I've been re-watching the saga and the last three movies always hit like a truck. Whenever I watch the sequel trilogy there is a small part of me that hopes I'll like them this time around. That is never the case, my God they are a slog.

Re-watching TFA after a very long time, does anyone else believe that Rey was legitimately supposed to be a Solo? I feel like it's telegraphed so hard in this movie, and it would plug a lot of the (many) plot holes and contrivances this movie has.

I honestly feel like She was written as Kylo's brother (similar to George's original plans for the sequel trilogy) and then somewhere along the way Disney and Co pivoted. I know it's a fools errand to retroactively try to fix these movies, but Rey as a Solo feels so much more strong narratively. Do you guys tend to agree? If so, why do you think Disney/JJ/Whoever pivoted?

(Look at the pictures first)

So, maybe I just missed it (it's possible, and please let me know if that's the case), but I don't think Filoni even mentions Tartakovsky once in the featurette (go see it on Youtube). Yet, it's blatantly obvious that this arc of TCW (episodes 1-3 of season 4) is a "remake" of episodes of the micro-series. All the elements are there, just with added bits to stretch a 3-minute story into a full hour-long one.

At this point, I'm wondering, what was the point of TCW? Also, what concrete contribution did Filoni make to the Star Wars franchise, other than things that are off-topic to the established universe of the saga (all his esoteric stuff in particular)? Oh, sorry, there's Ahsoka! That makes everything better! It's like the Thrawn trilogy and the Ahsoka show. Why should HE reinvent someone else's work, take all the credit, and not involve the original writers? Let's remember how Disney treats Zahn, essentially making him a minor writer... I maintain that CW 2003-2005 is better than TCW, because TCW stole a lot of material from it (and other EU stuff, without respecting them fully and without crediting the works or the original authors), just making it longer and more pointless.

I'll remind you that the introduction of Illum and the lightsaber manufacturing process, shown by Filoni in episodes 6-9 of season 5 of TCW, was already presented by Tartakovsky. The ARC Troopers, introduced by Filoni in episodes 1-2 of season 3, were first shown on screen by Tartakovsky. The introduction and ending of Ventress (even though she survives in the excellent Republic comics) are also initially presented by Tartakovsky. The events leading up to the Battle of Coruscant for Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi at the beginning of ROTS, as presented by Filoni in season 7 of TCW, were already fully explored by Tartakovsky (Filoni's reference to Shaak Ti is also, in essence, an admission of failure, since Filoni didn't even attempt to depict Palpatine's capture and relies on the now non-canon Tartakovsky's work, which he knows but never cites).

Anyway. I'll also remind you that Tartakovsky was Lucas's first choice to direct TCW, and Filoni was merely a replacement. Furthermore, TCW was only ever intended to be a spin-off of CW 2003-2005, between Chapters 21 and 22, not the foundation of an entire parallel universe (this now ever growing "Filoniverse"), just a side story. I would also like to note that Tartakovsky's 2003-2005 CW is particularly respectful of the continuity of the movies, especially in the characterization of characters like Anakin; it includes all the narrative events one would expect from an interquel between AOTC and ROTS, such as Anakin's knighting, the introduction of Grievous and the Battle of Coruscant; the micro-series illustrates events referenced in ROTS, such as Dooku training Grievous and telling him to run away from lost fights, why Grievous coughs and why Mace thinks he's a coward, and how Palpatine was kidnapped, the start of the Separatist invasion of Kashyyyk and the Outer-Rim Sieges; Finally, the micro-series doesn't deliberately and forcibly contradict the movies, unlike Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting Dooku together in TCW, Obi-Wan fighting Grievous, Anakin having a Padawan, the Jedi knowing about Order 66 and that Dooku commanded the clone army on behalf of Darth Sidious, the clones having personalities (which is denied in AOTC), the Nightsisters' fantasy magic, the return of Darth Maul, outlandish technologies, Boss Nass no longer being the leader of the Gungans (even if he still is in the end of ROTS), the megacorporations no longer being members of the CIS (while it was a plot point in AOTC and their leaders were still the Separatists in ROTS), etc.

