What do you think would be the best direction for the Jedi? Let me know below! Don't forget to watch my exclusive breakdown of The Last Jedi: nebula.tv/videos/lsoo-star-wars-the-last-jedi-8-years-later Signing up to Nebula also directly supports the channel :)
I genuinely think that the Jedi have lost their mysticism, they are far too exposed for the viewer. While I agree with their human traits and flaws, the myth of the Jedi is lost, at least for me.
I preferred the mysteriousness of the Jedi that was certainly there in the classic trilogy. It was sadly lost starting with the prequel trilogy. The short fan film Premonition where a young female Jedi, to protect her daughter, must confront and fight a Sith was a particular improvement in my view. Thank you, Tom, for your Star Wars review.
WHY u want feedback? 20:50 YOU DON'T HAVE DIRECTIONS!? The plan is explore -content series- on Scriptwriting ? whut? u have time , funding for that? u better launch your own IP, seriously . 1st Hot Take? Why would your and or OURS idea(s) even matter about Star Wars? The Original Creator can't even interfere on that ... He's the most confused on that btw... Obs When Nebula is going to evolve Smart TV Ux , it's kinda horrible to follow u there...
Despite my admiration for your videos, you are erroneously this time. George Lucas provided a fairly intricate explanation of how the jedi, or champions of the light, decide to serve the republic rather than the force and the highest good. The precuels demonstrate the hyprocesy of adhering to political systems and the complications that exist around following beliefs instead of virtues.
The Jedi I feel are part of a much bigger problem within Star Wars. I think it’s in a tug and pull between hard Science fantasy and Soft Science fantasy. I feel the more the Force is explained, cosmic and living force, the struggles that some have in powers, and the costs that those powers do to you….it becomes a lot less like soft magic and more like a hard magic system. Star Wars I feel is at a turning point. Do we keep digging into the past and go into the Old Republic era….or do we remake the franchise almost completely with a new saga. New characters, heroes, villains, factions, force users, a new galaxy to explore. Something to make Star Wars unrecognizable in terms of story but still astheticly familiar.
In my opinion, Kannan Jarrus from rebels is what every jedi should aspire to be and is probably the perfect example of a jedi besides legends Luke. He uses love as his greatest strength, not a weakness as the previous jedi saw. Most importantly he has flaws and is well aware of them, but still tries his best. He never even made it to knighthood in the jedi order but knows if he doesn’t step up, no one else will. Thats what a jedi should be
The thing about Star Wars is that I am just filled with so much apathy. My Sorrow and Frustration has mellowed into banal disinterest, especially as culturally these stories just no longer have anything new to say. I'm certainly interested in Andor Season 2, but after that I may just tap out for good...
Maybe it's time to put these types of stories to rest. The Jedi don't need their stories told anymore. What more could you expound on them that hasn't been said?
Some Star Wars purists hate Andor tho. Andor is a brilliant TV show based in the Star wars universe, but some don't consider it "real" Star Wars. The problem with Disney is they are chasing real Star Wars for the purists, while also being an incompetent company, and while also appeasing other cultural agendas. It's just a total mess!!!
My admittedly purist stance on Andor is yes it's very good, but why the hell did it (spinoff story about a spinoff character from a spinoff movie) get triple the budget that Kenobi had (two main characters of the entire saga) that same year? I can't enjoy it properly because of those poor executive choices
I honestly don't think anyone truly understood Star Wars beyond George Lucas, Chris Avellone and Irvin Kershner, there are so many subpar to bad Star Wars media nowadays that they are not even worth the apathy, gone is the ambition that is not only a brave attempt but a union of many talented people doing something that they actually care Star Wars can absolutely keep moving forward, but it needs good storytellers, good directors and good writers
Add Drew Karpyshyn that list. Both KOTOR 1 and the Darth Bane novels also truly got it right. The Darth Bane novels even executed the concept that The Acolyte struggled with, showing a Dark Side perspective with nuance without simply invalidating the Jedi. Dave Filloni weirdly seems to have the right understanding but struggles to pull off the good storytelling needed to execute the ideas. Despite the flaws in the series, Kanan was still probably the best Jedi under Disney cannon.
Kersh never really understood Star Wars. He just had George looking over his shoulder constantly, which actually caused a lot of friction on set. That's a big part of what makes Empire so great.
If you're not into Joseph Campbell's mythic structure as a narrative device or a Jungian then you probably should be writing Star Wars. But as LSOO says, if things change, that's fine, but stick to something.
I don't like the phrasing 'truly understood'. I certainly prefer the product of some directors' visions to others, but does that make them the Star Wars authority or just someone who produced something that resonated with me? If I just reference who I thought told the best story then Irvin Kershner wins because Empire is the best Star Wars story; and does 2nd place even matter? I don't think that's constructive though, it's just hierarchy building. I think there's merit in most Star Wars media. For example I was very ready to adopt the Last Jedi's take on abandoning the light/dark, jedi/sith binary (even if other parts of TLJ didn't work for me). JJ rolled that back and told a story I couldn't enjoy in Rise of Skywalker. But JJ's movie was more in line with the original trilogy (including Kershner) than Johnson's take. So who's wrong? Do I not understand Star Wars because I was willing to accept the narrative evolution? I don't think Star Wars has some objective core essence to 'be understood' and be true to. I think effective storytellers tell good stories and they can do that without adhering strictly to what came before.
Deconstruction can be amazing (KOTOR 2, Andor), but it requires a) outstanding writing, and b) a rich source material that stands on its own which can be deconstructed while still respected (KOTOR 1, the OT). Respect for the source materials is the operative term here.
Small stories are where its at, ill die on that hill. The big stories that seem to try to one up the last in grandure are boxed in for story telling and you end up with absurdity
I've always though a good SW anthology series letting writers and directors play in the sandbox without worrying about canon would be an awesome idea. Just a set of short 30-60 minute self-contained episodes, like the Twilight Zone. Visions did this very well. I'd love to see a live action version.
in our postmodern world, no system of power can be perceived as being good natured. Entertainment is written to be anti-establishment. So every single structure has to be disassembled and shown to be problematic at its core. A great example of this is what Star Wars is doing with the concept of a Jedi. now they have absolutely nothing to fall back on and have basically butchered the original concept. the actual art is suffering in quality and vision as a result of this. but that issue is true in so many other franchises. like what are people supposed to believe in if everything is deconstructed? The fact that you have TH-cam videos commenting on this trend proves to me that we are about to enter a new phase of art with redefined values. now that millennials are aging and they’re depressive and pointlessly rebellious outlook is no longer trendy and cool, the target audience for art becomes Gen Z who are really searching for meaning. The movie TV and print entertainment that provides glimpses of meaning are going to be the ones that resonate the most.
Yet to watch the entire video, so I might be repeating what's in it, but I think there were two main events that caused them to ruin the Jedi. The first was when they tried to retcon Anakin to not seem like a psycho in the prequels, which they did by making the Jedi utterly incompetent in Clone Wars. The second was the popularity of Game of Thrones. You can't watch Last Jedi and convince me its "The Jedi were morally grey" arc wasn't a direct result of that series success. Its really annoying how embedded this has become in the series.
@@friendlybane Postmodern philosophy does not allow for such a system. We haven't synthesized a suitable philosophy to replace it. Until we move on from the fetish of deconstruction and accept that a set of principles and presuppositions can be "good enough," with their short comings seen as opportunities rather than damnation then we will not view a system as good natured.
Also, the lack of idealism in media is not casual. It's part of a establishment propaganda disguised superficially as antiestablishment. Ideals are not bad. Ideals are what make people wake up every day and keep going. Having ideals doesn't mean you never question them or you're close minded. Star Wars was inspired by anti vietnam sentiment, according to Lucas himself. American imperialism doesn't want Vietnam protestors again so they prefer young socially conscious people to be stuck in the most unproductive way possible, and that's what they provide with mass media. We've gone from "there's no absolute good and absolute evil, and everyone is a different shade of grey" to "nobody can know what's bad and good".
There are many fan-made features writing good Jedi stories. Jedi are just knights, martial artists, or monks. If you can't tell a good story with those classic archetypes, then you're overthinking it.
Also the fandom: Let's hate the only guy trying to evolve the franchise in the main series and claim his movie is the worst thing mankind has ever made... Even though it's easily the best of the new trilogy and stand head and shoulders above the stuff that hack JJ Abrams came up with, despite its major flaws (mostly inherited from The Force Awakens).
The best depictions of the Jedi are when Yoda describes to Luke how we are more than just flesh, and when Luke throws away his lightsaber instead of killing Vader. Both of these events have one thing in common: They're emotional, they resonate with you. With the prequels, Lucas had good ideas that were horribly executed. He wrote the jedi as being a virtuous, ineffective and stiff institution, blinded by their inflexible ideologies and thus allowing fascism to grow (aesthetics vs praxis). The problem is that the execution made most of it fall on deaf ears, making the audience unaware if they were supposed to identify with the jedi or not. The jedi are the best when they're wise and capable of understanding the world beyond their egos. Not when they're space monks or lightsaber-wielding superheroes.
Re: Star Wars not knowing what to do with the Jedi: When the Sequels were set to come out, or maybe after the first one had been screened, I was so emotionally excited because it seemed to me that the writing was setting up Kylo Ren to finally explore how enticing it could be to "get ahead" or "make progress" or "become powerful" with hate in your heart. How a young man could be pulled away from "doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences" by exposure to (1) elements of corruption within the "good" system that demoralize him and (2) a universe where the "bad" guys were getting ahead. The sequel series was well placed to speak to the male crisis and address cultural conversations like "nice guys finishing last", elders planting trees whose shade they would never sit under, staying humble underneath someone else's tutelage, waiting your "turn" to move up in the world, and what will happen to you if you never get to move up. I see these all as important conversations that still aren't being resolved in the first world. I think that somewhere in the early writing, people decided that "good and evil" wasn't cool enough to write about. 4:30 - We've been seeing this for a long time. This is why JJ Abrams has gotten so much work, and why we don't ultimately like anything he makes over the long term because there's not actually an arc with payoff and resolution. only fuel for the next thing. In everything he touches, it seems like there was never a story that was trying to be told from the outset. I love your point about the failure to commit.
I know it's well trodden ground to talk about the failures of Palpatine in RoS, but not having Kylo Ren be the big bad, the Sith Lord that needs to be defeated at the end of the trilogy was a massive misstep. By the end of Last Jedi he got everything he wanted. He fired his planet buster, overthrew his Master as is the Sith custom, Became the undisputed Lord of the First Order over Hux and was even tempting Rey to the dark side. By many accounts he won. I think going from that point to expand from.
Kylo was a lazy recycle of Jacen Solo's fall. I did like him destroying the mask, that was actual character growth, but they never bothered giving him actual character motivation. Luke was done so dirty... In the books pre-Disney, he had built a thriving New Jedi Order. He went through massive struggles and losses, but wiping out the Jedi again, was such a lazy way to reset the galaxy back to the beginning of ANH.
It's gotten so bad they need to go into major retcon territory and basically start afresh. Post-RotJ needs to be a low-Force user universe. If a story involves a Jedi, they should really lean into the spiritual element and give it some actual chops. Actually draw from (and obviously slightly modify for flavour) real traditions like Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism and Christian mysticism, which are already influences for the Jedi. Anything set in the prequel (or pre-prequel) era can be free to effectively be a high fantasy setting (equivalent to a high magic setting like something Sanderson would write), while the Empire and post-RotJ eras should be low fantasy/low magic, like the original films themselves.
What their doing now is the reboot. That's kind of what we had before. No Ahsoka... Luke was trying to collect enough about the Jedi to figure out how to move forward, trying to train Leia, but she was busy helping put the Republic government back together. Luke started a new order about 7 years after RotJ, 2 years after Thrawn's defeat, and watching him start from scratch to try to figure out what the Jedi should be was one of the more fascinating aspects of the stories. Truce at Bakura, the X-wing novels, quite a few short stories collections created the low Jedi period, so it did mean something when the Jedi began to emerge again, and one of the struggles of the new order was being so few in number.
Sincerity must win over sardonic irony for any franchise to survive. We have deconstructed these stories for the sake of deconstruction, and in the end, it doesn't help anyone. Something to remember with Star War is that Lucas originally wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie. He couldn't get the rights, so he decided to make an original IP based on Flash Gordon, King Arthur, and Samaria film. He even bought the right to remake The Hidden Fortress to make ANH. I think we need new franchises based on what writers sincerely loved. We don't need another Terminator, SW, Jurassic Park, or whatever shit remake or reboot. Take a cance on something new.
I am firmly on the camp of the more mythical approach to Star Wars over the cynical, sociological approach. Star Wars to me was always meant to be more of a mythical story, with the Jedi standing as paragons of virtue and self control. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be more complex stories relating to the Force and how people discuss the Light and the Dark, but if the idea of an objective Good and Evil is removed, then it doesn’t represent was Star Wars is supposed to be. That heart needs to remain intact, no matter the story.
