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Your Episode 8 Nooooooooooo List


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The biggest continuity issue is Leia remembering Padme.

 

Arguably. But I'm pretty sure Driver wasn't about to start advocating for Padme to live.

 

 

Not only does it rob Obi-Wan of any agency, it's simply not what was told to us before and it feels wrong.

 

When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.

 

That's pretty much exactly what happened in the Prequels. Anakin was already a great pilot before Obi-Wan met him, as shown in detail with the pod race. He was incredibly strong with the Force, as shown in detail through the midichlorian count (which Obi-Wan was the first to see), and several other scenes where Anakin is said to have unprecedented Force talent. And Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train him as a Jedi, against the wishes of Yoda, and with only reluctant acceptance of the Jedi Council who had already rejected Anakin for training.

 

You may not like it, but you can't say that Lucas wrote something that was easy to see coming. He took your expectations, and went in a different direction.

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The biggest continuity issue is Leia remembering Padme.

I just assumed Mrs. Organa died early and that's who she remembered.

 

George has said they're referring to Padme. Also, Breha Organa is supposed to have died during ANH. I think it's dumb, but I'm not in charge.

 

 

 

The biggest continuity issue is Leia remembering Padme.

 

Arguably. But I'm pretty sure Driver wasn't about to start advocating for Padme to live.

 

 

She could have had the babies at the end of the second movie (unbeknownst to Anakin) and died in the third movie (preferably after confronting Anakin and doing something awesome, like rebelling against the Empire).

 

The older I get, the angrier I get over Padme's death.

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The biggest continuity issue is Leia remembering Padme.

I just assumed Mrs. Organa died early and that's who she remembered.

 

Luke wouldn't have specified "Your REAL mother" if he meant Mrs. Organa.

 

 

 

The biggest continuity issue is Leia remembering Padme.

 

Arguably. But I'm pretty sure Driver wasn't about to start advocating for Padme to live.

 

 

 

Not only does it rob Obi-Wan of any agency, it's simply not what was told to us before and it feels wrong.

 

When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.

 

That's pretty much exactly what happened in the Prequels. Anakin was already a great pilot before Obi-Wan met him, as shown in detail with the pod race. He was incredibly strong with the Force, as shown in detail through the midichlorian count (which Obi-Wan was the first to see), and several other scenes where Anakin is said to have unprecedented Force talent. And Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train him as a Jedi, against the wishes of Yoda, and with only reluctant acceptance of the Jedi Council who had already rejected Anakin for training.

 

You may not like it, but you can't say that Lucas wrote something that was easy to see coming. He took your expectations, and went in a different direction.

Okay-- fair enough. You want to use my word choices against me-- true, what he decided to do was unexpected. But that's not my point, and you know it. I was talking about Obi-wans ANH dialog, not the ROTJ bit. And yes, "a certain point of view" gives George a million miles of leeway do play loose with things.

 

But my point was, knowing the ending of the PT was not a factor in how well its story was told or received.

 

Also, you have to acknowledge that for a lot of people, a LOT OF PEOPLE, going 20 years as fans of the OT and wondering about Anakin Skywalker and seeing Darth Vader as a badass-- getting an 8 year old with terrible dialog was never going to be satisfying.

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As I've mentioned elsewhere, A New Hope was part of a different story arc than the Star Wars that was released in '77. Lucas was loathe to admit this, but (as one example) Vader was not Luke's father in the screenplays of the mid 70s. Lucas was deeply unsure about what he wanted to do with the original Star Wars because its success in those days was far from assured. In light of this, I'm less critical of continuity errors between ANH and the other films. He committed many worse writing and film making sins than this.

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That's always been clear to be given the ages of Obi-Wan and Anakin. It seemed like a LOT more than just 20 years had passed since the end of the clone wars.

 

Alec Guinness was only 61-62 when A New Hope was filming. With the timeline of the Prequels, Ben Kenobi was 57-years-old when he died.

 

Quite plausible given that he lived in a harsh environment for 20 years. Never could figure out why anyone had a problem with this.

