McAvoy wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 3:17 am
I follow American football. I can tell you the capabilities and weaknesses of almost every player on team and for the most part some of the players on the team I can tell you what offense they are going to run, I can tell you what defense is going to be played. I can tell you who the first read is. I can tell you where the running back will run initially.
But does that make me a football player? No it doesn't. But knowing what I know I can figure out how each series of downs will happen.
Your typcal "On Saturday, Germanys bars are full of National Coaches"-argument. Everyone knows it better than the actual person, who is doing the job. "Yeah, they should send Kimmich on and- oh boy - how does Götze play? And is the Schiri (ref) blind?! That clearly was a foul by Özil!"
And I feel reminded of that mentality by sentences like "They clearly don't know, what they're writing" or "I could write something better."
And of course you can say, what you want - but don't be surprised, if one says "Hey, maybe you should put your money where your mouth is?"
clearspira wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 6:33 am
If we are going for a full Sequel rewrite: TFA should have flat out stolen from the Expanded Universe. That's why so many people were annoyed about it being retconned - it was just flat out better.
Oh, I concur with you there - absolutely. The Expanded Universe - or "Legends"; as it is called now - would've been a so much better source. Personally, I would've liked to watch a "Thrawn"-Trillogy.
clearspira wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 6:33 am
If we are going for a partial Sequel rewrite: Palpatine should have been set up earlier and we would have gotten some serious backstory for how he/Snoke convinced Kylo to take to the Dark Side. We get
worse than nothing - a flashback of Luke trying to kill his nephew in his sleep. Show me don't tell me how Luke and Kylo reached this point.
Indeed. In fact, "show, don't tell!" reminds me of a German movie, I watched 5 years ago.
The movie was called "Flucht ins Ungewisse" (Escape into the unknown) or something like that and it opened up with a black screen and an opening-card (with opening narrator) that said "Germany in the not too distant future - the right-wingers have gained control" - and that was it.
And I was like "Hm - yeah, but how? What happened there? Did the stupidity of the people get the better of them and they voted en masse for the AfD? Or was it a coup d'état? What happened? You can't present us. with a fait accompli in that case."
Okay - it was never about that backstory, that's clear. It was about a reversal of roles, what would be happening if Germans would have to escape from their own country, making them refugees in the process.
But, while we're at your suggestions: What would've been the best moment to set up Palpatine? Personally, I'd say, that this new trilogy was the condensed version of at least two trilogies, if told right.
For example: One could've told the "Admiral Thrawn"-Trilogy and interwoven in that story would be the setup of Palpatine still being around somewhere and Snoke being the Grima Wormtongue of Ben Solo, slowly seducing him to the dark side.
While we're at that:, isn't "One of the Ogana-Solo-Kids being seduced by the Dark Side" one of the plots of the Extended Universe? Didn't Ben kill Mara Jade-Skywalker?
Anyway: We have the Snoke slowly seducing Solo's son Ben - and Palpatine sending visions of Ben being Kylo Ren into Lukes mind, which can lead to the scene, where Luke contemplates about killing Ben, ignited Lightsaber and all that.
Decompress the story, give it room to breathe, I think connoisseurs of wine would call that "decant" - one
can have that image of Luke with the ignited lightsaber over Bens sleeping body - because - let's be honest: that image is frakking gold. The golden boy, our hero of the last trilogy, with that slight mad look in his face - precious.
You can have that - but you have to
earn it.
My idea would be "Adapt the Thrawn-trilogy, introduce Mara Jade, let it end with both teaching kids on Yarvin. So Episodes 7 through 9 would be the Thrawn-Trilogy, and then the New Trilogy starts - I had the idea for a "Episode 10" written in another thread. Here it is.
CaptainCalvinCat wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 12:08 pm
So, I'd have Luke Skywalker (still married to Mara) - Jedi Master and his sister Leia (still married to Han) and a Jedi Mistress (gee, that word sounds a bit weird). C3po ans R2D2 are still there, hanging around, and maybe young Rey is indeed a force sensitive kid, that Luke notices.
We could still have the opening sequence of her living on Jakkuu, fending for her own, meeting Poe, a person, who was on the first Death Star, when it blew up. The blast translocated his body and spirit some 30 or 40 years in the future. (hey, it's sci-fi... if you play your cards right, you can come through an amazing amount of bullshit. And if you don't overexplain things, people are not asking, why something works. We saw that in the Prequel Trilogy and how people were annoyed, when the Midiclorians were put on the map.)
