ST The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s impact on new Star Wars films

Here’s the main problem - why do I care if they succeed or what is even success? In episode 10, they’ll just tear it all down again and retool it to match whatever the hot trend of the moment is.

Why would Rey, Finn and Poe even continue to fight? They saw how Luke, Han and Leia ended up - they won and thirty years later were ripped apart and killed because their own child decided to become a murdering fascist. If they’re smart, they’ll get out now. Let Kylo win because what does it matter anyway? If they beat him, they’ll be back in 30 years to have their kid murder them and start it all over again.

 

With this kind of logic we'd still be in the Dark Ages. Peace is a time between two wars. 3 decades of peace is no small thing.

 

Because they're young and iedealistic. What all young heroes going through a hero's journey need.

The same reason a young Luke didn't go by Obi Wan and Yoda's attitude that Anakin Skywalker was too far gone to save.

The heart of these films is about young people coming in to their own, despite their elders cynicism.

It's the cycle of generations.

You may as well ask why in real life, why don't millenials just give up because they see the disaster of what the generation x'ers led the world to.

Though, as a gen x'er, I would say the same about the baby boomers.

​

 

Agreed 100%. Three decades of peace is indeed nothing to shake a stick at. The lesson is that those who fight for good need to be vigilant in preventing great evil from arising again. It's just that some fans are (understandably) a little upset that Luke was one of those who decidedly didn't remain vigilant. Until that final moment in TLJ, which many view as too little, too late.

 

I agree with you in some ways but not fully. Rebels standing up to the villains and making fun of them doesn't mean the filmmakers don't want you to take them seriously. Exhibit A:


It's just not as simple as that. Prior to Poe commenting on how he can't hear him because of the mask he's clearly in awe of the blaster bolt in stasis and shortly after he comments on the mask or jokes with who talks first he's later shown being overwhelmed by Kylo Ren's force powers and screaming out lout as Kylo Ren tells of the info acquired.

The Force itself was also made fun of twice in self-aware ways. Here Vader is directly undermined and by your logic above this would mean he wasn't to be taken seriously. However, what follows, just as it did with Kylo Ren after, shows us that the is a threat and that the Force shouldn't be laughed at. Same for Han. He makes fun of the Force and then shortly after that we see Luke blocking the bolts blind-folded.






I'd also throw in that Boba Fett's death was played for laughs and undermined him as a villain as he was killed by accidentally activating his rockets as he screamed and flailed his legs like a kid jumping off a trampoline and then bounced off the wall and into the pit like a basketball and was then burped.

 

The funny thing is that @PendragonM is taking the same stance that Luke, at the beginning of TLJ did.

Yet many people say Luke was OOC.

 

Haha. That's pretty funny. Then the question for @PendragonM is: Do you think, in the context of the ST story presented, that Luke was justified in his cynicism and decision not to fight?

 

Yeah, from a narrative perspective without bringing in real life history like the Dark Ages, I feel ya. I've said before, it's like setting a movie or a show 30 years after Return of the King only for Sauron's army to be back stronger than ever, Aragorn's kingdom is wiped out completely with a snap of the fingers, and everyone is searching for a ring way more powerful than the previous ring. If you have an epic story of that magnitude, move on to a new story. Don't reboot it so you're rewatching the exact same conflict only crappier with outright stolen scenes, plots, and dialogue. That renders the previous epic totally moot.

I for one look forward to the SST when Rey has no Jedi Order and she's doing nothing on an island while baby Reylo has grown up to kill "Ben" and destroy the peace that Reylo fought so hard to achieve in IX with a new new Empire that looks exactly like the original empire and that is stronger than everyone else in the galaxy. Who wouldn't be a nihilist at that point? I feel sorry for everyone that followed Leia into the Resistance. What did they get for it? Predictable death and total failure. The clearly correct course of action was Finn's instinct in TFA - high tail it to the outer rim and look out for numero uno. Like Dr. Aphra, the best part of current SW canon besides R1.

Marvel actually did this to an extent in IW -

Spoiler

by wiping out Thor's people right after a movie all about saving them. It annoyed me, except I'm not that invested in Marvel so I didn't care that much, until I read an interview that actually half of them, including Tessa Thompson's character (the best character in the movie ) escaped in true Thanos form

 

I’m not talking about real life.

