it's interesting that Manny Jacinto's character seems to recite a part of the Sith code. I'd be curious to see how intentional that was (It probably was somewhat, but whether it's "Manny Jacinto is playing a Sith" or "they want to show Sith ideas spreading" is meaningful).

[Mordar]

I mean, that's pretty obvious once you think about it for like ten seconds. Filmmaking isn't a one person show. There will always be somebody on the crew people will say is the real mastermind, just like any other conspiracy theory. The people like JW Rinzler or Paul Duncan, who wrote books about the production of the films and have to do inconvenient things like actually check their facts, don't have any time for this nonsense.

Star Wars fandom really really really doesn't want George to get credit for anything, or failing that as little as possible, so they come up with all these crazy stories.

'George needed to be told no, he was surrounded by Yes men' Oh? Who were they, what did they say yes to, what did they say no to? No one knows, they just heard it on the internet and blindly repeated it.

'Star Wars was saved in the edit'... by the normal editing process that applies to every other movie. But no other movie has people try to sell the idea that the story was saved from the director by the editor. And it's always Marcia, because it makes a better story if it is his ex wife, ignore the contributions of Paul, Richard, and George himself because it complicates the narrative (Don't forget to leave out John Jympson, the initial editor who was fired, because we want to sell the narrative that the editors fixed up George's mess and it's hard to sell that if we have to mention that the initial cut was edited by someone else entirely)

As someone who is a fan of both Star Wars and George Lucas (though not rabid on either), I think this is kind of interesting.

I've heard that a director can make a good screenplay into a great film or a terrible film...and an editor can make a good film into a great movie or a terrible movie.

What I understand about the editing on SW in particular, is that the editor(s) did their jobs. They got a good film and made it a great movie. There was a very interesting show (not a video, not a YouTube or Tiktok or anything else that an 8-year-old with an iPad could create, but a combination of film and video that was turned into a production show that was sent over (cable)airwaves on not-public-access) that talked about the rearranging of segments, the stripping down of scenes, the remixing of sound...and it was told from the perspective of "great story gets visionary treatment gets wonderful editing and makes earth-shaking movie".

Plus, you know, all the cool stuff about the models and effects and music and lightning-in-a-bottle casting...

And it was all way before 1999, so Lucas hate was far from geekcred.

- M

[Errorname]

Interesting detail I saw, apparently the showrunner cites KOTOR II as a key influence. I'm going to call that encouraging.

[Mechalich]

Interesting detail I saw, apparently the showrunner cites KOTOR II as a key influence. I'm going to call that encouraging.

I'd call it terrifying. KOTOR II is one of several pieces in the Legends EU that is actively against the core structure of Star Wars in terms of basically everything Kreia says throughout the entirety of the game - which is a lot. Kreia is, of course, totally wrong on all counts and gets a lightsaber through the face from the Exile in the end, but the game really, really fails to emphasize this and instead a lot of people come away from the game thinking it's discovered some hidden truth about Star Wars rather than simply indulging the ravings of a Sith lunatic.

[GloatingSwine]

I'd call it terrifying. KOTOR II is one of several pieces in the Legends EU that is actively against the core structure of Star Wars in terms of basically everything Kreia says throughout the entirety of the game - which is a lot. Kreia is, of course, totally wrong on all counts and gets a lightsaber through the face from the Exile in the end, but the game really, really fails to emphasize this and instead a lot of people come away from the game thinking it's discovered some hidden truth about Star Wars rather than simply indulging the ravings of a Sith lunatic.

Kreia is wrong about a lot of things (mostly people and how much cynicism is a healthy amount), but her central contention is a matter of opinion that can't be right or wrong. She hates the idea of predestination implied by the "will of the Force".

And that's very different from other Sith, who mostly seem to ignore it and prefer to shove the Force until it does what they want whether it wills it or not.

[Infernally Clay]

Back to the trailer - it's interesting that Manny Jacinto's character seems to recite a part of the Sith code. I'd be curious to see how intentional that was (It probably was somewhat, but whether it's "Manny Jacinto is playing a Sith" or "they want to show Sith ideas spreading" is meaningful).

It would serve the narrative effectively if the show explored how the Sith, despite remaining in the shadows, have been slowly corrupting the galaxy and spreading their ideas for centuries.

If their goal is to gradually weaken the faith the galaxy has in the Jedi, sowing those seeds of doubt in smugglers and outcasts is a clever way to go about it. "The Jedi don't care about you, they only serve the rich and powerful" isn't just a powerful message but it's also... kinda true.

