Would you watch a no-holds-barred, non-kid-friendly SW show?

Breaking Bad is awesome. What SW character would you want to become Heisenberg? Ashoka?

 

I've always had a very eclectic taste when it comes to entertainment, and thoroughly enjoyed the diverse nature of the body of Star Wars works we've gotten over the years. "Something for everybody" has been, and as far as I'm concerned, always will be an excellent policy. With a good writing team and a strong story, I would absolutely watch a Star Wars series with a level of graphic maturity equivalent to the likes of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad.

 

Star Wars encompasses a lot of tones and mimics a lot of genres. It has slapstick and fart jokes on one extreme, and people getting burned alive and killing children on the other. Then TCW paid homages to everything from Godzilla to zombies.

I would appreciate more complexity at times in Star Wars, perhaps even to the extent of Game of Thrones. But not necessary getting graphic with characters getting their throats slit and the audience seeing everything. The implied or goreless violence of Star Wars I think is fine. We still get characters doing merciless things like Aurra gunning down a pleading senate guard, Cad Bane snapping a guard's neck, characters getting decapitated, Asajj kissing an impaled clone, Grievous murdering an unarmed Shaak Ti (in an ROTS cutscene), Maul murdering Satine, etc. Some violence happens just off screen, and some happens on screen, though with cauterized wounds, there's no graphic blood - though Ponda Baba's arm was an exception to this.

I don't know that Maul cutting her throat with a blade and seeing blood gush out really is something Star Wars needs or that there's really a substantial demand for.

With a Star Wars show taking place in the seedy segments of society and making more explicit references to things like drugs (or even showing someone doing drugs like "death sticks") or being able to call the twi'leks sex slaves without censorship or merely implying would be alright changes for a more adult show. But I don't think you need to see Jabba's Palace sex parties, or pools of blood and piles of organs, etc.

The one thing I would very, very, very much like to see is greater complexity of the story, as I said. Not dumbing things down for the kids. Showing things like political intrigue and making more complicated stories.

I'll pick on TPM. It included political scenes which I thought were some of the worst scenes in the Star Wars films. It's not because I hate politics. On the contrary I recently watch Hitler: Rise to Evil, which is pretty much devoid of any kind of action scenes. It takes place before the war and ends right as he becomes undisputed dictator of Germany. It's pretty much all about the politics of post-WWI Germany and how Hitler manipulates attitudes, and makes political maneuverings to get into power.

The Phantom Menace gives us such bare bones explanations as to what's going on that I really don't understand what's going on.

-Taxation of trade routes is in dispute (was the senate voting to tax the Trade Federation? or was it voting to eliminate taxes and make it illegal for the Trade Federation to tax client governments?)

-The Trade Federation protests this dispute by blockading the planet and asserts this is legal (exactly how is infringing on the sovereignty of the Naboo legal?)

-What was the Trade Federation getting out of the bargain they made with Sidious?

-Sidious wants Padme to sign a treaty that would legalize the occupation of Naboo by the TF. What did this treaty say? If it's a treaty to end hostilities that's still an admission that the TF illegally invaded Naboo to begin with. Just because Padme surrenders and signs over control of the planet to the TF does not change the fact that an illegal war took place. How were the Neimoidians covering their butts?

-Valorum secretly sent Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon to help out the Naboo. He's Naboo's strongest supporter. Yet he pretty much doesn't listen to Qui-Gon's report at all though if he's just going to side with the TF and Malastare delegates and insist that a committee be appointed to verify Padme's claims when the Jedi already did

-What exactly does Mas Amedda whisper to Valorum that makes him stop and side with the TF? How does Mas Amedda retain his seat as Vice Chancellor and why isn't Padme quick to see the corruption there?

I've heard reviews for Darth Plagueis that praise the book, saying things like "I feel like I finally understand TPM and AOTC!" And that's great, but I'd like to see that kind of complexity on screen.

In TPM's defense, a made for TV film like Hitler: Rise to Power was at least as long as TPM and ENTIRELY about the political situation of Germany. While TPM had a lot of other stuff it needed to tackle and so couldn't devote hours to developing the political situation, but the result was that he had a complicated political situation but didn't properly develop the idea such that I'm really at a loss as to what's going on.

A show like Game of Thrones doesn't need a big battle for every 2 hours of run time, or to cram action sequence after action sequence. It can have action, but it also develops character relationships and political situations and court intrigue.

And that is something I would really like to see in Star Wars on screen some day. It doesn't have to be gory; it doesn't have to be filled with sex; but give proper due to complicated plots and take the time to flesh them out. Don't rush them or leave them only half developed. It's even just the little things like having the Senate applaud the destruction of the Jedi in ROTS, without the prequels really at all showing how opinion of the Jedi turned sour. All the senators we really saw were people like Bail and Padme that were amicable to the Jedi. It would have helped to see someone mistrust them, rather than just showing "oh, by the way, everyone apparently hates the Jedi." And also I very much would have liked to have seen Palpatine's entire speech. To see how he sells the idea to the Senate that there is a Rebellion. Not just merely having his speech in progress and having Padme sum it up in a sentence for Bail as to what we missed.

Again, I understand these things can't be done in 2 hour films without compromising the film somewhere else, but in something like a TV show, I would very much like to see them slow things down and develop these kinds of ideas fully.

 

I'd watch. It'll never happen, let's be honest. But I'd watch the hell out of it if it did.

 

Sounds a little but too un-Star Wars-y for me. I mean it's not like it NEEDS all of thsese darker/HBO esque things. Violence on a deep, realistic level? Showing the problems in some of the people? Coruscant underworld and murder and crime and slaves? Political intrigue and backstabbing and manipulating the system? I would watch that show non-stop. But there doesn't need to be over the top violence, sex and language.

 

Maybe if you're 13 that's a measure of how "adult a series can get".

 

No, what i mean by that is "black and grey morality" - showing that the "heroes" can make morally questionable decisions.

 

No. I don't care for dark, violent fantasy. It's just no fun. I think Revenge of the Sith walked the fine line between dark and too disturbing. And it did so quite nicely. I wouldn't want to go any darker or more violent than that with Star Wars.

 

[/quote] No, what i mean by that is "black and grey morality" - showing that the "heroes" can make morally questionable decisions.[/quote]

The PT and TCW have already done that.

I for one don't want to see a "full-on" SW movie or series that doesn't have clear cut heroes. The "gray moral area" has been done to death in genre fiction since the '90's. We've seen the feet of clay in the SWU, it was a necessary chapter in the overall story, now it's time to get back to what made the original film such a classic, something that inspires the viewer to do something great, not depress them into a moral malaise. And mature content doesn't have to mean explicit.

 

I'd watch the hell out of it. I love shows where the "heroes" are the slightly lighter shade of grey, the villains often win, and where nothing is ever easy or without a massive toll. There's nothing I would like better than to see Rebels end with every single one of the main characters killed while the Imperial March blazes triumphantly in the background.

Sadly, that will never happen, but it's a nice thought.

 

If we got a NJO series, then yes!

 

The whole reason Star Wars blew a hole in the Seventies is because it was the opposite of your OP.

I go to Star Wars *for* the gee whiz golden age serial adventure. It's my *escape* from vulgarities, and back into my childhood.

For violence and cussing, I just clock in at work every day.

 

Star Wars: Underground (the apparent will they-won't they live action series) is meant to be darker and aimed at an adult audience; more or less focused on the darker side of the galaxy - gambling, smugglers, bounty hunters and organised crime. Which, IMHO, would be awesome.

 

I'd definitely watch a show like that. Gambling, using spices, smuggling, sex, those are all part of the SW universe, we just don't see it.