This sounds like the Jerry Maquire problem, where he posits that the sports agency company should take on less clients in favor of more quality relationships with those same clients. He was fired by lunch hour. I can imagine this short conversation at a Disney exec's office: Great writer: "We need to make these series much shorter in order to tell a great story." Studio Exec: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out." These big studios will not agree to make things shorter for the sake of something like mere quality. They want a cash cow that they can milk for decades. To quote the great Wu Tang Clan: C.R.E.A.M.
I do believe that the best direction to Star Wars is to stop. No more Star Wars movies and series. We are so deep in fanservce nostalgic time that it became post-nostalgic. Let Star Wars die, it already had it’s peak. Let the new universes and stories rise. I want to experience new worlds, new universes, characters and stories. I want to get similar emotions of freshness, of something unseen before as I got by watching first Matrix, Star Wars, even Marvel movies. Only emotions I get from corporations milking old franchises are boredom and tiredness. In my opinion, people moved on and movie industry has to do the same.
Nobody can be as good as Anakin self imposed restrictions too when he only showed off the same force abilities as everyone else so you can't show outrageous new powers or people bemoan why didn't X have this.
The Jedi idea's really simple, I think. What's weird is I don't see that simplicity coming up much in the actual stories, or not as much as it should. There's quite a bit of exploration into what effect the Jedi have on the world, but not much exploration of what the Jedi actually stand for and why they do the things they do. The Jedi ideas can be more than just philosophy or mythology. They can be a statement of the transformative power of kindness, humility and connection, just as the original trilogy was. Star Wars could really commit to that hopeful, transformative empathy, in a way a lot of other franchises can't. Some of the most popular heroes and stories in modern pop culture are based on that. The most recent I can think of that really spelled it out was 'Everything Everywhere all at Once', and that movie laid it all out thus (paraphrased): "When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything. The only thing I do know... is that we have to be kind. Especially when we don't know what's going on. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight." That's it. That's the Jedi. 'Saving what we love, not destroying what we hate.' In his movie, Rian Johnson had the Resistance commit to becoming the heirs of the Jedi ethos. Those are ideas that mean more than the 'Jedi' name, and they are beautiful ideas, that no story-teller would feel comfortable abandoning. It feels as if they are what Star Wars media keeps trying to reach back toward - but it also feels like it's reaching blindly, like it doesn't understand the idea at the heart of the original movies well enough. Even the characters who you would think would understand it the most - Obi-Wan, Luke - are portrayed as confused, despite the simplicity of it. And it is a simple idea. Everything's connected, and everyone, in lots of subtle ways. So don't look at things in isolation, look at the world in terms of relationships. See how related it all is, and how percieved differences don't mean as much as we think. Obi-Wan touches on that when he tells the Gungans they ought to care about the Naboo, because what happens to one will affect the other. Yoda tries to teach Luke that just as a rock and an X-Wing are much more similar than he thinks, so are Luke and his father. And Luke wins when he commits hard to the idea that he and his father are the same, and understands that if he can face the Dark and say no, then his father can too. So, live like that's the case. Hold good feelings in your heart, and give them to others. Recognise the bad feelings for what they are, understand them, and let them pass away. Don't let longing for the past or fear of the future drag you away from appreciating the world around you now. Help others with their troubles, but at peace in yourself, because life goes on and it always will. Open yourself up and let the world in, let it carry you along. It leads to a kind, wise, and serene kind of person. Against that you have the Sith, who say something very different: that you *matter.* In fact, you matter more than everything else. Don't look at the world as a whole, focus on yourself and your perspective. You should have the power to save what you want to save, punish what you feel is wrong, and take what you want to possess. But over time, that ego-focussed viewpoint leads to loss of perspective, and paranoia and fear eventually lead a person to see power as an end in itself, power to hold back change. Grip the world, and twist it to your will. It's not about good and evil as cosmic forces or abstracts, or even as political expressions, but ways in which the world is tangibly, observably healed or poisoned by the empathy, warmth, coldness or cruelty of the people in it. Often I read people talking about attachment, how the Jedi deny them while the Sith embrace them. But it's more complicated than that, in that the Jedi embrace connection with the world, while trying to avoid getting too attached to any one thing in favour of another. While the Sith grip their attachments close, but deny any connection, they deny the idea that these attachments have any power or influence over them. In the prequels, it's Anakin's possessive, obsessive love for his wife - his attachment, his wholly internal desire - that destroys him and others. He fights to control that relationship. In the original movies, it's Luke's unselfish, sacrifical love for his father - their connection, their tangible, mutual emotional link - that saves them both. He lets go, and trusts his fate fully in the hands of another. A story that tries to get past the confusion of the prequels' meaning, and recommits to the ideas of kindness and empathy as transformative forces at the heart of the originals and the Jedi, would be nice.
The superman comparison is spot on. I think we have to examine the finer points of what is good and what is evil and what do good people have a duty to stop when there is so much evil. I also feel like theres nothing wrong with the jedi through organizational dogma becoming corrupt and needing the be torn down to be rebuilt. At the end of the day our heroes have to be heroic and have to be good in a way that most everyone can agree is good.
Star Wars was best when it was influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was a myth with sci-fi dressings. Now it has turned into a sci-fi with robes and lightsabers. We have gotten to the point where can't accept religion as a force for good in the world, so we can't accept it in Star Wars either. Unfortunately, it can't exist without it's spiritual and mythological roots.
Same thing happened to the Star Wars Galaxies MMO. When there was maybe 1 or 2 Jedi on an entire server, the game flourished. When they made it a starting class that literally everyone could play, the game keeled over dead practically overnight.
Let's be clear here: The issue with the Jedi began when Disney took over. And Disney's issue is (despite producing outrageously stupid scripts and having no unified vision) that they fundamentally misunderstand (deliberately or not) that you CAN explore the flaws of the Jedi (as the original 6 films did, to some extent) without making them either completely incompetent, absolutely moronic, cartoonishly villainous or insanely ridiculous. They misunderstand that Jedi and Sith are not equal minded and that the Jedi - despite having flaws, as everyone does - strife to be better, to improve themselves, to help the people and protect them. They strive to be heroes. And that is also a weakness, often exploited by the Sith. The way I see it, most movies and series made under Disney would have to be removed from canon somehow to even be able to start fixing this. To your point of antagonists and connections to the past: There is no lack of antagonists that are not Sith in both Books and Series. The issue is not a lack of possible antagonists for the Jedi but an absolute lack of creativity and arrogant decisions in the past, de-canonizing basically all extended universe narratives. The Jedi striving to not get involved in politics (or at least prioritizing Ideals over Politics) does not mean that they do not serve the people of the republic, which may get them involved in politics. As you explore in your "Solution 2": There are many ways to actually explore different avenues and I firmly believe there is a lot of material already out there just waiting for the silver screen. Just stop the deconstruction and de-mystification. Escapism is - in my view - the most fundamental reason why fantasy and science fiction works for most people and that has been lost over the past decade. There are no mysteries, everything has to be explained, deconstructed and analyzed. But for me that is just not entertaining. That is just more of what I do every day.
the acolyte was a mess but at least it was an attempt to expand the timeline parameters. imagine having to sit through yet ANOTHER show/movie where protagonists fight Stormtroopers/the Empire
Honestly I feel Star Wars loses more of its magic the more its universe is explored. What was once three films released three years apart more than 40 years ago has spun off into countless books, comics, sequels, prequels, spinoffs, video games, role-playing games, all of which expand the universe while making it feel much, much smaller. The main reason why the first Star Wars - that's "Star Wars" not "Episode IV", not "A New Hope" - worked was because it was very much a one-and-done closed narrative that started in the midst of the action and ended on a triumphant note. It was a story that could have gone literally anywhere in this galaxy far, far away thereafter. But once Empire came along to give us Yoda, "another", and Darth Vader as Luke Skywalker's father that free-wheeling adventure story became locked on a single path like a train with station stops along the way before it and behind it as well. The magic, the mystery, all now subservient to turning a formerly imaginative film series into just so much more TV.
I don't think there is really any problem with expanding on the story, I do believe there is a big problem with the how. Look at Boba Fett. In Empire Strikes Back, he's just a dude, who looks kinda cool and seems to have a reputation, he pops into the story for a bit but doesn't really do much. It makes you wonder what his life beyond the movies is, so it lets the world exist beyond the movies itself. Now I don't think there's a problem exploring that, but even with just the prequels, it means he's biologically linked to the origin of all stormtroopers and has already met Obi-Wan Kenobi before, and now with the recent TV shows he's also closely linked to Luke Skywalker after these events by more or less "coincidence", Ashoka Tano and a bunch of other characters from stories that took place before. Rright now, any time a new character gets popular they seem to get to meet every other Star Wars character that would've been alive at that time. All these things are technically expanding the world, but they're also building ends to it, there's not much room to wonder what exists beyond this world. For writing these stories it hasn't so much become a source of inspiration but a burden where you need to be considerate of every other character and event but they're still cramming more and more stuff in there.
What was cool about the expansiveness of the EU is the that lore was building and not constantly resetting. I do agree there was a volume problem. Just way too much for anyone to really keep track of, but the "and then" aspect of the story telling meant events mattered. Even if I didn't always like the directions, most of the people working on Star Wars seemed to genuinely like Star Wars. We lost that with the 2014 reboot. It might have been okay, if we got a tidied up time line... but they just doubled down on all the problem, including the volume problem, but without the original magic of it mattering... Now I think we're just waiting for the next reboot so we can drop the sequels from the timeline.
@@PauLtus_B Boba Fett had so many good comics, short stories, and novels (ok bounty hunter wars was not good but still) exploring his character. His Dengar buddy adventure phase was a lot of fun. That guy in "Book of Boba Fett" was not Boba Fett.
In recent additions of star wars (and rings of power), i think the writers fell for a cardinal sin of storytelling and that is shoving their own baggage into the writing, this is compounded further if there is already an established lore and theme. You cannot successfully force a personal narrative onto the audience. It happened with star wars. It happened with rings of power. It happened with the witcher. It happened with dragon age. It's essentially wearing a franchise as a skinsuit in order to push a narrative, people can sense something is off.
Every story is shoving your own baggage into it! George Lucas named Luke after himself!! The original Star Wars is explicitly about racism, where the bad guys are all white men and the good guys are multicultural and have women involved!
Star Wars Origins, highly praised, including by Mark Hamill himself, gave us something most significantly refreshing. Especially having it set on Earth which I’m sure a lot of fans were hoping for.
Nope, Long Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... keep it away from Earth. Plenty of other earth based sci-fi. (I don't mind this stuff in fan films, but not for the story canon.)
Order 66 was dramatic and good at the time but in retrospect, this story decision was a mistake in my opinion. It basically prevented almost all future jedi/sith potential story ideas. One of the big things that makes the old republic is so cool is because of the jedi order and sith still exist. There’s a deep lore and mythos that’s just not as present in the current timeline. All the cool stuff happened in the past. Star wars emptied the tank of cool jedi stuff in the story prior to the new movies and they never filled it up with more cool stuff. They just kept trying to pump from an already empty tank.
You should check out Legends. Pre-2014, Star Wars had a tons of stories exploring thousands of years of history and different phases of the Jedi Order. What's most baffling about the new films is not letting Luke keep his New Jedi Order. It was easily the most fascinating part of the lore and he had to start from scratch and regrow the order, and an easy to insert a diverse cast and new conflicts. They allowed marriage, partly because no one had told him differently, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of the Del Rey period, they did actually struggle with the positive and negative aspect of attachments.
I've had long talks with my good friend, who is an educated theologian (they spent four years in seminary, in simpler terms), about The Last Jedi. Mainly because while I'm not religious in that way, we found the meta conversation that movie has around itself really interesting, and we wished there was more. It was very, very sad to see how upset the fan base of this franchise was by a relatively simple prodding. I think we both came to the conclusion that this franchise is build on a poisoned, way, way, way too commercialized soil, and nothing can grow in it. Even if you didn't like The Last Jedi, clinging onto that past is to stagnate.
The Jedi were a kind of 'space knight' and 'space monk': a paladin, a warrior cleric. It was a way for people to identify with a construct that was both strong and noble. The Superman/Batman contrast was a good one: Superman is a person with unbelievable power who uses it for the benefit of others. The Superman story is a story yearning for a protector, and the Jedi story is a story yearning to *be* the protector. For some reason, some people think it's innovative to re-imagine a story, flipping the villains and the heroes. Well, what if Superman is actually 'bad', what if The Wicked Witch is actually good, etc. Mankind has an intrinsic desire to believe in a hero and to be on the side of good, but in reality, that gets complicated. So we can fall back on stories...except the newer people working in the world of the creator want to reimagine the components of that creation. It's 'edgy'. It's a cycle of destruction we see over and over, redefining the heroes as villains and the villains as heroes...or as 'understandable' villains who have trauma. One of the biggest things I had to learn in life, period, was to stop identifying with the villain (and their trauma) and to be able to identify good people.
