7 hours ago, KCDodger said:

This is what's wrong with the Star Wars fanbase.

Rude!

And keeping to a consistent style and the reuse of similar literary devices within a series is not a bad thing. Did you bemoan the fact that every Harry Potter book was the start of a new school year? Star Wars and more specifically The Skywalker Saga is a space opera with several existing devices that are reused, such as the opening crawl, the establishing shot of a spaceship flying towards a planet, that create a connection between the stories.

Similarly, change for the sake of change is disruptive within a series, and likely to face backlash from fans of the existing series. They came back to that series for a reason , something they came to enjoy, and drastically changing the formula may have removed that. As well, it can cause a loss of consistency between stories. For instance, there is no reason why you couldn't tell a One Room Story in the Star Wars universe, say for instance contained entirely in a cantina on Tatooine, but it would be completely out of place to do that and label it Episode VIII of the Skywalker Saga.

As a one-shot, like Solo or Rogue One , sure, it could be fun; otherwise, it doesn't fit in with the rest of works, it would be aberrant and stick out like a sore thumb.

57 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Rude!

And keeping to a consistent style and the reuse of similar literary devices within a series is not a bad thing. Did you bemoan the fact that every Harry Potter book was the start of a new school year? Star Wars and more specifically The Skywalker Saga is a space opera with several existing devices that are reused, such as the opening crawl, the establishing shot of a spaceship flying towards a planet, that create a connection between the stories.

Similarly, change for the sake of change is disruptive within a series, and likely to face backlash from fans of the existing series. They came back to that series for a reason , something they came to enjoy, and drastically changing the formula may have removed that. As well, it can cause a loss of consistency between stories. For instance, there is no reason why you couldn't tell a One Room Story in the Star Wars universe, say for instance contained entirely in a cantina on Tatooine, but it would be completely out of place to do that and label it Episode VIII of the Skywalker Saga.

As a one-shot, like Solo or Rogue One , sure, it could be fun; otherwise, it doesn't fit in with the rest of works, it would be aberrant and stick out like a sore thumb.

I thought Rogue One and Solo were being made with the point of being intentionally outside of the devices and style of the main episodes. Where this went off the rails is that folks who just saw "Star Wars" in their titles expected it to be a lot more like the main episodes. Vader ended up in Rogue One as a response to testing feedback that the film didn't "feel" like Star Wars.

Look at the stuff about the Star Wars videogame that was more or less canned because it didn't have Chewie or Stormtroopers and such.

So I think we get TLJ in development with the idea that they need to create a new "feel" for Star Wars. They have to teach us a lesson so they can make the Star Wars they want to make which isn't necessarily the Star Wars audiences say they want to see, "Kill the past." But that lack of patience came in. They didn't want to ease us into it. Then Solo bombed. The creators took a lot of wrong lessons from the fanbase and they're blaming us for their failures of hearing what fans were saying versus what fans meant.

The Rise of Skywalker "unlikely" to reach The Last Jedi's box office:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/21/31/star-wars-box-office-rise-of-skywalker-wont-top-last-jedi/#24ff65de51c7

You'd think that if - if - the last jedi and it's director had done their jobs properly and generated tension, stakes and a story to lead in to the final film of the series, RoS would have been surpassing the last jedi's total, not struggling to match it - regardless of the quality of the final film.

cf Avengers: Endgame, Spiderman 3, The Dark Knight Rises...

And if RoS surpassed TLJ then I guarantee that it would prove TLJ was worse and even less popular, not that it had done its job.

1 minute ago, FTS Gecko said:

You'd think that if - if - the last jedi and it's director had done their jobs properly and generated tension, stakes and a story to lead in to the final film of the series, RoS would have been surpassing the last jedi's total, not struggling to match it - regardless of the quality of the final film.

I don't think that's totally fair. If The Last Jedi had left you on the edge of your seat you'd have gone to see the film regardless, but - lets be fair here - 90% plus of people who self-identify as 'Star Wars Fans' are going to go see it on the premise that it's a Star Wars film no matter how awful either it or its preceding episode was..

I'm not totally rejecting the argument, but there are two potential losses of cinema revenue - people who because of The Last Jedi didn't go see Rise of Skywalker, and people who because of Rise of Skywalker didn't go and see it again who otherwise might have, or who told people who were ambivalent not to bother because they didn't think it worth the effort. What the proportion of those two is, I'm not in a position to judge.