 

Now Sebastian Shaw in Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, was 76! That's been a continuity error since Return of the Jedi was released and has always bothered me. Darth Vader, the former young pupil of Ben Kenobi, should never have been played by an actor 9 years older than Alec Guinness. Even being generous, he would have needed to father Luke and Leia in his late-40s before turning to the Dark Side.

 

Anakin being in his 20s (early 30s if you want to stretch it) at the time of his turn to the Dark Side and the birth of the twins was the correct approximate age from all dialogue about Anakin found in the Original Trilogy. Only the unveiling scene in Return of the Jedi runs counter to this.

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The problem came from deciding to end on the birth of Luke and Leia. Had they been born in episode 2, or between 2 and 3, a lot more leeway could have been bought.

 

In what sense? The 20 year clock to the beginning of A New Hope starts as soon as the twins are born. I suppose that solves the problem of Leia remembering her mother (though in the end, that's technically not a continuity error, just something that's tough to believe).

 

But it brings the final meeting between Obi-Wan and Anakin (when Anakin was but the learner) even closer to the events of A New Hope.

 

 

I think people have a problem with it because of Ewan's age.

 

Ewan didn't look like he could pass for 37?

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Did JJ write a synopsis for the entire trilogy? I assume the basic storyline is already written, but each film will get the directors touch as far as the details go.

 

I'm just thinking that the Rey/Luke connection is a red herring. That she isn't a Skywalker, but could be connected another way. I like the theory that Rey was a very young trainee under Luke and Kylo Ren couldn't kill her, so he dumped her on Jakku figuring she'd never be heard from again. Maybe she's connected another way. Maybe Padme's death was faked to keep Anakin from looking for her and she remarried, had another kid, and Rey is her granddaughter. A silly theory, but no worse than her being a clone or someone reincarnated. I just don't want her to be Luke's kid.

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The problem came from deciding to end on the birth of Luke and Leia. Had they been born in episode 2, or between 2 and 3, a lot more leeway could have been bought.

 

In what sense? The 20 year clock to the beginning of A New Hope starts as soon as the twins are born. I suppose that solves the problem of Leia remembering her mother (though in the end, that's technically not a continuity error, just something that's tough to believe).

 

But it brings the final meeting between Obi-Wan and Anakin (when Anakin was but the learner) even closer to the events of A New Hope.

 

 

 

In the sense that there was more story to be mined. Pretty much everything we wanted to see came in the second half of ROTS. It was a trilogy of filler. I wanted to see Obi-Wan and Padme on the run with Anakin chasing them down. I wanted to see Anakin be Vader before the mask and hunting down Jedi like we were told he did, not just a switch-flip for the clone troopers. In that it always felt like more than 20 years since the Clone Wars ended given that people had forgotten about the Jedi. Lots tiny of little continuity not-errors, but also not-confirmation of things had been given more space to work with. Having the twins born and in hiding would give Padme and Anakin room to have a better more dramatic finish with gravitas, it allows for the OT to be set up more.

 

There were three big plot points to the PT as established by the OT:

 

1. Anakin falls to the darkside

2. Obi-Wan tries to bring him back to good, but fails

3. The twins are born

 

When you have three movies to work with, and you can't even hit your own set ups, you're doing something wrong.

 

Again-- I get that you're one of the seven people who liked the prequels, but I had 20 years worth of waiting and ideas of what would be cool and got none of it. That's not to say I have a closed mind and wouldn't have liked anything. I've had just as many years to think about what I'd want a post OT story to be-- and TFA wasn't close to what I imagined, but I was still plenty happy with it. Had the PT been halfway decent it could flub all the continuity it wanted. But it sucked. And so every tiny little detail that's off, or requires "a certain point of view" just becomes another ***** in the armor.

Did JJ write a synopsis for the entire trilogy? I assume the basic storyline is already written, but each film will get the directors touch as far as the details go.