I love Star Wars. As in, I love the original 6 films and a good portion of the EU (and look forward to reading more, especially the New Jedi Order books), but knowing that all roads lead to Rise of Skywalker makes me deny the Disney canon. Oh, and The Acolyte ended up being as terrible and anti-Jedi as the “toxic fandom” claimed it was. So yeah. I will always love Star Wars, but I know which timeline I prefer.
I really appreciate you. You serve two purposes for me. You educate me with your analysis of films and its so insightful and thoughtful. Also when i struggle to sleep. I put on your videos that ive already seen because your calm voice helps me sleep really well. Thank you
The movie "Everything everywhere all at once" could heal the jedi. When the Jedi were born within Buddhist & Stoic ideas & got thrown into postmodern deconstruction they could rise again with animism. Lucid constructed spirituality, orientation towards spirits that inspire. Aware of their constructed limited nature & yet committed to the numinous, not as a dogma but as a ongoing process of recreation & adaption.
I think the biggest issue is that TLJ refuses to actually break the status quo in any meaningful way. Even Rey finding out she's a nobody came from an unreliable source (Kylo) so it was easy to retcon, and also meant that Kylo HAD to be redeemed because the Skywalker family legacy couldn't, thematically, end in darkness. It made both of their stories far more predictable and boring (kind of like how from the moment Kylo kills Snoke, you know he's not getting redeemed, because there's no other serious villain except Kylo to take Snoke's place, since Hux was turned into a joke and isn't Sith). In a lot of ways TFA paved the way for new interesting concepts through set up. Finn in many ways was the character to be the most new to the franchise - picking up threads from the Clone Wars about identity and agency, etc. He would've been a perfect "Nobody turned Jedi" to pair with Rey wrestling with Kylo over the Skywalker legacy, or Finn leading a Stormtrooper rebellion and completely upending one of the franchise's most iconic features. Instead we got middling arcs for multiple leads and Finn de-regulated from a co-lead spot.
Unrelated Observation: I think it's interesting that we have just left a "golden age" of storytelling in pop entertainment (2007-2016 RIP) but the Star Wars franchise was relatively untouched by that era. Lucas held on to the property a little too long and handed it over to corporate interests that didn't really have a genuine affection for it, but a monetary goal.
90s was really the golden age for Star Wars. The energy and the fan interactions then were a ton of fun. There were hundreds novels and comics exploring the kind of thing he's talking about in the video... seeing some of that brought to life on screen would have been nice.
I'll never forget the day it was announced that Disney had bought Lucasfilms. I said, boldly, 'this is the best possible thing for Star Wars. Too many people love this universe for it to fail. You could make a strong argument that there is no one less qualified to make a Star Wars than George Lucas at this point' and man. This must be what it's like when flat earthers see the 24 hour Sun. I've never been so wrong in my life.
I think this is a subject that Tom Van Der Linden is uniquely qualified for, but there's a huge amount to unpack. Because, in my opinion, the conflicting intentions behind Star Wars, and the moral framework it tries to explore through the Jedi, aren't just a reflection of confusion between various storytellers working on the franchise, or merely a lack of vision in the part of Lawrence Kasden, Kathleen Kennedy, and the other keepers of the flame, as it were. I think it reflects the greater struggle to understand the conflict between good and evil that we face in modern times. In a way, the confusion in what it means to be a Jedi is a perfect, poetic reflection of humanity's struggle for meaning. The Jedi originally represented a pretty simple chivalric standard, lifted largely from Arthurian legend, with a few bits and pieces from other mythic traditions. This worked fine for the first film, as it was left wonderfully ambiguous and mysterious. But with the introduction of Yoda, and a deeper exploration of the Jedi's moral code, the general "noble knight" vibe became more and more defined by specific tenets. And that rendered the ambiguously romantic Jedi vulnerable to critical analysis. But what else could they have done? Keep the Jedi ambiguous? The very nature of an ongoing serialized story, where everything is canon, makes that impossible. Analysis and deconstruction become inevitable. The Jedi represent the ideal of what "good" means, but the conversation of what "good" means is never-ending. So once they started defining the Jedi's code, the Star Wars franchise had two choices. They could declare that the code is unquestionably good. But that just means that whatever wisdom Lucas and Kasden put in Yoda's mouth, and whatever tenets subsequent writers added to the mix, however dubious, can never be questioned. And that's a great way to drive the franchise into a dead end of dogmatic morality, based on the half-baked notions seemed like a good idea at the time. Or they could query those notions, which inevitably plunge the Jedi into moral ambiguity. Are they really the highest good? According to whom? I think this initial video is approaching the material with the assumption that the franchise is trying to have its cake, and eat it to. The franchise wants the Jedi and the Sith to be simply "good vs. evil," while also wanting to use this conflict to explore moral ambiguity, and query what good or evil actually means. And it's easy to dismiss this as folly, because after all, you can't have your cake and eat it too. But remember, this is story. And in story, you can DEFINITELY have your cake and eat it too. The greatest stories in history work because they operate as two contradictory narratives happening at the same time. In Frankenstein, we know the real monster is Victor Frankenstein. And yet, there's no denying that his creation is also a monster, a horrific perversion of the natural order, who commits unspeakably evil acts. Yet he is also the victim of Frankenstein's hubris, deserving of empathy and compassion. You can't truly comprehend the story thoroughly without holding these contradictions, and accepting that there's no clear moral answer to the problem. So I think the struggle for the Star Wars franchise to define the Jedi, either as the highest good, or as a political order with a questionable moral code, isn't a problem. It's the core meaning of Star Wars, the conversation that can never have a final conclusion, the ongoing contradiction that has no resolution. If you choose one or the other, the tension is broken, and the story ends. So the series must continue. To me, the problem of the Jedi comes down to what the Jedi think it means to be good. They think good comes from their moral code, and therein lies the source of their identity crisis. Because the rules that define what a Jedi is, the rules about detachment from emotion, connection, passion, are also the source of their downfall. What it means to be a Jedi contains within it the seeds of its own ruin, just as the Sith's endless hunger for control and dominance carry the seeds of its own failure. We want the Jedi to find the answer to their quest for perfect galactic peace and harmony. But by nature, the quest has no end. To deny the darkness within is to give it power. That was the lesson of The Last Jedi. To be a Jedi is to fail, because it's built on conquering inner darkness, an impossible quest that leads to the denial of self. There's no conquering inner darkness. This is hubris. Yet, the great power of the Jedi requires a constant inner struggle with darker urges. This is the place where the moral and the political merge. The Jedi must seek the highest good, within themselves, and in the galaxy. And yet, they will constantly struggle, as the nature of darkness is to shapeshift, to take on deceptive forms, making great evil look like the greater good. That's why the Star Wars story must always question its own professed moralities. Otherwise, it becomes a mouthpiece for a fictional dogma, without actually reflecting on whether its own code of ethics are genuinely moral, or deeply unethical. So what path should the stories take, moral, or political? This is the question that drives Star Wars, and may well drive it on forever. Because each path drives it straight into the other.
I’m right there with you, I’ve not been this into Star Wars since just before TLJ! I saw Ahsoka and it just reignited my love for the IP. So I watched mando s3 and now I’m onto rebels…I may follow that up with clone wars. Lots of content out there, but yea, I feel we are in store for a longer SW break than people realize. Disney is going to stagger what they have finished over the next year and a half I think…but it could be 2-3 years before we move onto the next stage. I’m working on making peace with it, I really don’t want Disney to f up SW like they did Marvel.
You don't want them to fuck up Star Wars like they did with Marvel? They fucked up Star Wars FIRST, and have since fucked up Marvel. The only notably good thing to come out of Disney Star Wars is Rogue One, Andor, and the start of Mandalorian. Star wars is currently IN a garbage state. It's not in danger of going there, it already is. Ahsoka re-igniting your love for the IP is the opposite of what most of the fanbase is saying. It's clear that more media has been tailored made to individuals like yourself. But that's the content that everyone is admonishing, and part of why is because it's being tailored to the small audience you are a part of.
The Jedi problem dates back to 1999. Yoda as a monastic figure alone on his swamp world spouting aphorisms and training Luke made sense, it had extensive mythological resonance. Set the story back a couple of decades with that same wise old hermit master instead in a giant, bustling temple full of Jedi right at the heart of the galactic government sitting in bureaucratic meetings, and everything immediately got ridiculous. Even without the whole business of turning into generals in the Clone Wars, the Jedi of the prequels were such a radical break from everything we'd been told about what they were in the OT, It may as well have not even been the same universe. Lucas was great when he was just cribbing from a bunch of other older sources to cobble together a modern heroic fairytale. He was however truly awful at creating backstory for that same tale.
I think the basic story of prequels is solid enough. The Jedi were almost exactly what I expected them to be, except the CGI. But Lucas was a victim of his own success and didn't get enough pushback and suggestions from other creatives like he did on the original films. Reading the novels helped me appreciate better the story he was trying to tell. I do think he lost the thread a bit insisting the story was about Vader... Naw, it was about Luke, and about finding that balance between attachment and detachment. 1999 was a problem for a different reason. It kicked off the New Jedi Order series, which really should have left a blank space for sequels. On one hand it did a lot of the exploring of the Jedi he's talking about here... but it went so grimdark that it was a branding issue, particularly for Disney. The problem was instead of embracing what had worked and simplifying it, they took the two worst plots line, went bleaker, and gutted the all connective material that had make them work. Not letting Luke have a small new Order like in the original EU and as Lucas had in his treatments was a really baffling decision.
They just couldn't keep it simple. The less we knew the better the Jedi were. The more we've learned the more they've unravelled and pissed people off.
18:35 Yes! Someone finally said it. I never understood why people said Last Jedi was so different when it regurgitated so much iconography from previous films, brought back so many familiar elements just to go "yoink" when something brand new would be better, introduced so many ideas that didn't go anywhere within its own story (Finn being introduced to war profiteering only to declare himself Rebel Scum anyway) and has tonal inconsistencies throughout. I always thought the sequel trilogy's main theme would be Reformation, and that desire is kinda there in Last Jedi. But because it spent two hours spinning its wheels just to re-establish the status quo, and that's why it failed in my eyes.
Great video and touches exactly on why Star Wars can't evolve the Jedi. They are basically discount Bene Gesserit, without any coherent story, philosophy and depth. They're basically smoke and mirrors. They were cool space wizards bullshitting the audience with cool faux-philosophical statements, but no solid intention. When the foundation is shaky, you can't build upon it. Everyone will be pissed with any in-depth portrayal of the Jedi because it's not going to match the interpretation they have in their heads based on the vague elements the original introduced or the many hands that built upon it since the original in the Extended Universe and other entries in the franchise. There's a fundamental dissonance that Star Wars diehard fans have that clash with what the story initially attempted to be: They view it as a incredibly complex and deeply layered story in their minds, but the movies are pretty much trying to be well-written pulpy space operas with dudes shooting lasers and lightsaber fights with some decent, but not in-depth, world-building elements. It's not Lord of the Rings, Dune or Game of Thrones, it never tried to be.
The "clash" for the hardcore fans is Star Wars had a very extensive lore until Disney decided to reboot the canon in 2014 and drop 99% of it. There were some issues prior to Disney. Filoni and TCW was an absolute wrecking ball to the continuity, but lot of people were still trying to fit the pieces together. Part of the problem is when Disney cleaned the slate is they didn't clear out the cartoons as well. All this exploration of the Jedi he's talking about. We had a lot of that and Disney went "too long, didn't read". The sequel trilogy is the cliffnotes version of Dark Empire and the Legacy of the Force which were two of the worst series in the Star Wars expanded universe. There were hundred of books and comics stretching over thousands of year of history... and they were erased for a rushed cash grab. That's why the Star Wars fandom is still salty.
@@TheChristianPsychopath The "many hands" comment I did was exactly calling out the expanded universe. Lots of different entries from different authors, varying in quality. It turned the original lore from vapid smoke into a quagmire of incongruity and contradiction. Star Wars never really had the depth that old fans thought it had and they were kids and what they crave now they're adults with better critical thinking skills (mostly). Star Wars is an iconic franchise, much like Indiana Jones. They're fun pulpy movies and should enjoyed as such, they're among the best in that style.