I did find it mildly amusing if annoying that people's response to not liking The Last Jedi was to boycott Solo, from which Disney took the numbers-driven conclusion that the Star Wars Story films weren't popular when a lot of the older fans complaining were preferring them, in part because they were able to be different as @kris40k says, since they are allowed to 'assume' you've seen episodes IV-VI and can use in-jokes and avoid backstory and exposition in a way the 'saga' films can't (or at least shouldn't).

But, whatever happens, and whoever's "fault" you personally consider it to be, given the latter half of the sequel trilogy being near-simultaneous with Infinity War/Endgame, it's not going to go down as anywhere near the success it 'should' have been, as that's the financial metre stick it's going to get measured by.

(To be fair, in much the same way the prequel trilogy's 'revolutionary use of CGI' falls kind of flat on its face when you bear in mind that the Droids v Gungans Battle of Naboo was pretty much simultaneous with the Lord of the Rings trilogy)

One of the things that I think is very telling, is that The Mandalorian is doing so well while it has changed the formula, yet kept a familiar feeling. Solo was a Heist movie, Rogue One was a Military Epic ala The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen , and The Mandalorian is a Western/Kurosawa series, however it even gets away with experimentation with its shorter episodic nature such as "Chapter 6: The Prisoner" where it took its lead from Ridley Scott's Alien.

...and fans are loving it!

So, there is room for experimentation and change within the larger Star Wars universe, and its fandom, but I think the expectations for the Skywalker Saga was different than what Rian Johnson wanted to try.

21 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I' m not totally rejecting the argument, but there are two potential losses of cinema revenue - people who because of The Last Jedi didn't go see Rise of Skywalker, and people who because of Rise of Skywalker didn't go and see it again who otherwise might have, or who told people who were ambivalent not to bother because they didn't think it worth the effort. What the proportion of those two is, I'm not in a position to judge...

There's plenty of good counter points here. Of course, my opinion also factored in the upswing generated from - imho, classic - films like The Dark Knight and Spiderman 2 into the box office of their sequels.

The argument can also be made that Batman/Spiderman fans would have tuned in regardless, but on the back of superbly written, directed and acted films like those, the box office shot up for the inevitable sequels, which - by most metrics - didn't quiet live up to audience expectations.

I think it's reasonable to suggest that given the critical and audience response to both Spider-Man 3 and Rises - and the drop off in repeat viewings that would cause - then the prior films in the series were largely responsible for pushing the box office final total to new heights. Hype generates hype, and if a film is that good, audiences will usually with increase for the sequel, regardless of critical reaction.

19 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I did find it mildly amusing if annoying that people's response to not liking The Last Jedi was to boycott Solo, from which Disney took the numbers-driven conclusion that the Star Wars Story films weren't popular when a lot of the older fans complaining were preferring them, in part because they were able to be different as @kris40k says, since they are allowed to 'assume' you've seen episodes IV-VI and can use in-jokes and avoid backstory and exposition in a way the 'saga' films can't (or at least shouldn't).

The spinoffs have to use less in-jokes and rely less on the "texture" of Star Wars and provide even more of their own text and their own texture in addition to using the texture of Star Wars for their little portion of the story they are going to tell. Neither Rogue One nor Solo is a movie for casual fans. You need the casual fans to make billions of dollars. To be accessible and comprehensible to the casual audience they have to hold folks hands more. They have more work to do as to establishing their setting.

I think Solo made to big an ask of the audience in doing some of the film-maker's work for them. Alternately the film in trying to "feel" like Star Wars did itself a disservice by spending a lot of time on Star Wars texture that didn't matter to its story. A Star Wars story instead of a Han Solo story. Solo was trying to go back to make Iron Man after Endgame.

13 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

That's going to require some reasoning to be considered anything but wild opinion my dude.

I ain't a dude.

11 hours ago, debiler said:

I've been just reading along for quite some time now. Really haven't felt the need to comment on anything that's been said, because since TLJ, I've been very uninterested in Star Wars.