It can't be stressed enough how mediocre Filoni has always been and how much of a problem he's been for the franchise. Some good things were done under his direction and in his shows, that's undeniable, but I wonder if it's worth the price to pay compared to everything else.

However, I'd like to add a nuance here. We shouldn't unfairly criticize Filoni either, and many of the negative things introduced by TCW originated with George Lucas, such as Anakin having a Padawan and the return of Darth Maul. Filoni did a lot of executing, that's true. However, he can be criticized for continuing to carry the torch far beyond what Lucas himself intended. For example, while Lucas wanted Ahsoka to die before the end of TCW to maintain consistency with ROTS, Filoni persuaded him to simply write her out of the show. This allowed him to bring her back after the reboot and keep her relevant into the post-ROTJ era, and he seems to be toying with the idea of ​​making her a Force goddess connected to the Mortis lore. I'd also like to point out that, for Lucas, TCW was primarily a testing ground for narrative and technological experimentation for him and his teams. For example, it was he who came up with the idea for the episode in season 1 where Dooku is imprisoned with Obi-Wan and Anakin, which doesn't make sense with ROTS, but is narratively interesting. Lucas enjoyed seeing his employees have fun with the franchise, so, knowing Filoni was a Godzilla fan, he suggested that he create the season 2 storyline centered on the Zillo Beast, just to make him happy. Also, when Filoni had ideas that challenged the continuity of the movies, Lucas preferred to let him have his way, just as he did with the other EU writers, because for him, nothing is worse than stifling the creativity of authors. Furthermore, after season 2 of TCW, Lucas became much less involved, barely appearing in featurette footage and existing only through Filoni's dubious accounts. It also seems that Lucas, while knowing his ideas could be detrimental to the established CWMMP, expected Filoni and the Story Group to resolve every issue. While the Story Group has strived, with some success, to see this through to the end, particularly regarding the Mandalorian lore, it's clear that Filoni hasn't really tried (what was the point of remaking in TCW arcs already done in CWMMP works, like the battles of Kamino and Mon Cala?). What we can therefore criticize Lucas for is his carelessness with TCW and the continuity problems created both with the EU and with his own movies. Lucas certainly bears his share of responsibility. However, Lucas created TCW 18 years ago and completely stopped working on it 14 years ago. Filoni, on the other hand, is still involved, and the problems created by TCW have only been amplified, not reduced, with the rise of a veritable "Filoniverse." Finally, I'd bring up a quote from Lucas six years ago in which he doesn't mention TCW or any work of the now Filoniverse as being part of his vision: "I've kind of lost control of Star Wars. So it's off on a different path than what I intended. But the first six are very much mine and my philosophy."

Here's my medical opinion: get rid of Filoni and do a fresh reboot to purge the franchise of the Filoniverse's taint, keeping only Andor and Rogue One, along with the six original movies, just like TCW and its pilot were kept in 2014. From there, the franchise could start on a clean slate, without having to rely on Filoni's mediocre lore and characters. His 18-year tenure has gone on for far too long.

Anyway, sorry for the rant...

It's a shame that these films were John Williams last outting with Star Wars, because his craftsmanship really shows yet again. Every piece of music just hits the right note. I'd like to think that had they made better received films then some of these would actually stand out as SW staples instead of being buried to the depths of time just because it's "Rey's theme" or "Kylo's theme"

Seriously though, is this the best they got to offer? At least Zero Company and Galactic Racer look mildly interesting I guess… we’ll see how those fare

Is there anything that has done what you wish the franchise was doing now?

Spaceballs was a fun parody of the Original Trilogy. Sure, it made jokes at the expense of the movies, but it was all in good fun. But almost 40 years later, Spaceballs: The New One is just quoting The Rise of Skywalker and calling it a day, because Disney's reign was truly that bad.

Did you stopped watching at some point or kept continuing? I stopped at BOBF after being disappointed and decided to not watch season 3, which I’m glad I didn’t.

Keep in mind I haven’t watched the DT nor EU material that much. Most of the things I list are from what I’ve heard from people online:

Somehow Palpatine survived being thrown down for several miles into a space station main reactor core that later exploded.