@@LightningRaven42 I admit my eyes skipped over that part. But the King Arthur myths were also a work of many hands over hundreds of years. The EU was not perfect, but the idea of a constantly expanding shared universe was different enough to be something special. If Disney had evolved that, pulled out the best parts, tidied up the inconsistencies, then a reboot would have been more palatable. Instead we got something even less coherent that couldn't be bothered plotting an arc for the 3 anchor films. Why take away Jaina and Jacen Solo to give us pale shadow of Jacen and Jaina Solo? Why restore Chewie only to serial kill your way through Luke, Leia, and Han? At it's core Star Wars is a fairy tale. Simplicity is part of the point. Distilling good and evil to its simplified forms was the point. Finding the shared threads of various faiths and mythologies. There are stories that build off that and did so very well, fleshing out all the bits in between. But if it not about the conflict of good and evil, either outside or in ourselves, it misses the core essence of Star Wars. No, it's not Dune or Lord of the Rings. Complex world building was not the main thrust. It was moral philosophy woven into more palatable adventure stories. There's a lot you can do with that, but moral relativism just isn't Star Wars. Disney's trying to pedal this post-modern morality that at time plays at good and evil but side steps any actual moral issues or cause and consequence. It's drama and visuals without ethical substance. Andor gets a little closer than most, but it still penalizes or corrupts anyone who tries to just do the right thing and attempts to elevate the Sith as some kind of equal option.
The way you present your argument is almost as if "being stuck" is the only problem of the franchise. I agree vision cohesion is part of the issue, but the stories being told are just bad. Bad in quality, bad in ideas, bad in morals, bad in logic. Even in isolation, none of the ideas presented by Disney worked, thats why they tried A and it didn't work, then tried B and found out it also didn't work. The writers dont understand Star Wars. And I think you don't understand it either. Your description of what a Jedi is, was very superficial. For a really good analysis of What a Jedi is, check "What JEDI Used To Be" from youtuber schnee. If you can't understand the Jedi, you can't create a Star Wars film WITH the Jedi. That's part of the reason the only stories that worked, didn't use the Jedi.
I'm definitely more of a fan of the course correction back to the jedi in original+prequel series framing. I think that black and white framing is actually best for it because people can instill their own sense of gray for it. The original framing worked because it was a black and white story, so of course black and white jedi fit into it. The prequel worked pretty good because it could imply the gray without having to state it - if white can become black, is there gray? The sequels intent is planted in the gray and thus fall short because, in our desire to instill meaning, it makes the intent feel bland in the first place. We can sense where the gray is even without being directly told what is gray and what isn't.
To me it was all perfectly resolved in The Unifying Force novel in the EU. But then, they saw the dollar signs and decided to unresolve it in order to make Jacen Solo Darth Cadeus. At least Darth Cadeus was a much better character than "we have Darth Cadeus at home" Kylo Ren
Much as I detest Denningverse, I think there needed to be push back against the Jedi embracing the dark side. Vergere was absolute poison for the Order, but she did bring in an element of philosophical discourse that worked really well. But "we have Darth Cadeus at home" Kylo Ren is a perfect description.
You're right about a lot of things here. But I think a big part of the problem is that the modern writers at Disney don't seem to have sufficient grasp of where Star Wars comes from or even what "aspirational" means. I would argue that neither JJ Abrams nor Rhian Johnson understood the Force, the Jedi or their classical roots. Johnson tried to deconstruct them but arguably used a too narrow political perspective in questioning not only heroism and tradition but also things like religion, gender-roles and capitalism, making his messaging shallow and largely miss the mark. Abrams' approach was an even less creative repetition of visuals and soundbites without adding any substance or asking any questions. But the deconstruction itself is not the problem. For instance, simply making a Jedi more human and vulnerable wouldn't make them any less of a heroic figure, or any less aspirational. The bigger problem is that many modern writers seem reluctant to deal with concepts like good and evil, heroism or idealism at all. Star Wars simply doesn't work without those components.
Had Andor not already been greenlit for two seasons, it would have gone the way of Acolyte with the goofy criticisms it got of not having lightsabers & showing gritty things like bricks & screws (I'm being fr). I think Star Wars is stuck cuz it has a needlessly whiny fanbase who's way too critical of some things that are alright & also praises the films that aren't actually good (imo).
A major part of it is that the writers behind modern Star Wars largely have antithetical attitudes towards them as compared to either the OT, Prequels, or most of the EU. You are not going to satisfy both the people who liked what they already were and those who want to deconstruct or subvert them.
The more exposure they get the less mystical they are. It's that simple. Expanding a fictional setting or story has a limited lifespan. You cannot do it forever because you spread the core ideas too thin eventually. You explore every worthwhile idea in time and so the quality necessarily drops.
The worst part about the Jedi Problem is that it has been visited In-Universe before, in what may be one of the greatest stories told outside the Original Trilogy: KOTOR2 (That's "Knights of the Old Republic 2"), and it hasn't been picked up as well ever since. I won't spoil the story too much, but the central theme of the game is structured around borrows heavily from "Jedi fatigue": You meet people who are either apathetic to the Jedi and Syth or actively seek to avoid or even fight them. Your mentor, Kreia, is one of the most interesting people in fiction ever written and voiced, and she tries to direct the PC away from both the jedi and the sith side. It's an overall fantastic experience for people that want Star Wars explored on a more Meta-level while still in-universe.
The best part about that game is the revelation behind Kreia's motivations: she hates the Force and the idea of predetermined fate that seems to govern the lives of those in the galaxy. The best description I've seen of her is if Nietzsche were tossed into a world where good & evil were tangible forces for a select group of people to draw upon. She admires the protagonist for their ability to have absconded from that dichotomy, and now seeks to use that potential to deny the will of the Force from those in the galaxy, regardless of the havoc that would wreak. It's that option that's still very unique in the proposition it presents regarding a third option to the central conceit of the franchise: is it possible for us to choose beyond the two sides? Is there even a meaningful separation between the two?
The result of them constantly switching from optimistic take to cynical take on the Jedi will inevitably leave audiences confused and unsure of what they're meant to represent in the story.
19:18 THANK YOU! Glad someone said it. If you check out most of Rian Johnsons movies you'll see a fair share of this. Around 10 years ago he stopped world building and started leaning more into deconstruction/dismantling. The bathos effect that MCU does too, that's a heavy one. It's boring when EVERYONE is trying to force meta schtick.
a little confused by the take that LAST JEDI views the Jedi in a sociological lens... when I really think it's a strong continuation of the 'mythic' as opposed to anything involving political actors (which the prequels and THE ACOLYTE absolutely are) I think someone might get thrown off about this is in Rian Johnson's default MO as a writer/director to take a deconstructionist approach to stories (not just with starwar). THIS is where a lot of the sense of subversion came from... not in anything regarding "THE JEDI MUST END" sentiment the trailers pushed... but the actual film's text directly refutes. It's truly mystifying how so many people completely misread this about the film. The irony is that Abrams' movies really try to take the Jedi back to their mythic status (in desperately trying to pivot away from anything prequel-related)... but his MO as a filmmaker is so heavily built upon spruced-up nostalgic mimicry, that him simply trying to repeat the mythology only reveals how shallow it already is... resulting in the myth already losing its power For me, this is what it really comes down to; I agree that Lucas' philosophies expressed through the Jedi are a shallow new-agey soup of various world philosophies that were made to FEEL mythic by strong visions and storytelling in the original trilogy. I don't care about the 'integrity' of the Jedi philosophy or their portrayal in itself beyond what it can do for a good story and an artist's own take on the material. So I can enjoy the childlike wonder towards the Jedi ideal in something like SKELETON CREW... while also greatly enjoying the Jedi being taken down a peg and built back up in LAST JEDI through Johnson honoring Lucas' prequel text (which Abrams desperately tried to avoid with FORWAKENS) Anything franchise that gets milked this much and often is gonna have its myths demystified and limits tested, and I like seeing those limits tested for good or ill. There are a lot of reasons behind why a mega-franchise's mythic sheen has ups and downs... but keep this in mind; the Jedi aren't the only thing that got demystified with the Disney era. The origins of ROGUE ONE was built on the old playful/smug geek-stenchy nitpick about the Empire leaving a weak point in their superweapon. So even our favorite exhaust port couldn't maintain its MYTHIC STATUS for the purposes of the original STAR WARS If anyone wants their favorite mythic franchise to remain mythic? LET IT END
Funny how two video games from over twenty years ago, star wars knights of the older republic, one and two define the sith, and the jedi, clearly that made defined in clear ideals of the philosophy of what jedi and sith both believe
I never liked the prequels. Because they made Jedi uninteresting by portraying them in a completely inflationary and shallow way. Every Jedi wears 60 pound brown robes at all times, never changes his clothes, and never needs any equipment except his lightsaber. So they fly, dive, and sit around. At some point a hundred Jedi show up and have over-choreographed dance fights. The depth and variety of a Fortnite skin. On top of that, you have the completely superfluous and false portrayal of Yoda and the Emperor as they are jumping around with lightsabers. Like so many things, that should never have been portrayed. The Jedi should have been portrayed in the prequels as a kind of secret society or special unit that only rarely appears as helpers in crucial situations. Oh, and the sequels... dont let me start.
In the original trilogy, Jedi are space samurai/cowboys. The magic is in the creative synthesis of samurai movies and westerns in a science fiction setting. Everything else after is various degrees of death of the author.
JJ got so close to course correcting but I think because of what Ryan Johnson left him to work with he had to overcorrect. I'd love to see more of JJ's vision IF he takes a leap and expresses a real creative vision, expanding on the previous movies AND the EU comic verse.
If they told the Old Republic stories, they would make bank. Very compelling story lines, easy definition of Sith and Jedi: just another branch of the Republic’s and Empire’s armies
I agree with a good bit of your points here, but I do think there's space for both "Noble Jedi" and the examination of these ideals when put into trying times. But there has been a failure to actually work on this idea in a material way. Funnily enough, the closest we got was the Acolyte, because it took pains to show how all these Jedi were largely good people, but that the currents of politics and tradition messed everything up. I think what needs to be done more clearly is framing the ideals of the Jedi against the realities of the Jedi. There SHOULD be space for just flat out bad Jedi, because if being a Jedi is just a blank check for goodness, it makes the feats of the heroes LESS special. If every Jedi can just resist temptation, then Luke's rejection of Palpatine is just another Tuesday. And this is going to mean some of these people got positions of power, and they are going to leave ripples from their actions. Plus, people don't really ever see THEMSELVES as evil. In their mind, everything they do is ultimately a net benefit to the world. And there's also room for the idea that while the ideals and methods of the Jedi are well intentioned and did good for many, that the traditions are starting to no longer fit in the modern world. How these noble aims step on toes, but at the same time we shouldn't forget what the Jedi STOOD for. You can make a "Man out of Time" type story, like Captain America or Blast from the Past. Some Jedi who is trying to do good, but the world makes doing good hard. The drama of "will they compromise their beliefs, or will they do the good but foolish thing?" But I also think one aspect of the discourse that shouldn't be forgotten is that a SIZABLE portion of the hate for these Star Wars ventures doesn't actually have anything to do with Star Wars. It's just grifters and bigots throwing shade at the target du jour. And even if they only make up a tenth of the crowd critical of these pieces of media, they are still coloring ALL of the conversations. A lot of people will just parrot incredibly bad takes they heard one time, and even once a claim has been unequivocally refuted it will still get repeated for ever and ever because some people don't CARE that it's wrong, they just want to talk smack about the stuff. Especially with all this "anti-DEI" stuff that has now filtered up to the level of global politics.
The collective consciousness is exhausted with Star Wars (and most forms of modern storytelling) because stories are no longer there to temporarily take us into a quiet space and give us something thought-provoking that we can take back to the real world. Franchises are the destination - the end in-and-of themselves. The complexity of life, coupled with the technological capacity to create endless media, derail the integrative superpower we have to make action out of meaning. Instead we're left with endless, fantastical worldbuilding that only serves to sap our lives, take our money, and delude us into a false sense of safety, which we masturbate to every night through high-definition visual archetypes. Please, LSOO, break your own statis and get back to myth, sincerity, and real intellectualism.
I really like the analysis of the problem: that SW writers/exec's can't "pick a lane" about the Jedi. But I think that prior to deciding what kind of storytelling to do, they need to figure out what they're telling a story about. And as the video notes, SW has never really known what the Jedi are. What are their teachings beyond a few "vaguely Buddhist and Stoic" lines? I think the official canon needs to do some worldbuilding about what the Jedi actually believe and practice, and step 2 would be what kind of story they want to tell about it.
