Television The Mandalorian OT - This is the Way

[johnny]

3 hours ago, Reputator said:

 

Gee whiz, it sure doesn't seem like Mark prefers TLJ interpretation of the Luke character.  I wonder why?!?

and? 

[Reputator]

5 minutes ago, johnny said:

and? 

 

Just pointing out a key example of how much better received Mando Luke is.

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, Reputator said:

 

Just pointing out a key example of how much better received Mando Luke is.

Was this in question?

[cusideabelincoln]

I don't think t he was happy about the way he was handled in TFA either.

[Spork3245]

People who act like any of the Disney SW sequels were actually good are fairly crazy, IMO. Saying that TLJ was the best of the 3 is like arguing which pile of dog shit has the least amount of flies on it. None of the movies were good.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

On 1/18/2021 at 5:48 AM, Spork3245 said:

People who act like any of the Disney SW sequels were actually good are fairly crazy, IMO. Saying that TLJ was the best of the 3 is like arguing which pile of dog shit has the least amount of flies on it. None of the movies were good.

yeah, but that’s pretty par for the course with Star Wars movies. They are all wildly imperfect films. If they weren’t Star Wars the prequel trilogy of movies would have faded into obscurity with how bad they were. Yet there are a legion of fans for those movies that grew up in them. 
 

Time may tell on this trilogy, but this set may get its own legion of fans. Though if we don’t have a ten year gap between film releases, the generation growing up on these may not have as much nostalgia if a newer trilogy is significantly better. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

None of the Star Wars movies are "good" (except maybe, Rogue One, and perhaps Empire), they are enjoyable dumb fun.  IMHO, even though all of the sequel movies weren't very good, TLJ was a dumpster fire that felt like it was made by someone who didn't like Star Wars.

 

The treatment of Luke Skywalker in Mando was what I wanted to see from that character post-RotJ.

[johnny]

i can’t figure out what is supposed to be so good about rogue one 

[CitizenVectron]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

None of the Star Wars movies are "good" (except maybe, Rogue One, and perhaps Empire), they are enjoyable dumb fun.  IMHO, even though all of the sequel movies weren't very good, TLJ was a dumpster fire that felt like it was made by someone who didn't like Star Wars.

 

The treatment of Luke Skywalker in Mando was what I wanted to see from that character post-RotJ.

 

It's very easy (imo) to find out the people who enjoy power fantasies based on if they prefer Luke in TLJ or Mandalorian. Could probably do the same thing with Man of Steel vs Superman (70s).

[AbsolutSurgen]

4 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

It's very easy (imo) to find out the people who enjoy power fantasies based on if they prefer Luke in TLJ or Mandalorian. Could probably do the same thing with Man of Steel vs Superman (70s).

The original trilogy is, in many ways, a stereotypical power fantasy.  The geeky guy from a remote world, goes on to be the most powerful sorcerer in the universe and saves it from evil.  

Not sure I understand how Superman is a power fantasy -- Spiderman and Captain America, yes, -- but Superman?  He was essentially born a god.

[Mercury33]

Smh haven’t all you guys terrible opinions on TLJ been shot down enough on this board? You’re really looking for it to happen like a 10th time?

[skillzdadirecta]

4 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

None of the Star Wars movies are "good" (except maybe, Rogue One, and perhaps Empire), they are enjoyable dumb fun.  IMHO, even though all of the sequel movies weren't very good, TLJ was a dumpster fire that felt like it was made by someone who didn't like Star Wars.

 

The treatment of Luke Skywalker in Mando was what I wanted to see from that character post-RotJ.

The first Star Wars is a good movie by any metric especially since it accomplishes what it sets out to do as well as doing a bunch of stuff that hadn't really been done on that scale of film before. I don't even know how anyone could look at that movie and say its "not good" unless they were looking at it from a modern lens which is NOT what you want to do when judging classic films. Look at them in the context of the time that they were made and you can REALLY appreciate their greatness even if they don't necessarily hold up. (For the most part Star Wars does hold up though) Empire is a GREAT film. The Last Jedi is a good movie that just stops short of being great because the unfortunate Canto Bite nonsense. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

TLJ was a dumpster fire that felt like it was made by someone who didn't like Star Wars.

I always felt the opposite. It felt like it was made by somebody who loves the Star Wars universe and the idea that a hero can come from anywhere, and people can find redemption if they want it. 
 

