1 minute ago, StarkJunior said:

As far as I see it, The Mandalorian is going to properly earn the reputation Boba Fett didn't really earn.

If nothing else, it'll be a far more engaging story than anything that's ever written about Boba Fett.

6 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

If nothing else, it'll be a far more engaging story than anything that's ever written about Boba Fett.

...and about an actual Mandalorian. 😋

7 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

*facepalm*

He looked cool, but aside from that (if I dare admit it, I was never THAT big a Fett fan) the Mandalorians as a culture are just straight-up awesome. My response was more about the general concept than about the Mandalorian show though.

I don't really care that "he looked cool", and I certainly don't think that's enough justification to fabricate an entire race to prop up his "bada$sness" in the franchise, turning what was just a clever bounty hunter, into some god tier warrior race that can kill Jedi with a casual wave of the hand, and all the other inflated fanfare they have. I get that the one author who wrote the mandalorian book series had a lady boner for spartans, but Fett was not a super awesome character.

He was smart, used the Empire to actually catch his bounty, ran away when he saw Luke after taking some pot shots at him. Then in Return of the Jedi, proceeds to get his weapon chopped in half, miss every shot he fired at Luke (odd since the Mandos are these Elite Jedi Killers), and then proceeds to get knocked to his death by a blind guy flailing around with a stick, and didn't even know he was there. And not like Donny Yen kind of "blind guy flailing with a stick" , just regular bumbling idiot Han, making a slight turn to the left, and killing the bounty hunter that captured him. Yesss.....elite warriors, scourge of the galaxy!

Says something that the best Boba stories were written after AotC "ruined" him. His journey to becoming the best bounty hunter in the galaxy is more interesting than stories told after he's reached that destination.

What do you mean AotC "ruined" him?

2 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

What do you mean AotC "ruined" him?

I meant in regards to it overriding his established EU backstory. A lot of fans were up in arms that Boba was a clone and not Jaster Mereel, as was suggested in pre-AotC stuff.

Huh. Never heard anything about that.

I like the way Jango/Boba's backstory was done with AotC and the legends material pre-Disney. Not sure what the official story on the Fetts is now (and I don't want this Mandalorian thread to get locked over another argument over whether Jango/Boba were Mandos or not).

It ended up sorting itself out through a healthy dose of retconning, but people were pretty nasty for a while.

16 minutes ago, A7T said:

It ended up sorting itself out through a healthy dose of retconning, but people were pretty nasty for a while.

How though? There was no social media then right?

3 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

How though? There was no social media then right?

Thankfully not, could you imagine how much more toxic things would've been if there had been when the PT was coming out? A lot of that stuff was contained to the early forums, so not as many people were exposed to it.

11 minutes ago, A7T said:

Thankfully not, could you imagine how much more toxic things would've been if there had been when the PT was coming out?

I would venture a guess that sw would not have been bought by Disney in that case.

On 10/28/2019 at 10:55 AM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That was done ceremoniously. It was also before Star Wars is as big as it is now (as far as the EU, be that canon or Legends). We didn't have every detail of anyone's backstory at that point.

Because of everything behind and around Star Wars now, Snoke was this new mysterious figure with mysterious origins. We knew where Kylo fit into the picture, we knew where the First Order fit into the picture, we knew where the Resistance fit into the picture, but Snoke was a wild card. Sure he leads the First Order, but he's not something we've ever seen before, and since we know how the First Order came into being, where did Snoke come from?

The Emperor was never much of a mysterious figure, and with the OT the Empire was simply "The Empire" there was reference to what came before, but nothing that would really make us wonder all to much about how their leader came to be. (Others' experiences may be different on this front though, I didn't come into the OT "untainted")

That comparison between the Emperor and Snoke is not a good measure. The Emperor was explained as much as he needed to be for that series of movies, whereas Snoke did not have the same effect, and a direct comparison based on exposition does not illuminate the difference. The OT had an easier time of it, but the Snoke character showed up in movie 1 of the new trilogy and immediately starts having full on scenes. Who is this guy? Then you also have the fact that he seems to have the first order built around him or because of him and because we have context unlike in 1977-85 it is a question that at least comes to mind. Then you have his death scene where he seems to have an error in his mind reading program. I guess that he wasn't really all that formidable after all. Kind of anticlimactic. When Palpatine died it was like a bomb went off.

