Saga Unpopular Star Wars opinions!

again, it's all about numbers,

thousands of soldiers gaining on one or two Sith lords at once dropping bombs at them from above etc, I think the odds will be on 'normal soldiers'
I like to think there is some sort of realism left in Star Wars,

but I seem to be alone in this (seemingly unpopular opinion)

People all over this board like to elevate Palpatine to god status for example.

(check out nearly any thread in the PT forum)

 

TROS did that for us, unfortunately.

 

Even before that movie. Just look at Clone Wars and Rebels, the comics and books.

 

The Clone Wars had a Sith Lord outnumbered and captured by a bunch of pirates. No different than the Jedi in AOTC being outnumbered on Geonosis. It's the licensed material and Disney that turned these characters into some sort of superheroes, something they were never meant to be.

That said, @Sarge is correct in saying that only a Jedi Knight can fight a Sith Lord one on one with any chance of success.

 

I'd say a mandalorian has a good chance.

 

Vader almost killed Ahsoka, but Ezra saved her. So it doesn't compare to the other stories.

Though it was cut from the film, Mace stated that one Jedi is worth 100 warriors. The only reason Order 66 worked as well as it did was the timing of its use. Many were blindsided, while others were overwhelmed even when they had sufficient warning. Those who died before then had to do with overwhelming odds.

 

Almost doesn't cut it. The result is still her surviving. It's the writer's choice to have Ezra save her from Vader, so it absolutely counts.

And while I don't think Jedi or Sith are infallible, I think their powers make it especially hard to determine how they'd do against a vast army of non-Force users. You don't even need an OP godlike Sith or Jedi: a normal member of either group could just look into the future, see the outcome, and plan ahead for it. Their powers make it hard to predict (no pun intended).

 

Vader is fighting Ahsoka, who due to his injuries is closer to being his equal, than Aphra and Sabe. The latter is more difficult to justify compared to a former Jedi who is rescued by another. It should be noted that Vader held back against Sabé since she looked so much like Padme and the other Handmaiden were being toyed with before he took them out.

 

Personally, I much prefer Scott Lawrence, who voices him in Jedi: Fallen Order (as well as the 1990s LucasArts games like X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Dark Forces). But I agree that recasting is the preferable option. These days SW seems to prefer zombie CGI creations to hiring brand-new actors, though - even though they still have to hire actors to play legacy characters on set, and then go to the trouble of replacing their faces and voices.

 

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter that she has some Jedi training (it doesn't match Vader's experience and power anyway), the result is the same: she doesn't get killed by Vader when she should, simply because the writers twist the story in order for her to survive and stick around. Just like Aphra and Sabé. Like I said, it's a trend.

It's actually the second time Ahsoka gets spared like this: they already had her leave the Order conveniently before RotS happened, but then they upped that to a ludicrous degree by having Ezra conveniently grab her via time travel right before Vader killed her, and in a way that Vader could conveniently be convinced that she died.

And don't get me started on that stupid thing with Vader not killing someone who betrays and tries to kill him simply because they resemble his dead wife. Everything to do with handmaidens in that series is such crap.

As for Vader's voice, I'm fine with the automated Jones's voice. But there are actual actors who could do a great imitation too.

 

The automated Jones voice is oddly fiting for the charactor

 

Vader is only as powerful as Dooku. So it is reasonable that he cannot dominate Ahsoka. In terms of fighting skills, she learned from him. She's more than capable than Luke was. And his victory was unbelievable if we go by your standards.

It's showing that Luke and Sabé got to him. The part of him that is broken is starting to regret his decisions. Luke refused to turn and it broke him. Then Sabé telling him what Padme said before dying intensifies his conflict.

 

Bull****. Only as powerful as Dooku? Where does that come from? And what does it even matter? She didn't get saved by her skill, she got saved by someone else reaching through a time travel portal.

I know the intent, and again, it's bull****. It's an excuse to keep Sabé around and unharmed, and it's a stupid one.

Again, that's the point I'm making. These are excuses the writers make in order to keep these characters alive and unharmed, even if it meant coming up with contrived deus ex machinas to save them like Ahsoka, or making a character like Vader act stupid and weak like Sabé. Because no way you're convincing me Darth Vader would let someone live after they betrayed and tried to kill him, simply because they physically resemble Padmé. That's stupid.

Even more embarrassing is they had another concurrent pre-RotJ comic where he encountered a lookalike posing as Luke... and quickly killed him. Which is what Darth Vader would do -- but not when Greg Pak is writing Sabé, apparently. Gotta keep her alive and sticking with Vader for several TPB's, dragging this series on and on, because I guess this one damn handmaiden is just that special.

