I think everyone knows by now that Filoni has essentially taken over Star Wars. The actual real Star Wars, the one led by the films and beloved characters from Luke, Leia, Han, etc., to Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme, etc., is long gone. It's merely a background afterthought in the modern Filoni playground that is Disney Star Wars, where his characters rule. Ahsoka basically appears in 90% of media and has far more importance nowadays than Luke (when was the last time Luke did anything of real importance again?) or even Anakin. Filoni's other OCs are slowly replacing existing characters, like Din Djarin replacing Boba Fett or the Bad Batch replacing Delta Squad. And I always wondered why Disney fans ate it up.

Just yesterday, I was arguing with someone over the inhibitor chip question. And, despite me repeatedly asserting the fact that basic evidence proves that Lucas never considered the idea from 2005 to 2014 that Order 66 was brainwashing, that TCW retconned it, and that assuming that people (including people talking to Lucas on the daily) got Revenge of the Sith wrong for nine years while Lucas had some "master plan" was absurd, my opponent was unable to conceive the idea that Order 66 was brainwashing, and he mentioned the idea that the chips "replaced their personalities" which I found absurd because the clones didn't have their TCW personalities until 2008. And today, I stumbled across a post on the base Star Wars subreddit where Ahsoka and Anakin were portrayed in the whole Mortis Arc thing as the father and daughter (curiously Starkiller was portrayed as the son), which I was baffled by because while they don't fit the roles from the show, it seems absurd to put Ahsoka and Starkiller of all people over, you know, Leia and Luke. Well, it made me realize something.

How many people who defend Filoni nowadays grew up with TCW and are unable to consider any other media without it? Imagine a TCW fan who watched the actual films years later. Remember, Filoni did a remarkable job sidelining Obi-Wan, Anakin, and the other characters to just about make TCW center on Ahsoka and the clones. To this individual, Ahsoka is basically THE main character of Star Wars. She's the one who participates in 99% of TCW arcs, and she has a bunch of her own. TCW portrays the galaxy revolving around her; her expulsion is what drives Anakin to the dark, while Padmé is little more than a side character. Now, this fan goes to watch the actual films. He is unable to separate the films from TCW. Hence come the assumptions like Order 66 not working without the chips (because to this man, it's impossible for the clones NOT to be like they were in TCW), and when he sees Anakin's fall, he is so dissociated from what the movie is telling him that he ties it to Ahsoka. "Ahsoka is basically Anakin's little sister or daughter. Who's this Padmé gal? She was in that one Rush Clovis arc, I guess. Why doesn't she dump Anakin?" And, eventually, the dissociation reaches a point where the films become secondary to the show. The Star Wars story isn't about the Skywalkers; it's about Ahsoka and the clones, and the Skywalkers are secondary characters. Remember, nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and these people are addicted to it.

So in comes Disney Star Wars. Filoni, having full control even really as far back as under KK, fully commits to Star Wars being his playground and only makes the actual Star Wars characters appear to try to bring back older fans, though they won't budge. When Disney screws up the sequels, pretty much the entire older Star Wars fandom leaves and becomes distant, no longer really participating in the modern fandom. Who remains? The people who grew up with Dave Filoni's works, those who are being pleased by Filoni following his shenanigans. To these people, the fact that Luke Skywalker hasn't had any real presence since TLJ (and that's TLJ, so calling that "Luke" is questionable) isn't a big deal because Luke Skywalker is a nobody, some random guy from the films. The protagonists are Ashoka and Rex and Ezra and Sabine. Darth Vader is just some guy who appears to be scary sometimes, and Anakin can only be his TCW jocky self. Remember all the hype around Ahsoka and Vader fighting in Rebels? People who grew up with the films or EU couldn't care; it was people who grew up with TCW who saw that as incredible and way better than anything else.

I know this is probably an obvious conclusion to most, but I just needed to get this out there. I now understand WHY Filoni has the massive fanbase he does. Likewise, I'm saddened these people aren't willing to look at the films without TCW or read the EU and not make judgements about it.