I agree with the thesis that the problem with current Star Wars is that it has lost the mythic structure in favor of sociology(I also love the term Schrodinger’s Jedi), but I think that the real problem here is not with the Jedi, it is with the Force itself. The nature of the Dark Side is such that it has an almost natural allure, and it easily corrupts emotions from those who use the Force unless they willfully suppress them, in the process also corrupting the very motive that caused their fall in the first place as they are driven towards more power for its own sake (Yuthura Ban in KOTOR states this directly and it is also evident in Anakin's fall). This then means that Jedi are doomed to perpetuate an eternal recurrence that means the Wars can never truly end. Jedi orthodoxy forbids attachment because attachment serves as a strong source of emotion that can be corrupted. As this is against human intuition, some Jedi will inevitably resist and be drawn towards the Dark Side especially when combined with the fact that the Jedi Order itself is inevitably politically corrupted and forced into actions that make the Jedi Council hypocrites. This then leads to Sith coming about and either wiping out or severely depleting the Jedi. These Sith inevitably die to a combination of infighting in their endless quest for power, Jedi action, and the occasional redemption. This then allows the Jedi to be restored in which they are inevitably drawn back into the same games of orthodoxy and hypocrisy. If a version of the Jedi Order tries something different, it always fails. Emotional connections for Jedi are just too dangerous, as while some individuals can handle it there will always be those who cannot. Luke’s Jedi Order in both Legends and Disney canon had several apprentices fall to the Dark Side for this reason. The attempt at a third option to Jedi and SIth, Gray Jedi, is sometimes popular among fans but is doomed to embrace apathy rather than finding a better path because they are incapable of decisive action (the Bendu in Rebels and Jolee Bindo in KOTOR both clearly show this). Most alternative traditions are like the Nighsisters (or the Korunnai of Haruun, Jensaari, or Rakata) in which they are overtly using the Dark Side to a lesser extent than Sith. There are a couple of slightly more obscure groups who merely use the Force passsivley (like Lasat Mystics and the Dagoyan Order), but they then rely on either the Jedi or others as protection against external threats of the Dark Side making them no better than Gray Jedi. The underlying problem here is that the Force itself is almost a colonized take on Eastern mythology. The Legend of Korra had a similar problem with Raava and Vaatu. To repeat what I said earlier, it's an encapsulation of the Taoist binary into a Christian worldview via the Campbellian monomyth, one that leaves no room for the actual symbiosis of the Yin and Yang because they are combined with good and evil. This problem means that Jedi and Sith are inevitably caught in an eternal recurrence of violence that feels like it can never be broken. There really is something genius about the nature of Star Wars and the Force and how it encapsulates so much about religion into a single spiritual ideology, the trouble is that it's also terrible from any sort of in-universe perspective such that if you examine it with any detail it doesn’t hold up. Star Wars worldbuilding in general has always been a castle resting on a foundation of sand with everything from the inconsistent scale of the galaxy, the nature of droids as comedic servants, the dynamic of Rebels without a clear ideology, to the nature of the Force itself. On a personal note, I’m also struggling with this concept of Schrodinger’s heroism more broadly with my own writing in terms of whether I should build a straightforward heroic faction. Should I embrace actual heroism or let my heroes be more complex and less heroic in the process? Actual heroism often feels hollow today especially at the level of a heroic organization as we realize the complexities of the world, but at the same time as someone else noted in the comments if all I do is deconstruct heroism I am left with nothing.
I'd say that DC is heading to a really bad take with the characters. At least in terms of quality, the stuff looks bad. The story might be just okay, but who knows. But if you see MoS, then BvS to end it with ZSJL, every novie went with a different tone depending what each movie needed to continue the story and yet they feel perfectly connected. The first one being a "what if Supermen were in our real world?", then "what does it mean to the world there is a Superman?", and then we get the mythological aspect with ZSJL.
Bad take how? Everything Gunn has said gives more reason to him adapting these characters faithfully. And the thing with the DCEU is that on surface-level is does look like that if it was only MoS & ZSJL. But then BvS comes in the middle & completely ruins it with the most boring sauceless adaptations of these characters.
I disagree with where you draw your lines. ‘Modern Star Wars’ didn’t start with the Disney films. The series almost entirely abandoned the mythological elements over the course of episode 5, and Lucas began deconstructing the Jedi starting with episode 6. The issue is that directors are still slavishly following Lucas’s ideas decades later, without meaningful innovation. We’ve been deconstructing the Jedi for 7 consecutive films and 2 shows, and no director has actually tried to reconstruct them, to write what comes next.
The Lost World - the sequal to the OG Jurassic Park - did the same thing for me: it basically destroyed the magic of that first movie and lost any real interest in the entire Jurassic universe. Also, the 3(!) Hobbit movies have nearly done that for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The problem with the Jedi is just a symptom of the fact that the people who are writing the Jedi fundamentally don't understand the Force. The believe that the Force is a morality or about motals when its not. And they believe that "balance" in the Force is some mixture of the Light and Dark. Both of these assumptions are not only misguided but functionally wrong, and they are ruining the underlying mythology of the purpose of the Jedi and Star Wars as a whole.
All of this could have been easily avoided had Disney gone with the orginal source material from Legends. Luke reforms the Jedi and Leia helps do the same with the New Republic. All of this is on Disney and their absolute disrespect for the starwars lore. I should also add that the best Jedi turn out to be ones that have actually turned at some point and come back. They recognize clearly the ridiculous and cloying nature of their dogmatism having broken it.
One influence on modern Star Wars has to be the video game Knights of the Old Republic. The political nature of the Jedi vs Sith we see today, IMHO, orignates there. Though even there they managed to keep the Sith as villains but giving them a logic to their actions beyond being cackling bad guys. However that has been lost in modern tellings, opting instead for a more grey relativism that is clearly inspired by Game of Thrones.
Dave Filoni was a disaster for my interest in Star Wars. The difference between Andor’s deep and personal storytelling contrasts *starkly* with his shows that feel like a kid smashing his toys together while debating power levels with his friends
In my opinion this is a problem introduced in the original trilogy and a big part of why I didn't like empire or return, Star wars is a small universe. The emphasis on jedi and the skywalker family only made it smaller.
Everything is having an identity crisis. Everything Everywhere All At Once caught this spirit I believe. Only rocks are sure what their identity is. Movie characters too are having similar identity crisis, which is why getting to the essence of a character is getting difficult for best of writers.
The best course correction for Star Wars is towards retirement. It has left a permanent mark in pop culture a long time ago, it should now rest in the museum of great things from the past, not suffer the indignity of being endlessly milked for profit.
I'm only about halfway though the video but I'm thinking to myself that maybe Lukes New Jedi in the media following the fall of the Empire should have pivoted to Stoicism versus the seemingly Buddhist that the Old Jedi Order were. While I'm not fully educated on either topic and they seem to have quite a lot of overlap, Buddhism seems more self-reflective, spiritualist and to have a common doctrine of peace/anti-violence at all costs, Stoicism seems more about having accurate judgements about yourself and the world around you. Cal Kestis and Qui Gon are Stoics as they have accurate judgements and *can be* proactive in their use of force (har har) for others from a position of love, which is why we like them, while the Jedi as a whole were blind to the reality of the politics and the galaxy at large, and were strongarmed into the Clone Wars as the supposed "keepers of the peace" which secured their destruction and hypocrisy; also Dooku is a tragic figure who *thinks* that he has accurate judgements which on some level we understand, but is also acting for selfish reasons and from a position of hatred, he isn't doing what he is doing in an effort to protect or save anyone. "stop debating how to be a good man, and be one" - Marcus Aurelius "philosophers have merely interpreted the world, the point is to change it" - Karl Marx
As far as the “failure to commit” I believe Time Period is the solution. Star Wars jumps around in time a lot and shows us a bunch of institutions in different contexts. But if all of the depictions of a single institution are consistent with each other in the same time period, then I don’t think there’s a problem. In other words, if the Pre-Empire Jedi (or at least Post-Ruusan Pre-Empire Jedi) are the problematic “detachment” ones - but Luke Skywalker’s Sequel Era Jedi are the more lenient enlightened “Marriage is ok” ones - and the franchise depicted that consistently, I don’t think it would be a problem. It wouldn’t be a contradiction because if you follow t he story chronologically, the Jedi themselves evolve and then commit to their new state. As long as it makes sense chronologically, then different depictions of the Jedi can work. The problem is that you have The Acolyte saying one thing, then the Prequels another, then the Originals another - then the Last Jedi kind of doing a loopty loop back to the Acolyte. We’re getting conflicting things said about the Jedi in the same time periods, so it doesn’t feel like an organic evolution of the institution through chronology. It just feels like a haphazard disagreement from any given writer at any given time. 19:18 “I think it’s a misguided idea that the sort of postmodern deconstruction that we’ve been seeing a lot of in popular media is the only way to add complexity and depth to a story.” THANK YOU
I just find Jedi boring. What made them interesting was being this long dead legend, and what made us care was that we wanted to see Luke aspire to the heroic greatness of their myth and legend. Otherwise they're just samurai with inconsistent magic powers and an overinflated sense of importance. When Disney said they were going to make new spinoffs, I was really hoping we'd get some fringe stories with characters who are not linked to anything major in the galaxy at all. No jedi, no Skywalkers, no famous figures. I wanted smaller stories that didn't just wind up back at the jedi once again. We got that with Mando for like one episode before it all became about the force and Jedi again. The only show that managed it was Andor. I would have loved a crime thriller along the lines of The Wire featuring the Black Sun crime syndicate. Or a Rome-esque story of intrigue and politicking in the Imperial Senate following a Royal guard or something. So much potential wasted. If I was in charge of Star Wars I'd delete the sequels and every tv show except Andor.
The real p[roblem with Star Wars is they don't have good enough storytellers. They don't understand story to the same level as George and Rian Johnson.
Putting Rian Johnson in the same side as "understanding" story is wild to me. I believe he has repeatedly demonstrated his complete inability to write a coherent story.
@@AfutureV all the opposite. If anything, I'd say Rian Johnson understands Star Wars in a way that not even Dave Filoni does. His movie is a literal love letter to the main themes of the franchise. Sadly, The Last Jedi is a movie that tried to move the franchise forward sandwiched between two movies that want to keep it rooted to its past.
You should check out the comic series Starwars Legacy. It'll just make you pissed off of what Disney took away. There was already well written characters, world building, etc and they just threw it all away.
I say this as a massive Star Wars fan: great video, LSOO, and I agree. I'll expand a bit further with moly take. Star Wars was stuck since 1983. You could always enjoy it if you let your tastes match with it and you can always put one thing down to enjoy another Star Wars installment because even back then there was a ton. And it's juggled multiple identities since A New Hope. I recently watched the nine films in full with a critical eye, and the sixth episode is fraught with tonal dissonance and Disneyfication decades before Disney touched it. I suspect Lawrence Kasdan was an unspoken genius behind our favorite scenes because amidst the drama of a son thinking he's a Jedi but succumbing to darkness on his path to defeat his father only for the father to forsake the dark and spare his son, there was an entire scene dedicated to aliens dancing to their *specific* genre of music and an entire story line dedicated to wonky antics with teddy bears who don't know what helmets are when they're actively wearing one, replete with lines that definitely parallel and surpass "they fly now". Its identity there fought itself and showed cracks in it's own logic (e.g. borrowing yin yang aesthetic from eastern philosophy to say the force needs balance then forgetting that by destroying one side of the force and favoring the light). It foreshadowed the tonal dissonance we'd see in the Prequels where Lucas took full control - e.g. a 9 year old boy destroying an entire army of trained combatant pilots when trained allies failed, yelling "now this is podracing," (which again shows cringey Disneyfication decades before Disney "ruined it") all cut in the middle of our father figure slain during Duel of Fates. The ensemble direction of the Originals polished them (actors contributed to direction and scripts, Lucas's wife recut and edited the final product for a more satisfying close, etc) and spared them from Lucas's infamously clunky but hollow dialogue that reflected hollow characters who were primarily aesthetic focused and never deep. It's why Padme was absolutely butchered in the Prequels. It's why there's so much nonsense dialogue and filler that required an entire team of writers dedicated to the specific mission of making sense of it in the Clone Wars series. That's why there are midichloreans now. That's why the Jedi Order was militaristic government agents in the Prequels, which betrays their ideals and core - which is, you're right, vaguely pacifist spiritualism that bears the aesthetic of Buddhism. The Prequels depiction contrasts heavily with the Originals, and the Originals' Jedi depiction aligns more closely to the Sequel's. Luke has the jaded whimsy of Yoda yet the iconic Jedi wit of letting an opponent destroy themselves with darkness without ever stooping to their level - not commanding battleships. He learned from his mistake with Solo and recognized his internal battle requires constant vigilance, not violence. The Prequels was the first series to lose the spirit of the Originals and it's been in freefall, exploring itself through a myriad of genres and foci ever since. It's a hot take to many in a fandom compromised by bandwagons and grognards, but the first films ep 4 and 5 were cinematically sound, yes, but certainly still fraught with errors, yet generally consistent in tone, pace, character, and core. Every film after that falls into question. But none marks the fall better than ep 6 and none cements the fall better than the Prequels. Again, I enjoy Star Wars, but fans really must take an honest look at the franchise if they want it redeemed. Now, knowing my Star Wars community, they will glance at this, see that I didn't spit exclusively on Disney's productions, dismiss the legitimacy of the points I addressed, ignore them to focus on ones I didn't in hopes that somehow makes my points go away or just instinctually say I'm wrong. LSOO, good video, and I agree.