 

I'm just thinking that the Rey/Luke connection is a red herring. That she isn't a Skywalker, but could be connected another way. I like the theory that Rey was a very young trainee under Luke and Kylo Ren couldn't kill her, so he dumped her on Jakku figuring she'd never be heard from again. Maybe she's connected another way. Maybe Padme's death was faked to keep Anakin from looking for her and she remarried, had another kid, and Rey is her granddaughter. A silly theory, but no worse than her being a clone or someone reincarnated. I just don't want her to be Luke's kid.

Lucasfilm has a brain trust of sorts-- Kennedy, Kasdan, Kinberg, and the writer/directors of the saga episodes. They beat together a very rough idea of what they wanted, but left each film to its own writer/director to craft. This was after Michael Arndt got the ball rolling with his draft.

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In the sense that there was more story to be mined. Pretty much everything we wanted to see came in the second half of ROTS. It was a trilogy of filler.

 

The story was told completely. And there was less filler than you think. When you break things down, most every scene in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith build to the dark place where the trilogy ends. The Phantom Menace exists somewhat separate from the other two as its own story to show what came before and what was lost. The Republic and Jedi still in their prime. Brightly colored with a simple classic origin story. It's adds the least to the overall plot, but it is far from filler. Its has a definite purpose while the seeds of the downfall are laid.

 

I understand the Prequels aren't for everyone. And I also realize there are some big flaws that should have been fixed long before we saw them. But I also believe that I understand what Lucas was trying to achieve in creating them the way that he did, and I appreciate a lot of the ideas that he put into it. They're not like other movies. They're also more like the Original Trilogy than people realize. The Phantom Menace, for example, evokes A New Hope more than any other film in the series for me. More than The Force Awakens, which copied so many of its plot points and so desperately wanted to be A New Hope.

 

It's not like I didn't have my own expectations for the Prequels. I basically spent the entirety of my teenage years waiting for them to come out. But perhaps I was just in a better mindset to accept them as they were. To be cool with young Anakin as a legit direction to go and not fixate for a decade on Jar Jar stepping in poop like so many people have.

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You seem to think that I somehow don't understand what Lucas up to with the prequels, and you keep trying to explain it like I am missing something.

 

I get what he wanted to do and I firmly believe it was the wrong direction. You don't have to agree-- again, I envy you for being able to enjoy them. But you are in a very small minority.

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Lucas himself had ideas going all the way back to the late 70s about a "sequel" trilogy - the old ideas about a 9 movie saga that Lucas always denied, despite having also confirmed it in numerous interviews and it also being confirmed by statements made by numerous people he worked with in the production of the OT, including Mark Hamill, among others (Lucas wasn't any better about preserving continuity in his own thoughts and ideas about SW than he was in preserving continuity in-story). Had Lucas truly felt that there not been more SW stories to tell, it's doubtful that Lucas, no longer wanting to do it himself after the grilling he took from fans and critics over the PT, would have sold Lucasfilm to Disney. He would simply have retired and been done with it, leaving further creative speculation to the EU.

 

Yes, I am referring to the "9 movie" saga wherein the Emperor is not actually defeated until the end of the 9th film. But since he was clearly killed in ROTJ, we need this Snoke character and the First Order to stand in for an Empire that does not survive Endor but needs to in order for this 9 film arc to work. The 9 movie saga in which "the Other" that Yoda spoke of after Ben's force ghost referred to Luke as "our last hope" more than likely wasn't Leia (if it was Leia, Obi Wan would not actually have said that Luke was their last hope, he would have known better, and their rather non-siblingly kiss on Hoth wouldn't have happened either) - this "Other" only became Leia after the decision was made to wrap up the whole saga at the end of ROTJ, and not even George Lucas is so clumsy a writer that he would introduce a whole new jedi character to be the female Yin to Luke's masculine Yang in the last movie to fill that role, or else simply disregard this intriguing piece of dialogue from ESB all together. Though it would not surprise me to find out that he had to be talked out of it or have it pointed out to him at some point.

