Books STAR WARS: AFTERMATH

That's become so passe.

 

What if the "imperial" characters are actually the government set up by our Rebellion, and the rebels are rebelling against that rebellion?

 

The Insiders live!

 

What if the imperial characters are lovable underdog rebels trying to overtop the New Republic led by the evil Chancellor Mothma? It would be like poetry.

 

If that happened, I'd suspect Jello had been hired to help with the plot

 

Fixed.

 

Truly fixed. (sorry if it's a bad joke)

 

BTW, if you're interested on a nuanced approach to the prequels by Wendig, he's done a good job of expressing himself on twitter this morning.

CW: Let me tell you my one uttermost problem with the prequels, beyond CGI, beyond Jar-Jar, beyond dialogue and romance and whatever else —
My problem is, I can't show those movies to my son any time soon. Let me unpack this a little bit.
Lucas made the prequels with littler kids in mind, right? So much so that one of our protagonists in the first film is literally a kid.
And it's full of silly fun and derring-do and Jar Jar fart jokes and whatever. Even the battle droids are inept, wacky fun. ("fun.")
ATTACK OF THE CLONES, besides its wtf plot, is still fun and fairly light outside a few moments — though the darkness creeps in.
Then in REVENGE, we learn that our little kid protagonist is now a woman-choking child murderer. It presents an Anakin that goes too far.
And it twists the redemptive aspects of Vader that we're made to believe are present at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI.
It feels like a terrible bait-and-switch. "Ha ha ha these prequels sure are fun OH MY GOD TRAGEDY AND CHILD MURDER AND AMPUTATION."
Anakin's jump to the Dark Side is like a switch gets flipped — one minute he's, "Wait, I dunno," and then, "TIME TO LIGHTSABER LITTLE KIDS."
The prequels contain some genuinely powerful moments despite themselves and put forth tons of useable, compelling worldbuilding.
But I can't plunk [my son] down and take him on that journey because it's just too nihilistic.
I do so love the CLONE WARS show, be advised. It contextualizes the prequels and ramps up character and worldbuilding in a big way.
What we needed in REVENGE OF THE SITH was an Anakin who, despite his turn to the Dark Side, tries to do right and has it go wrong.
We need Anakin to *save* the younglings despite Palpatine's orders — which would somehow worsen or complicate his situation. #savethecat
REVENGE sets up an honestly compelling reason for Anakin's turn — "The love of your life may die" — but that turns out to be a lie.
Meaning, it's hard to trust in Anakin's love for Padme when his first instinct on Mustafar is to Force-choke her. (This made only worse that Padme is as effective as a coat-rack in that movie. She mostly just stands there and cries.)

Another User's Response: It is utterly believable as a pattern of love/abuse, but then we're back to the hollowness of redemption in the face of that.
CW: Right! I mean, in a sense, it works — but it perverts the spirit of the thing, I think.
Response: If i'm feeling generous, I could frame that as the mistake that broke him, and it all flows from that. But that's tenuous.
CW: There's an argument to be made that the Dark Side is less a moral choice and more an infection and then it… kinda works?
--
There are additional ebbs an flows and thread from that conversation - Be sure to follow @ChuckWendig. You may not agree with everything he thinks/says/writes, but I love his thoughtful approach to Star Wars as an effective story, and his willingness to see intent or good approaches even if it didn't necessarily work for him personally.

He has, by the way, just finished the First Draft of Aftermath, and is now at work on polishing and revising it.

His most recent note:

I will stop yammering at you now about STAR WARS and I will go (here my heart flutters because what is my life) write some actual STAR WARS.

 

I agree with him.

 

WTF plot ? I just lost it by there . Seriously ?! These are his excuses ?
write some ACTUAL Star Wars ? (As if he knows what it is )
What a ...
Edit : OK I'm a little better now but how he presents his opinion is wrong IMO.

As to one of the point above
hahaha Jawas and Droids are fun , OH NO A PLANET IS DESTROYED
Leia's planet is destroyed... Few moments after "Aren't you a little to short for a Stormtrooper ?"
HAHA ! Ewoks are fun ... TORTURE BY LIGHTING !

I highly disagree with what he says ... The points he's trying to make could be presented much better ...