And Finn is a tough one to crack - he's not a stormtrooper, he's a higher ranking officer, who looks at Rey and points out, that she would have had a good living in the Empire. All he sees is dust, people disecting "ships of the glorious empire" and it disgust him. So, he sneaks on the remnants of a destroyer, let's call it the "remnant" and activates a homing beacon.
Rey has followed him, and he stands there, gloating, boasting, how his beloved empire will bring order to this chaos and indeed - one ship appears. But it is no imperial ship, it is the Milennium Falcon, still flown by Han Solo and Chewbacca (who had no meeting with a moon), accompanied by Leia, Luke and Mara.
Finn can't believe that. The empire - down? The Emperor - dead?
And we could use this whole scenario to explore a) the difference between "life in the Empire" to "Life in the New Republic" and b) how to exdoctrinate a person, who is so deeply indoctrinated by the empire.
And since we all want a little bit of Space Battles - why still not throw in a resurging Empire? It's not as "strong" as the New Order, there are two to three Star Systems that are forming the New Empire and they react to the homing beacon, too.
So they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight - and in the end, Finn gets taken away by the new Empire, by Kylo Ren. But instead of him "having to kill his father" and him being a emo-villain, he is at peace with himself, he quips, he cracks jokes - when he first appears he uses some Darth-Vader-Trademark-sentences, then he takes of his helmet, smiles "Hi, family.". And he sees the great potential, that lies within Rey.
So, the movies second act beginns with Finn being in the capital of the new Empire, which makes him feel quite at home. He grins, but when he looks around, he starts to notice, that this New Empire feels a bit off. He notices oppresion on the streets, but he brushes it off as "they don't know, how these things were done" - because in his opinion, there was no oppression on the streets during the times of the Empire.
So it must be one of the leaders, who clearly has no idea, how to handle things.
And he figures, that if he plays his cards right, he can change things for the better. So he calls for a meeting, gets one and is surprised. The leader of this planet is an old friend from the empire - another one of the Dislocated.
And there it dawns on Finn: Everything, that Luke, Leia, Han, Mara, Rey - even Chewie - said, was true.
There was oppression, the Empire was evil.
The third act deals with Finn trying to contact Rey and to escape the empire. He reunites with the gang and wants to join the New republic.
Okay, in that version, I have Kylo being already on the first orders side, so let's ignore Kylo in that story.
So Episode 10 sets up Rey on Jakku (being found by the Solo-Skywalker-Siblings and their significant others and Finn as a loyal empire-soldier, being time-displaced from the explosion of the first Death Star. Rey and Ben meet each other on Yarvin, after the Solo-Skywalkers brought her from Jakku. And we meet Snoke, a charismatic force-teacher - a bit like, say Sinestro.
Episode 11 would deal with the Finn-Redemption-Arc on First-Order-Homeworld (and here we can go dark. I'm talking brainwashing, torture, whatever - the point is to show: Yeah, the first order is as bad as the empire. There are no doubts about it, no youtube-videos about "How the empire was actually right" will be made after this one.) And on Yarvin we have Rey and Ben train - and Ben being slowly seduced by Snoke. The eleventh episode ends with Finn escaping from FOH (first order homeworld) and Snoke promising Ben, that he can teach him how to be a great Jedi, better than his mother and his uncle.
Episode 12 begins, where 11 left off - Finn landing on Yakku, tearfully apologizing and saying, that he has seen the error of his ways and Snoke teaching Ben in the Dark Side Arts.
Luke feels this. He wants to talk to Ben - who doesn't listen - but Leia and Han are listening, as well as Rey, who is Bens best friend. They try to intervene, but Ben is all like "You all are against me!", because he saw the image, Snoke put in his brain: His uncle, mad glitter in his eyes, ignited lightsaber - the picture we know.
So he escapes, along with some other people of the Jedi-Temple, that he recruited for the "Knights of Ren".
Next would be the "Rey-Trilogy", which has her as protagonist trying to find Ben and bring him back - and that could be, where we sync up with the proper "New Trilogy" (TFA, TLJ, TRS).
And now we can have the "first Order" as an "heir to the empire", because now we have earned it - sure, we still have the problem, that annoyed me in the first place: "Everything our heroines and heroes have fought for is null and void at the end" - but now we have a better understanding,
why it failed.
Or you could go the really dark route: Except for our main heroes - Luke, Leia, Mara, Han, Chewie, Lando, Rey - and probably some side characters like Admiral Ackbar - the Galacic Republic turns evil. The Empire just took a page out of the "Hydra infiltrating SHIELD"-playbook and reinvigorated itself in the works of the new Galactic Republic, turning the Republic over the course of twenty years into the very thing, the "rebels" fought for.