 

Rey, not Leia, is who the "Other" that Yoda spoke of in ESB would have been had the 9 movie plan Lucas had while that film was being produced been adhered to faithfully right up until the end.

 

Forget Obi Wan's "certain point of view" clap trap that was just more ret-conning that was done to shore up the jarring discontinuity that resulted from these changes in premises that take place between the films. When "Yoda spoke of another" in ESB, that other was Rey Skywalker. Perhaps not in name, and maybe not in terms of familial relationship (she rather than Leia would have been Luke's sister, not his daughter or niece) but certainly in position within the story. The "other" only became Leia after the kibosh was put on further SW films, somewhere between the release of ESB and ROTJ.

 

Rey is more than likely of Skywalker descent so as to preserve the theme of familial continuity that spans the trilogies. If the prequils were Anakin's story, and the OT Luke's story, then it would not make sense to make the central jedi protagonist of this film not be a Skywalker. Lucas repeatedly stated back in this phase of his creative process that the sequel trilogy would see Luke take on the kind of role that Obi Wan had in ANH - more a cameo as opposed to a central character, meant to pass the torch along to the next generation, as it were. Plus the gender question - this new hero being female, was strongly alluded to. Plus the numerous other parallels - being found on a desert planet and so on. Questioning whether or not she's a Skywalker just feels like "Palpatine actually isn't Sidious" all over again. We all knew what the answer was right from the get-go. Denying it was simply an exercise in sophistry, nothing more.

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There's the irony that movies aren't written for writers but for everybody else. Also I don't believe you have to be able to do something to criticize it. I can't sing a lick but that doesn't prevent me from knowing Candlebox sucks a thousand asses.

 

But back to the point, I also admire Poe's enthusiasm but this is probably a subject we're just not going to agree on.

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There's the irony that movies aren't written for writers but for everybody else. Also I don't believe you have to be able to do something to criticize it. I can't sing a lick but that doesn't prevent me from knowing Candlebox sucks a thousand asses.

 

But back to the point, I also admire Poe's enthusiasm but this is probably a subject we're just not going to agree on.

It's more the reverse. Any time I try to use my job or expert opinion as a basis for an argument as to why a movie blows I'm called elitist.

 

Which is hilarious given that my knowledge of screenwriting is the least elitist thing about me. I'm insufferable in so many other ways.

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You seem to think that I somehow don't understand what Lucas up to with the prequels, and you keep trying to explain it like I am missing something.

 

Not really my intention. For the most part, I'm letting you drive the discussion. In fact, if you want to go back, I don't believe I made anything other than technical arguments about continuity and addressed the idea that the Prequels weren't full of surprises until my most recent previous post where I responded to your assertion that the Prequels were mostly filler. Something I disagree with since I found the structure of the movies to generally be fine. That was the first time I made an actual positive case for the Prequels in this whole back and forth.

 

Look, I understand why some people have issues with the Prequels. But I also understand why there are a lot of people who like them, or liked them in the past until the bandwagon effect caught up with them. I can only go with what I thought of the movies which are filled with my own set of biases. I most certainly walked into The Force Awakens with a different attitude than most since I enjoyed the Prequels. And that film's less ambitious, safer approach was a bigger issue to me than it was to you. Heck, to many it was a feature. An attitude that I find disappointing and constraining in the same way that Lucas himself has expressed.

 

In the end it comes down to what I would look to for inspiration. The Prequels, as imperfect as they sometimes are, still give me plenty of fresh ideas that few films can match. That, I think, is the central appeal of Star Wars. Something new and exciting around the corner. Something to stretch beyond the conventional perfected Hollywood blockbuster.

 

We can revisit this in a few years and see how the Hollywood formula and playing it safe works out for the new trilogy. If I'm right, what was lost should be a lot more apparent by then.

 

 

 

 

It's funny, I can never use what I do as an argument point cause people assume I'm just being pompous. my expert opinion doesn't count because movies are subjectional.

 

While I appreciate your reluctance to use a self-declared argumentl from authority, you seem to be making up for it with a liberal use of an argumentum ad populum.

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