Why is Rey fighting? Why is Finn staying? There are 20 people who saw the damage it did to Luke, Han and Leia. The galaxy doesn’t give a damn. So why stick around? Especially when we know it’ll all be torn down again for unexplained reasons.

That’s the nihilism at the rancid heart of the ST.

ETA: Everything @AhsokaSolo said above - exactly that.

 

I take it you never read the Hobbit prior to LOTR? It’s almost as if killing Smaug and the battle of the 5 armies (dwarves, men, and elves vs Goblins and Wargs) and Thorin’s efforts of restoring his family were all for naught due to the rise of Sauron and his quest to acquire the One ring while building a gigantic army or Orcs (among others) who nobody sees amassing.

To your larger point though, the battle logistics of LOTR are considerably different than that of the 5 armies and the threat of Smaug in the Hobbit.

I just found it humorous that you cited that example when the real OT of that story (The Hobbit) did have much of its events overshadowed by what followed.

ETA: The nihilism only sticks if the saga story is considered ended at VIII @PendragonM . It isn’t. The threat of nihilism in the galaxy can be used as a powerful narrative tool just as Rey’s feelings for Ben Solo can be. To worry fans that things will get worse on both of those fronts rather than get better. That’s exactly what a good second act should have the audience fearful of before surprising and showing the amazing, crowdpleasing ending that awaits us in Episode IX.

 

Create a coherent storyline.

 

Without seeing it, and just going off of the concept of a self-contained origin story that doesn't have as much to do with the a singular integral event related to the OT the way Rogue One did... I have to think that Solo will feel the closest thing to a Marvel origin story that's ever existed under Lucasfilm.

 

It depends on the situation. The film makers OBVIOUSLY (I mean in huge red letters) framed the survival of the Resistance as a moral victory that reignites hope across the galaxy. We even get Broom Boy to underline three times with an exclamation point at the end. "We are the spark that will ignite the fire that will burn the First Order DOWN." It doesn't get any more obvious than that. Kylo lost, because that spark survived. And now it's gonna destroy the First Order.

 

Holdo basically spells it out in her speech in the film.

 

Alan Horn of Disney called it precisely that, while saying there was a “good distance” between Han’s death and his origin story.

Which is exactly why I will not be seeing it and Han is my favorite character.

 

Because you now know Han died?

Or because you don't want to experience any on-screen adventures with the characters of Han, Lando and Chewie during that "good distance" between their youth and the OT (and later ST) eras just in general?

 

Both. Also the cheap and stupid way they killed Han, for nothing with his whole life stripped from him. So why do I care how he started if I’m a new fan? I thought we were supposed to let the past die?

Plus the attitude of Disney in general, the fact I haven’t paid to see anything since TFA, and that guy looks and sounds less like Ford that if they’d grabbed random dude off the street.

Plus if there is one thing I am sick to death if, it’s origin stories. Three Spider-Man’s. Batman Begins. Man from UNCLE - which might have worked better without an origin story.

Yes, I realize ANH to an extent is an origin story but it’s not the third “let’s kill Uncle Owen” story cf Spider-Man. There’s a whole story going on of which Luke is a part. It’s lije the humor question - some fans see no difference between the OT and ST and others see a big one. I’m in the latter camp.

 

Fair enough.

I don't subscribe to the notion that lives can be stripped away. They're experiences. Good and bad. And to quote Han and Leia from TFA:





I'm sure they had decades of good times but life is a rollercoaster and then we die. I think Han's tragic death was the perfect tragic end in this complex family space opera mythos that Lucas built. He was an orphan who was willing to give anything for his son. Even his life. Now it's up to episode IX to show us if Ben Solo can push Kylo Ren out and become the man his father an mother hoped he'd return to being and spend the rest of life working to make the world a better place, living with the guilt of the choice he made that day to end his father's life.

 

To me, it’s not a tragic end because Kylo not only isn’t worth saving, Han didn’t give up his life for his son, he was MURDERED by him to get more dark side power. He lost the Falcon and Leia and was back smuggling in misery but hey, that’s all right so long as Darth Emo sees the light a few billion dead people later, right?

Why not have Kylo come back and be a “good guy” stepping over Han and Luke and presumably Leia’s dead bodies. That said, I’ll go see an Ep 10 where his kid kills him. Poetic justice.