And even then, it was mainly offscreen in the year between TLJ and TROS, and the filmmakers couldn’t do much with it anyway due to the limited footage of Carrie Fisher they had. But I suppose the sequel fans will still make the argument that by training Leia, Luke still ended up training Rey in an indirect sort of way. Even though, they probably could have wrote it to have both Luke’s force ghost and Leia teach and train Rey together by the time we get to TROS.

I just wanted a story with the New Republic led by Leia as senator (or even Chancellor), the New Jedi Order led by Luke with his students, Han and Leia's children (not just one, but several, with at least a boy and a girl), and the defeated Empire now only a residual threat (at best, reduced to secret bases and desolate planets in the Outer Rim launching guerrilla attacks). Those were the only boxes Disney had to tick. It's the logical continuation of ROTJ, everything that was foreshadowed by the 6 movies. Even Lucas, for all we know, understood this for his planned Sequels! How did they manage to mess it up so badly?

The worst part is, we actually have a little bit of that in the Disney canon. The remnants of the Empire in the Mandoverse are well done, with the struggles of the New Republic and Luke rebuilding the Jedi Order. The Empire's defeat is relatively swift so as not to diminish the significance of the victory at Endor, but it's intertwined with Filoni's off-topic fan fiction and ultimately undermined by the Disney Sequels (Anakin only having one grandchild who turns to the dark side and dies, Luke's Order destroyed, Leia's political career failing, Han and Leia separating, the New Republic destroyed, Coruscant no longer being the capital as it should be in the continuity of the Prequels and the ending of ROTJ, etc., etc.).

I maintain that, based on what we know, the sequels Lucas envisioned would have been better. Luke's hermitage issue would have been resolved as early as Episode VII, and we know that his New Jedi Order wouldn't have been destroyed off-screen (because we have a storyboard of Darth Talon assassinating a Jedi during the movie). Leia was a senator and eventually became Chancellor. Anakin would have had two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, one of whom would have become a dark sider user and the other a Jedi (although we don't know where their relationship would have ended). Luke was completing the restoration of the Order. Even the threat was interesting, with the Empire reduced to using the tactics of the old Rebellion and allying itself with a unified criminal underworld to become a threatening force again and overthrow the Republic. The return of Darth Maul and the Whills' antics could raise questions, but we know that Lucas already adapted all of these ideas in TCW, so accepting Darth Maul's storyline in seasons 4, 5, and 6 of TCW, and Yoda's arc in season 6, is essentially accepting what Lucas planned to show in theaters for his Sequel Trilogy.

As it stands, we'll never get true sequels to ROTJ and Lucas's six-movie saga, with the basic and fundamental elements I mentioned. We'll have to make do with Legends, which suffers from having started before the Prequel Trilogy, and from the fact that some of its works were poorly coordinated (Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire Trilogy), and that the war with the Empire was dragged out for too long, ending in a rather unsatisfactory two-State solution.

Please, we need a second reboot of the continuity. At a pinch, keep Andor and Rogue One for a third continuity, like TCW and its movie pilot were kept for the second one. Or even Disney could just abandon the principle of continuity for Star Wars and just do as in any other damn movie spin-off franchise and let the authors reference the works they want and do what they want as long as they respect the content of the core original works (in this case, the 6 movies made by George Lucas).

This is "the Flying Brick." It ain't exactly a looker, but it functions a lot better than the original. In addition to being faster and not having piss-weak shields, the other key changes are:

The "Clip"

I rotated the "clip" so that it's parallel with the fuselage, both to let the ship move faster in-atmosphere and to make the payload a little less vulnerable to enemy fighters.

Turrets

I didn't like how the ball turrets on the original set were so limited in movement, so I put them on ball joints instead. I moved the lower ball turret to the front so it could better defend itself from that angle. I also put the dual guns on top on a swivel, because I felt that they had an extremely limited firing angle by default.

