Star Wars: The Disney+ Empire Strikes Again and Again and...

Anyway I enjoyed it overall — a nice fillip in the end with a couple of striking moments. Roll on Andor….

felt a little flicker of engagement in the last ep
but it is my overall feeling that this show was Not Good

yeah i feel the same as mh - the story is deadened by being such a narrow arc within well-worn story beats we already know that i found it hard to get overly enthused or excited. i think i prefer something like mando where there’s more freedom in the storytelling? idk

the moments btw obi & leia were lovely though, and i thought mcgregor was a+

xxxpost to mh

“Aaaaarghhh!”

my reaction to the last two eps

https://i.postimg.cc/23NW4p2J/Capture.png

emsworth OTM for mine

Would've like to have seen Vader unboxing his replacement helmet while being berated by Palps.

Also godawful deaging going on in the series. Very plastic seeming.

The most biting criticism I read of the show is that nobody has a conversation even for exposition, every bit of dialogue is there to move the plot forward.

So did they end up addressing why Leia doesn’t acknowledge having previously encountered Obi-Wan, when she leaves her hologram message in the first movie?

I mean, she says "you fought for my father in the Clone Wars", her not mentioning "and you rescued me as a child" doesn't mean it didn't happen, esp since she was quite in a hurry to record the important parts of the message.

on a "from a certain point of view" scale, really rates a 5 or less.

I do think the last ep was only really interesting for the moment of broken helmet Anakin speaking and hearing his real voice and synthesized at same time.

nice visuals, but I liked the previous two eps better.

Eh she still talks like they’ve never met. I wouldn’t expect her to go “What’s up, B! Remember that shit with Flea, that was wild”—but if the retcon adventure really had happened first, you’d think her message would have been a little different.

(This had also been one of those “everyone’s talking about it” angles on Twitter, so… whether Disney likes it or not, it’s in fan’s heads)

Did they explain why Ben couldn’t “remember owning a droid”? Lol

I thought the last two eps were pretty decent, but it was a rough road to get there.

Really hate the fake grain added in post (I assume, given how this was shot) that made some scenes look like absolute dogshit on our 4k tv.

beats me, it started off as what sounded like a diplomatic call for help and then ends with that oddly personal "help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.." bit

they're going to keep making stuff that falls between existing stories and playing the game of spotting which plot point is a square peg they're trying to push through a round hole is tedious canon-grinding

who gives a crap, tell me there were two Darth Vaders and only one of them was Anakin. have the Emperor blow up a planet using the force alone. just make an interesting show

Fair enough, but they’re the ones choosing to tell stories that are instantly raising these questions for people. With a film as beloved as Star Wars, when you start retconning big chunks of the backstory, it will have that effect!

i hate myself for writing this, but:

-how did they make the time work in the finale - so reva gets left for dead, but manages to get off that planet to tatooine and find out where owen lives at the same time the rebel ship is still being chased by the star destroyer?
-accounting for reva's trip means the rebel ship is flying around getting shot at for half a day at least - seems kind of implausible given a star destroyer's firepower? they don't have ion cannons yet?
-lol @ the decoy ship, but then there's another ship inside the real ship! and the dropship has a functioning hyperdrive?
-there's enough time for obi-wan to fight vader, leave and go to tattooine before the night is over and rescue luke?
-what is reva's motivation for wanting to kill luke - just to get back at obi wan?
-luke's encounter with reva makes it hard to believe his wide-eyed farmboy innocence @ the force in ANH - he wouldn't have remembered being chased by an inquisitor with a lightsaber?
-what's the point of obi wan keeping leia's droid - just so you can have a scene of leia ignoring obi wan for the droid when they reunite?

realize i'm being a huge comic book guy here!

Really hate the fake grain added in post (I assume, given how this was shot) that made some scenes look like absolute dogshit on our 4k tv.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, June 23, 2022 11:15 AM (seven minutes ago)

don't think it was fake grain, i think it was shot in available light using super sensitive camera sensors - think those barry lyndon candlelight scenes but with digital

luke's encounter with reva makes it hard to believe his wide-eyed farmboy innocence @ the force in ANH - he wouldn't have remembered being chased by an inquisitor with a lightsaber?

OMG, this happens? jeez

Did Luke actually see the saber? Owen told him it was Tusken Raiders and to be ready to run, and he had quite the head start on Reva. She only caught up because he fell/passed out.

I was actively watched to see if he was looking at the saber when she pulled it out. Inconclusive.

The Ben introduction at the end seemed tacked on to prove Luke would know who he was when he first sees/talks about him in ANH.

I don't care so much about tight continuity in a series that retconned just about everything.

But it does seem weird to do all this ANH foreshadowy stuff ten years before ANH. I thought the show would be more about Ben Kenobi's fledgling pierogi business

don't think it was fake grain, i think it was shot in available light using super sensitive camera sensors - think those barry lyndon candlelight scenes but with digital

okay, I wasn't sure, saw some other people online saying it was "fake" grain. either way it was just weird to watch this right after Ms Marvel and comparing with how crisp that looked.

龜 otm, only note is that I think the second ship was behind the first one?

grateful that they were able to recreate the beloved "Chewbacca was on a different ship" moment

I do think the last ep was only really interesting for the moment of broken helmet Anakin speaking and hearing his real voice and synthesized at same time.

Could've been cool to see him just remove the helmet fully but I guess it's supposed to be keeping him alive and maybe only just enough of it broke to avoid that.