I get that fans want Luke to be infallible, incorruptible, and a force & lightsaber god beyond that if any grand master. But I liked seeing a Luke that needed help. I really liked the scene with him and Yoda. It lead right into Luke being the hero they needed, maybe not in the way everyone imagined. I thought Luke had a nice little arc. 
 

I still feel the stakes in the Mandalorian were not shown high enough to warrant Luke saving everyone. That being said, I think the Luke scenes were great for where he was in that stage of his life, and I found his scenes in TLJ to be great for where he was in that stage of his life. 

[skillzdadirecta]

3 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The original trilogy is, in many ways, a stereotypical power fantasy.  The geeky guy from a remote world, goes on to be the most powerful sorcerer in the universe and saves it from evil.  

Not sure I understand how Superman is a power fantasy -- Spiderman and Captain America, yes, -- but Superman?  He was essentially born a god.

Power fantasy? If by that you mean Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, then sure. And Superman is the ULTIMATE power fantasy considering he's a super powerful immigrant and was created by two Jewish kids during the height of anti-semitism in the world. Also his secret identity is the ULTIMATE nerd.

[Greatoneshere]

4 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The treatment of Luke Skywalker in Mando was what I wanted to see from that character post-RotJ.

 

And this is the problem with a lot of arm chair film criticism today. "The story/plot/characters/whatever" weren't what I wanted to see, therefore, what they actually gave me is automatically worse. 

 

I don't get why people keep judging/assessing things on what they aren't vs. what they are/are trying to be. The Luke of TLJ is a fascinating, idiosyncratic, broken old man. 30 years does a lot to the soul, especially when your nephew has become Youth Hitler and is killing scores across the galaxy. 

 

Whether you personally wanted a different Luke or not is irrelevant. What matters is, did they do a good job defining the character as portrayed and intended in TLJ? From my perspective, yes. Luke's journey, all done in one film no less, is incredibly poignant if you aren't looking high and low for a Luke Mando scene. I thought it was refreshing. 

 

That doesn't mean TLJ is a perfect film, or that it can't be criticized. But to be annoyed that TLJ didn't put your head cannon on screen is not a criticism. What you're describing is fan service, not character building or writing (the desire to have seen Luke in a Mando-like scene, which was cool but pure fan service, it wasn't in service to anything substantive really). 

[Reputator]

14 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

Whether you personally wanted a different Luke or not is irrelevant. What matters is, did they do a good job defining the character as portrayed and intended in TLJ?

 

No, and that's the fundamental disconnect people have. People who say TLJ Luke makes sense, and people who say it doesn't.

 

And before you ask "What didn't make sense to you?" just stop. I've read all the explanations.

[Mercury33]

Except the people who say he fundamentally makes sense are correct and the people who don’t are just mad that he wasn’t a super hero and are no crying like a baby with a doo doo in their pants. 

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, Reputator said:

 

No, and that's the fundamental disconnect people have. People who say TLJ Luke makes sense, and people who say it doesn't.

 

And before you ask "What didn't make sense to you?" just stop. I've read all the explanations.

 

Well yeah, I agree. That's the fundamental question, and we can disagree there. But that's a different question than the point AbsoluteSturgen was making about head cannon. I understand some didn't feel Luke in TLJ made sense, and that's at least a more compelling criticism than "it didn't meet what I had wanted of it beforehand".

[AbsolutSurgen]

19 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

The first Star Wars is a good movie by any metric especially since it accomplishes what it sets out to do as well as doing a bunch of stuff that hadn't really been done on that scale of film before. I don't even know how anyone could look at that movie and say its "not good" unless they were looking at it from a modern lens which is NOT what you want to do when judging classic films. Look at them in the context of the time that they were made and you can REALLY appreciate their greatness even if they don't necessarily hold up. (For the most part Star Wars does hold up though) Empire is a GREAT film. The Last Jedi is a good movie that just stops short of being great because the unfortunate Canto Bite nonsense. 

I agree completely -- viewed through a 70s lens they probably could be called "good movies".  I find all of the OT trilogy extremely entertaining to watch, however in a "modern context" of what is good movie-making craft (acting, script, character development), I would argue they probably don't qualify as a "good movie".

