Meedyah Morsels #187.
So!!! Now that the sequel trilogy is all out, and we're about to embark on a no-movies all-TV era of Star Wars for the next coupla years, I think it's finally time to do a proper update/sequel to "I Love Star Wars".
Star Wars: A New Hope
My old attitude was "Star Wars, Superman, Incredible Hulk, I never stood a chance of not being nerdy", but then....by that logic, there should have been no jock bullies of my generation, and there were plenty, so I just would have been nerdy about something else.
Nerdy is something you just are.
Guess without Star Wars, I just would have read more.
Eh...I plowed through 100 books one summer, I read plenty too.
Anyway, I'm glad us gen-x nerds had Star Wars.
In hindsight, it was the first big step towards this normalized Marvel/DC/Game Of Thrones/Dr Who world we have now.
Thank you, George Lucas.
Any gripes about Jar-Jar, midi-chlorians, or re-edits pale to vanished in the face of what you really did for us.
The Empire Strikes Back
I seem to recall they let us out the back fire exit so no one would blab "Luke, I am your father", to the new batch coming in.
Smart move.
Wish they did that these days for the big Marvel flicks.
Course, there's the internet now, so there's really nothing physical you can do anymore.
Except go internet blind the week of release.
Return Of The Jedi
Y'know who was actually more broken-hearted than all us kids that we weren't getting a fourth one in 1986?
Kenner.
Oh, man, did they milk every last drop out of this one.
They even had plans to do their own action figure Expanded Universe to try to keep the dead horse alive.
Nope, Transformers, He-Man, Thundercats, Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles all that came along instead.
BUT, Transformers and He-Man learned an important lesson from Star Wars.
Story gives the product context.
Put a C-3PO action figure out with no movie to go with him, he's just a golden robot guy.
Have the movie to go with him, he's C-3PO, a character the kids all love, and they have to have him.
Even if you HATE him, you have to have him to interact with your Luke, Han, & Leia.
So, that's why all the toys since then have a show and/or comic book that goes with them to give them a backstory.
That's why video games all have elaborate backstories now.
And Pokemon has all of it.
Games, toys, movies, the whole shmeel.
Pokemon perfected that shit.
It all came from toy companies learning from Star Wars.
Marvel got it intuitively.
They were in the character story business.
Especially since they DID the goddamned cartoons and comics for Transformers and GI Joe.
And they DID the Star Wars comic!
They were like "why are we making money for these other guys, when our characters and the universe they live in is a million times better?".
They made toys of the comic characters, they had some cheesey TV shows, but they just weren't getting the non-nerd kids to read the goddamned books to give a shit about the toys and t-shirts.
They knew they needed to penetrate into movies like Superman and Batman.
But the Hollywood suits were a bunch of coke-sniffing idiots who had no vision.
Meanwhile, Disney understood the formula on paper, they just needed their own Star Wars, but all their attempts were flops until they actually bought Star Wars.
And Marvel movies didn't get traction until Blade, then X-Men, then Spider-Man.
Then they got bought by Disney.
So, Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, they've kinda been circling each other like the last Cheerios floating in the bowl for decades.
It was kind of inevitable.
Hell, maybe in my lifetime, Patton Oswalt's idea of using the reality stone to cross Marvel and Star Wars will finally happen.
Anyway, that's me finally addressing the corporate beast the franchise both became, and fed.
The Expanded Universe
So, this kept the universe alive in the minds of fans in that drought between Jedi and Phantom.
I talked about it a bunch more here.
Short version, Disney de-canonized all of this, and only acknowledges the new post-2012 stuff.
BUT, Thrawn ended up on "Rebels", Emperor's return in TROS is straight out of "Dark Empire", and holocrons, Sith witches from Dathomir, and Kaibur crystals all ended up in "Clone Wars", and "Rebels". And then Ahsoka from "Clone Wars", and "Rebels", does a voice cameo in TROS.
So, it's not like this shit's exactly been erased.
They're still shamelessly cribbing from it.
Oh, and as said above, if the novels hadn't done it, Kenner was more than glad to step in, and continue the story their own selves.
We would have gotten a story continuation Hell or high water.
The Special Editions,
DVD editions,
and blu-ray editions.
*Sigh* I guess I just have to live with these final edits.
They're what plays on TV now.
The Vader "noooo!!", makes me cringe, but I can let it slide.
Especially where my edition doesn't have it, so I always have that.
Phantom Menace retroactively put CG Yoda in place of crappy puppet Yoda.
WTF were they thinking making a new puppet Yoda that didn't look like Empire puppet Yoda?
