Just watched Ep. VII again, some thoughts about the SW universe

You can see what's wrong with the old Expanded Universe, the Disney's Expanded Universe and Episode VII by looking at very simple things in each piece of SW content: the state of the galactic technology and culture.

Episodes I to VI are perfect in this regard because they show a living galaxy, one that evolves and changes with time.

When the Republic was the leading power, the allied worlds were beautiful, prosperous, full of technology, color, religion and culture. When the Empire took over, the galaxy crumbled, the technology stagnated and decayed, the planets became monochromatic, dirty, gross, without religion or old traditions.

Lucas perfectly portrayed the decay by showing the wars being fought with deadly robots first (Ep I), then with elite clone troopers (II, III) and then with average humanoid soldiers (IV, V, VI), meatbags recruited in poor planets. The jedi of the past were gracious in combat, the saber fights evoking ritualistic dances. The combatants of old were equally worried about the efficiency and the beauty of their moves, while the few saber users of Eps IV to VI were warriors that traded finesse for strength and fierceness.

Then you have the EU, Disney's EU and Episode VII, which seem to have learned nothing from the movies. The EU has stories going as far back as 4000 years before the events of Episode IV, but the worlds look and feel exactly like the ones in the prequel trilogy. Old Coruscant, Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine look EXACTLY the same as they do thousands of years later. The stories revolve around the same stuff talked about in the Prequels (republics and empires, rogue jedi, sith etc). Fortunately, the EU isn't canon anymore. Episode VII is the worst offender, though.

Thirty years have passed since arguably some of the most dramatic events that galaxy has ever seen and yet everything is basically stuck in a loop. Everything looks like Eps IV to VI. And we know the reason why nothing has changed (Hint: nostalgia = more money).

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You are wrong about the EU. If you played any of the KOTOR games, the Old Republic felt thousands of times different from anything in the movies.

In lots of ways, George Lucas should be commended for his courage in making the prequels the way they are.

I enjoy Eps. I and III, despite ackowledging their many flaws. I even thought Ep. II was a fun experience during my teenage years. Time has made me come to the conclusion that the latter happens to be the worst of the prequel movies, by far. One thing no one can deny, though, is that the Prequel Trilogy certainly doesn't tread old ground, despite the clear nods to the Original Trilogy (the "poetry" of George Lucas).

It would be much easier for him to do what Episode VII did, which is to make another planet destroying weapon for Ep. I, have the old stormtrooper, TIE fighter, AT-AT, AT-ST designs to sell more toys based off nostalgia instead of creating new races, new planets, new relationships, new status quo for every player in the galaxy etc.

What did Ep. VII bring to the SW universe? In my opinion, barely anything. Kylo Ren's lightsaber was cool, I guess, but everything else is extremely derivative of the OT. The Rebels are the Resistance, the Empire remnants don't feel like remnants, since they can build stuff like the Starkiller Base, new enemies feel like old ones... Status quo is practically unaltered in the new movie.

Episode VII was well received, so mission accomplished, I guess?

I was thinking of KOTOR when I wrote that part about the EU. I love that game, but I think it plays extremely safe in world building and lore. If I show pic related to anyone not familiar with the game but familiar with the movies and asked when does this take place in the SW universe, most would say "oh, around the era of the prequel movies?"

Bioware was lazy in that aspect.

That new Old Republic Game seems like it's even worse about it. Setting it all so far back just seems like it's too much, and ends up making the galaxy feel stagnant for several millennia.

Yep, I think so too. Like I said, I love that game, I like playing it, loved exploring Korriban and the old Sith tombs, loved the twist with Darth Revan, but there are tons of flaws in world building / lore.

>Kylo Ren's lightsaber was cool, I guess
It's cool if you think it looks that way because it's jury-rigged from long broken lightsabers, or because Kylo doesn't really know how to build a lightsaber.
Then you realize it looks that way because
>lol ancient sith designs
Kylo Ren building a defective lightsaber could have played into the final fight against Rey, too, and Kylo's character development from that point on onwards, with Kylo starting to question Snoke's teachings and continuing his struggle between the Light side and Dark side.

Introduced the Rakatan Infinite Empire, which might be the best part about it, and will probably be made canon by Disney.

I hope that now that JJ Abrams is gone, the next episodes can be better and fully explore the possibilities of the Kylo Ren character. He's the one thing with true potential in that new trilogy. Rey, sadly, is just a mary sue and Finn is a non-character that was poorly implemented in the franchise for comedy relief and forced drama.

youtu.be/Rh4SrRqhqlE

This video is some really good world building in my opinion. Old republic was cool. Though the one thing that I always wondered about was why there weren't significant technological advances from that time up to the prequels.

True.
They really should have gone with the original plan of Finn being the new Jedi character.

Dude, read Dark Empire or the Thrawn trilogy.

Don't know about Dark Empire, but Thrawn Trilogy suffers from the problem of being derivative as well, albeit not nearly as bad as Ep VII. It borrows so much from the OT, it doesn't let the SW universe breathe.

This is one of the most wrong statements I've read on Sup Forums today.