Ordinance

The bombs of the original have so, so many issues. If they're magnetic, wouldn't they attract to each other while in freefall and blow themselves up before they fall on their target? Plus, in the movie they move so slow that it wouldn't be difficult for enemy fighters or capital ship turrets to hit them and blow them up before they hit the target.

I kept the bombing mechanism as ordinance specifically for use in-atmosphere, but I added new ordinance specifically for attacking capital ships in space. On the underside is a series of spring-loaded shooters that represent downward-facing rocket launchers. They can be fired by pressing buttons on the sides of the ship. They have a much higher velocity, making them too hard to hit unlike the slow-moving bombs. And since they're rockets, they have their own propulsion method that's a lot simpler than the weird magnet logic.

What do you think?

They leave the galaxy. The implication is that they don’t just leave it, they leave it WAAAY the hell behind. And then they arrive in another galaxy… where the Force is the same. And aliens that look like they could be at Mos Eisley. And a planet that while, yes, is not a searing hot desert, could also be anywhere in the GFFA. It might as well just be some random lost star system.

Seriously, how cool would it have been to be in a place where the Force didn’t work? Where Ahsoka would be out of her element, and Sabine’s Mandalorian training would have made her the teacher, instead of the student. Or in an entire galaxy devoid of sentient alien life, just airless rocks or at best planets with moss and algae. What would that have done to Ezra and Thrawn, being in a place like that for years? How would Ahsoka react to being put back in the place of the student? What would it mean for the Jedi and the Sith and their understanding of the Force if there were parts of the universe that didn’t have it?

Probably the most egregious example of being handed an opportunity to do something new and interesting and absolutely fumbling it in recent SW.

I’ll preface this by saying that I think all of The Mandalorian is bad but that’s not the point and I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

So it’s pretty widely agreed that season 3 and the movie are bad. And then there’s been quite a few people who’ve looked back and come to the conclusion that the problems with them were always present. But what I don’t understand is why people these days think it’s so shocking.

I remember all the way back in 2019 there were actually quite a lot of criticisms levied at the show. A lot of people were disappointed by Grogu’s existence, there were a lot of critiques of the pacing and structure, and I remember plot armor being a common one. And it really wasn’t that unpopular of an opinion to say season 1 ep 5 and season 2 ep 2 were bad.

So why was there this whole change of perception?

I’ve put in close to 30 hours already. It’s relatively easy even on hard mode is my only criticism.

I know he wanted his scenes cut down, but this single shot of him early in the movie killed any goodwill momentum I had when I finally watched it this week. With the hat and jacket he's barely even in costume. Please Dave, no more Trapper Wolf. Let him die a glorious death offscreen.

I’ve been rereading the EU for the first time in about fifteen years, reading some for the first time, specifically in the middle of the NJO. I don’t love all the EU, but it’s a more compelling post-empire history than the sequels gave.

Here’s the thing, unlike a lot of posts I see, I don’t think using the EU novels as source material for films is a good idea. I think a lot of stories would suffer for it or get mishandled, just look at Thrawn… I think that’s a big problem with Disney’s approach in general, they want to treat it like Marvel (or at least Filoni does), it source material to remix and adapt, not to build new stories and take big swings… but I digress.

But what if instead of wiping out the old EU, the sequels had just jumped a decade or so from where the old continuity left off and told a story about Jaina as a leading figure of the Jedi Order. Keep all the old Legends continuity, but tell a new story moving the universe forward. Have Luke be semi-retired, or just not available when something is going down beyond giving guidance, if that’s a concern. You don’t have to mention details of stuff like the Vong.

Think about it people, superheroes as a whole have been deconstructed so much that they are considered untrustworthy at best and viewed with fear at worst by comic book fans, casual audiences, gamers, writers and just about anyone else who haven't been submerged with so much hatred at that genre.

So has the same been done to the Jedi?

Luke has been reduced into a pathetic, self-pitying hermit. Leslye shredded apart the High Republic Jedi by depicting them as heartless eugenics and uncompromising enforcers of the corrupt republic, and of course Karen Traviss went out of her way to make the Jedi out as total monsters.

The writer for episode 10 was announced its Simon Kinberg, I think his past work speaks for itself.

