Honestly, for all the gripes I had with VIII at a story level, can't deny the small grin I got when I saw this show up.

Time to hit up a friend for our post-Christmas tradition.

 

His Force sensitivity, maybe. But Star Wars has always been inconsistent with how that comes about. Supposedly bloodline matters and the Skywalkers are proof of that, yet Anakin was the very start of that, with his talent presumably appearing out of thin air. Same for Rey, who we are led to believe was born from randos.

And regardless, I think that you're attributing 'all of Ben's defining traits' to exactly his Force sensitivity and nothing else. I believe that all other comparisons between them fail at even the surface level.

 

Anakin was created by a force experiment by Sidious and Plagueis in an attempt to create a superior force sensitive or something, as I recall. That's why he has no father, and why he has such a strong force sensitivity.

 

Hey @Sauce Bauss I thought we were discussing canon my man.

 

Man, that's some kooky shit from the EU. I wasn't aware that was a thing, and it's somehow even more ridiculous than "Shmi was the Mary to Anakin's Jesus analogue".

 

floofy Anakin hair
love of long black coats/capes
angsting
rage-monstering
susceptibility to the dark side
thirst for power

All of that screams Anakin Skywalker to me. Not Han Solo.

100% new canon

Anakin is still Force Jesus. The force was just being poked with a dark-side stick to get it horny enough to imac-preg Shmee. Oh comic book writers.

 

Not even a flicker of interest, except to see how much of a trainwreck it'll be. Thanks Disney.

 

Jesus, and here I thought only the EU could possibly be that retarded. That'll teach me to underestimate Disney's capacity to fuck up Star Wars, an IP that I'd honestly believed impossible to actually fuck up.

 

Another little bit of news, after the trailer was revealed at the chicago Celebration convention and the lights came back up, Ian McDiarmid was the only one left on stage. In his Palp voice, he says "roll it again."

Cute confirmation Palps will probably play an actual role and they didn't just throw in the laugh for flavor.
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I mean... fair play. Disney has made dozens of lore blunders since gaining control of the franchise. But let's be real. Palps manipulating the force to bring forth the chosen one is really no more egregiously stupid than say, teddy bears saving the galaxy, magical mitochondria, or Padme LITERALLY dying of a broken heart.

 

Fair enough. The difference is mostly down to it being a silly retcon, instead of it only being inherently stupid, but I'll freely admit it's mostly a matter of taste.

 

That is one dumb fuckin' name.

....But still looking forward to it. I love all things Star Wars.

 

Personally, I find it strangely hilarious how some people are so vehemently against the Sequel Trilogy. Not because they don't have any good points (they do, especially in regards to the poorly done world building). But because they're basically doing the exact same thing Star Wars fans did nearly 2 decades ago with the Prequels: treat them as the worst thing ever that totally ruined their childhood. And judging by how some people are seriously defending the Prequels now (if only because of backlash from that original hatred), I'm guessing that within 20 years people will treat the Sequels the same way: a deeply flawed yet secretly brilliant trilogy that might have been treated more than a bit unfairly.

With that said, I liked the trailer. Say what you want about the Sequels, the trailers have all been very good at getting you hyped.

 

I wouldn't bet on that, personally. The prequels had plenty of issues, but most of it ultimately boiles down to "Lucas is a brilliantly creative guy, but not the best at directing actors and needs to have people who can challenge his bad ideas."

For all their flaws, the prequels still had that same je ne sais quoi that made Star Wars work. Something that, at least in my opinion, the new sequel trilogy has lacked.

As for the trailer, it looks nice and promising, but like the other sequel trilogy trailers it's mostly just some neat visuals and a few teasers without giving away anything about what we can actually expect.

 

This. The prequel trilogy wasn't great (in a lot of places it flat out wasn't even good), but for all his faults, Lucas has never lacked a creative vision, and it informed pretty much everything in the prequels.

The sequel trilogy is just a mess, with no single vision at all. It's just a bunch of things that Disney's Council of Star Wars thought was most marketable, and it really shows. There's not even an overarching plot.

 

Were I directing, I think I probably would have chosen something more obtuse, and I say that even without knowing the plot. Dropping the Skywalker name in there just feels... I dunno... clunky? Cheap? Not sure how to express it.

 

I've seen this in a lot of fandoms. The Zelda cycle fits it to a tee. In the Star Wars case, there's a bit of a generational gap between the original trilogy, the prequels, and now these.

You can also think of it as "we didn't realize how much worse it could get when the prequels came out".

 

It's a blatant marketing ploy, using the name and the implications therein to build hype for the movie without having to even release a trailer. It's yet another creative decision made by a committee of soulless corporate drones in pursuit of the almighty dollar, rather than any kind of art.

A perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the sequel trilogy, in other words.

 

I've actually been going through a Doctor Who blog, TARDIS Eruditorum that spends an awful lot of time on how opinions of the show's episodes, eras, characters, etc., all changed and evolved over the years, often quite drastically. Iconic classics turned out to be awful, old duds are actually quite impressive, and so on. The Hartnell episode "The Celestial Toymaker" went from one of the best-rated episodes of the era to a dull racist disgrace, while the very next episode "The Gunfighters" started out as a universally panned episodes and ended up a hilarious British Western.

It made me think a lot about how Fandoms can evolve quite dramatically over time, reconsidering how it feels about older stuff every several years, realizing good stuff was bad and bad stuff was good. I have no doubt that the Sequels will have the same fate over time. New Star Wars stuff will show up, everyone will move on to love/hate the new thing, and their feelings on the new thing will make them reconsider the now-old Sequels. I'm not saying everyone will love the Sequels or think them a perfect masterpiece, just that they'll be willing to reconsider it. And if you don't believe me, look how many people nowadays are convinced that, say, Jar Jar Binks was actually the evil mastermind behind everything who was totally a Sith Lord the whole time. Do you think anyone would have conceived such a theory, or approve of anyone that said it, back when Phantom Menace came out in 1999?

 

To be fair, the "Darth Jar Jar" thing was mostly a meme making fun of JJ Abrams' whole "mystery box" schtick with Snoke. It snowballed a bit into a "legitimate" wild and baseless fan theory, because the concept is so ludicrous it's hilarious, but it definitely started as a response to Abrams' style of filmmaking and a rejection of Snoke as a character plot device.