But it's comments like this one that drive me up the wall. What exactly is wrong with the Star Wars fanbase, dude ? That some of us are critical of what is presented to us instead of gobbling it all up without any second thought? Nobody's always gonna like everything. What's wrong with respectfully and coherently expressing one's disappointment with the direction one's favorite fictional thing has been taking?

A Star Wars outsider would of course agree that a long-standing franchise like Star Wars could use some fresh, invigorating ideas and also swerve from the formula these films were created by. For many insiders, this also worked. But for another large group of people, this subversion of expectations not only did not work, they felt ridiculed and mocked by it. You may not like that fact, and that's also fine. But don't you dare question my love of Star Wars. Disappointment can only go as deep as the love one has had in the first place. If I didn't enjoy Star Wars as much as I did, I wouldn't have felt as betrayed as I did.

What'd I just say?

Let me tell you what's wrong with the star wars fanbase. They ask for nothing new, nothing daring, nothing fresh. They only ask for more of what they know. This is stagnation of an IP incarnate. Nothing new is allowed to be introduced, just more of the same. If you had it your way, the PT and OT would look identical, but George Lucas knew better and made them incredibly distinct from one another, but ended up marrying the design languages in the end, blending them together.

This was done too, with the theme and overall setting. It was very polarizing, very daring, and very flawed. But most of all, it strongly contributed to what made Star Wars, Star Wars. Half of the beloved media of the EU had stronger PT roots than OT roots, especially post-1999.

I am not questioning your love for the Star Wars you know.

I question your willingness to love the Star Wars you do not yet know and seem to never wish to. With all due respect, complaints such as yours got us the safest Star Wars movie ever made. Eight films made a good case against the cycle, and what did we get? We ended up in the exact same position we were in, in 1983.

It's 2020! Do you have any idea how screwed up that is?

6 hours ago, kris40k said:

Rude!

And keeping to a consistent style and the reuse of similar literary devices within a series is not a bad thing. Did you bemoan the fact that every Harry Potter book was the start of a new school year? Star Wars and more specifically The Skywalker Saga is a space opera with several existing devices that are reused, such as the opening crawl, the establishing shot of a spaceship flying towards a planet, that create a connection between the stories.

Similarly, change for the sake of change is disruptive within a series, and likely to face backlash from fans of the existing series. They came back to that series for a reason , something they came to enjoy, and drastically changing the formula may have removed that. As well, it can cause a loss of consistency between stories. For instance, there is no reason why you couldn't tell a One Room Story in the Star Wars universe, say for instance contained entirely in a cantina on Tatooine, but it would be completely out of place to do that and label it Episode VIII of the Skywalker Saga.

As a one-shot, like Solo or Rogue One , sure, it could be fun; otherwise, it doesn't fit in with the rest of works, it would be aberrant and stick out like a sore thumb.

Oho wow, you use Harry Potter but clearly haven't read it. No, not every book was the beginning of a new school year, holy s**t.

4 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

And if RoS surpassed TLJ then I guarantee that it would prove TLJ was worse and even less popular, not that it had done its job.

Bingo. There is no way for TLJ to win in these fans' eyes. They are willfully blind to it. It is extremely unfortunate to have to witness.

4 hours ago, kris40k said:

One of the things that I think is very telling, is that The Mandalorian is doing so well while it has changed the formula, yet kept a familiar feeling. Solo was a Heist movie, Rogue One was a Military Epic ala The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen , and The Mandalorian is a Western/Kurosawa series, however it even gets away with experimentation with its shorter episodic nature such as "Chapter 6: The Prisoner" where it took its lead from Ridley Scott's Alien.

...and fans are loving it!

So, there is room for experimentation and change within the larger Star Wars universe, and its fandom, but I think the expectations for the Skywalker Saga was different than what Rian Johnson wanted to try.

There is something about The Mandalorian you're forgetting that's extremely important. I will say first and foremost, that I love The Mandalorian.

But not once has it challenged my conceptions or told me that I did not know better.

The Mandalorian pays incredible respect to the name of its source material, and everything about it. It is decades of very good literature about an extremely intriguing culture, made canon.

But it has done very little new within the realm of what fans know and expect of Star Wars. It is different, but it still marries itself to centering its existence around the force / a force sensitive character. I sighed heavily when that turned out to be the case, for I am tired of such themes having to be in Star Wars. I'm certain that if it didn't appear, people would be clumsily slapping their keyboards until the words, "It doesn't feel like Star Wars" managed to come out, miraculously legible.