[Sapphire Guard]

Looking even more like yet another half baked deconstruction, then.

[Infernally Clay]

Looking even more like yet another half baked deconstruction, then.

Well no, it's not a deconstruction it's a challenge.

The greatest strength the Sith have is taking truths, or even just half truths, and twisting them to their advantage. Like, yeah, the Sith are going to point to the corruption in the Senate and how the Jedi are loyal to the institution despite its obvious corruption and they're going to use this to turn people against the Jedi, but they're also going to gloss over the part where the Sith have spent centuries eroding the democracy of the Republic, manipulating and blackmailing and even killing "obstacles" and installing puppets in powerful political positions to further strip the Jedi of their autonomy and influence.

It would not surprise me at all if we were to learn that the only reason the Jedi abandoned so many outposts and temples across the galaxy is because they are funded directly by the Republic and the Senate, under the direction of the Sith, has been slowly scaling back the "Jedi budget".

Of course I doubt we'll ever hear about stuff like that because people were angry enough about trade negotiations so government budget allocations is probably completely off the table. :P

[Sapphire Guard]

Spoiler: High Republic

Show

I suspect the fact that the Nihil liked to attack and destroy any small or isolated temples they could find, (or sometimes even big ones like Starlight) that make soft targets had something to do with that.

[ecarden]

Spoiler: High Republic

Show

I suspect the fact that the Nihil liked to attack and destroy any small or isolated temples they could find, (or sometimes even big ones like Starlight) that make soft targets had something to do with that.

Well, I don't want to re-ignite previous debates, but as you note this is a genuinely hard tactical/strategic problem, especially for a group which is basically the size of modern infantry division. If you concentrate your forces, you can protect yourself against most enemies, but if defeated, you're basically screwed and your ability to hold territory, or solve smaller scale problems is limited. If you disperse, you invite defeat in detail, but gain a broader view/influence and a greater chance to bounce back from defeats. Neither is necessarily better than the other.

But given the Jedi's limited manpower and long training time, prioritizing force protection and minimization of losses, isn't crazy.

[Infernally Clay]

Spoiler: High Republic

Show

I suspect the fact that the Nihil liked to attack and destroy any small or isolated temples they could find, (or sometimes even big ones like Starlight) that make soft targets had something to do with that.

If only we had a movie about a group of seven Jedi holed up in a Jedi Temple acting as the last line of defence against an invading force of Very Bad People with Very Bad Plans for the people in the system and the Jedi have to somehow hold out long enough for backup to arrive.

It's such a bold and visionary idea, Seven Samurai in the style of Star Wars. Nobody has ever thought of that before.

[LibraryOgre]

If only we had a movie about a group of seven Jedi holed up in a Jedi Temple acting as the last line of defence against an invading force of Very Bad People with Very Bad Plans for the people in the system and the Jedi have to somehow hold out long enough for backup to arrive.

It's such a bold and visionary idea, Seven Samurai in the style of Star Wars. Nobody has ever thought of that before.

Mixing Samurai movies and Star Wars seems like a bad idea. How would that even work? </deadpan>

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Infernally Clay
It's such a bold and visionary idea, Seven Samurai in the style of Star Wars. Nobody has ever thought of that before.

I know your text is so blue it’s ultraviolet, but an episode of Clone Wars did exactly this. They played it straight and it was a ton of fun.

[Lord Raziere]

Star Wars Visions first episode was basically a mini-Kurosawa movie and it was awesome.

and like, a few other Visions episodes also did similar stuff with depicting lightsabers like samurai things to various degrees

really visions might as well be called "japanese studios take turns demonstrating how you can do Star wars better than Disney in less than 30 minutes"

[warty goblin]

Mixing Samurai movies and Star Wars seems like a bad idea. How would that even work? </deadpan>

Right? Everybody knows a katana will cut straight through a lightsaber. It'd be a total mess.

[Infernally Clay]

I know your text is so blue it’s ultraviolet, but an episode of Clone Wars did exactly this. They played it straight and it was a ton of fun.

Arguably the biggest flaw of Star Wars as a franchise is its hesitance to just... tell stories. Forget the time period in question, forget the planet in question, forget trying to connect the dots... Just tell a story.

