Arguing over which story is the “official” version is something humans have fought over for centuries and perhaps millennia. It’s sort of what we do.
I feel like to honor my Jewish heritage I should join the sect that believes the original trilogy is the real deal and everything else is bullshit.
Seriously, though. I accepted long ago that all fictional worlds are fictional. Although a corporate “owner” may bless a particular official canon, there is not actually any such thing. You can’t use the scientific method to prove that one version of a fictional story is the true one. There is no such thing. Different people are going to prefer different versions, and that’s just how it is. I may prefer one version, but I give no fucks if someone else prefers a different one. They do their thing, I’ll do mine. We all good.
I see too many people online getting mad and fighting because someone else believes a different canon than they do. Just ignore them! Life is too short. Who gives a shit? Just enjoy what you like and go in peace.
Actually, simply arguing over which parts of the Star Wars fictional universe are the real deal vs. not in general would probably honor your Jewish heritage, no matter what side you’re on. At least this is the impression I get after finding out that arguing over interpretations of the Torah seems to be as old as Judaism itself.
To be fair, though, that’s pretty much how I feel about “canon” vs “not canon.” I may disagree with it or come up with “head canons” to work around stuff I don’t like, but I never take it seriously enough to affect my enjoyment one way or the other.
So I recently got Last Jedi Cross Sections and Visual Dictionary because they’re incredibly useful as RPG aids.
Funny story: Cantonica (the name of the planet Canto Bight is on) is on the edge of the Galaxy at the one o’clock position. D’Qar (The resistance base is TFA) and Crait (The resistance base they were running to in TLJ) are relatively close to each other and are about 4:30, about 3/4 from the center.
So Rose and Finn basically traveled 150,000 light years in about 30 hours, using a rando shuttle one way and a super fast luxury ship the other.
BTW Holdo was on one of the other ships, which is why you didn’t see her until she was on the Crusier.
I was curious as to the length of the ships involved. The Rebel Cruiser is about 3.5KM long, the “line” Star Destroyers in TLJ are about 3KM. The Dreadnought in the beginning was about 7KM. For reference, the Star Destroyers in the Original Trilogy was about 1KM and the Super Star Destroyer is about 20KM.
I sort of worked out that there’s a 30:1 advantage to doing what Holdo did with the Cruiser. The idea being that you might be able to take something the size of an X-Wing, turn it into a missile, and maybe one-shot a Star Destroyer.
I was going to mention this. The dreadnought really did not seem scary or impressive. I was expecting super star destroyer, and this seemed much smaller. Apparently I was right.
Still keeping a light on for the other super star destroyers and my boy Thrawn.
For completions sake, Snoke’s command ship is about 13.5KM by 60KM and is basically a mobile space station, having a manufacturing and drydock complex. So the ship might be able to repair itself.
I don’t know if this would be better here or under the media analysis thread, but here we go. He basically summaries my feelings about what made the originals great and the issues with this latest round, but is much more articulate than I am.
Edit: The video is not just “angry nerd rant” like the thumbnail may appear.
I have not watched the above video and generally don’t care about star wars, however I can identify Matt Colville for the audience here.
He either does, or used to work in the games industry. I know this because he wrote all the dialogue and story and really all the text in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. This is one of my personal favourite console games ever. So the fact that this guy was the one to write Jennifer Mui’s backstory makes me respect him right out of the gate.
I know he also used to work in card games. Like in his little video where he explains what he’s been up to since the 80s he like did the website and community management for a CCG based on the Dune Novel(s?)
Since then he’s been (in addition to whatever puts food on his table) making videos, largely on how you, as a dm, may go about constructing a good experience for your players.
I love Matt Colville to pieces and have his videos on notification, but I’m pretty sure most of the points he raised about why he disliked The Last Jedi are among the reasons why I liked it. Nothing is sacred, kill your darlings.
I enjoy Matt’s other videos quite a bit, but I think Star Wars is more than a fairy tale, I think it is filled with meaning and that’s what makes these new films good. I think they do have a theme. It’s not “Everything from before wound up sucking, how dare you believe,” it’s “The important part of this story wasn’t the bloodlines and the fact that these characters were the most important, it’s never giving up hope.”
I like Colville’s take. It’s not exactly my own, but I think he’s convincing. Seems like where I usually am with his opinions… I differ on a lot of fine grained specifics, but he’s definitely in the ballpark.
Finally got to see it myself. I’m mostly liking everything that went on. I wish we would get a bit more of an arc where Kylo and Rey come to some understanding about moving forward with a middle path devoid of the old ways, but maybe divided on how to accomplish the task. Guess that will come down the pike eventually.
But the biggest gripe I have so far is that I have to really stretch my suspension rig over the disbelief chasm in regards to the hyperspace kamikaze run. For reasons mentiond already but, to reiterate; in a society where hyperspace travel has existed for many thousands of years, the dangers of a ship jumping to hyperspace into another ship must be well known. As a result, such a powerful kinetic force would assuredly be well understood by even low level pilots and strategists. If you’re going to have a world where a major plot is resolved with this tactic then it either has to be somehow novel in that universe, or somehow not commonly practical.
Now, the bridge crew almost immediately responded to seeing the cruiser turn to face them so they were well aware of what the maneuver meant. Thus it can’t be very novel an idea in-universe. So is it a thing where it just isn’t a good idea most of the time so it isn’t standard practice? Well the kinetic kill vehicle here is the Rebel’s biggest capital ship, going into hyperspace directly into the target, and even then not even truly killing the target. So in terms of being an OP giant-slayer it isn’t quite the magic bullet we need to throw away capital ships in a 1:1
But I can’t see any reason why strapping hyperdrives to asteroids is not a standard practice. They would make hella-good mines: go into an asteroid belt and wait for the enemy to follow before a few asteroids wake up and punch holes in their cruisers. I definitely can’t see any reason a fleet with ships that may not have the resources to continue a fight would not plan to commit them to kinetic kill vehicles when their traditional role has run out. If they are doomed to loose the race, at least go down hard. Seems every X-wing, thus hyperdrive equipped, would have a ‘ragequit’ button instead of an ejection handle, to attempt to turn it into a hyperspace impactor when nothing else to do.
At any rate, I think it’s a cool idea. But now that they’ve introduced it, why wasn’t it even a thing anyone brought up earlier in the film, despite being an obvious and effectiv,e if not total, defense against massive warships?
Why haven’t droids taken over? Why isn’t all war conducted by droids? If youre going to be a nerd picking on that kind of shit, Star Wars is over in the first few minutes of episode IV.
Because in-universe most droids have been shown to be stupidly ineffectual? That’s not a response at all to the problem of how hyperspace is portrayed in the new movies.
Or extraordinarily specialized. They have a droid that’s literally just a walking power generator - because obviously just having a generator on wheels(or repulsorlifts, I guess) isn’t going to cut it.