 

From George Lucas, actually:
"Palpatine will ultimately be disappointed with Anakin, after he's been permanently maimed by Obi-Wan: "He's less than what you bargained for," Lucas says. "By the end of the film, he's just a man in a shell. So when this young kid [Luke] comes along..." Lucas also explains that Darth Vader can't generate Sith lightning because he doesn't have real hands or arms."—The Making of Revenge of the Sith

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the dark side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."—George Lucas, The Empire Strikes Back DVD Commentary

"And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor -- he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that."—George Lucas, Rolling Stones Interview, 2005.

Fans really overrate Darth Vader in terms of his power level. He did not do anything extraordinary in the original trilogy. His son, who had ~1 year of training on his own managed to defeat him, even though you could argue that Vader was conflicted, but still. Luke outright overpowered him in the end. Nearly all of the supplementary material gets Vader wrong. Rebels was one of the few that got it right. Rogue One ending was also embarrassing. It is utterly jarring seeing Vader go full slasher maniac unstoppable comic book tier mode and then 5 minutes later, cut to A New Hope, he's letting his troops clear the way, only to calmly walk in when the job had already been done. It was my impression that he would never lower himself to cutting disposable Rebellion grunts. Stormtroopers exist to do that job. It's like someone said, "Vader's original introduction sucked! He should have killed 50 people with his lightsaber!"

And Darth Vader was quite weak and pathetic in Return of the Jedi. He was an entirely different character from aggressive, dominant, persistent Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back. Since the very beginning of Return of the Jedi, Vader was depicted as passive, inert, and as the movie progressed, more and more pathetic. There is nothing inherently wrong with comic books depicting him going through more conflict, thus arriving to this state.

Also, complaining about Deus Ex Machinas in Star Wars of all things, when in the very first movie Luke was saved in the last moment by Han Solo, who came out of nowhere, is really kinda funny.

Imagine being mad about all of this.

 

^Thanks for pointing out a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with my point. Again, it's not about skill.

And Vader was still a villain in most of RotJ, he wasn't ''passive''. He only shows conflict with Luke, and Luke is really the only person who should have that affect on him. Sabé should mean nothing to him. The writer is just forcing this stupid weakness into the story with the piss poor excuse of "but she looks like Padmé" because again, they want to keep her around.

And if you're going to compare getting saved by someone in a ship as opposed to getting saved by time travel portal grab, that says you got nothing. If you're going to handwave any form of characters being saved from danger -- including main protagonists like Luke Skywalker getting saved by things that actually make sense, and aren't magical things the writers just made up for the sole purpose of saving a character -- then you've really got no defense.

 

Now you know where that comes from :^)

He really was. Watch the opening of Return of the Jedi, for one. "Not as forgiving as I am?" Vader was forgiving? I did not think so, by watching the previous two films. Take a note of Vader's voice, intonation, his whole demeanor. He was a lot more passive and submissive than dominant, aggressive, active Vader from The Empire Strikes Back or even A New Hope, who choked his subordinates, took initiative, was the running force of the previous two films.

Why? Vader is Anakin Skywalker. And now that Vader knows that he has a son, now that he knows that his entire Sith "life" was a lie, that the Emperor tricked him into believing he killed his wife and unborn child, and more so, now that Luke outright rejected him and jumped into the pit, rather than going with him — all of that must be telling him that something is wrong with his life. Why would a woman, who knew his wife and a mother of his child so closely, who also resembled her visually, mean nothing to him after everything that had happened up to this point? On the contrary, she would matter. Because Vader started to crack between ESB and ROTJ, in order to arrive to the state he was depicted in ROTJ.

Oh, so your issue is the magical nature of it? In Star Wars, right? Mechanical nature of Han Solo coming quite literally out of nowhere, just in the nick of time to save Luke from imminent death, not being detected by a giant Death Star and all the personnel aboard it, not being detected by Vader and his escort, is okay with you? Are you OK with Luke blowing up the Death Star by believing and using the Force? Wew, sounds like a thing the writers just made up for the sole purpose of Luke winning the day through some make-believe nonsense. Got any defense for that? That's a rhetorical question.

In essence:
Things that I like: make sense and are acceptable
Things that I don't like: don't make sense and stupid

Simple as.

 

Leaving the source of those premises aside (if there's any), I don't follow that logic. Are you implying that Dooku wouldn't be able to dominate Ahsoka in a duel?

Vader is still all that, only less.