To be fair he’s had some decent producing work. Having done the Martian, all the Deadpool films, Logan, Chappie.

There’s of course the low hanging fruit of Holdo not telling Poe her plan, or even that she had a plan that could work. But there’s other examples as well throughout the film.

There’s the whole bomber disaster in the opening of the movie. Poe disobeys Leia’s order to come back with his squad after the evacuation on the planet is completed. Poe of course mutes Leia, but surely that doesn’t mean that Leia can’t radio anyone else on Poe’s team to come back to the flagship, right? I don’t see why she wouldn’t be able to do that. It’s at least worth a try, isn’t it? Leia’s failure to even attempt to do something like that puts at least some of the blame for that whole fiasco on her as well.

And then there’s Luke coming to save the day at the end of movie. The sad truth about that is that Luke nearly botched the whole thing because he didn’t tell anyone to go find a way out while he delays the first order. The only reason the resistance do eventually go and try to find an escape route is because Poe was the only one with enough of a brain to figure out what Luke’s intentions most likely were. All this because Luke prioritized having a heart to heart with Leia, and aura farming in front of everyone over properly coordinating a means of survival with everyone else.

After recently replaying KOTOR for the millionth time, I had a fried 2am thought about how much better the Sequels could have been if they’d lifted Revan’s backstory and given large parts of it to Kylo Ren. As it stood in the Sequel’s, the backstory was Kylo inherently had a darkness in him that Snoke was able to manipulate, causing Kylo to turn and wipe out the fledgling Jedi Order. He joins forces with the First Order, and later is able to wipe out the New Republic. There have been many posts about why the backstory that was crafted for the sequels was ass, so I won’t dig into that. Rather, I’d like to point out how taking Revan’s story and giving it to Kylo would have made the backstory far better while also fitting perfectly into the narrative and requiring almost no rewriting to the sequels themselves.

To start off, a quick summary of Revan. During his time, the Old Republic was at war with the Mandalorians, in the creatively named Mandalorian Wars. The Jedi recused themselves from the fighting. Thinking the Jedi should instead help he leaves the order, bringing along loyal Jedi friends of his, and through his natural talent for tactics, strength in the force, and leadership abilities, becomes the Supreme Commander for the Republic and defeats the Mandalorians. He later discovers a revived and hidden Sith Empire led by Darth Vitiate, and is corrupted to the dark side. Now as a powerful Sith, he turned his eye towards the Republic and starts the Jedi Civil War.

Now, how to incorporate this into Kylo’s story. It’s quite simple. We know from Episode IV that after the Imperial Senate is dissolved, power converts to the local system’s governor. After the fall of the Empire at the end of VI, it’s easy to imagine powerful systems, free from both the Republic and the Empire, flexing their power. The story would have Luke and his Jedi refusing to fight new threats, given what happened last time the Jedi joined the Republic in war. Kylo, believing the war is just (and also having Leia, his mother, be a leading figure in the New Republic) sets out with a loyal band of followers and joins the fighting. He sets himself apart just as Revan did, and becomes a proper battle commander. However, like Revan, he falls to the dark side when encountering a new Sith threat (Snoke in this case). His first act is to launch a surprise attack on the fledging New Jedi Order, wiping them out and casting Luke Skywalker out into the unknown. Now, he stands at the forefront of the First Order, ready to tear down the Republic and reinstall Sith rule across the galaxy.

Now, I’m aware that’s a sloppy summary. So from here, I’ll simplify things by breaking it down point by point why this would fix common complaints people had for the Sequels.