The way I would've preferred the fight to end is instead of Kenobi getting buried for all of 10 seconds is for Vader have to become trapped by rocks himself in such a way as to allow Kenobi enough time to escape. Kenobi then also destroys Vader's shuttle, figuring that there's a chance Vader would survive but his needing rescue would distract the Grand Inquisitor and co who could show up during a penultimate scene to either rescue or see Vader crawling out of the rock pile. Cut to Kenobi's final scene. Then maybe do the scene with the Emperor as a mid or end credit scene.

Did Luke actually see the saber? Owen told him it was Tusken Raiders and to be ready to run, and he had quite the head start on Reva. She only caught up because he fell/passed out.

I was actively watched to see if he was looking at the saber when she pulled it out. Inconclusive.

The Ben introduction at the end seemed tacked on to prove Luke would know who he was when he first sees/talks about him in ANH.

― Doop Snogg (Neanderthal), Thursday, June 23, 2022 11:33 AM (twenty-six minutes ago)

fair enough

reading around (man i'm bored at work today) it seems reva intuits that luke is anakin's son and that's her motivation for wanting to kill him - reasonable enough, i suppose

also kind of lol imagining this version of ewan mcgregor aging into alec guinness in just 10-15 years

Ben introduction at the end seemed tacked on to prove Luke would know who he was when he first sees/talks about him in ANH.

that and so that McGregor can finally say “hello there”, sigh

i know shitty retcons have been part of SW tradition from the very beginning, but I am starting to wonder whether they’re doing it deliberately at this point lol. like I can buy the idea that Leia is pretending not to know him when she sends her message in ANH but… she also has little to no reaction to his death and spends the aftermath comforting Luke instead. It’s just odd to introduce this relationship between two major characters knowing perfectly well that it doesn’t quite fit in with later parts of their story. but you know, whatever.

overall, I quite enjoyed this in the end - mainly because I love mcgregor as kenobi, and also because it kinda felt like a Clone Wars arc (especially the middle eps).

also kind of lol imagining this version of ewan mcgregor aging into alec guinness in just 10-15 years

This is Alec Guinnes in a film 11 years older than Star Wars pic.twitter.com/BaJ9X5tzxF

— Ben Banyas (@benbanyas) June 22, 2022

Actually pretty wild how much they look alike pic.twitter.com/igAd8V20FW

— Ben Banyas (@benbanyas) June 22, 2022

:)

have to admit that refusing to kill Vader after absolutely messing him up and going upside his dome with a lightsaber is a funny power move

might even outrank leaving him on fire by the side of a lava flow

three more seasons of Obi-Wan, and each ends with Vader getting owned in ridiculous ways

i like how Vader’s fighting style in this series has fully devolved into hacking & chopping like a madman as he gets further & further away from his jedi roots.

he learned how to pop and lock from the Emperor and sometimes he gets those trainings confused

one-handed broadsword action

Loved wheezing half masked Vader. Ewan was the best part of this show, and he was the main character so that really works. I like Mando better, but everyone else in my house thought this was the best.

Reva's actions make no sense if she doesn't know Luke is Darth Jr. And that is a pretty good hint that she knows.

This was boring infill despite mcgregor’s ok performance. The inquisitors were meh. In part I didn’t care because I felt I knew how this “needs to work out.”

that might have been a YOU thing

lol u mad

The iquisitors inquire -- "do you even WANT to be happy?"

Anyway, I no doubt received some benefit from seeing this with young and fresh eyes. But for fucks sake McGregor was better than "ok".

no

Despite my fondness for what appears to be McGregor’s irl personality (cf Long Way Down etc.) I find him pretty tedious as an actor post Trainspotting. But I bought his grief in part 6 of this, the fight was the best thing in it (and felt mythical in the way I wanted the whole show to feel).

I guess MacGregor was trying his best to infuse the script with something? But apart from the lack of tension re knowing where everyone ends up - I also feel Obi-Wan, like Boba Fett, is a character that doesn’t really support extended examination? Like, he was a pretty cool kindly space wizard in one film - everything else feels pretty tedious and awkwardly retrofitted.

But maybe people who were the right age for prequels / Clone Wars might have found it easier to lock in to?

These characters were just undeveloped. Boba Fett was originally nothing more than a cool costume. Everything after the first film has been retrofit, so I don't know what makes one case more tedious than another.

McGregor did a good job IMHO... his last scene with Leia worked on me emotionally despite everything being so terribly underwritten and shoehorned in. agreed about no one having real conversations in this. i feel like every time two characters seem poised to have an interaction that would actually be interesting (and difficult) to write, the show cuts away to something else.

my comic book guy moment: what happened to the star destroyer that Vader came down from? it seems like that would pose some small issue for Obi-Wan's getaway. it seems to just be.... not there. if they're so easily evaded, then it kinda deflates his grand self-sacrificing gesture.

also i really wanted jimmy smits to be like "c'mon, we got all dressed up, you could at least stay for lunch!"

mouse ears appear on Smits' head. "C'mon, we're heading to Oga's Cantina for Jabba Juice and Batuu Bits, loser."

Boba Fett was originally nothing more than a cool costume. Everything after the first film has been retrofit, so I don't know what makes one case more tedious than another.

IMO, it’s because it’s not comics, where retconning just happens continuously and it’s accepted as part of how the fictional universe is received. When you have stories that sit on their own for a few decades, then are “retrofitted,”then once again a few decades later… you feel it a different way.

(Also, for all the jokes about “Comic Book Guy”–style complaints, at least comics have No-Prizes and retcon adjustments etc. to clean up the narrative messes they make.)

I think the point is more "these are very slight in terms of retcons and to some aren't really that jarring". it's not like Terminator 3 changing John and Sarah Connor's birthdates randomly due to laziness, or Uncle Jesse on Full House being shown in high school the day before his graduation, then seasons later saying he dropped out of high school early on

just about every epic fantasy movie is filled with unreliable narrators