 

I ultimately don't agree with Chuck's reasoning, for reasons that I'm not going to delve into because I don't want to be the one to push the thread too far off the topic of "Star Wars Aftermath", but I will say that its always nice to see thinking about and analysis of the PT at a level that transcends "the prequels suck" so kudos to him for that.

 

I'll admit I've never read any of Wendig's novels, because the majority of reviews I've seen have said "these are great! but very violent!" and the type of violence described therein has not been to my tastes. That said, I've always appreciated his candor and enthusiasm. And the man knows writing. He knows the craft. I can't claim to be a published writer or anything, but I've absorbed a lot of great advice from his blog over the years. I can say without a doubt that Chuck Wendig has made me a better writer.

So what I see here is a guy who has thought long and hard about writing, about storytelling, and about Star Wars. I see someone who's really excited about those things. I won't say Aftermath is going to be great based on that assessment alone, but I think the combination of a conscientious writer and the Story Group, which hasn't really steered us wrong so far, puts the book in a position to do really well.

 

"Vader hunted down and destroyed the Jedi Knights. But he tried to save the kids, so he wasn't all bad."
--The Chuck Wendig version of A New Hope

 

What do you mean 'excuses'? Those are him explaning reasons the narrative doesn't resonate with him as strongly as it could have. He didn't sit down and say, "I'm going to hate Star Wars movies, and then come up with ad hoc reasons to excuse my choice." He went in, watched them, and as a human being and storyteller, felt they fell short in some ways for him as a person. In this post, he gives his reasons. They may not be yours, but they are his reasons.

As in "I'm going to stop talking about how someone's job resonated with me, and actually sit down and try to do my job."

I don't think he was trying to put a value statement on it. He praised the heck out of the worldbuilding, and loves TCW and Rebels. Some stuff in I- III just didn't resonate with him. I, of course, respect his position. Because its a movie.

And just a note - I have no idea how old you are, but having kids changes your perspective. I think his kid is about 3. And ROTS is, indeed, quite depressing and dark and takes some sharp morally difficult turns. The film is pg-13 for a reason. You understand something more (and are often affected by it more) when you try to explain it to children. The prequels are a strange breed, because while some things on the topic seem to make them far more suitable for children, the moral gray complexities of the politics and the war and the Sith are far more complex and (intentionally) disturbing than anything in the OT.

My daughter's 5. I started her when she was 2 on Droids, IV-VI, and then Ewoks, before going into I, II, and the The Clone Wars, and finally a few scenes here and there from III.

My 5 year old, as a 5 year old, picks up on a lot more nuance than most kids her age do, and watching through the saga again (we're halfway through TCW) leads to some fascinating and nuanced discussions.

I know someone who hasn't shown III to his 5 year old, and doesn't want him to put the pieces together that Anakin is Vader, because he believes it would 'break his heart'.

Even though Chuck Wendig is writing an adult novel, I love that he has had these experiences and had these questions and concerns going into the story. He takes Star Wars seriously, and doesn't hate on the prequels because its the popular things to do. He has some sincere narrative praise and critique of the work, and I thinking working through and identifying the details and nuance of what didn't click for him will make him a better Star Wars storyteller than he might have been otherwise.

It's not just someone going "I hate midichlorians and Anakin's turn to the dark side and blah blah so no one should ever refer to them again", it's determining what it was about them narratively that didn't work as well as it could for him, or could have been improved, so those items can be potentially used, perhaps more effectively, and the baby isn't thrown out in the bathwater.

That exchange above actually added to my respect for him as a capable storyteller in the Star Wars world. It doesn't all work for him, but he takes it seriously and approaches it as a storyteller, and then goes off in his job to try and tell a damn good story in that world.

 

"And it twists the redemptive aspects of Vader that we're made to believe are present at the end of RETURN OF THE JEDI."

I strongly disagree with his take on Anakin/Vader and ROTS somehow destroying the "positive" scenes in ROTJ. The man is twisted from the first film, why did he assume someone who's noted for "helping the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights" and letting a planet full of people get blown up is going to be portrayed much different in the prequels? His good acts are conditional to his authoritarian and ruthless worldview, helped along by Palps. It doesn't help that the order he grows up in focuses on letting yourself go from worldly relations. It worked when he slaughtered his fellow Jedi, he just had a thing for keeping relations with his immediate family.