The chief problem of everything Star Wars is that Lucas chose to become a toy franchiser instead of a storyteller(and he wasn't a particularly original storyteller to begin with) and this kept everything at a sophomoric level after Empire. And the endless circling of Skywalker, Death Star and Palpatine has been simple cash grab laziness since Return..
What do you think would be the best direction for the Jedi? Let me know below!
Don't forget to watch my exclusive breakdown of The Last Jedi: nebula.tv/videos/lsoo-star-wars-the-last-jedi-8-years-later
Signing up to Nebula also directly supports the channel :)
I genuinely think that the Jedi have lost their mysticism, they are far too exposed for the viewer. While I agree with their human traits and flaws, the myth of the Jedi is lost, at least for me.
I preferred the mysteriousness of the Jedi that was certainly there in the classic trilogy. It was sadly lost starting with the prequel trilogy. The short fan film Premonition where a young female Jedi, to protect her daughter, must confront and fight a Sith was a particular improvement in my view. Thank you, Tom, for your Star Wars review.
WHY u want feedback?
20:50 YOU DON'T HAVE DIRECTIONS!?
The plan is explore -content series- on Scriptwriting ?
whut? u have time , funding for that?
u better launch your own IP, seriously .
1st Hot Take?
Why would your and or OURS idea(s) even matter about Star Wars?
The Original Creator can't even interfere on that ...
He's the most confused on that btw...
Obs When Nebula is going to evolve Smart TV Ux , it's kinda horrible to follow u there...
Despite my admiration for your videos, you are erroneously this time. George Lucas provided a fairly intricate explanation of how the jedi, or champions of the light, decide to serve the republic rather than the force and the highest good. The precuels demonstrate the hyprocesy of adhering to political systems and the complications that exist around following beliefs instead of virtues.
The Jedi I feel are part of a much bigger problem within Star Wars. I think it’s in a tug and pull between hard Science fantasy and Soft Science fantasy.
I feel the more the Force is explained, cosmic and living force, the struggles that some have in powers, and the costs that those powers do to you….it becomes a lot less like soft magic and more like a hard magic system.
Star Wars I feel is at a turning point. Do we keep digging into the past and go into the Old Republic era….or do we remake the franchise almost completely with a new saga.
New characters, heroes, villains, factions, force users, a new galaxy to explore. Something to make Star Wars unrecognizable in terms of story but still astheticly familiar.
In my opinion, Kannan Jarrus from rebels is what every jedi should aspire to be and is probably the perfect example of a jedi besides legends Luke. He uses love as his greatest strength, not a weakness as the previous jedi saw. Most importantly he has flaws and is well aware of them, but still tries his best. He never even made it to knighthood in the jedi order but knows if he doesn’t step up, no one else will. Thats what a jedi should be
The thing about Star Wars is that I am just filled with so much apathy. My Sorrow and Frustration has mellowed into banal disinterest, especially as culturally these stories just no longer have anything new to say. I'm certainly interested in Andor Season 2, but after that I may just tap out for good...
It's interesting how most of the properties Disney has acquired, that I used to love (Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars), inspire so little in me anymore 😔
Maybe it's time to put these types of stories to rest. The Jedi don't need their stories told anymore. What more could you expound on them that hasn't been said?
It’s time to let old things die.
Just started watching. Wanna mention that Andor is the best thing in Star Wars happened in Disney era
Andor, Visions and the Vader comics.
Some Star Wars purists hate Andor tho.
Andor is a brilliant TV show based in the Star wars universe, but some don't consider it "real" Star Wars. The problem with Disney is they are chasing real Star Wars for the purists, while also being an incompetent company, and while also appeasing other cultural agendas.
It's just a total mess!!!
@@dually81purists already have the classic trilogy - no Andor or other Star Wars movie can take it away
My admittedly purist stance on Andor is yes it's very good, but why the hell did it (spinoff story about a spinoff character from a spinoff movie) get triple the budget that Kenobi had (two main characters of the entire saga) that same year? I can't enjoy it properly because of those poor executive choices
Thats not saying a lot
I honestly don't think anyone truly understood Star Wars beyond George Lucas, Chris Avellone and Irvin Kershner, there are so many subpar to bad Star Wars media nowadays that they are not even worth the apathy, gone is the ambition that is not only a brave attempt but a union of many talented people doing something that they actually care
Star Wars can absolutely keep moving forward, but it needs good storytellers, good directors and good writers
Add Drew Karpyshyn that list. Both KOTOR 1 and the Darth Bane novels also truly got it right. The Darth Bane novels even executed the concept that The Acolyte struggled with, showing a Dark Side perspective with nuance without simply invalidating the Jedi.
Dave Filloni weirdly seems to have the right understanding but struggles to pull off the good storytelling needed to execute the ideas. Despite the flaws in the series, Kanan was still probably the best Jedi under Disney cannon.
That is hardly true; take a deep dive into how jedi are understood in The old republic (2 does it best imo) or the extended galaxy before disney.
Kersh never really understood Star Wars. He just had George looking over his shoulder constantly, which actually caused a lot of friction on set. That's a big part of what makes Empire so great.
If you're not into Joseph Campbell's mythic structure as a narrative device or a Jungian then you probably should be writing Star Wars. But as LSOO says, if things change, that's fine, but stick to something.
I don't like the phrasing 'truly understood'. I certainly prefer the product of some directors' visions to others, but does that make them the Star Wars authority or just someone who produced something that resonated with me? If I just reference who I thought told the best story then Irvin Kershner wins because Empire is the best Star Wars story; and does 2nd place even matter? I don't think that's constructive though, it's just hierarchy building. I think there's merit in most Star Wars media. For example I was very ready to adopt the Last Jedi's take on abandoning the light/dark, jedi/sith binary (even if other parts of TLJ didn't work for me). JJ rolled that back and told a story I couldn't enjoy in Rise of Skywalker. But JJ's movie was more in line with the original trilogy (including Kershner) than Johnson's take. So who's wrong? Do I not understand Star Wars because I was willing to accept the narrative evolution? I don't think Star Wars has some objective core essence to 'be understood' and be true to. I think effective storytellers tell good stories and they can do that without adhering strictly to what came before.
Deconstruction can be amazing (KOTOR 2, Andor), but it requires a) outstanding writing, and b) a rich source material that stands on its own which can be deconstructed while still respected (KOTOR 1, the OT). Respect for the source materials is the operative term here.
Small stories are where its at, ill die on that hill. The big stories that seem to try to one up the last in grandure are boxed in for story telling and you end up with absurdity
I've always though a good SW anthology series letting writers and directors play in the sandbox without worrying about canon would be an awesome idea. Just a set of short 30-60 minute self-contained episodes, like the Twilight Zone. Visions did this very well. I'd love to see a live action version.
Nothing like a simple story told well. Seven Samurai is objectively a very basic tale but it continues to resonate.
@@andrewchambers9752 Are you talking about Star Wars Visions?
@@kakal10s yes, SW Visions
Once you save the galaxy once it feels less and less impactful the more times you save it
in our postmodern world, no system of power can be perceived as being good natured. Entertainment is written to be anti-establishment. So every single structure has to be disassembled and shown to be problematic at its core. A great example of this is what Star Wars is doing with the concept of a Jedi. now they have absolutely nothing to fall back on and have basically butchered the original concept. the actual art is suffering in quality and vision as a result of this.
but that issue is true in so many other franchises. like what are people supposed to believe in if everything is deconstructed?
The fact that you have TH-cam videos commenting on this trend proves to me that we are about to enter a new phase of art with redefined values.
now that millennials are aging and they’re depressive and pointlessly rebellious outlook is no longer trendy and cool, the target audience for art becomes Gen Z who are really searching for meaning. The movie TV and print entertainment that provides glimpses of meaning are going to be the ones that resonate the most.
Yet to watch the entire video, so I might be repeating what's in it, but I think there were two main events that caused them to ruin the Jedi.
The first was when they tried to retcon Anakin to not seem like a psycho in the prequels, which they did by making the Jedi utterly incompetent in Clone Wars.
The second was the popularity of Game of Thrones. You can't watch Last Jedi and convince me its "The Jedi were morally grey" arc wasn't a direct result of that series success.
Its really annoying how embedded this has become in the series.
Give me one example of a system that is good-natured?
@@friendlybane Postmodern philosophy does not allow for such a system. We haven't synthesized a suitable philosophy to replace it. Until we move on from the fetish of deconstruction and accept that a set of principles and presuppositions can be "good enough," with their short comings seen as opportunities rather than damnation then we will not view a system as good natured.
@@friendlybane give me one example where destroying the hope or faith in something leads to a healthier lifestyle.
Also, the lack of idealism in media is not casual. It's part of a establishment propaganda disguised superficially as antiestablishment. Ideals are not bad. Ideals are what make people wake up every day and keep going. Having ideals doesn't mean you never question them or you're close minded. Star Wars was inspired by anti vietnam sentiment, according to Lucas himself. American imperialism doesn't want Vietnam protestors again so they prefer young socially conscious people to be stuck in the most unproductive way possible, and that's what they provide with mass media. We've gone from "there's no absolute good and absolute evil, and everyone is a different shade of grey" to "nobody can know what's bad and good".
There are many fan-made features writing good Jedi stories. Jedi are just knights, martial artists, or monks. If you can't tell a good story with those classic archetypes, then you're overthinking it.
George Lucas handle the jedi pretty well and I don't even like George Lucas as an person too many anger outburst
"Hey we have this whole universe but let's just focus on the problems of the same family over and over, ok?"
Also the fandom:
Let's hate the only guy trying to evolve the franchise in the main series and claim his movie is the worst thing mankind has ever made... Even though it's easily the best of the new trilogy and stand head and shoulders above the stuff that hack JJ Abrams came up with, despite its major flaws (mostly inherited from The Force Awakens).
@@LightningRaven42 The last jedi was my favourite of the last trilogy, that movie had something
The best depictions of the Jedi are when Yoda describes to Luke how we are more than just flesh, and when Luke throws away his lightsaber instead of killing Vader. Both of these events have one thing in common: They're emotional, they resonate with you.
With the prequels, Lucas had good ideas that were horribly executed. He wrote the jedi as being a virtuous, ineffective and stiff institution, blinded by their inflexible ideologies and thus allowing fascism to grow (aesthetics vs praxis). The problem is that the execution made most of it fall on deaf ears, making the audience unaware if they were supposed to identify with the jedi or not.
The jedi are the best when they're wise and capable of understanding the world beyond their egos. Not when they're space monks or lightsaber-wielding superheroes.
I was literally thinking 'i wonder if Like Stories of Old will upload today' and lo and behold
I checked him an hour ago.
Re: Star Wars not knowing what to do with the Jedi: When the Sequels were set to come out, or maybe after the first one had been screened, I was so emotionally excited because it seemed to me that the writing was setting up Kylo Ren to finally explore how enticing it could be to "get ahead" or "make progress" or "become powerful" with hate in your heart. How a young man could be pulled away from "doing the right thing, regardless of the consequences" by exposure to (1) elements of corruption within the "good" system that demoralize him and (2) a universe where the "bad" guys were getting ahead. The sequel series was well placed to speak to the male crisis and address cultural conversations like "nice guys finishing last", elders planting trees whose shade they would never sit under, staying humble underneath someone else's tutelage, waiting your "turn" to move up in the world, and what will happen to you if you never get to move up. I see these all as important conversations that still aren't being resolved in the first world.
I think that somewhere in the early writing, people decided that "good and evil" wasn't cool enough to write about.
4:30 - We've been seeing this for a long time. This is why JJ Abrams has gotten so much work, and why we don't ultimately like anything he makes over the long term because there's not actually an arc with payoff and resolution. only fuel for the next thing. In everything he touches, it seems like there was never a story that was trying to be told from the outset.
I love your point about the failure to commit.
I know it's well trodden ground to talk about the failures of Palpatine in RoS, but not having Kylo Ren be the big bad, the Sith Lord that needs to be defeated at the end of the trilogy was a massive misstep. By the end of Last Jedi he got everything he wanted. He fired his planet buster, overthrew his Master as is the Sith custom, Became the undisputed Lord of the First Order over Hux and was even tempting Rey to the dark side. By many accounts he won. I think going from that point to expand from.
Kylo was a lazy recycle of Jacen Solo's fall. I did like him destroying the mask, that was actual character growth, but they never bothered giving him actual character motivation.
