Rogue One had a few glimpses of Vader in action. Solo gave us a brief glimpse of a former Sith lord, but no force action. The show Resistance is, as of now, all political and military action, no force users. The upcoming show The Mandalorian is about a “lone gunfighter,” taking place sometime after RotJ, which doesn’t inspire much hope in me that it’ll involve many (any) force users.
I know the comics and novels and video games may do a bit more with this, and I haven’t really explored those areas, but what’s up with the TV and movie people? I feel like the franchise is moving away from space fantasy and more toward space action/adventure. I wish the movie and TV people would get into some Old Republic, early Jedi and Sith, or even tap into Ahsoka’s post-Jedi story more. My favorite parts of Rebels and Clone Wars were when the the Force was front and center (the Mortis storyline, the Jedi temple on Lothal).
I’m glad the Clone Wars is being revived later this year, as that should scratch me where I itch, and Ep. IX should give us a good dose of the Force. But I was just discussing with my son last night why a lot of the latest Star Wars offerings (Solo, Resistance, The Mandalorian) don’t excite me: It’s all just action/adventure that happens to be set in a galaxy far, far away. Solo is the first new Star Wars movie I didn’t go out and immediately buy when it was released on BluRay. Resistance is the first show I have to force myself to watch (in the hopes that it will get better). I *like *seeing people use the Force in badass ways. Is it just me, or does Disney seem to be moving SW into a more generic action/adventure arena?
I am one with the Force the Force is with me.
I am one with the Force the Force is with me.
I am one with the Force the Force is with me.
I am one with the Force the Force is with me.
I am one with the Force the Force is with me.
Yeah, Chirrut wasn’t a Jedi (there were precious few of them, at that point in the Galaxy Far, Far Away’s history), but he was definitely a Force user.
I’m not sure if it’s “moving away” so much as broadening the scope of their stories to include characters and events that aren’t as intimately tied to the Jedi / the Force / the Skywalker family.
In the cases of Solo and the Mandalorian, they’re developing properties around characters and groups which have always had a lot of interest among fans, but which hadn’t ever been the focus of a story before.
Yes, but it seems they’re still stuck in that same 50-75 year period and vicinity, while there are presumably thousands of years of galactic history and thousands of places and thousands (millions?) of Force users to dip in to.
I know what they’re doing, I just personally am not impressed. Solo didn’t do so well, comparatively speaking, and for me personally, I’ve concluded it’s because: Not enough Force! More Force! And a gunslinger from Manadalore? Yes, I’ll watch it, and may actually love it, but as of now, I’m just not excited about more from Mandalore. How about Dathomir? Or Mortis? Or Jedha?
Sure, he repeated that he was one with the Force, but aside from some pretty snazzy martial arts moves and not getting shot while walking across a battlefield, he didn’t exactly dazzle with Force badassery. I’d love to see them delve deeper (on either the big or small screen) into the Guardians of the Whills, instead of casually mentioning them and leaving it at that.
Again, just mho on the current direction of SW. I mean, I’m still watching it all, but just wish someone at some point would go deeper into the stories involving the Force.
“The Force” is one of those things I’ve always felt works best in small-to-medium doses. I think there’s only so much CGI magic you can put on screen before it just looks like an effect and breaks a movie’s spell. You need the universe to feel grounded or else it all just kinda feel frivolous.
I’m not a huge fan of the current handling of the franchise, but my complaint is definitely not “not enough sword wizards flipping around!”
I was an avid player of the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG for several years. It’s set ~3600 years before the films, and depicts a galaxy in which the Republic controls about 3/4 of the galaxy (and there are thousands of Jedi), and the Sith Empire exists (with the matching thousands of Sith). I love that setting, and I’d love to see a TV show or film that explores it, but I suspect that that’s low down on Disney’s / Lucasfilm’s list.
That may well be, though I also think that part of the reason it didn’t do well was a backlash against the franchise by fans who hated Episode 8. Personally, I really enjoyed Solo, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Corellians.
I think part of the problem is that it’s difficult to maintain the mystique over a long period of time. I think the midichlorian debacle was an attempt to shore up the interest, but it had the opposite effect by introducting a scientific quality to it. Additionally, since we’ve seen the journey of one force user from novice to master (Luke), the franchise no longer has an interest in showing it again. So now we’ve got Rae who basically seems to be some weird Force prodigy.
Unfortunately, that cat is out of the bag and there’s really no way to put it back in. From now on, all force using SW heroes will become instant masters. That might be why they’re looking at moving away from force users. Personally, in the main current stories, I find Finn and Rose as the most compelling characters.
I always had the impression that Force sensitivity varies among individuals, and that even with a lot of sensitivity, your abilities will be limited if you’re not formally trained. I’m imagining a universe where a kid might be Force-sensitive, but if he’s not trained, or isn’t that sensitive, it might just manifest as an ability to be a good salesman, or to shoot free throws or something.