Was that dig unnecessary? Maybe. So was the fanbase's collective digs at the lives of many producers and actors. Star Wars fans as a group deserve absolutely no quarter. There is a reason my interaction has become incredibly sparing.

The Mandalorian is however, very good. The fact that it canonizes things far in need of it, is one of the biggest reasons I love it. But it does very little to nothing new. It is exactly the type of Star Wars people expect, except maybe with less lightsabers.

Unfortunately, it couldn't go a f**king season without activating a gods damned lightsaber because Disney LITERALLY cannot ******* help themselves.

Is the Darksaber interesting as a theme? Oh yes, absolutely. The implications are absolutely astounding. Did we need it? **** no we didn't. SOLO didn't need a stupid ******* lightsaber either. Rogue One didn't REALLY need one.

But see that's what Disney doesn't understand about Star Wars, is that it can exist without needing to delve into The Force or Lightsabers. This is the thing they do not and potentially refuse to comprehend.

THAT is the real problem with Disney's Star Wars, and it will continue to be a problem. ****, it's why I like Resistance. There's never been one activated and The Force has not made an appearance. It's about people and their conflicts first and foremost. If Resistance goes down as the first Star Wars media in canon to NEVER activate a Lightsaber or EVER outwardly use The Force, I will love it forever for that.

I just hope Disney can ******* stop themselves long enough. But what does this all loop back to?

A complete unwillingness to break away from the formula, and being punished by angry fans for doing so when TLJ did it.

We are going to be in a creative rut for a decade at LEAST, because you guys that complained got what you wanted, and the IP will suffer for it. But you will not see it that way.

And that is the problem with the Star Wars fandom.

I think everyone on this thread have at least one thing in common:

They all care about Star Wars... A lot.

_______________

As for me, even with the list of things I wasn't given from Ep9, I got something I wasn't expecting: respect for the Wookie .

They finally gave the Faithful Friend a meda l .

If that's not honoring the OT, I don't know what is?

I'm truly shocked.

I mean, you could call it cheap fan service, but it felt truly meaningful because of his loss of both Han and Leia .

The award itself probably belonged to Han.

Really cool.

40 minutes ago, KCDodger said:

There is no way for TLJ to win in these fans' eyes.

A great way for TLJ to have "won" would have been not killing Luke Skywalker.

25 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

A great way for TLJ to have "won" would have been not killing Luke Skywalker.

His ending was breathtaking, the most interesting and touching arc to date. Actually good cinema in Starwars

57 minutes ago, KCDodger said:

Oho wow, you use Harry Potter but clearly haven't read it. No, not every book was the beginning of a new school year, holy s**t.

This is one of the worst examples of nitpicking I've seen with no attempt to dispute the point, or the existence or use of literary devices in the series. Each of the books may not have begun at the start of new school year, but each covered from Harry's First through Seventh years. Its a obvious logical divider repeatedly used throughout the series.

"holy s**t" indeed.

Similarly, the existence of force-wielding fan service in Solo and Rogue One is pretty minimal, and while it may be a distraction for you, you shouldn't let it take away from your enjoyment of the movies, but I mean, if it does for you, it does. Similarly, you could tell a story in the universe of The Lord of the Rings without involving magic in any way, but would you want to? The Force is something that connects everything in the Star Wars universe, and while I am gloriously happy having stories that do not have anything to do with anyone named Skywalker or wielding laser swords (and have said this exact thing many times on these forums), I understand that its a defining attribute of the setting.

Similarly with The Mandalorian . I get what you mean about bringing in a force user early in the series, but the lead is still Din Djarin. I don't feel that The Child as a supporting character / macguffin is too distracting from the rest of the cast. The existence of the Darksaber goes hand in hand with the story that they are telling of the purge of the Mandolorians and Moff Gideon's part in that. They could have left it out, but I think its an important part of the Mandalorian story.

33 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

His ending was breathtaking, the most interesting and touching arc to date. Actually good cinema in Starwars

Breathtaking?

Luke meditated himself to death... 😑

20 minutes ago, Captain Lucas said:

Breathtaking?

Luke meditated himself to death... 😑

I hope for your sake that you try to make a joke. Because the alternative is so much worse.