Luke was done so dirty... In the books pre-Disney, he had built a thriving New Jedi Order. He went through massive struggles and losses, but wiping out the Jedi again, was such a lazy way to reset the galaxy back to the beginning of ANH.
It's gotten so bad they need to go into major retcon territory and basically start afresh. Post-RotJ needs to be a low-Force user universe. If a story involves a Jedi, they should really lean into the spiritual element and give it some actual chops. Actually draw from (and obviously slightly modify for flavour) real traditions like Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism and Christian mysticism, which are already influences for the Jedi.
Anything set in the prequel (or pre-prequel) era can be free to effectively be a high fantasy setting (equivalent to a high magic setting like something Sanderson would write), while the Empire and post-RotJ eras should be low fantasy/low magic, like the original films themselves.
What their doing now is the reboot. That's kind of what we had before. No Ahsoka... Luke was trying to collect enough about the Jedi to figure out how to move forward, trying to train Leia, but she was busy helping put the Republic government back together. Luke started a new order about 7 years after RotJ, 2 years after Thrawn's defeat, and watching him start from scratch to try to figure out what the Jedi should be was one of the more fascinating aspects of the stories. Truce at Bakura, the X-wing novels, quite a few short stories collections created the low Jedi period, so it did mean something when the Jedi began to emerge again, and one of the struggles of the new order was being so few in number.
Sincerity must win over sardonic irony for any franchise to survive. We have deconstructed these stories for the sake of deconstruction, and in the end, it doesn't help anyone.
Something to remember with Star War is that Lucas originally wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie. He couldn't get the rights, so he decided to make an original IP based on Flash Gordon, King Arthur, and Samaria film. He even bought the right to remake The Hidden Fortress to make ANH.
I think we need new franchises based on what writers sincerely loved. We don't need another Terminator, SW, Jurassic Park, or whatever shit remake or reboot. Take a cance on something new.
I am firmly on the camp of the more mythical approach to Star Wars over the cynical, sociological approach. Star Wars to me was always meant to be more of a mythical story, with the Jedi standing as paragons of virtue and self control. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be more complex stories relating to the Force and how people discuss the Light and the Dark, but if the idea of an objective Good and Evil is removed, then it doesn’t represent was Star Wars is supposed to be. That heart needs to remain intact, no matter the story.
This sounds like the Jerry Maquire problem, where he posits that the sports agency company should take on less clients in favor of more quality relationships with those same clients. He was fired by lunch hour.
I can imagine this short conversation at a Disney exec's office:
Great writer: "We need to make these series much shorter in order to tell a great story."
Studio Exec: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
These big studios will not agree to make things shorter for the sake of something like mere quality. They want a cash cow that they can milk for decades. To quote the great Wu Tang Clan: C.R.E.A.M.
I do believe that the best direction to Star Wars is to stop. No more Star Wars movies and series. We are so deep in fanservce nostalgic time that it became post-nostalgic. Let Star Wars die, it already had it’s peak. Let the new universes and stories rise. I want to experience new worlds, new universes, characters and stories. I want to get similar emotions of freshness, of something unseen before as I got by watching first Matrix, Star Wars, even Marvel movies. Only emotions I get from corporations milking old franchises are boredom and tiredness.
In my opinion, people moved on and movie industry has to do the same.
I completely agree with this.
Nobody can be as good as Anakin self imposed restrictions too when he only showed off the same force abilities as everyone else so you can't show outrageous new powers or people bemoan why didn't X have this.
I think they need a 5-10 year hiatus, then pick out the best of the Legends material and bring the best stories to life.
The Jedi idea's really simple, I think. What's weird is I don't see that simplicity coming up much in the actual stories, or not as much as it should. There's quite a bit of exploration into what effect the Jedi have on the world, but not much exploration of what the Jedi actually stand for and why they do the things they do.
The Jedi ideas can be more than just philosophy or mythology. They can be a statement of the transformative power of kindness, humility and connection, just as the original trilogy was. Star Wars could really commit to that hopeful, transformative empathy, in a way a lot of other franchises can't. Some of the most popular heroes and stories in modern pop culture are based on that.
The most recent I can think of that really spelled it out was 'Everything Everywhere all at Once', and that movie laid it all out thus (paraphrased):
"When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything. The only thing I do know... is that we have to be kind. Especially when we don't know what's going on. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight."
That's it. That's the Jedi. 'Saving what we love, not destroying what we hate.' In his movie, Rian Johnson had the Resistance commit to becoming the heirs of the Jedi ethos. Those are ideas that mean more than the 'Jedi' name, and they are beautiful ideas, that no story-teller would feel comfortable abandoning. It feels as if they are what Star Wars media keeps trying to reach back toward - but it also feels like it's reaching blindly, like it doesn't understand the idea at the heart of the original movies well enough. Even the characters who you would think would understand it the most - Obi-Wan, Luke - are portrayed as confused, despite the simplicity of it.
And it is a simple idea. Everything's connected, and everyone, in lots of subtle ways. So don't look at things in isolation, look at the world in terms of relationships. See how related it all is, and how percieved differences don't mean as much as we think.
Obi-Wan touches on that when he tells the Gungans they ought to care about the Naboo, because what happens to one will affect the other. Yoda tries to teach Luke that just as a rock and an X-Wing are much more similar than he thinks, so are Luke and his father. And Luke wins when he commits hard to the idea that he and his father are the same, and understands that if he can face the Dark and say no, then his father can too.
So, live like that's the case. Hold good feelings in your heart, and give them to others. Recognise the bad feelings for what they are, understand them, and let them pass away. Don't let longing for the past or fear of the future drag you away from appreciating the world around you now. Help others with their troubles, but at peace in yourself, because life goes on and it always will. Open yourself up and let the world in, let it carry you along. It leads to a kind, wise, and serene kind of person.
Against that you have the Sith, who say something very different: that you *matter.* In fact, you matter more than everything else. Don't look at the world as a whole, focus on yourself and your perspective. You should have the power to save what you want to save, punish what you feel is wrong, and take what you want to possess. But over time, that ego-focussed viewpoint leads to loss of perspective, and paranoia and fear eventually lead a person to see power as an end in itself, power to hold back change. Grip the world, and twist it to your will.
It's not about good and evil as cosmic forces or abstracts, or even as political expressions, but ways in which the world is tangibly, observably healed or poisoned by the empathy, warmth, coldness or cruelty of the people in it.
Often I read people talking about attachment, how the Jedi deny them while the Sith embrace them. But it's more complicated than that, in that the Jedi embrace connection with the world, while trying to avoid getting too attached to any one thing in favour of another. While the Sith grip their attachments close, but deny any connection, they deny the idea that these attachments have any power or influence over them. In the prequels, it's Anakin's possessive, obsessive love for his wife - his attachment, his wholly internal desire - that destroys him and others. He fights to control that relationship. In the original movies, it's Luke's unselfish, sacrifical love for his father - their connection, their tangible, mutual emotional link - that saves them both. He lets go, and trusts his fate fully in the hands of another.
A story that tries to get past the confusion of the prequels' meaning, and recommits to the ideas of kindness and empathy as transformative forces at the heart of the originals and the Jedi, would be nice.
I think this is possibly the best explanation of the jedi & sith I have seen.
The superman comparison is spot on. I think we have to examine the finer points of what is good and what is evil and what do good people have a duty to stop when there is so much evil. I also feel like theres nothing wrong with the jedi through organizational dogma becoming corrupt and needing the be torn down to be rebuilt. At the end of the day our heroes have to be heroic and have to be good in a way that most everyone can agree is good.
Star Wars was best when it was influenced by Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. It was a myth with sci-fi dressings. Now it has turned into a sci-fi with robes and lightsabers. We have gotten to the point where can't accept religion as a force for good in the world, so we can't accept it in Star Wars either. Unfortunately, it can't exist without it's spiritual and mythological roots.
They screwed the protagonist antagonist paradigm and now everyone is confusion and or annoyed 😠
Same thing happened to the Star Wars Galaxies MMO. When there was maybe 1 or 2 Jedi on an entire server, the game flourished. When they made it a starting class that literally everyone could play, the game keeled over dead practically overnight.
Let's be clear here: The issue with the Jedi began when Disney took over. And Disney's issue is (despite producing outrageously stupid scripts and having no unified vision) that they fundamentally misunderstand (deliberately or not) that you CAN explore the flaws of the Jedi (as the original 6 films did, to some extent) without making them either completely incompetent, absolutely moronic, cartoonishly villainous or insanely ridiculous. They misunderstand that Jedi and Sith are not equal minded and that the Jedi - despite having flaws, as everyone does - strife to be better, to improve themselves, to help the people and protect them. They strive to be heroes. And that is also a weakness, often exploited by the Sith.
The way I see it, most movies and series made under Disney would have to be removed from canon somehow to even be able to start fixing this.
To your point of antagonists and connections to the past: There is no lack of antagonists that are not Sith in both Books and Series. The issue is not a lack of possible antagonists for the Jedi but an absolute lack of creativity and arrogant decisions in the past, de-canonizing basically all extended universe narratives.
The Jedi striving to not get involved in politics (or at least prioritizing Ideals over Politics) does not mean that they do not serve the people of the republic, which may get them involved in politics. As you explore in your "Solution 2": There are many ways to actually explore different avenues and I firmly believe there is a lot of material already out there just waiting for the silver screen. Just stop the deconstruction and de-mystification. Escapism is - in my view - the most fundamental reason why fantasy and science fiction works for most people and that has been lost over the past decade. There are no mysteries, everything has to be explained, deconstructed and analyzed. But for me that is just not entertaining. That is just more of what I do every day.
the acolyte was a mess but at least it was an attempt to expand the timeline parameters. imagine having to sit through yet ANOTHER show/movie where protagonists fight Stormtroopers/the Empire
The idea of setting a mystery in the high republic era was great. It just failed in the execution.
@@TheChristianPsychopath yup, the execution of it was a problem. i really loved the premise, though.
Honestly I feel Star Wars loses more of its magic the more its universe is explored. What was once three films released three years apart more than 40 years ago has spun off into countless books, comics, sequels, prequels, spinoffs, video games, role-playing games, all of which expand the universe while making it feel much, much smaller. The main reason why the first Star Wars - that's "Star Wars" not "Episode IV", not "A New Hope" - worked was because it was very much a one-and-done closed narrative that started in the midst of the action and ended on a triumphant note. It was a story that could have gone literally anywhere in this galaxy far, far away thereafter. But once Empire came along to give us Yoda, "another", and Darth Vader as Luke Skywalker's father that free-wheeling adventure story became locked on a single path like a train with station stops along the way before it and behind it as well. The magic, the mystery, all now subservient to turning a formerly imaginative film series into just so much more TV.
I don't think there is really any problem with expanding on the story, I do believe there is a big problem with the how.
Look at Boba Fett. In Empire Strikes Back, he's just a dude, who looks kinda cool and seems to have a reputation, he pops into the story for a bit but doesn't really do much. It makes you wonder what his life beyond the movies is, so it lets the world exist beyond the movies itself.
Now I don't think there's a problem exploring that, but even with just the prequels, it means he's biologically linked to the origin of all stormtroopers and has already met Obi-Wan Kenobi before, and now with the recent TV shows he's also closely linked to Luke Skywalker after these events by more or less "coincidence", Ashoka Tano and a bunch of other characters from stories that took place before.
Rright now, any time a new character gets popular they seem to get to meet every other Star Wars character that would've been alive at that time. All these things are technically expanding the world, but they're also building ends to it, there's not much room to wonder what exists beyond this world.
For writing these stories it hasn't so much become a source of inspiration but a burden where you need to be considerate of every other character and event but they're still cramming more and more stuff in there.
What was cool about the expansiveness of the EU is the that lore was building and not constantly resetting. I do agree there was a volume problem. Just way too much for anyone to really keep track of, but the "and then" aspect of the story telling meant events mattered. Even if I didn't always like the directions, most of the people working on Star Wars seemed to genuinely like Star Wars. We lost that with the 2014 reboot.
It might have been okay, if we got a tidied up time line... but they just doubled down on all the problem, including the volume problem, but without the original magic of it mattering... Now I think we're just waiting for the next reboot so we can drop the sequels from the timeline.
@@PauLtus_B Boba Fett had so many good comics, short stories, and novels (ok bounty hunter wars was not good but still) exploring his character. His Dengar buddy adventure phase was a lot of fun. That guy in "Book of Boba Fett" was not Boba Fett.
THANK YOU for turning your keen eye toward Star Wars. They need all the help they can get.
In recent additions of star wars (and rings of power), i think the writers fell for a cardinal sin of storytelling and that is shoving their own baggage into the writing, this is compounded further if there is already an established lore and theme. You cannot successfully force a personal narrative onto the audience.
It happened with star wars.
It happened with rings of power.
It happened with the witcher.