At least CG Yoda looks like Empire Yoda.
As does TLJ puppet Yoda.
So, some improvements are better than others.
But I'm still keeping my DVD editions.
The prequels-
The Phantom Menace
Attack Of The Clones
Revenge Of The Sith
I re-reviewed them here.
And I re-re-reviewed TPM on its 20th anniversary here.
And Red Letter Media can go take a flying fuck off a rolling donut these days.
They went from making good clear arguments in their prequel ones, to now, they started off their TROS review by reading positive reviews in a childish sarcasm voice.
Really?
Literal playground shit?
Well, they clearly stopped giving a fuck.
Must be nice to get that sweet Patreon check no matter what you do.
But I'd soured on them well before that.
They got on the anti-SJW bandwagon, and Rich Evans is an Armored Skeptic fan, even after the fucker has spouted white nationalist talking points.
So, yeah, I'm back on the prequels, and off of RLM.
If you told me 10 years ago that would be the case, I'd've called you crazy.
Star Wars: Clone Wars
De-canonized, but "THE Clone Wars", and "Rebels", cherry-pick from it.
Still a fun watch.
The Clone Wars, and Rebels
As mentioned above in the EU entry, these are canon, and help make other stuff canon.
Good stuff.
I still haven't dug into Clone Wars deep enough.
I've seen chunks of it.
I followed Rebels start to finish.
The sequels-
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
The Rise Of Skywalker
Non-spoiler reviews-
Spoiler reviews-
So, what are we gonna call these trilogies now?
The original trilogy used to just be "The Star Wars Trilogy", or "The Star Wars Saga".
But, then the prequels came along, and it was "The Prequel Trilogy", and "The Original/Classic Trilogy".
Now, we're calling them "the prequels", "the originals", and "the sequels".
But...the originals are sequels in relation to the prequels.
And the originals are prequels in relation to the sequels.
And it's only gonna get more convoluted as more stuff comes out.
Disney has them by era, and the eras they've picked are "Age Of Republic", "Age Of Rebellion", "Age Of Resistance".
Boil that down to just "Republic, Rebellion, Resistance", I think that works pretty well.
BUT, then where do "Rogue One", and "Solo", go?
They happen in the Rebellion era.
I'm gonna go with "Anakin trilogy", "Luke trilogy", "Rey trilogy".
And "Anthology", for the spinoffs and Disney+ shows.
I explain my reasoning in the next entry...
The anthology movies-
Rogue One
Solo
Non-spoiler reviews-
Spoiler reviews-
Ewan McGregor now admits they came this >< close to pulling the trigger on Obi-Wan as the third one of this trilogy.
Now it's a TV show.
So, if the "____A Star Wars Story", movies do their own thing in their own little corner of the universe, and the TV shows do their own thing in their own little corner of the universe, and Obi-Wan even started out as an "____A Star Wars Story", movie, then...to my way of thinking, all the shows may as well have "____A Star Wars Story", slapped on, and I'm lumping it all together in the original title "Anthology".
And that scrapes up the animated shows too.
The Mandalorian
Review.
OR "The Mandalorian: A Star Wars Story". ;-)
Kathleen Kennedy green-lit this, so now the toxic fanboys don't know what the fuck to do with themselves.
I've got some suggestions, and they all involve dick.
And, we're all up to date now.
I forgive George Lucas, and defend Kathleen Kennedy's choices.
For the most part.
Her firing of directors caused some messes.
But they needed firing.
But she should have chosen better in the first place.
But, their resumes were good.
You'd have to have the goddamned force to see some of it coming.
Maybe Lucas wanting control by directing all three prequels wasn't paranoid after all.
Star Wars is an unwieldy franchise, and an impossible fandom, I don't envy anyone who gets stuck running it.
"Dave Filoni!! Dave Filoni!!".
Do you want Filoni cuz he makes good stuff, or do you want him because he has a pecker?
"He worked with Lucas! He's his hand-picked successor!".
Well, so's Kathleen Kennedy.
Lucas picked her.
You go down the rabbit hole, and the arguments cancel out.
And I say this as a guy who digs Filoni.
But I don't want the burden of "boss of Star Wars", on his shoulders.
Let him be creative.
The business bullshit would crush him.
Let Kennedy handle that crap.
That's what she's good at.
Let Filoni be the Stan Lee.
And, that's where Star Wars is at, and where I'm at in 2020.
I might do another one of these when the movies start coming out again, whatever they're going to be.
See you then!
Previously with MM-
The Mandalorian (2019) (MM #186)
Thursday, January 2, 2020
I Still Love Star Wars
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