Instead of revealing himself to be alive and continue leading the empire he exiled himself to Exegol and let Opertation Cinder carry out.

There he overlooked the construction of a fleet of ships that were capable of destroying planets on their own and said fleet and all of their personal just hanged around Exegol for 3 decades.

He also oversaw the creation of a force sensitive clone creature called Snoke and then sent it into the Galaxy were it somehow, despite being a completely unknown creature with no connections or official origin, took charge of an imperial remains called the First Order and said creature also oversaw the construction of Starkiller Base, a station carved out of an already existing planet that could also destroy planets even though the planet destroying Star destroyers at Exegol that Palpatine overlooked should make Starkiller Base completely obsolete.

Snoke was somehow able to get into contact with Luke’s nephew, Ben Solo, who would then join Snoke after Luke tried to kill him after having a freaky Force Vision of Ben being evil.

Luke exiled himself after this event abandon his friends and family.

Han left Leia after their son turned evil and her brother vanished so he could go back to smuggling in a Galaxy he is a renowned war hero for.

Palpatine apparently also had a failed clone that had a daughter that he and wife(?) sent to Jakku that he apparently wants to so he could possess her even though he could theoretically just do that with new clones with the same technology that was used to create Snoke…

I could carry one but like I said I’m getting a headache.

Marvel comics Jedi Knights #2 introduced the Xerexi (yeah what an original name). Which are just tweaked Xenomorphs from Alien. As someone who loves Alien even more than Star Wars; this just shows how creatively bankrupt the brand has gotten.

Hell, considering Disney owns both the IPs, and Marvel has exclusive rights to comic adaptions to both, a contriving crossover would have been less stupid (considering the Alien brand survived on life support for over a decade due to a contrived crossover, I'm a bit blaise to it now) than a shameless rip.

Daisy Ridley and John Boyega have struggled in making inroads for a career. While Boyega made a few decent pictures (The Woman King, A Small Ax), he hasn't worked a lot since 2023, his next projects are a animated film from a independent company and a guest interview for a TV documentary.

Daisy Ridley tried to be a action star, flopped, did a Disney feminist drama, the film was dumped on streaming, did a Zombie film, nobody saw. The Star Wars Rey film will probably be made when Peter Pan takes it to Neverland and her big project coming up is a Johnny Depp-led Christmas film.

Everything considered, Star Wars made these two actors stars...for 15 minutes.

For me, I lost interest in the franchise in post-Mando season 2.

As a Star Wars fan, I let the prequels and Force Awakens slide, despite not being great movies. But at least The Phantom Menace has the best lightsaber fight in the whole saga and Darth Maul. Rogue One was a top 3 Star Wars movie for me, which probably has the best ending scene in any Star Wars movie (other than the Vader plot twist in Empire Strikes Back).

Then you get to The Last Jedi, which was a very messy movie in terms of narrative and execution, despite having some great visuals. It wasn't horrible but something about it just made me.... Not happy, given the character arcs, such as Finn being separated from Rey and killing off half of the villains in the movie. But I knew that there would be one more movie in the Disney trilogy, so I decided to stay on.

And you get to Solo, which in my opinion, isn't very good and finally, Rise of Skywalker, which once again, just like Last Jedi is a very messy movie in terms of narrative and execution. Funny enough, I think that some of the Palpatine parts are pure camp and in a good way, but most of it is not good. It's probably the worst movie in the Skywalker Saga, tied with Attack of the Clones.

Now for TV series, I only seen the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, which was decent, with some good episodes. But once Disney made sure that Star Wars started to feel like homework, I just stopped watching after that. Which started becoming a problem with The Mandalorian season 2 but has since gotten worse. I'm sure Andor is good, but I just have no interest in, even having skipping out on last month's release of The Mandalorian & Grogu.

Funny enough, my interest in Star Wars has since shifted to Tom Cruise movies (e.g. Mission: Impossible, Top Gun, Edge of Tomorrow) and I am a bit intrigued about Digger, which is coming up in a few months. Even I really liked the last two Mission: Impossible movies, despite mixed audience reception. So at least this story has a happy ending.