Sith guys with their pretend Stormtroopers have pretend Star Destroyers and pretend Tie Fighters. Tatooine is almost exactly the same. Old Republic guys wear the same helmets the Rebel marines on the Tantive 4 wear.

Rey's mary sue-ness can be redeemed if she somehow falls to the Dark Side, permanently. But that won't happen because:

a. it'll just mirror Anakin's arc.
b. you can't have your main character be bad when you're too focused on her being perfect at everything, because that means evil will win.

I'm glad someone other than me has noticed this. The sameness of TFA was probably the most disappointing thing. The events of ROTJ should have been galaxy-changing but instead we got kicked back to ANH because that's what everyone recognizes.

Is Standard Gabriel going to do anything? He's the first hero we got to meet and he played a role in all the big events in the movie, although not as directly as Finn and Rey. He hasn't really done anything but kill stuff and act cool yet but I got the impression we were meant to give a shit about him. Kylo was easily the most interesting character but I don't trust Disney to do him justice.

They're doubling down on the idea that the Empire is a "white supremacist group" and the Sith are perma-evil, so you won't have any originality in that aspect, like Rey learning to use rage, fury and passion for good or some cool twist that erases the line between jedi and sith.

WANANA JIJI BOBO.

Dark Empire has a really decaying feel, I think. In fact most of the EU that takes takes place after Ep. VI is pretty good in my opinion.

Not that I've read it, but that shit with Darth Talon looks pretty nice. Red Twi'lek with the black Sith tattoos, hot.

Too bad they basically forgot that Star Wars can only ever be about humans. Of the main characters we travel with, only Chewie's been nonhuman, and he doesn't even have any dialogue so he doesn't count.

I'm writing an R Rated Darth Maul Star Wars Story spec. Fun time passer till I think of something real to write.

I totally forgot about him. He was extremely out of place in Ep VII. The way his scenes were shot in the beginning of the movie made it seem like he was the main character, then he simply disappears and returns one hour later, in the resistance base, with the worst excuse of all "oh, you thought I was dead? I just woke up and found a way to come back to the resistance base :)"

This also reminds me of the Maz Kanata character, which could be the worst one in that movie. That whole "where did you find Luke's lightsaber?" scene that ended with her saying something like "It's a long story" is atrocious.

That image looks cool, empire remnants vs empire remnants. I wanted to see stuff like that in Ep. VII.

Maz Kanata feels like a character who was dreamed up completely outside of the main writing process. Like somebody had something coherent but then some focus-group obsessed number-autists decided that they needed a new Yoda-figure and to save time they could also make them their big PoC condescension casting. The character sticks out like a sore thumb, but then that whole sequence was bad. The overly scuffed up set and costumes felt like a forced re-do of the cantina.

>Episode VII is the worst offender, though.
>Everything looks like Eps IV to VI

Not really. Most of what we see of The First Order is similar to The Empire but that's their template and they're just remnants of the empire. Also what they do have appears sleeker than it was on the OT. Jakku resembles Tatooine yes, but Tatooine was out of reach of the republic to begin with and didn't look much different in the prequels and OT. It's perfectly reasonable to believe there are numerous poor planets that look like shit regardless of who is in power. Then there's the planet Maz Kanata is on which really doesn't resemble anything particular from the OT or prequels although the cantina obviously is nostalgia but it doesn't look quite as seedy as the Mos Eisley cantina.

The biggest offenses are probably the fact that The Resistance looks exactly like The OT Rebellion did which makes no fucking sense at all. And they are still using the same ships and weaponry which is foolish. So as for your theory that everything is stuck in a loop I will grant you that aspect. But otherwise not really.

The bigger problem is just the re-hash of the plot

100% agree. All the interactions in that scene were forced as fuck. A few minutes before they meet Maz Kanata, Han Solo talks about her as some badass old neutral-to-the-conflict character that you have to have manners around. It turns out that she's literally just a generic ally to the good side.

Progress isn't always linear. There's a massive rebellion against the Galactic Empire, war breaks out, the Empire falls, and who knows what happens next? Look at any other civil war in real life like Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, etc. Society stagnates, regresses and out of nowhere just moves forward. The Empire may have lost but there's still loyalists out there like the First Order and the Republic is a sham. Kinda like Libya's "pro-democracy" government that rules with no authority over the militias with the guns.

The problem is that you'd expect the remnants of the Empire to not be as strong as the actual Empire, but I don't think the movie led people to this conclusion. On the contrary, that "nazi celebration" scene when they fire the Starkiller Base Laser for the first time with many more troopers than we had previously seen in the OT, the fact that they had built a base that big to begin with, among other stuff made the organization look as strong, if not stronger than they ever were.

It minimized the ending of Ep. VI, in my opinion.

For that to have worked, they'd have to have devoted a little bit more than 20 seconds to establish the New Republic, the First Order etc. The way the movie was shot, we don't know the extent of the power / influence of the First Order, of the New Republic and of the Resistance. We only know that a New Republic exists, that the rebels turned into the Resistance (which still struggles for support) and that the remnants of the Empire are still out there, looking more powerful than the actual Empire in its heyday.