19 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

And this is the problem with a lot of arm chair film criticism today. "The story/plot/characters/whatever" weren't what I wanted to see, therefore, what they actually gave me is automatically worse. 

 

I don't get why people keep judging/assessing things on what they aren't vs. what they are/are trying to be. The Luke of TLJ is a fascinating, idiosyncratic, broken old man. 30 years does a lot to the soul, especially when your nephew has become Youth Hitler and is killing scores across the galaxy. 

 

Whether you personally wanted a different Luke or not is irrelevant. What matters is, did they do a good job defining the character as portrayed and intended in TLJ? From my perspective, yes. Luke's journey, all done in one film no less, is incredibly poignant if you aren't looking high and low for a Luke Mando scene. I thought it was refreshing. 

 

That doesn't mean TLJ is a perfect film, or that it can't be criticized. But to be annoyed that TLJ didn't put your head cannon on screen is not a criticism. What you're describing is fan service, not character building or writing (the desire to have seen Luke in a Mando-like scene, which was cool but pure fan service, it wasn't in service to anything substantive really). 

You're combining two of my thoughts together into an argument I didn't make.  They were in two completely different paragrphs.  I dislike TLJ because:

1)  It consistently had me saying -- that doesn't make any fucking sense, why wouldn't they just do X.  I'm not sure I want to have another discussion on the 20+ things in this movie that fit these for me.

2)  TLJ was the 8th installment of a 9-movie series.  It was so focused on subverting my expectations that it felt that it was actively trying to make a commentary on what was wrong about the previous Star Wars movies.

3)  Other than the Praetorian Guard fight with Kylo Ren/Rey there it was almost completely devoid of any interesting action sequences

4)  Everything to do with the Casino

5)  IMHO, TLJ completely deviated from the narrative that was trying to be developed in TFA.  Which, again, was somewhat reverted back in RoS.  The end result was a completely uneven and unsatisfying trilogy.

I could go on.  

 

I, also, don't like the creative decisions that Rian Johnson made with Luke Skywalker to make him an uncaring asshole who had decided to turn his back on the galaxy.  I am free to hold any opinion on the creative decisions any director makes, particularly when a) it wasn't made by the same author who previously wrote the content and b) it goes contrary to the cannon that had just recently been retconned.  I also don't think they earned the turn -- after spending 3 movies developing the character of Luke (and I am not suggesting that George Lucas is good at character development) to a bitter asshole through flashbacks was a cop out.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

13 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

it goes contrary to the cannon that had just recently been retconned.

 What canon was retconned? 

[AbsolutSurgen]

15 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

 What canon was retconned? 

Everything in what is now called "Star Wars Legends".

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

2 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Everything in what is now called "Star Wars Legends".

Hate to break it to you, but most of that, nearly all in fact, never was canon. George Lucas didn’t believe anything was canon unless he wrote/made it. Disney used the branding “Legends” to create a definitive dividing line between canon and not canon. So that we would know what is kept as canon, and know going forward that everything newly made will be canon. They just removed the ambiguity. 

[AbsolutSurgen]

4 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Hate to break it to you, but most of that, nearly all in fact, never was canon. George Lucas didn’t believe anything was canon unless he wrote/made it. Disney used the branding “Legends” to create a definitive dividing line between canon and not canon. So that we would know what is kept as canon, and know going forward that everything newly made will be canon. They just removed the ambiguity. 

Lucasfilm stated many times that the officially licensed cartoons, comic books and novels were part of the "Star Wars Saga" -- and stated many times as such.  Regardless, they were officially licensed books, with stories approved through Lucasfilm for continuity with the Universe, and weren't my own personal fan fiction that I made up in my head.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

24 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Lucasfilm stated many times that the officially licensed cartoons, comic books and novels were part of the "Star Wars Saga" -- and stated many times as such.  Regardless, they were officially licensed books, with stories approved through Lucasfilm for continuity with the Universe, and weren't my own personal fan fiction that I made up in my head.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canon

 

This quote from an interview in the August/September 1999 issue of Star Wars Insider is also notable: 

"Part of the job of the director is to sort of keep everything in line, and I can do that in the movies—but I can't do it on the whole Star Wars universe."

In July 2001, Lucas gave his opinion on the matter of what is canon in Star Wars during an interview with Cinescape magazine: 

"There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe—the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don't intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don't get too involved in the parallel universe."