For example, one Kurosawa movie I'd love to see adapted into a Star Wars story is Yojimbo. Two rival crime syndicates making the lives of the people on a planet miserable and a stranger appears out of nowhere one day and plays both against each other to take them both out, only revealing at the very end that they're a Jedi before leaving as suddenly and as quietly as they had arrived.

A completely standalone story with no defined time period and maybe not even naming the planet at all, but one told through the lens of Star Wars nonetheless.

[runeghost]

Star Was is by design pretty generic, it's just a generic version of a genre of sci-fi that, outside of Star Wars itself, hasn't really existed in 50 years.

Lucas wanted to do a Flash Gordon movie but couldn't get the rights, so right there its genesis is as a serial numbers filed off version of a different thing. But Flash Gordon is a clone of a clone of A Princess of Mars because any time you hit a desert planet with weird wildlife it's an Edgar Rice Burroughs clone, and indeed a lot of Star Wars is an ERB clone*. This is not terribly obscure. Because most people don't read lots of eighty year old pulp sci-fi, what is somewhat more obscure now is that there was a giant market absolutely packed full of ERB knockoffs, to the point where copy-pastes the ERB versions of Mars, Venus, and the rest of the solar system formed an implied common setting, the way you can have elves and dwarves in a fantasy game today, and everybody knows how those work. This was really big through the 1940s and 50s, tapered off in the 60s, and was absolutely crushed in the 70s when we started landing spaceships on Mars and Venus and discovered that there was absolutely zero chance of weird dying canal cities and steamy jungles filled with monsters and hot native princesses.

Star Wars is basically that, spread across a galaxy**. If you had thumbed through Amazing Stories anytime between like 1930 and its release date, Star Wars would have been very familiar. There's obviously original elements, the Force is a clear transplant of 1970s spiritualism definitely lacking from genre material from the 40s and 50s***, and the details are original to Lucas, but at the core it's a really big budget version of decades of pulp novels and short stories and terrible movies nobody has watched in decades.

Really, one of the reasons I think Disney has struggled to get Star Wars to feel like Star Wars is that it doesn't have this genre in recent memory to draw upon. Rather, the only reference text for Star Wars is... Star Wars. Which is why it feels like the franchise is disappearing up its own sphincter, there's just nothing else around Star Wars like Star Wars so Star Wars just copies Star Wars in a self referential loop as Star Wars is slowly stripped of all meaning by Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars.

*This becomes 100% overt by the time you get to Geonosis in the PT, the Geonosians just, like, are Tharks.

**Not an idea original to Lucas, Leigh Brackett, who wrote the first draft of the Empire Strikes Back screenplay, did exactly the same thing with The Ginger Star in 1974, even porting her hero Eric John Stark from the solar system to the galactic stage. This doesn't line up with the universe implied by the original Stark stories from the late forties/early fifties, or even solve the scientific plausibility problem because Stark still hails from the planet Mercury. Don't think about it, daddy's gotta choke out this mutant fishman now.

***Which isn't to say these stories were devoid of the supernatural, far from it. They generally lacked the mystical or spiritual overtones of the Force however.

You're hitting the nail right on the head here, I think. As someone who grew up in the 70s reading classic pulp SF (thanks to relatives and a public library with lots of it), Star Wars is classic pulp SF - specifically a blend of Space Opera and Sword & Planet - brought to life for the big screen.

One other large influence on Star Wars from that same era is the father of Space Opera, E.E. "Doc" Smith, author of the Lensman series, whose first book, Galactic Patrol, was serialized in the 1930s. The titular Lensman are... specially trained lawmen with psychic abilities who roam the galaxy, each identified by their unique mystic crystal telepathy-boosting Lens, cooperating with and leading The Galactic Patrol to destroy the evil Boskonian Empire. (Lucas' greatest unique idea with Star Wars may have been, "What if the Bad Guys won?")

[pita]

It would serve the narrative effectively if the show explored how the Sith, despite remaining in the shadows, have been slowly corrupting the galaxy and spreading their ideas for centuries.

If their goal is to gradually weaken the faith the galaxy has in the Jedi, sowing those seeds of doubt in smugglers and outcasts is a clever way to go about it. "The Jedi don't care about you, they only serve the rich and powerful" isn't just a powerful message but it's also... kinda true.

Reviews seem to be saying Jacinto is playing the comic relief, so it definitely seems more like your thing, but I would personally love to see the man go from Jason to being a Sith.

Jason took down the Jedi order? JASON? This one hurts.