On 10/31/2019 at 12:38 AM, Archlyte said:

The Emperor was explained as much as he needed to be

It's funny how you start by defeating your own argument.

You know, I actually enjoyed Snoke turning out to be just another jerk power-broker with more arrogance than intelligence. When I first saw TFA, he seemed like one of the many have-to-haves checked off by Disney to reassure moviegoers of an OT-inspired film (a villain mysterious to the audience, instead of one mysterious to characters only like Sheev/Sidious/etc.). TFA implied that Snoke's identity was important, superfans inferred that it was close to the circle, and that did not interest me at all.

When Snoke turned out to be a catalyst for Kylo Ren's building, downright Hitlerian presumption of injustice and entitlement — right down to the moment where I thought Ren would join Rey — I thought all the pieces fit together fine.

I think Palpatine — drawing from Jedi only — has been more memorable largely because temptation is way more interesting than manipulation and abusiveness. I'd also credit McDiarmid, and personally insist that physical costumes in physical spaces do something to the mind of an audience that the best effect trickery can't.

On that note, I'd love to see Palpatine and Luke trading one-liners throughout RoS.

So let's take a refresher look at Palpatine and his appearance in the original trilogies...

With Palpatine, he first gets name dropped as "the Emperor" in A New Hope, only being noted as having disbanded the Senate and nothing else. Had Lucas' concerns of him only being able to do one movie been true, that's probably all that ever would have been known about him.

Come Empire Strikes Back, we see more of the Emperor, albeit as a giant holographic head in a single scene but all we really know is that Vader willingly bends the knee to this guy, and Vader had spent the movie up to that point taking guff from nobody, as opposed to being subordinate to Tarkin in ANH. We get an exchange of how the Emperor has sensed a new threat growing in power, and Vader pitches the idea of turning Luke, while the Emperor is insistent that son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi. So to check, all we know apart from him being in charge of the Empire is that he's to some extent aware of the Force, and that Vader is his servant.

Now we reach Return of the Jedi, where the Emperor gets fleshed out a bit more. He's revealed to be reliant upon foresight (or at least prone to proclaiming things are proceeding as he's foreseen), but gets perturbed when things happen he didn't foresee (like Luke's presence with the Endor team) and quite a manipulator having leaked the DS2 plans to the Rebels with the intent of drawing them into a trap to squash them once and for all. He also displays a bit of casual telekinesis and then an unseen Force ability before meeting his (apparent) on-screen demise at the hands of his former servant, who dies not long after. At the conclusion of the trilogy and what many of the time thought was the franchise, we still don't know much of anything about him, such as where did he come from, where did he learn to use the Force, how did he become Emperor? After three films, he's really not much more than a plot device to advance the stories of Luke and later Anakin/Vader. And I'd be very surprised if there weren't some critics calling out back then that the Emperor was a waste of a character as he got zero development and was just there to be a greater scope villain so that Vader could make a heroic sacrifice.

We don't find out more about who Palpatine was until the Prequel Trilogy, revealing he was a Senator from a fairly remote system, and was indeed a shrewd manipulator who was able to adapt and improvise as needed to see his plans proceed, and it's confirmed that he was indeed a Sith Lord. And we don't see him really show how powerful a threat he was until RotS, where he's able to drop all pretenses in his fights with Mace Windu and later Yoda, with him as Sidious not doing anything other than showing up and delivering dialogue for all of TPM and AotC, and most of that was via holographic projection.

The bulk of what's known about the Emperor/Palpatine these days is from material that came out after the films in which he appeared. And if anyone honestly thinks that Lucas wouldn't have made use of ancillary material to flesh out the setting if such a thing had been available to him, I hear there's beachfront property in the Sahara desert that's for sale at a steal of a price.

The core problem is that a portion of the viewership, having grown up with Star Wars, are now viewing what are essentially children's movies through the lens of jaded adults. As I've said numerous times here and in other places, the original films fall apart just as fast under the same level of deep scrutiny that the sequel or prequel trilogies do, and yet for all the many flaws present in the originals, it gets a pass from that portion of the viewership simply because of childhood nostalgia, where the flaws are seen not as flaws but endearing quirks, but are either unable or simply unwilling to extend the same consideration to the prequels or the sequels for no reason other than those weren't the films they saw as children.

34 minutes ago, wilsch said:

I think Palpatine — drawing from Jedi only — has been more memorable largely because temptation is way more interesting than manipulation and abusiveness. I'd also credit McDiarmid, and personally insist that physical costumes in physical spaces do something to the mind of an audience that the best effect trickery can't.