 

I'm Fine with his concerns and I might exaggerated my disagreement with him but his " WTF plot" really made me think if he knows that there are fans of this so called wtf plot of AOTC .
And the points below were HIS improvements what in his opinion could have been better.
(The way he typed it was a bit off)
BTW ROTS dark nature is controversial but it doesn't make it a bad thing .
I know many people who grew up with Episodes I-III and they're all fine.
(grew up as kids I mean)
He at least says what he finds flawed and I give him that.

 

I know a lot of parents who found Vader's redemption in VI to suddenly be a lot more hollow and too quick after having seen that he personally, before he was even a cyborg, intentionally slaughtered innocent little defenseless kids who respected and looked up to him and sought him out for rescue.

This is a fact that it affected people this way. You can say, "well it doesn't for me, or it shouldn't" all day long, but the fact is - this change negatively changed their own reaction to a key point in ROTJ for a not-insubstantial amount of fans.

It doesn't mean it was the wrong choice for Lucas, it does mean it was a polarizing one that didn't resonate with everyone the same way. Pointing this out doesn't make someone a Bad Star Wars Fan, or hateful of those who like it. I'd be worried if a Star Wars author couldn't acknowledge this.

 

I'm in agreement with the "wtf plot" comment he made; I have been baffled by the plot of AOTC since I saw it the first time. But the opinion that the plot of AOTC was weak or poorly done (or "wtf") is not an insult to the people who liked the film. It just means we have a difference of opinion.

Plus, Wendig thrives on hyperbole. And I think we should all keep in mind that this was a twitter conversation, and twitter by its very nature makes in-depth discourse difficult. It's great as a launching board for discussion but it's way, way too easy for meanings to get distorted when everything has to fit into 140-character chunks. "wtf plot" reads to me as shorthand for "I thought there were problems with the plot."

 

To use a real life case: I read an interview with the daughter of the "Happy Face" serial killer. His daughter, after the trial, managed to compartmentalize the knowledge that he was both her dad with positive qualities and a brutal serial killer. Until the day she found out he had thoughts of killing his own children when they were kids, which meant she could finally break with him for good. She realized there never were two opposite parts within the man, only one rotten one that managed to lie and deceive all around him.

Something like that is different from the Skywalker saga, where Anakin genuinely had caring aspects that, through the Force, Luke could sense in him. But I'd say it's not without precedence we can have a story with someone who is genuinely horrific, yet being shown in a different light as well.

 

Weirdly, while I don't disagree with his actual analysis, he lost me at the initial premise--that Lucas consciously made the prequels with a younger age target in mind. For one thing, I don't believe he thinks in those terms at all, and for another, I don't believe he perceives the tonal difference between the two trilogies. He approached the films the way he always had--he just got sloppier at it, and had far less moderating influence.

 

In hindsight, his comment to Obi-Wan, "I'd rather be dreaming about Padme" in AOTC following his visions about his mother becomes a rather dark foreshadowing case of "Be careful what you wish for..."

 

I'm having this conversation on Twitter as well (natch) and someone just shared this with me.

In Lucas' mind, Jar Jar = Ewoks = Threepio. It's not that he doesn't think he's making kid movies, it's that he sees them all that way equally--the evolution you're referring to is him becoming less and less subtle as an artist.

 

As for the 'Padme does nothing but cries' What ? She goes to Mustafar and tries to convince him to turn back ! That is a really courageous thing to do .
What did he think she wouldn't cry ? Even Yoda and Obi Wan were devastated by the whole situation.
Should she take a machine gun and burst into senate , kill the Clone Troopers,kill Palpatine and then kill her husband in cold blood ? ( I'm exaggerating here of course )
And that Vader did such horrible things it even makes his redemption in ROTJ so much powerful IMO.
BTW he only said what he thought of ROTS in general , so what does he despise in TPM and AOTC then ?(Besides the 'WTF' plot claim)

 

For some people, after slaughtering hundreds or thousands - including blatantly innocent children - the fact that you finally decided to end it all and save your kid and kill off your slave master isn't that impressive as an act of 'redemption'.

Many were willing to suspend their disbelief and go with it until they actually were given face to the children he slaughtered. That's... understandable, if not universal.