You can joke about me being cynical like Luke, but I’m not a Jedi master who could presumably have stopped it all. When we get to the end of Empire, there’s hope. There’s nothing but Broom Boy and twenty people on the Falcon at the end of TLJ. Oh and the only child of Luke, Han and Leia as the Emperor.

So why would I want to see a Solo origin story? They give him a victory, rip it away, turn him into a comedy act and kill him. Doesn’t sound like someone I want to see.

 

The same reason you saw the prequels.

 

Oh I've read the Hobbit. And Smaug is more like Jabba the Hutt than the Galactic Empire. He is just a local threat who has no affiliation with Sauron at the time. And the Goblins and Wargs of the Misty Mountains had their own grievances with the Dwarves that have nothing to do the Dark Lord as well. Sauron was a different level of threat altogether. And the events of TLOR is in another region of Middle Earth far away from the Lonely Mountain. Sauron is the Galactic Empire. And every story of Middle Earth made it clear that Sauron's return was slow and took hundreds if not thousands of years to reach fruition. By that time, only the elves and wizards remember personally what happened before.

The Hobbit was meant to be a fairy tale of one person. No more, no less. Bilbo did one adventure and lived happily ever after. When Tolkien realized that his sequel was going to be more grander and epic than the last, he didn't try to redo the Hobbit all over again. He instead took the idea of Bilbo's heir being the main lead and gave him a far different adventure in a different land. Frodo did not go back to the Lonely Mountain only to see the Dwarves lose their home again. Nor did Bilbo end up dying to show how evil Sauron is.

The Lord of the Rings overshadowed The Hobbit as sequel because it wasn't really much of sequel as it is its own thing. That's why people were willingly to adapt TLOTR first. I have to admit though, we didn't have to be angry at Tolkien having Thorin die anticlimactically in TLOTR... because The Hobbit did it first. Fortunately, the remaining 10 Dwarves that survived have a mixture of success and failure. Oin, Ori and Balin got killed in the Mines of Moria, but the rest have rich, happy endings and even children to call their own.

 

Once.

Plus I was seeing how the GFFA got to where it was in ANH. What am I seeing in Solo? I already know who Han is (and based on the spoilers, he’s not that guy). I don’t care if people are fine with it, I’m not. ::shrug::

 

That’s why I acknowledged that to her larger point the battle logistics and setups were very different.

Great post about Tolkien nevertheless!

@PendragonM , it’s a little like the prequels in that way but likely better written since the Kasdans were involved and Ron Howard directed it. Seeing Han and Lando together! Seeing Han and Chewie meet! Winning the Falcon! Learning more about the golden dice and realizing what they meant to Han. Ties to the larger mythology including some surprise cameos! Insight into Han’s childhood.

Just as you watched Anakin before his dark period and death you’d be seeing Han in his prime before his dark period and death.

 

The sequel trilogy doesn’t undo the accomplishments of the original trilogy. The old EU did that more! In Legends you get one galaxy threatening crisis after another from a day after ROTJ to 40+ years after.

In canon the rebels fought for only a year after ROTJ mopping up the last of the empire and they established a new republic that ruled in peace for 30+ years. Of course Palpatine being the schemer he was had a contingency plan that enabled the imperial remanent to flee into the unknown regions with star maps only the empire had uncovered and the keys to their planet killing Death Star tech.

As Qui Gon says in episode 1, there’s always a bigger fish. The galaxy was at peace for over a thousand years before episode 1. Palpatine managed to turn it into an empire. Don’t you think he would inspire other power hungry dark side tyrants to rise up and fill the void?


As for Kylo, it’s poetic irony that the rebels who fought a war against the establishment have a son who rebels against them! Couple that with the powerful bloodline of Anakin/Vader running through him, a flighty, insensitive dad, a busy mother trying to create a government and the influence of a powerful dark side master following in Palpatines footsteps and by his example and what transpires feels almost tragically inevitable.

But there is hope...in SW there always is.

 

A) never really cared about Anakin. Also Han shouldn’t have a dark period after ROTJ

B) Kasdan is NOT a selling point. He wanted Han dead, Luke gone, and Leia alone since ROTH, never liked Han/Leia, and finally got his wish. I don’t care what he thinks about Han and any talent he had has been gone for years.

Also anyone who sat through Silverado and decided he should write another Western - as they say on Project Runway, I question their taste level.