I kind of figured that also means that there’s a large population of sub-Jedi level Force sensitives out there, or that there are a lot of Jedi who aren’t super-duper Force users a-la Obi-Wan or Luke Skywalker, if the Jedi basically recruit all Force-sensitives.
With Chirrut, I always figured he was probably either self-trained, or trained in some limited fashion because he wasn’t Jedi-level Force sensitive.
I think it’s even worse than that – Luke WAS a Force prodigy and was able to go from totally naive to going toe-to-toe with masters with only a short bit of training from a couple elderly weirdos. But there was a REASON for that; he was the secret son of a Force master (and his trainers both knew his father, to boot). This all came together to add mysteries and reveals and a sense of destiny to the story.
Rae is a Force prodigy for, at this point, no reason. She’s received even LESS training and has no reason to be as skilled as she is, but is shown being EXCEPTIONALLY gifted – mainly, I think, because the VFX are better.
I don’t even hate Rae, but I am definitely disappointed that her amazingness is just so arbitrary.
The grueling journey of a NON-prodigy Jedi from novice to master over a long period could have been very interesting.
I have an extensive collection of the old WEG books, and our group still plays it. Yes, the default setting of the original edition of that game was in the Rebellion Era (and, specifically, usually in between Episodes IV and V). And, in fact, a lot of now-canonical lore (like species names) in SW originated in some of those old WEG books.
Video games like Star Wars: The Old Republic (and the single-player Knights of the Old Republic) were set thousands of years earlier, though some of the tabletop RPGs have had sourcebooks that at least touched on those earlier eras.
If so, good, because the Force makes no sense and never has. It was fine in Star Wars, if it was going to be one-shot novelty movie. But the more detail that has accumulated about the Force, the Jedi, and the Sith, the more obvious it is that George Lucas gave absolutely no thought to his writing, other than creating an echo of eastern mysticism cliches. Every time Yoda or another Jedi says something, they sound like morons trying and failing to imitate wise men.
”The Force” was always just a space opera version of sorcery (Kenobi is even referred to as a “wizard” by Uncle Owen) and no attempt should have ever been made to put it on a rationalist basis, particularly one involving microorganisms or deep mythology. The main problems with the prequels (aside from banal dialogue, wooden acting, overuse of CGI, et cetera) is that they basically existed to fill in backstory that was more interesting in fragments; see Solo for the same. (On the other hand, a separate Lando Calrissian movie with Donald Glover could be an awesome look into the criminal underworld of the Staw Wars universe and the character’s rise to respectability without being much hampered by having to fill in details because there are very few hooks that have to be snagged.)
Star Wars is most interesting when focused on personal conflicts with monumental consequences, e.g. a farm boy on a remote desert planet rising up to defeat the Emperor. As some kind of political thriller or straight actioneer it works far less well because heroic mythology is literally woven into its underpinnings. Dispensing with “The Force” (which is supposed to be this really powerful and significant, uh, force) makes it little different than any other generic sci-fi property.
I don’t agree. Rebels featured a partially-trained Jedi who lost his master to Order 66, who then attempted to train a kid in the Jedi way. No one there was an instant master, and it was a very compelling story. Ahsoka Tano’s life after the Jedi Order would probably be an interesting story too (even beyond the novel) and she’s no master.
Plus, there are thousands of years of master Force users they could explore, both Sith and Jedi, plus everyone in between.
True, and perhaps going back to pure magic would help the problem, but that would still leave the problem of the Jedi themselves, who are all immoral fools. For me to go along with this, you’d have to rewrite all the idiotic pseudo-mystical pseudo-philosophy. When I hear the Jedi telling Anakin to suppress his emotions and stop caring about his wife and children, it makes me happy that the Jedi were wiped out.
Seriously, did the Jedi make one reasonable choice in the entire series?
This is absolutely true. I’ve told people over and over just to watch that one scene in Star Wars in which Kenobi tells Luke the history of the war. It’s so immersing and exciting right there as Alec Guinness recites the lines. And they spent three movies turning that one exquisitely dramatic scene into dull garbage.
Magicians usually make terrible decisions, particularly those who regard themselves as especially wise. As a rule, you can generally trust any kind of magic user to make stupidly arrogant choices which serve only to obfuscate their weeknesses and inflate their aura of mysticism.
Rey is a “Mary Sue”; she can do everything the plot requires and never be put at risk.
What made Luke interesting were his flaws; his whiny immaturity, his impetuous ineducability, his headstrong enthusiasm. It is what made his character arc so fulfilling; when he finally refuses to kill Vader, he’s actually made a leap in growth as a character. Rey has essentially no room for growth; she’s already ‘perfect’ and arguably more mature than Old Man Luke. It’s unfortunate, because there are a lot of interesting roads they could have taken her character (and that of Kylo Ren) down, and instead took the most trivial.
The most intersting post-Original Trilogy film that has been made so far is Rogue One, and not because of the story or setpieces but just because they allowed the characters to be flawed (if often inconsistent in their motives).