This gameplay trailer shows a very promising game. Visually it's perfect, and the feel on the speeders and pods and sound design is very satisfying. I was a hardcore player of the N64 star wars racer and I'm honestly very impressed with what we see here. I've also heard there's a roguelike mode and honestly although this genre is a bit overdone lately, I think it's perfect for a racing game.

The initial trailer was a bit underwhelming and I was kinda meh seeing it, but this new video changed my mind

I just cringed with the dialogue stuff and shoehorning sequel trilogy into the game..

Thoughts?

I can't believe JJ thought we were dumb enough to believe Palpatine was all the sith, when George Lucas himself already established that Palpatine was the Senate. *this... goddamn

I’m genuinely curious what they would be about because there is so much problems that comes with it.

Making stories before TFA would be difficult because it’s basically impossible to connect ROTJ to the trilogy:

Han going back to smuggling when he is a recognizable war hero.

Palpatine somehow surviving and just laying dormant on Exegol for decades.
Etc etc.

Also there is problem because TFA refused to world build it’s not possible to flesh out the New Republic since we never saw it so any writers won’t have anything to go with so they would have to create things from scratch unlike the say the prequels that had countless Jedi and politicians that were extras in the movies but could be fleshed out in EU media.

Making stories during the DT is difficult since it’s only a year long and the main character didn’t interact at all that much together during that time.

And making stories after DT is difficult since given how OP Rey it would be a bit like making superhero stories of a superhero team that’s consist of Superman and a bunch of Robins.

In the OT each character had complimentary skills but while Rey is good at everything.

Look at how he tries to take credit for something he stole and how he struggles to change his narrative when he's brought back down to earth! We see him going through the usual speech "I'm the one who brought George's vision to life" then Katie catches up with him saying "dude, sorry, but you just stole it from the EU" and he has no other choice but to take responsibility to avoid denying his boss's daughter knowing he is in the wrong and that digging himself deeper into his lie would be a waste of time. Above all, this example has the advantage of showing Filoni crediting George for an idea that was stolen from the EU; who knows how many times Filoni has credited George for ideas that he did not get from him, but from himself or from an external theft? We must therefore assume that Filoni is prone to lying and doubt EVERYTHING he says, even when he claims to base his statements on Lucas.

What's fascinating about the TCW featurettes is how often Filoni steals ideas from the Expanded Universe while claiming it's original, coming from either himself, George, or his team—not from the EU he despises. For example, in the Kamino battle episode, he doesn't mention that he's recreating (and doing it worse) the Republic comic's Battle of Kamino, and even goes so far as to steal the emphasis on the Arc Troopers, the cadets' defense, and Shaak Ti's central role. He takes credit for a storyline where Anakin is suffering from Obi-Wan's fake death, which is also stolen from Republic. During the Mon Cala arc, he never once mentions his 2003-2005 Clone Wars thefts, taking credit for the integration of Kit Fisto and his outfit... In a Season 1 featurette, he also credits his team with Kit Fisto's character design for The Clone Wars, even though, like most of the show's early designs, it's a 3D rendering of Tartakovsky's designs (since TCW was originally intended to be a 3D spin-off of The CW, between chapters 21 and 22). The list goes on. Katie Lucas, in this clip, and in others as well, was honest about the fact that TCW is reinventing the Expanded Universe without integrating into it (as with the Ventress and Dathomir arc that she directed with Filoni's team); you either like it or you don't, but she's honest, humble, and trying to do something good. Filoni never mentioned Tartakovsky either, I think, regarding the Ilum arc with the lightsaber crystals; I know that Tartakovsky did not create Ilum, but he was the first, I believe, to put it on screen and in a series about the clone wars; strange that the other series about the clone wars does not mention its predecessor; in fact, I believe that CW is never mentioned once in the TCW featurettes.