The purpose of that line in ROTJ is not that he's becoming forgiving. But that the Emperor is even worse than Vader, who is not known for his forgiveness.

 

Uh, I think it's pretty obvious he was being sarcastic. If you can't detect it in that scene, I don't know what to tell you. Just because he's not choking officers left and right doesn't mean he's not a villain. Again, he shows conflict concerning Luke, and he's submissive to Palpatine, and they're the two characters he shares the most screentime with. So naturally he's not going to be acting like he was on Bespin. That doesn't make him weak and pathetic.

You're making a bunch of assumptions, and nothing explains why Sabe should mean anything to him. Anakin didn't know Sabé, he knew Ric Olie more than he knew her, and having a son doesn't correlate with her at all. She looks like Padmé and was her handmaiden -- so what? I can see that giving him momentary pause when he first encounters her, but not to point the comics have gone, with him letting her live after she tried to kill him. She's not Padmé.

Luke was the turning point for him, he redeemed him. No one else is needed, and bringing in this other character to unnecessarily add to that, boosting her importance, only takes away from Luke's character, and is, quite frankly, insulting.

You can't use the excuse of "it's Star Wars, unrealistic stuff happens, so anything can happen!" to explain every nonsensical thing. I don't, at least. A smuggling ship in a space battle is convenient, but it isn't magical or on par with a time traveling portal grab. Can't believe I have to explain that, but there it is.

And Luke believed and used the Force to make a shot that blew up the DS... and? What is there to defend? It's one of his very few accomplishments in the film, and it's done with plenty of help. He had his fellow pilots, Han as backup, and Obi-Wan to guide him. He wouldn't have been successful without their help. Don't see a problem there.

Also, he was a main protagonist. He had to live. Neither Ahsoka or Sabé do.

And the same couldn't possibly apply the other way around, right?

If you don't have the same beefs I do, or just accept whatever the writer wants you to accept, that's your choice. I'm not going to do that. And pointing fingers in a "it's YOUR fault, not the writers" way is petty and doesn't prove anything.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

 

I don't know what to tell you if you can't detect the obvious change in the character's entire demeanor and tone. It is evident throughout the entire movie.

Whereas he wanted to overthrow him in the previous movie. He gave up all hope of that in ROTJ. He wants to bring Luke to the Emperor to make him his apprentice, he seems to have lost any and all ambition that he had in ESB, and he became entirely subservient to him. If that's not becoming inert and pathetic, then I don't know what is. It is a polar opposite of Vader from the previous film. Especially after he had learned that his son was alive all along, and that the Emperor lied to him all along. Because his idea of Vader was cracking and he was conflicted. Which started after ESB. Which was my point all along.

No, I am not. I made a bunch of observations directly from the films. I did not assume anything.

I literally did explain that.

Re-read my previous post and think again. The man, who's been tormenting himself for two decades over presumably killing his pregnant wife, finds out his son is actually alive, and he actually doesn't want to join him, much like Padme, who did not want to join him on Mustafar. Would he actually do the same thing again to a woman that closely resembles his wife, mother of his child, and who was protecting and serving her? Why would he do that? Pre-ESB Vader would kill her, sure. Pre-ESB Vader was absolute unstoppable evil. Post-ESB Vader? No.

I suggest taking a few deep breaths if that insults you. Yeah, Luke redeemed him. No one else can redeem him. That already happened. It is set in stone. Might as well stop making Star Wars altogether, following that logic. There is literally nothing to suggest that other characters could not have had an impact on Vader other than your pettiness.

Very convenient, indeed. It's a Deus Ex Machina. There is one in every Star Wars movie. Get over that. In reality, Han would have been detected and shot down long before he approached Vader. Can't believe I have to explain that, but there it is. You just don't have a problem with it, ugh, because you don't, mkay? I could go on the same tirade about "time traveling portal", since it was set up in Rebels all the way back in Season 1 and it did not come out of nowhere, and it, in fact, makes sense with the pre-established Star Wars lore, but who cares? We all know the reason why you're really so riled up about it. You would have been just as upset if anything else, non-magical, more grounded happened.

The fact that ace pilots with the use of a targeting computer that cannot make a mistake failed, yet he succeeded doing what is essentially a blind, miracle one in a million shot in a two meters wide exhaust port by simply believing and "using the Force" and winning the day in the nick of time before the entire Rebellion is destroyed. That's fairy tale nonsense. Quite hypocritical of you to accept one fairy tale nonsense, but not the other. People's mileage may vary, I suppose.