 

he would have “decanonized” any story that conflicted with a project he was working on. 

[Kal-El814]

9 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canon

 

 

 

he would have “decanonized” any story that conflicted with a project he was working on. 

 

This is already happening in the new canon to an extent as well. Some of the stuff revealed about Poe in TRoS doesn’t fit well with the comics about him, The Mandalorian contradicts some of the stuff said about Cobb Vanth in the books, etc.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

This is already happening in the new canon to an extent as well. Some of the stuff revealed about Poe in TRoS doesn’t fit well with the comics about him, The Mandalorian contradicts some of the stuff said about Cobb Vanth in the books, etc.

yeah, the inconsistencies is bound to happen unless you have every detail of every story reviewed, vetted, and approved by a single infallible person with perfect memory to prevent different creators from crossing over each other.

 

The benefit to Disney’s Star Wars is more is actually canon. Comics, books, shows, games, movies, all canon. Not just a Star Wars story based on Star Wars. Some of what was Expanded universe, now Legends has been made canon, even if just by reference. 
 

What was better about Lucas and Lucas film Star Wars was more fan support and allowing more fans to create stuff without copyright claims. And there was far more licensing. I doubt Disney would ever allow the Family Guy Star Wars movies. Maybe they would, but Disney seems far more draconian with who and how Star Wars can be used. 

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Everything in what is now called "Star Wars Legends".

That was never canon... Lucas never considered it canon. He was on record saying at the time that if it wasn't in the movies, it didn't count. 

[Jason]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Lucasfilm stated many times that the officially licensed cartoons, comic books and novels were part of the "Star Wars Saga" -- and stated many times as such.  Regardless, they were officially licensed books, with stories approved through Lucasfilm for continuity with the Universe, and weren't my own personal fan fiction that I made up in my head.

 

It was always a "it's canon until the screen media says it's not" situation, though.

[Chris-]

ThAt iSn'T CaNoN 

[Bacon]

Jar Jar is canon and it feels so good

 

[Reputator]

10 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

3)  Other than the Praetorian Guard fight with Kylo Ren/Rey there it was almost completely devoid of any interesting action sequences

 

Actually even that is ruined once you find out about the disappearing weapons.

[ort]

I'd be willing to wager that most Star Wars fans cared more about what was canon and what wasn't than George Lucas himself did.

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, ort said:

I'd be willing to wager that most Star Wars fans cared more about what was canon and what wasn't than George Lucas himself did.

 

This is undeniably true.

 

12 hours ago, Reputator said:

Actually even that is ruined once you find out about the disappearing weapons.

 

None of this shit matters. The Princess Bride has one of the most fun sword fights of all time and while none of the weapons disappear, the whole fight is riddled with moments where someone does something that leaves them wide open to a killing blow from the other person. It just doesn’t matter at all as long as the rule of cool is obeyed.

[TheLeon]

33 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

 

None of this shit matters. The Princess Bride has one of the most fun sword fights of all time and while none of the weapons disappear, the whole fight is riddled with moments where someone does something that leaves them wide open to a killing blow from the other person. It just doesn’t matter at all as long as the rule of cool is obeyed.

Sure, that's ok for The Princess Bride, a light bedtime story of a movie. But when depicting something as serious as a laser sword fight between space wizards, we deserve a rigid adherence to realism. 

[Reputator]

1 hour ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

This is undeniably true.

 

 

None of this shit matters. The Princess Bride has one of the most fun sword fights of all time and while none of the weapons disappear, the whole fight is riddled with moments where someone does something that leaves them wide open to a killing blow from the other person. It just doesn’t matter at all as long as the rule of cool is obeyed.

 

1 hour ago, TheLeon said:

Sure, that's ok for The Princess Bride, a light bedtime story of a movie. But when depicting something as serious as a laser sword fight between space wizards, we deserve a rigid adherence to realism. 

 

Are you guys really arguing that a huge and clearly unintentional technical blunder that actually CHANGED the outcome of the fight is fine, because lul derrr Yoda talks funny and Palpatine can rip apart a senate chamber with his brain?

 

Is that really the argument you're gonna go with? Let's just absolve the filmmakers of any need for continuity because, hey, it's fiction?

 

Whoops, TLJ came out, better lower my standards!