4 hours ago, Frimmel said:

A great way for TLJ to have "won" would have been not killing Luke Skywalker.

Sorry they killed your hero, but you can join the Han Solo crowd in getting over that.

3 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

I hope for your sake that you try to make a joke. Because the alternative is so much worse.

SO much worse.

Luke had a force stroke. Nothing breath taking about it.

I love the comments about how original TLJ is when in fact its nothing more than a re-telling of ESB. How did so many people miss that piece about the movie?

I don't know how reliable this is but Wookiepedia says TROS included appearances of the N-1 and Fang fighters and honestly that seems a bit ridiculous.

6 minutes ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

I don't know how reliable this is but Wookiepedia says TROS included appearances of the N-1 and Fang fighters and honestly that seems a bit ridiculous.

I know someone said they saw a Fang Fighter in the mix of the fleet that Lando pulled in. I would not be surprised if there was a N-1 in there as well.

In one of the frames where Palp does his sky lightning (groan) I believe you see the silhouette of a Fang Fighter falling. I never saw an N-1 but I bet its there somewhere.

2 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

His ending was breathtaking, the most interesting and touching arc to date. Actually good cinema in Starwars

It was a freakin' bait and switch.

Han Solo's endjng arcs were better (both of them). So was Obi Wan's (of which Luke's TLJ demise was merely a pale imitation).

And Vader's. And Jyn/Cassian.

And K-2SO's.

It was probably the best character death in TLJ, though, I'll give you that (but that's only because Ruin didn't have the cohones to follow through with Leia's death.).

3 hours ago, KCDodger said:

I ain't a dude.

Fantastic. By all means choose a word that suits, I'll try and remember. Fore warning, I'll probably forget with all the folks that were chatting with and my terrible memory for names, it's not an offense, just roll with it is it happens. Promise you I'll do the same.

You have a very interesting perspective on the SW universe friend. Perhaps not entirely unique, but interesting. If I were to summarize it, it seems more like you don't want the things that make it what it is. Or maybe, selectively so?

I'd like to ask you to pause and consider for a moment, my perspective. But of what happened per se, but how. Because to make some of the great many assumptions your making, along with the severity of them in some cases, is quite frankly unfair to many in this discussion. To be certain my friend, your grouping a large number of individuals and aiming a label at their head, with a few unkind words attached to boot. So please, parley with me a moment.

Would it surprise you (or our friendo @GreenDragoon ) to know that I full well expected Luke to die in 8? And I mean like, from the trailer for 7 I was betting on our boy biting it. After seven I was unsure the timing on it within 8 itself, changed my prediction from mid to late movie. But I was also expecting, and ready to throw some money at it, a time of story telling of an old Luke. I was also counting on there being time for them to get that made later with a, you guessed it, time skip. Because while yes it's a rote thing of the entire saga, it always was the right move for how this story is told. And functionally there's nothing wrong with it.

It reminds me of having your proverbial parents read you stories as a kid. (Or okay seriously I could pick one of a great number of franchise that do this and not some nostalgia trip, but here we are) and when they start the story with 'once upon a time'. The mood is set. The framework is done. Heaven forbid they start with 'one day' or you throw a fit. And when they start somewhere different from the last ending your little child mind starts asking questions. But what happened to this or that you'd say. And they'd chide you that they'll tell you about it another night. And then the next night, you ask well what happened to so-n-so that made them sad in the last story you told me? And then they start again: well, once upon a time...

It's like the ritual of the story telling experience. Just like dimming the lights before a play, or the poised still silence of the musicians just before a concert.

And that's what we want to get in our experience. There's the epic opening score, leads into the scroll with our 'a long time ago', scroll fades pause... Pan down to space battle some time further from our last story... And we're off.

Because after that, it really doesn't matter where you go. Like, I'm down as long as the rest is respectful of the source.

New lady Jedi lead? Sweet. It's not like it's a entirely new edgy concept anyway. Sup Ashoka. Hey Bastilla. Aayla, welcome back.

Stormtrooper dropout, potentially a sensitive. I'm down. Wedge meets Mace? Yeah I'll take that. Atton, thanks for joining us. Rex, always a pleasure.