They are protagonists of their respective stories. Going by your logic, every single Star Wars story should never do anything or dare anything, because everyone must die since Luke exists, or something. Especially since you can't give a convincing argument as to why it should happen other than you being upset.

No. I don't cry ad nauseam about the Star Wars stories I don't like, and I am objective enough to see that the original Star Wars as created by George Lucas had set up plenty of precedents for all kinds of stuff that is more than plausible and explainable within the setting.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Giving weak explanations, actively ignoring my points, and making petty insults.

Yeah, I'm done here.

 

But... You literally gave no explanation whatsoever other than "Duh, only Luke can do it, anything else makes X too important and takes away from Luke, because I said so! It's insulting! I don't like it!!! It is unnecessary!!!" Very strong explanation, indeed.

Across multiple posts, you actively ignored the entire point about Vader's mindset and why he would do the things he did.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I know George Lucas wouldn't agree with me, but in my opinion The Empire Strikes Back is the only Original Trilogy movie that ever needed a Special Edition, as Palpatine's appearance in the movie needed to be changed regardless. However, both the despecialized editions of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi have nothing in them that need to be changed, they work perfectly fine on their own without the need of any change (well, perhaps replacing Yub Nub with the Victory Celebration music is the only other change I can think of, but still... It's not necessary like changing Palpatine in ESB).

To be clear: by saying all of this I don't mean that the Special Editions are awful or anything like that, I just mean that they're virtually not necessary, except for the change in Palpatine's appearance in Empire.

 

Bull true. Ahsoka didn't let her skills deteriorate like Kanan did. That's why Vader overwhelmed him, but couldn't with Ahsoka. Her skills allowed her to last as long as she did.

As Anakin, she wouldn't stand a chance. As Vader, she can hold her own. Dooku's main advantage was his skills, more than his power. Think about how badly Ezra was manhandled by Vader on Lothal. Now picture Anakin doing that to Ahsoka, if he wasn't damaged. Vader fights her like Dooku fought Anakin on Geonosis.

You're correct, she is not Padme. What she is, however, is someone who reminds him of her. It stops him from killing her in the first place. And what she says to him about Padme's last words, it gives him further pause regarding his choices. When he hears that Padme still believed in him, it makes him wonder why. It gnaws at him that she forgave him for what he did. Just as Luke is able to forgive him for what he did. He is struggling here.

 

Unpopular opinion that is a hot one.

Star Wars should have never existed in the first place and should have just remained unmade.

Now some people are probably gonna take this the wrong way, but allow me to explain what I mean.

Look at what's going on and has been going on since 1977.

Fans complain about whiny Luke.

Fans complain about the Ewoks.

Fans complain about Boba Fett.

Fans complain about Return of the Jedi.

Fans complain about Jar Jar.

Fans complain about Hayden as Anakin.

Fans complain about the Prequels.

Fans complain about George Lucas.

Fans complain about the Disney-made Sequels and that they're not canon because it's not George Lucas.

Fans complain about the Obi-Wan series.

Fans complain about basically most everything with Star Wars new and old since 1977.

If George Lucas NEVER made Star Wars, it would have been a blessing for our world and for social media and we would never have to deal with divided Star Wars fandom where both sides will never grow up nor learn to be grown men with mature demeanors nor come to the acceptance that whatever is made at Disney, even those made by Dave Filoni, is official Star Wars canon because they're Sith who can't let go of George Lucas as they're so butthurt his ideas for his trilogy weren't used among other things, kind of like how the Special Editions and Prequels had haters who won't accept them as canon either.

Someone needs to go back in time to stop Star Wars from ever existing so there can be peace in our world.

You divided fans don't like how either side (Lucas or Disney) does Star Wars? Fine. Well, learn to live with NO STAR WARS. Maybe that will make your life actually better.

 

People will complain about things regardless. Sometimes because of unrelated, personal issues, sometimes because they're narrow-minded and sometimes because they genuinely feel that things could and should be done better in the future.
The latter is important, not least because some of the things fans take issue with are closely related to societal problems. Inevitably, we are divided on these topics, but we need to deal with them. That's how we grow as a community. It's healthy.

Sure, many fans do spend a lot of energy complaining about stuff that's ultimately not that important, but maybe they need to? Maybe that's a way for them to cope with their hectic lives; an outlet that helps them reduce stress and/or anxiety. There might be better ways to handle those things, but there are definitely much worse ways too. Without something like Star Wars in their lives, they might have been truly miserable. It certainly brings a great deal of joy to a lot of people in this world, including those who dislike some aspects of it.