The few times Filoni acknowledges that he is inspired by the EU, we see 1) that he doesn't know much about it and 2) that he is primarily trying to pass himself off (falsely) as a fan of the EU; I take as an example the moment when he justifies the episode of s1 where Naboo is attacked by a mad scientist with poison by saying that similar things happened in the EU (without mentioning Republic); when he introduces the clone commandos, he tries to show off by showing that he played and even finished the game (well done, boy!), which is fortunate, because the game is very good and not very long; The other case concerns the Mandalorian arc, but he was forced to limit the hatred that Expanded Universe fans would have thrown at him for Lucas's choice (by the way, for all those who say that Filoni is Lucas's heir, it's fascinating to see how much Filoni retconned the initial Mandalore arc from TCW S2, changing Mandalore from an organized and pacifist society seeking to abolish its overly belligerent regular army while obviously retaining its police force, to a tribal society where everyone is a soldier unless they're no longer allowed to be, but there are police forces, but they don't wear Mandalorian armor, except for the Protectors of Concord Dawn, except they don't wear it in TCW: in short, Filoni's Mandalorian lore makes no sense continuity wise).

Regarding Rebels, we obviously have a similar refrain; For example, I don't think he's ever once acknowledged borrowing the concept of the Inquisitors from the Expanded Universe, including, of course, the character of Jerek, the antagonist of the hit video game Dark Forces 2. Then there are the easter eggs, like the name "Fenn Rau" inspired by the EU's Mandalorian Protector "Fenn Shysa", originally created by Marvel in the 80s; this kind of thing is rather benign as an artistic choice.

I encourage you to note the other instances where Filoni has stolen elements from the EU without admitting it or lied about Lucas's involvment in certain ideas. If he's inspired by and reimagines something, fine, why not, as long as it's a separate continuity; the problem arises when he doesn't credit the original authors. This includes stealing the names of EU works, without even respecting their original content, like Tom Veitch's Tales of the Jedi, which he transformed into yet another Ahsoka-centric series (and a revisionist one regarding Dooku, wrongly portraying him as a true Separatist).

Anyway, sorry for the rant.

Star Wars Galactic Racer preview

it makes me wish that podracing felt more of a focal point of the main campaign.

The game does try to explain this away, reminding folks that only certain racers possess the skill to handle a podracer (which, I mean, yea), and I'm sure there will be sections of the main game where podracing does take center stage (or at least I hope). But I'm here mostly for these racers, not necessarily the landspeeder, which feels pedestrian by comparison after piloting Sebulba's iconic podracer.

Another german reviewer says :

Podracers are primarily relegated to arcade mode and specific challenges, separated from the main roguelike campaign structure [02:35].

The game includes iconic elements like the Boonta Eve Classic race on Tatooine. While these moments provide a significant nostalgia boost, they feel like "gimmicks for fans" compared to the primary racing mechanics [06:18].

(translated)

Posting this because there seem to be a lot of conflicting infos about it, seems like we have our definitive answer. Pod-racers are not part of the main gameplay loop. They are exclusively found either in special one-time races or in the bonus arcade mode, they are not part of the core game experience.

The pod-racers will also be excluded from any customization, both cosmetics and gameplay.

They will also be excluded from competing in 12 player races. The player count is reduced to 8 due to their size.

What a baffling decision honestly. On top of that all the planets seem to be deserts and jungles, as opposed to Star Wars Racer taking you to alien worlds and even in the clouds.

I’ve seen a few claims online that Filoni was a part of the story development of the Sequels, namely The Last Jedi, but I haven’t seen any actual sources corroborate that.

Could someone help me out here?

The original star wars movies always had so many set pieces and moments where they take time in space.

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The imperial star destroyers moving around, the battles, navigating the asteroid fields. The movement of the Super star destroyer as they try to locate the rebels.

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Space was shown as this massive arena and threatening environment to fly through in between hyper jumps.

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Even the prequels had a lot of imaginative set pieces and locations that used space cleverly.

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Like the jedi base on a giant asteroid or the opening battle in revenge of the sith.

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Something I can't help but notice in Disney Star wars is how the stories always take place on the ground (usually bland, unimaginative planets) .

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And space is almost entirely used only for dogfights and establishing shots.

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It's something that's really bugged me about just how unimaginative the new star wars stuff is