Here's my own take of 7: you did TOO MUCH fan service. Yeah Rey's a Mary Sue. So is Finn. So is Poe. They're ALL worthy of that badge. But that's not why I dislike their characters. I dislike them because they're so blessed hero worshipy that we never get much out of them. 7 plays like three kids went to a meet and greet with their favorite band back stage and then got invited on stage. Its not different, it's old and dull.

While your ready to slap me with a label as not ready for change, or wrong for wanting the foundations to stay the same whole you build this new Castle, please consider that I was actually in the forward side of yeah, let's change some stuff. Kinda sucks that we agree on that, and yet still, I'm 'wrong' to you, and not just different from you.

I'll save the Luke scene discussion for another time. Because my take on it is waaay Different from pretty much any other opinion I've ever encountered. And yeah, I thought he was going to die. But the way they did it was really dumb, and fell emotionally flat to me.

5 hours ago, KCDodger said:

Let me tell you what's wrong with the star wars fanbase. They ask for nothing new, nothing daring, nothing fresh. They only ask for more of what they know. This is stagnation of an IP incarnate. Nothing new is allowed to be introduced, just more of the same. If you had it your way, the PT and OT would look identical, but George Lucas knew better and made them incredibly distinct from one another, but ended up marrying the design languages in the end, blending them together.

This was done too, with the theme and overall setting. It was very polarizing, very daring, and very flawed. But most of all, it strongly contributed to what made Star Wars, Star Wars. Half of the beloved media of the EU had stronger PT roots than OT roots, especially post-1999.

I am not questioning your love for the Star Wars you know.

I question your willingness to love the Star Wars you do not yet know and seem to never wish to. With all due respect, complaints such as yours got us the safest Star Wars movie ever made. Eight films made a good case against the cycle, and what did we get? We ended up in the exact same position we were in, in 1983.

Don't presume to know anything about me. I was so willing to love TLJ, you have no idea. After loving the opening Episode of the ST, why wouldn't I be hyped about that? I also hated almost none of the ideas Rian Johnson had for that story. It was the execution, the telling of that story that was so way off the mark, that I couldn't enjoy one single bit of it. Do I have a problem with Luke being grumpy, old, bitter and dead at the end? No, I think it's a great idea. I'm not not one of those uber-fanboys who just wanna see him shred Imperials for two and a half hours. I don't need Rey to be "someody". I don't mind women in positions of power. I don't want extensive lightsaber battles. What I want is a compelling, cohesive story with memorable, believable characters that flows from beginning to end. And in that regard, TLJ just failed for me. Because Rian Johnson chose to tell it in a way that does not work for a Star Wars movie, at least as far as I and many other people are concerned. But whenever I question his ability or willingness to create for an audience and not just for himself, there are people like you who tell me how wrong I am. I am not wrong. It is a fact that Rian Johnson failed to create a movie that could be enjoyed by most Star Wars fans. But maybe "failed" might be the wrong word, actually. Seems to me more like he didn't want to. When you put so much inappropriate humor into a movie in all the wrong places and by that decision alone - don't get me started, because that horse is REALLY dead by now - prevent it from ever developing some kind of flow or tone, you don't give a rat's behind about your audience's moviegoing experience. As a director, you have to be either blind, incompetent or darn arrogant to display such an amount of indifference towards your audience. Which one is it?

Also, one more thing: Have any of you seen the Re-Edited version of TLJ by Ivan Ortega? Some of the changes he made (like Ackbar doing the ram maneuver instead of Holdo, Luke not dying at the end) I can take or leave, but seriously: go watch that version and then tell me that the original version has better pacing or flow. It baffles me how all the material for a spectacular, deep, moving movie was there - it was just a jawdroppingly bad and tone-deaf editing and cutting job that wrecked this train for me.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

I'll save the Luke scene discussion for another time.

Save your breath, or at least leave me out of it

E: you know what... I should save my breath. I hope to read new, interesting, well reasoned opinions. There are some users delivering exactly that, and it's great to have them around and read what they write. I just get frustrated at low effort trolls and others who intentionally obfuscate the discussions by their inability for empathy. Anyone saying Luke meditated himself to death or had a stroke - and all the similar examples - is just not part of any discussion that I want to be in. Same with the infantile name calling (Ruin Johnson? Wow). Simple as that. If it happens that I'm the odd one out with that then I shut up. Finally, I know.