On that note, I'd love to see Palpatine and Luke trading one-liners throughout RoS.

I remember a behind-the-scenes clip for RotS, and the make-up guys were fretting about how they couldn't get the Emperor make up to look right. And it wasn't until Ian McDiarmid was in the chair and wearing the prothestics that it truly came to life, making it plain that the actor was the missing element that the make up crew needed to replicate the Emperor's look.

But I think you're right, much as it is with physical effects (or at least physical effects with only a modicum of CGI applied) have a greater sense of "realness" to audiences, primarily as there's something there for the on-set actors to react and interact with. A large number of actors have said that they've found it very difficult to interact with something they knew was going to be CGI'd in later, with the largely forgettable yet fun film Dragonheart (the one with Sean Connery voicing a dragon), where the leads said that they had to act against what was a set of tennisballs to represent Draco's eyes.

Snoke in TLJ did look quite unnatural (apart from being mo-cap'd CGI), which was probably the point of his appearance. Then again, Maz Kanata was a mo-cap character, but she got to interact more directly with the protagonists in TFA than Snoke did, who even in TLJ simply sat on his throne until Kylo cut him out of the picture and ascended to his place as the sequel trilogy's principal villain.

11 hours ago, penpenpen said:

It's funny how you start by defeating your own argument.

Well I wasn't composing a formal argument but was just typing something on a game forum, but basically my intention was to say that the Emperor didn't need to be explained because the first movies were better and didn't have the history to contend with as a factor. The first two movies were such magic that nobody cared.

3 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

The core problem is that a portion of the viewership, having grown up with Star Wars, are now viewing what are essentially children's movies through the lens of jaded adults.

I don't see this so much being a problem as it being the reality of the situation. If I create a great story now and in 30 years I try to do it again and think I can repeat the same effect I am being naive. It was never going to remain a children's movie after the response it got in 1977. Too many dollars heading downrange in all forms of the product.

^which has nothing to do with the points anyone was making.

12 hours ago, Archlyte said:

I don't see this so much being a problem as it being the reality of the situation. If I create a great story now and in 30 years I try to do it again and think I can repeat the same effect I am being naive. It was never going to remain a children's movie after the response it got in 1977. Too many dollars heading downrange in all forms of the product.

Thanks for proving my point.

For the record, I have spoken with a number of different adults who only saw the originals recently (only in the past few years), and pointed out the large number of flaws in the originals, simply because they're not beholden to nostalgia about how great the original trilogy allegedly was. And reliance upon supplementary material to get Palpatine's backstory was one of the problems brought up, with one chap (who used to be a film critic for a local paper) feeling that Palpatine as a villain was so much wasted potential, and that he really only clicks as a good villain (as opposed to a hooded cloak wearing cliche) if you factor in the prequels, citing both Vader and Kylo Ren as far more interesting villains by comparison. Oddly, he didn't have any problems with Snoke not getting much development, because (to him at least) it was clear from the start that Snoke was simply a placeholder for Kylo's eventual ascension to being the principle baddie of the sequel trilogy, much how Vader went from being Tarkin's attack dog in ANH to major Imperial authority figure in ESB and RotJ, and it makes for a nice subversion of Kylo following in Vader's path that the young upstart was able to do what Vader never had the ability or will to do, and that was strike down his mentor/tormentor and seize power for himself, where Vader only acted on an impulse that was (to him) both altruistic and selfish, killing the Emperor to save his son. I don't agree with him on this, but to him Kylo Ren is by far the most interesting villain in the entire series of films, as he's not mustache-twirling evil like the Emperor, he's not an unemotive block of ruthlessness like Vader, and he's not just a snarling predator like Maul was.

6 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

For the record, I have spoken with a number of different adults who only saw the originals recently (only in the past few years), and pointed out the large number of flaws in the originals, simply because they're not beholden to nostalgia about how great the original trilogy allegedly was.

I only intend this as a point of order, since your answer may be "yes," in which case, carry on — but were they shown the original originals? The Special Edition versions are surprisingly weaker films from each two-hour accumulation of Lucas' futzing.

6 hours ago, wilsch said:

I only intend this as a point of order, since your answer may be "yes," in which case, carry on — but were they shown the original originals? The Special Edition versions are surprisingly weaker films from each two-hour accumulation of Lucas' futzing.

