Eh. Aside from the guy who played Han. Solo was actually decent. Rebels was good . No idea on the current one (resistance?) But I can't deal with the art style for it. I couldn't even watch 5 minutes of the first episode. Mandalorian I hope will be good. Final season of clone wars should be good. So movies and games they have not done well (reception wise). But outside that I think Disney has done ok.
I actually liked Solo. Plenty of things were satisfactory explained, at least enough for me.... but I am more of a casual trekkie.... I did not really care for most of the last 2 movies (7 & 8 I guess). They did seem like modernish remakes of 4&5. I understand why they added so much non-Jedi stuff to the last movie. They are trying to show how important normal people are to the cause...and I get it but its also boring. Maybe a better director would have been able to cut most of that why still getting the point across.... Anyway my hopes are middling for the next couple movies. I would really like The Mandalore to be great but I doubt it will be. Episode 9 already seems like a smoldering dumpster fire but we will see...
The main movies I think have to be about jedi (even if not the skywalkers). Side stories can do well focusing on non-force users. rogue one was pretty good. I think if they ever turned the expanded universe x-wing series books into movies they would probably do pretty well. Not a force user to be seen in those books. Well technically there were 2 who later became jedi. But they had little to no training (in the force) in those books. And they couldn't really use it.
Apparently they may be soft retconning some of Rian Johnsons plot points from Last Jedi with the next movie... and Johnson doesn't seem to care. It seems like no one competent is steering this ship at this point. To be honest, I have never really enjoyed JJ's work; he just borrows better ideas and gives them a new coat of paint (third death star bigger than evar!). Add to the fact that Kathleen Kennedy and company seem to keep making mistakes. They keep talking about their "vision resolving a 9 movie story arc" but that is bullshit. We've had two trilogies of resolved narrative. Then JJ came in with his "mystery boxes" and fucked everything up. Apparently, the new script was so bad, someone leaked the whole thing... maybe in hopes it will get reworked (Ben knows more about it than me)? Probably too late for that. The more news I hear about this next movie, the less I care about it.
To be fair, the bigger badder death star was actually in several of the EU stories. If I recall there was even one that could destroy a star, at one point. Though really building a bigger badder gun just makes you a bigger badder target. Acting and bad writing aside I thought the way Sidius managed to destroy the Jedi in the prequel trilogy was a much greater indication of his genius than his 'master' stroke during Return of the Jedi. Then again I suppose after being twisted and disfigured by his own force lightning he might have difficulty concentrating on the more sinister and diabolical schemes and simply try to focus on total domination instead.
The sun crusher was an entirely different weapon system than the death star. The death stars are designed to intimidate a single planet. The sun crusher was designed for whole system (like the entire solar system. Or in star wars the whole corellian system. Multiple planets). Had to look it up. But the sun crusher was also about the size of korean war fighters (13.5) meter length. I did read about 90% of the EU. (Also Jaina Solo and Mara Jade are way better than Rey could ever hope to be).
Those are fair points. But to put this in perspective, remember that your average movie goer walked away from Episode 6 thinking that the Empire was largely defeated. I don't object to the idea of an "Empireal Remnant" existing after Episode 6, but it was very jarring to see what appeared to be a much stronger Empire in Episode 7. The question I kept asking myself during the whole movie was "how the fuck is the Empire paying for all of this?"
Right? I mean there was an imperial remnant (that was their actual name) in the EU but I don't think they ever did the super weapon route. They were still pretty powerful even though they were nowhere near their galactic civil war size.
Going off your stellaris name thing imperial remnant is a bad name. They were a martial oligarchy from 12-44 ABY (after battle of gavin, episode 4) then a democracy after that.
If I recall, they controlled about a third of their original territory. Maybe 10% of the galaxy? Still hundreds of worlds. And they did build superweapons, but they were smaller and more efficient than the Death Stars. The Sun Crusher, The Eclipse Super Star Destroyer, etc. [edit] I tell a lie, the Sun Crusher was an independent project. The main Remnant had nothing to do with it.
Hmm. Possibly. But I think it was mostly warlords and splinter factions withing the remnant (as in in moffs on the council doing it mostly on their own or with a few others but most of the council and pelleaon not knowing about it).
Yeah, definitely not a single "faction" in the national sense. Just a collection of territories with a common Imperial culture. I called the Sun Crusher an independent project because it was the work of a single design team in the Maw installation. They hadn't had contact with the rest of the Empire since the prototype of the first Death Star was done.
To be fair, isn't some of this passing into increasingly obscure Star Wars lore territory? Like I would never expect your average casual Star Wars fan to know about any of this (I certainly didn't and I pay attention to more than most). I'm not saying I agree with it, but I think part of the reason why Disney chopped a lot of the EU was because it was too much hassle to manage it all (or get the copyright for it).
Oh, absolutely. It's super obscure stuff. And there was no way in hell Disney would have been to use any of it and still tell their own story. The timeline is just too clogged up in the books. And the story starts getting a little stupid later on. I quit reading halfway through the Yuuhzan Vong war when Anakin Solo turns into literal avatar of the force, goes super saiyan, and wipes out an entire legion of force-immune aliens by himself. My brain just clicked off at that point.
You missed luke using the light side version of force lightning at the end of that war then. Also Ben Skywalker was born during that war (Luke and Mara Jades son). Apparently Anakin Solo used it when he went super saiyen as well. It's called electric judgment. And green/yellow instead of blue/white. Though it does explain why I find the Disney movies so subpar. Because for me it has all been done. To people who did not read much of the EU it is probably new. Like Luke's projection on another planet. I just went "meh. He can use projection to hide entire fleets and space stations".
Well we never did find out who found Luke's/anakin's lightsaber (the blue blade one that Rey used). Presumably lukes hand he lost was still with it. So sometime between 5 and 6 the empire retrieves the hand and go from there.