South Park skewered them for it too lol
Member Chewbacca? Member the cantina? Member the Force??!!!
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TFA was some necessary fan service to wipe away the taste of the prequel trilogy, but you could see the pre-Trump stirrings with negative reactions towards a black stormtrooper and a female lead. TLJ was great and Old Man Luke was a wonderful character, but it was very polarizing because of the spirit of the times. Instead of âmaking Star Wars great againâ, it made breaking with the past its theme. Still, it needed TFA to establish the platform from which to leap.
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I fully understand people hating the prequel trilogy, but Iâm pretty sure Iâll always defend it over the sequel trilogy simply because I find its sins more forgivable. It had a coherent story to tell, it maintained focus, it told that story. The execution was lacking in a number of areas for sure, but it built a strong skeleton at the very least, which is why The Clone Wars was able to retroactively make the prequel trilogy a lot more palatable if you put in the time to watch it.
Because of the total lack of focused vision in the sequel trilogy, Iâm far, far more dubious that using Mando-era shows to plug holes is going to be nearly as successful in its rehabilitation efforts. It just seems like sunk cost fallacy at work. But I suppose I can understand why the creatives who worked together a very nice project in The Clone Wars feel like they can do it again.
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Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser is unlike anything that currently exists in narrative live entertainment because it offered so many things at once: a âcruiseâ in which you are a guest on the fictional Halcyon starcruiser, with a view of space as you move through a galaxy far far away; a hotel with four-star service from the food to the rooms; traditional theater enabling passive viewing so you can watch a story unfold; immersive theater transforming that passive audience into active participants; an interactive adventure enabling gameplay, puzzles, personalization and actions rewarded based on participation; a costume party where you can roleplay; and, true to its DNA, a theme park (where a âcruiseâ excursion is offered to the planet Batuu, equating to an IRL backdoor pass to Disneyâs Hollywood Studios).
Not gonna lieâŚsounds like it was awesome. Hope the LBE space continues to evolve into Westworld.
As with everything, it depends on the execution and the cost. I heard it wasâŚreasonably OK. Which unfortunately doesnât jibe with having to pay 2-3 mortgage payments to go there for a weekend.
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Havenât read the above yet but itâs in line with closing of the Star Wars hotel at the end of Sept, which was incredible by all accounts, but galactically expensive (sorry)
All visits are two-night stays with a starting cost of more than $4,800 for two people and around $6,000 for a family of four. For authenticity, the 100 cabins at the Florida hotel have no windows. Instead, stars, planets and asteroid showers are shown on video screens.
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Expectations were high for the hotel after it opened in March 2022. Two months later, Bob Chapek, who was then Disneyâs chief executive, described demand for stays as strong and said the company expected â100 percent utilizationâ through the end of the third quarter.âResponse to next-generation storytelling like Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser has been phenomenal,â he said at the time.
I hated how small TLJ made the galaxy seem. Oh, there are only like 20 rebel fighters left now? And they have like 5 ships? Whats the point then? Its over at that point.
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There was a lot of that in the trilogy. They completely ditched any idea of hyperspace travel being a thing that takes days to get anywhere, with lots of planning, basically turning it into effortless teleportation. They showed people watching the five Republic planets blow up in real time in TFA, from a vantage point like half the galaxy could see it from their backyards or something. Even the time period in which the trilogy takes place is claustrophobically small compared to the other trilogies.
And then one of my many gripes about TFA is the inexplicable convenience of everything going on on Jakku at the beginning. I mean when you first watch ANH at first it seems like âhmm this is weird, thereâs a lot going on with this supposedly remote desolate planetâ but then itâs explained, this old dude is there because heâs watching over this teenage kid, this rebel ship winds up there because the chick with the robes is specifically looking for the old dude, etc.
But thereâs no explanation (that I recall) given for the one-in-a-trillion coincidence of this other shitty desert planet happening to be the place where (all apparently within a few miles of each other btw):
âMax Von Sydow is hanging out with the map to Luke
âAn incredibly powerful force user, and the granddaughter of the Emperor himself, is living as a scavenger
âThe actual fucking Millennium Falcon is docked in a junkyard
Itâs just one of those things that makes it feel like thereâs only a dozen inhabited planets in the whole galaxy or something.
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The pitch meeting for TFA did make fun of that one-in-a-trillion thing a bit, starting around here:
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This old dude named Obi-Wan Kenobi whose life is under direct threat at all times, but who cleverly hides behind the indecipherable moniker âOld Ben Kenobi.â Frankly itâs a miracle that any of the characters in the story could crack that code.
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Same thing happened in GoT. Iâm terrible at this sort of thing, which was in part why I adored the catastrophies everyone encountered due to their journeys from point A to B taking so long. But all of a sudden the characters could travel from here to Dorn in less time than an email.
Yeah that was silly, unless maybe the surname Kenobi was like the Smith or Rodriguez or Nguyen of the galaxy.
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Always possible I suppose, but Luke jumped to the correct answer instantly in a way that suggested that old Ben is the only one he knew.
To be clear: I definitely categorize this under âincredibly stupid thing that I find funny instead of annoying.â
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No, Antilles is the Smith of the Star Wars universe.
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Finale
Although I enjoyed the penultimate episode and mostly this one, the season turned out to be considerably less than the sum of its parts. I have made peace with the utter moral incoherence of this franchise a while ago, although it is still somewhat jarring to see it play out. Ahsokaâs arc apparently was that sheâs now totally cool with sacrificing the galaxy for a person you care about, I guess Anakin was on to something.
Ezra didnât even chime in, cop out. I did not foresee the Bold Move Cotton of not putting forward any substance as to what Baylan was seeking on this planet, although when I saw the runtime was 48 minutes I knew thereâd be nothing there. I wonder if they cut some stuff after he passed away, doubt it but I wonder.
Rip Morgan, her choreography was top notch.
Ahsokaâs best duels have been against her. I like that Sabine stayed behind, was not expecting that, but if this is going to be a one-off the climax was mostly flat. Ezra is a solid character, but we need more juice from Thrawn going forward, he has been over-scrutinized for the looks, but he needs to be shown to be making deep strategic decisions rather than always leaning of some rando rearguard delaying action which kind of got old by the end here.
Episode rating 7/10
Series rating 6.5/10 really not that much better than the last season of Mando tbh
I think it was a decent bit better than Mando S3, but I think Mando S3 is the worst Star Wars TV season. I liked Ahsoka S1, but I admit I let my hopes get higher than the show has achieved.
Andor >>> Mando S1 > Mando S2 > Ahsoka > Book of Boba Fett > Kenobi > Mando S3 IMO.
Andor >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mando 2 >= Mando 1 >>>> Ahsoka >>> Mando 3=Book >>>> Kenobi
Pretty close, I have Andor in another universe from the rest, and I thought Kenobi was mostly a hot mess.
My experience with Kenobi was that I basically enjoyed all but one of the episodes as they happened, but the series holds up pretty badly on audit. But I canât be too down on a show when I wasnât really disliking the experience while watching.
I think this is the same issue with the MCU. Some fans want the TV shows to be central to the main narrative when their point is to be universe-building without being indispensable without constraining future movies that will be part of the main narrative.
I wish these shows had more room for stand-alone episodes that donât advance series-long story arcs.
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