A few of them have seen the originals. But frankly, most of the complaints that came up have zero to do with what Lucas added to the Special Editions, with the Jabba scene being almost universally noted as "was this scene really necessary?" The Han vs. Greedo scene was more laughed off, especially in light of Lucas needing to do that to keep ANH at it's original PG rating due to the different standards (and existence of the PG-13 rating) than when it was first released.

21 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Thanks for proving my point.

For the record, I have spoken with a number of different adults who only saw the originals recently (only in the past few years), and pointed out the large number of flaws in the originals, simply because they're not beholden to nostalgia about how great the original trilogy allegedly was. And reliance upon supplementary material to get Palpatine's backstory was one of the problems brought up, with one chap (who used to be a film critic for a local paper) feeling that Palpatine as a villain was so much wasted potential, and that he really only clicks as a good villain (as opposed to a hooded cloak wearing cliche) if you factor in the prequels, citing both Vader and Kylo Ren as far more interesting villains by comparison. Oddly, he didn't have any problems with Snoke not getting much development, because (to him at least) it was clear from the start that Snoke was simply a placeholder for Kylo's eventual ascension to being the principle baddie of the sequel trilogy, much how Vader went from being Tarkin's attack dog in ANH to major Imperial authority figure in ESB and RotJ, and it makes for a nice subversion of Kylo following in Vader's path that the young upstart was able to do what Vader never had the ability or will to do, and that was strike down his mentor/tormentor and seize power for himself, where Vader only acted on an impulse that was (to him) both altruistic and selfish, killing the Emperor to save his son. I don't agree with him on this, but to him Kylo Ren is by far the most interesting villain in the entire series of films, as he's not mustache-twirling evil like the Emperor, he's not an unemotive block of ruthlessness like Vader, and he's not just a snarling predator like Maul was.

Ok well I can get behind the fact that they were really the same but I then don't understand why The Last Jedi sucks. Genuinely confused as to why I can't bring myself to watch TLJ on Netflix for free but I still enjoy watching the original trilogy. One of the mysteries of life I guess.

4 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Ok well I can get behind the fact that they were really the same but I then don't understand why The Last Jedi sucks. Genuinely confused as to why I can't bring myself to watch TLJ on Netflix for free but I still enjoy watching the original trilogy. One of the mysteries of life I guess.

It's a matter of time and perspective.

Back when ESB was released, it was savaged by both critics and especially adult audience members, with many saying that Lucas had pretty much ensured that his career as a Hollywood film maker was over, or that he should just step away entirely and let other people handle the next Star Wars movie, that they ruined Vader as a villain by making him Luke's father, or that Han's charm got drastically reduced by making him an outright creep that wouldn't take no from Leia when she rebuked his advances on the Falcon. And this was the film directed by Irwin Kershner, a well-respected and accomplished director. A film that only in later years, long after its release, did it start to be seen as "good" or "the best of the trilogy."

And much how the prequels were blasted, after more than a decade has passed, there's a growing portion of the fanbase, many of whom where children/tweens when the prequels came out, that hold them as being as good, if not in some ways better than the original films. And I'll be very surprised if in a decade's time, TLJ is heralded as being on the same lofty tier that ESB has since been put on. You may not like TLJ, just as there are people who saw ESB when it was released and still think that movie is trash.

15 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

It's a matter of time and perspective.

Back when ESB was released, it was savaged by both critics and especially adult audience members, with many saying that Lucas had pretty much ensured that his career as a Hollywood film maker was over, or that he should just step away entirely and let other people handle the next Star Wars movie, that they ruined Vader as a villain by making him Luke's father, or that Han's charm got drastically reduced by making him an outright creep that wouldn't take no from Leia when she rebuked his advances on the Falcon. And this was the film directed by Irwin Kershner, a well-respected and accomplished director. A film that only in later years, long after its release, did it start to be seen as "good" or "the best of the trilogy."

And much how the prequels were blasted, after more than a decade has passed, there's a growing portion of the fanbase, many of whom where children/tweens when the prequels came out, that hold them as being as good, if not in some ways better than the original films. And I'll be very surprised if in a decade's time, TLJ is heralded as being on the same lofty tier that ESB has since been put on. You may not like TLJ, just as there are people who saw ESB when it was released and still think that movie is trash.

I never use film critics as a barometer. Other than if the critics hate it it is probably actually good.