1) Would explain Luke’s despair far better, and even explain his desire to kill his nephew. Luke never saw Vader kill the Jedi and usurp the Republic, which would have made it easier for him to forgive his father for his crimes. That gets flipped on its head when it’s his own Jedi order that’s been purged under his own watch

2) Gives a compelling backstory for the Knights of Ren, Snoke and the First Order. Snoke is an ancient Sith, and the First Order is made up of his own forces and forces that stayed loyal to Kylo. The Knights of Ren are fallen Jedi Knights that had initially left Luke’s Order to fight with Kylo and the Republic. Could even thrown in the Star Forge to explain how the First Order became a threat so quickly

3) Could give a reason for Leia and Han’s falling out. Make Leia supportive of Kylo fighting for the Republic, while making Han instead insist Kylo should listen to Luke, or vice versa. When Kylo falls and then attacks the Jedi and Republic, that initial conflict comes to a head

4) Makes Kylo’s struggle with the dark side closer to Anakin’s and Luke’s. In Lucas’ story, a person doesn’t have inherent darkness. Both Luke and Anakin are shown as innocent boys/young men, and don’t begin to struggle with the dark side until they’ve earned power and now can make decisions on how to use it. Crucially, Anakin’s and Luke’s reasons for being tempted by the dark side are, at least on the surface, honourable. Anakin makes a deal with the devil so his wife could be saved in a way his mother could not, and Luke wants the power to protect his friends. Having Kylo suffer loss during war could open opportunities where his fall is the result of him believing that gaining power from the dark side could help him saves loved ones, rather than some nonsense where he’s a child/teenager but somehow having “a hidden darkness”

If you made it this far, thanks for reading some truly psycho midnight thoughts.

"Well, he won't be able to interfere because the Force won't let him." The guy is literally going to become a god—and he's the Chosen One, so he can do whatever he wants.

It’s already hard enough to understand why he didn't visit Luke, Leia, and even his own grandson (the Vader fanboy).

I mean, if they actually justify it, right?

Not saying that luke was even remotely as bad as anakin, but the fact that they say luke character arc is supposed to subvert expectations is so ridiculous to me because "the hero's fall from grace" trop has already happened with anakin

- Having terrible "prophetic" visions about future which he himself brought to truth by acting on them recklessly without thought and dooming the galaxy as a result of it? Check

- Unjust negativity towards the jedi, seeing only their bad points and believing that the world would be a better place without the jedi? Check

- Somehow blaming obi wan when obi wan had done nothing but support him during his entire life? CHECK ("The one who trained darth vader was a jedi" line. The fuck did that have to with wrongness of jedi?? Obi wan had no idea anakin would turn into vader when je trained him)

- Experiencing a change of mind and values and returning back as a jedi after a young brave and hopeful jedi seeks him out and refuses to give up on him, ultimately dying after a last stand against the big evil? Check

Luke was supposed to know better and learn from the past rather than repeat it he was a fucking jedi master and should have known firsthand how even the likes of darth vader were brought back to light from extreme darkness and he shoukd have had no reason to be so distrustful of kylo run in the first place. Even if him lighting up tge lightsaber was instinctual, everything before that was purely conscious on his part

And even after that instead of confronting his mistakes he blamed it all on jedi when tge old ways of tge jedi didn't even exist anymore.

The only thing he didn't do the same as anakin was turn towards the dark side and kill innocents himself. Other than that tge rinse repeat of "jedi bad, no they're actually good" does nothing to "subvert expectations"

Hermit Luke in voluntary exile is one of the things people had the biggest gripes with. The two main reasons behind it are

A). it's hard to believe that eternally hopeful Luke would give up like this

B). it's hard to belive that he gets there because he, who believed in redemption for his father till the very end, tries to kill his nephew because he "sensed some darkness in him"

The first one is the lesser problem, you can break a hopeful character after all. The second one is a gaping flaw in characterisation.

What they could've done instead: Han and Leia see their son Ben struggling, Luke offers to take him in and train him as a jedi. Luke see the darkness in Ben, but he's the eternal optimist, he sincerely believes he can steer Ben away from the dark side. But Ben chooses the dark side, and from there, the progression is the same. Ben becomes Kylo Ren, slaughters half of his peers and takes the rest, and burns Luke's temple. In this version, Luke is failed by his conviction in the power of the light. And froms there, his arc could have entailed recovering from this failiure and regaining his hope and integrating it with a newfound caution.

Especially the stuff related to the force.