It happened with dragon age.
It's essentially wearing a franchise as a skinsuit in order to push a narrative, people can sense something is off.
Every story is shoving your own baggage into it! George Lucas named Luke after himself!! The original Star Wars is explicitly about racism, where the bad guys are all white men and the good guys are multicultural and have women involved!
Star Wars Origins, highly praised, including by Mark Hamill himself, gave us something most significantly refreshing. Especially having it set on Earth which I’m sure a lot of fans were hoping for.
Nope, Long Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away... keep it away from Earth. Plenty of other earth based sci-fi. (I don't mind this stuff in fan films, but not for the story canon.)
Order 66 was dramatic and good at the time but in retrospect, this story decision was a mistake in my opinion. It basically prevented almost all future jedi/sith potential story ideas.
One of the big things that makes the old republic is so cool is because of the jedi order and sith still exist. There’s a deep lore and mythos that’s just not as present in the current timeline. All the cool stuff happened in the past.
Star wars emptied the tank of cool jedi stuff in the story prior to the new movies and they never filled it up with more cool stuff. They just kept trying to pump from an already empty tank.
You should check out Legends. Pre-2014, Star Wars had a tons of stories exploring thousands of years of history and different phases of the Jedi Order. What's most baffling about the new films is not letting Luke keep his New Jedi Order. It was easily the most fascinating part of the lore and he had to start from scratch and regrow the order, and an easy to insert a diverse cast and new conflicts. They allowed marriage, partly because no one had told him differently, and while I wasn't the biggest fan of the Del Rey period, they did actually struggle with the positive and negative aspect of attachments.
I've had long talks with my good friend, who is an educated theologian (they spent four years in seminary, in simpler terms), about The Last Jedi. Mainly because while I'm not religious in that way, we found the meta conversation that movie has around itself really interesting, and we wished there was more.
It was very, very sad to see how upset the fan base of this franchise was by a relatively simple prodding. I think we both came to the conclusion that this franchise is build on a poisoned, way, way, way too commercialized soil, and nothing can grow in it. Even if you didn't like The Last Jedi, clinging onto that past is to stagnate.
The Jedi were a kind of 'space knight' and 'space monk': a paladin, a warrior cleric. It was a way for people to identify with a construct that was both strong and noble. The Superman/Batman contrast was a good one: Superman is a person with unbelievable power who uses it for the benefit of others. The Superman story is a story yearning for a protector, and the Jedi story is a story yearning to *be* the protector.
For some reason, some people think it's innovative to re-imagine a story, flipping the villains and the heroes. Well, what if Superman is actually 'bad', what if The Wicked Witch is actually good, etc. Mankind has an intrinsic desire to believe in a hero and to be on the side of good, but in reality, that gets complicated. So we can fall back on stories...except the newer people working in the world of the creator want to reimagine the components of that creation. It's 'edgy'.
It's a cycle of destruction we see over and over, redefining the heroes as villains and the villains as heroes...or as 'understandable' villains who have trauma.
One of the biggest things I had to learn in life, period, was to stop identifying with the villain (and their trauma) and to be able to identify good people.
I love Star Wars. As in, I love the original 6 films and a good portion of the EU (and look forward to reading more, especially the New Jedi Order books), but knowing that all roads lead to Rise of Skywalker makes me deny the Disney canon. Oh, and The Acolyte ended up being as terrible and anti-Jedi as the “toxic fandom” claimed it was. So yeah. I will always love Star Wars, but I know which timeline I prefer.
Fire all writers. Hire any with a clue. Problem solved
I really appreciate you. You serve two purposes for me. You educate me with your analysis of films and its so insightful and thoughtful.
Also when i struggle to sleep. I put on your videos that ive already seen because your calm voice helps me sleep really well. Thank you
The movie "Everything everywhere all at once" could heal the jedi. When the Jedi were born within Buddhist & Stoic ideas & got thrown into postmodern deconstruction they could rise again with animism. Lucid constructed spirituality, orientation towards spirits that inspire. Aware of their constructed limited nature & yet committed to the numinous, not as a dogma but as a ongoing process of recreation & adaption.
I think the biggest issue is that TLJ refuses to actually break the status quo in any meaningful way. Even Rey finding out she's a nobody came from an unreliable source (Kylo) so it was easy to retcon, and also meant that Kylo HAD to be redeemed because the Skywalker family legacy couldn't, thematically, end in darkness. It made both of their stories far more predictable and boring (kind of like how from the moment Kylo kills Snoke, you know he's not getting redeemed, because there's no other serious villain except Kylo to take Snoke's place, since Hux was turned into a joke and isn't Sith).
In a lot of ways TFA paved the way for new interesting concepts through set up. Finn in many ways was the character to be the most new to the franchise - picking up threads from the Clone Wars about identity and agency, etc. He would've been a perfect "Nobody turned Jedi" to pair with Rey wrestling with Kylo over the Skywalker legacy, or Finn leading a Stormtrooper rebellion and completely upending one of the franchise's most iconic features. Instead we got middling arcs for multiple leads and Finn de-regulated from a co-lead spot.
Unrelated Observation: I think it's interesting that we have just left a "golden age" of storytelling in pop entertainment (2007-2016 RIP) but the Star Wars franchise was relatively untouched by that era. Lucas held on to the property a little too long and handed it over to corporate interests that didn't really have a genuine affection for it, but a monetary goal.
90s was really the golden age for Star Wars. The energy and the fan interactions then were a ton of fun. There were hundreds novels and comics exploring the kind of thing he's talking about in the video... seeing some of that brought to life on screen would have been nice.
It's simple - bring back the Expanded Universe, LucasArts stories, Admiral Thrawn, Kyle Katarn, and Mara Jade.
I'll never forget the day it was announced that Disney had bought Lucasfilms. I said, boldly, 'this is the best possible thing for Star Wars. Too many people love this universe for it to fail. You could make a strong argument that there is no one less qualified to make a Star Wars than George Lucas at this point' and man. This must be what it's like when flat earthers see the 24 hour Sun. I've never been so wrong in my life.
I think this is a subject that Tom Van Der Linden is uniquely qualified for, but there's a huge amount to unpack. Because, in my opinion, the conflicting intentions behind Star Wars, and the moral framework it tries to explore through the Jedi, aren't just a reflection of confusion between various storytellers working on the franchise, or merely a lack of vision in the part of Lawrence Kasden, Kathleen Kennedy, and the other keepers of the flame, as it were. I think it reflects the greater struggle to understand the conflict between good and evil that we face in modern times. In a way, the confusion in what it means to be a Jedi is a perfect, poetic reflection of humanity's struggle for meaning.
The Jedi originally represented a pretty simple chivalric standard, lifted largely from Arthurian legend, with a few bits and pieces from other mythic traditions. This worked fine for the first film, as it was left wonderfully ambiguous and mysterious. But with the introduction of Yoda, and a deeper exploration of the Jedi's moral code, the general "noble knight" vibe became more and more defined by specific tenets. And that rendered the ambiguously romantic Jedi vulnerable to critical analysis.
But what else could they have done? Keep the Jedi ambiguous? The very nature of an ongoing serialized story, where everything is canon, makes that impossible. Analysis and deconstruction become inevitable. The Jedi represent the ideal of what "good" means, but the conversation of what "good" means is never-ending. So once they started defining the Jedi's code, the Star Wars franchise had two choices. They could declare that the code is unquestionably good. But that just means that whatever wisdom Lucas and Kasden put in Yoda's mouth, and whatever tenets subsequent writers added to the mix, however dubious, can never be questioned. And that's a great way to drive the franchise into a dead end of dogmatic morality, based on the half-baked notions seemed like a good idea at the time. Or they could query those notions, which inevitably plunge the Jedi into moral ambiguity. Are they really the highest good? According to whom?
I think this initial video is approaching the material with the assumption that the franchise is trying to have its cake, and eat it to. The franchise wants the Jedi and the Sith to be simply "good vs. evil," while also wanting to use this conflict to explore moral ambiguity, and query what good or evil actually means. And it's easy to dismiss this as folly, because after all, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
But remember, this is story. And in story, you can DEFINITELY have your cake and eat it too. The greatest stories in history work because they operate as two contradictory narratives happening at the same time. In Frankenstein, we know the real monster is Victor Frankenstein. And yet, there's no denying that his creation is also a monster, a horrific perversion of the natural order, who commits unspeakably evil acts. Yet he is also the victim of Frankenstein's hubris, deserving of empathy and compassion. You can't truly comprehend the story thoroughly without holding these contradictions, and accepting that there's no clear moral answer to the problem.
So I think the struggle for the Star Wars franchise to define the Jedi, either as the highest good, or as a political order with a questionable moral code, isn't a problem. It's the core meaning of Star Wars, the conversation that can never have a final conclusion, the ongoing contradiction that has no resolution. If you choose one or the other, the tension is broken, and the story ends. So the series must continue.
To me, the problem of the Jedi comes down to what the Jedi think it means to be good. They think good comes from their moral code, and therein lies the source of their identity crisis. Because the rules that define what a Jedi is, the rules about detachment from emotion, connection, passion, are also the source of their downfall. What it means to be a Jedi contains within it the seeds of its own ruin, just as the Sith's endless hunger for control and dominance carry the seeds of its own failure. We want the Jedi to find the answer to their quest for perfect galactic peace and harmony. But by nature, the quest has no end. To deny the darkness within is to give it power. That was the lesson of The Last Jedi. To be a Jedi is to fail, because it's built on conquering inner darkness, an impossible quest that leads to the denial of self. There's no conquering inner darkness. This is hubris. Yet, the great power of the Jedi requires a constant inner struggle with darker urges.
This is the place where the moral and the political merge. The Jedi must seek the highest good, within themselves, and in the galaxy. And yet, they will constantly struggle, as the nature of darkness is to shapeshift, to take on deceptive forms, making great evil look like the greater good. That's why the Star Wars story must always question its own professed moralities. Otherwise, it becomes a mouthpiece for a fictional dogma, without actually reflecting on whether its own code of ethics are genuinely moral, or deeply unethical.
So what path should the stories take, moral, or political? This is the question that drives Star Wars, and may well drive it on forever. Because each path drives it straight into the other.
You could almost say Lucas Film Star Wars was Fantasy, Disney made it vaguely science fiction
You could except they can't figure out how hyperspace works...oy. But I get what you mean about it being more political than mythic.
I’m right there with you, I’ve not been this into Star Wars since just before TLJ! I saw Ahsoka and it just reignited my love for the IP. So I watched mando s3 and now I’m onto rebels…I may follow that up with clone wars. Lots of content out there, but yea, I feel we are in store for a longer SW break than people realize. Disney is going to stagger what they have finished over the next year and a half I think…but it could be 2-3 years before we move onto the next stage. I’m working on making peace with it, I really don’t want Disney to f up SW like they did Marvel.
Disney are course correcting with Marvel & they should with SW.
You don't want them to fuck up Star Wars like they did with Marvel?
They fucked up Star Wars FIRST, and have since fucked up Marvel. The only notably good thing to come out of Disney Star Wars is Rogue One, Andor, and the start of Mandalorian. Star wars is currently IN a garbage state. It's not in danger of going there, it already is.
Ahsoka re-igniting your love for the IP is the opposite of what most of the fanbase is saying. It's clear that more media has been tailored made to individuals like yourself. But that's the content that everyone is admonishing, and part of why is because it's being tailored to the small audience you are a part of.
The Jedi problem dates back to 1999. Yoda as a monastic figure alone on his swamp world spouting aphorisms and training Luke made sense, it had extensive mythological resonance. Set the story back a couple of decades with that same wise old hermit master instead in a giant, bustling temple full of Jedi right at the heart of the galactic government sitting in bureaucratic meetings, and everything immediately got ridiculous. Even without the whole business of turning into generals in the Clone Wars, the Jedi of the prequels were such a radical break from everything we'd been told about what they were in the OT, It may as well have not even been the same universe. Lucas was great when he was just cribbing from a bunch of other older sources to cobble together a modern heroic fairytale. He was however truly awful at creating backstory for that same tale.
I think the basic story of prequels is solid enough. The Jedi were almost exactly what I expected them to be, except the CGI. But Lucas was a victim of his own success and didn't get enough pushback and suggestions from other creatives like he did on the original films. Reading the novels helped me appreciate better the story he was trying to tell. I do think he lost the thread a bit insisting the story was about Vader... Naw, it was about Luke, and about finding that balance between attachment and detachment.
1999 was a problem for a different reason. It kicked off the New Jedi Order series, which really should have left a blank space for sequels. On one hand it did a lot of the exploring of the Jedi he's talking about here... but it went so grimdark that it was a branding issue, particularly for Disney. The problem was instead of embracing what had worked and simplifying it, they took the two worst plots line, went bleaker, and gutted the all connective material that had make them work. Not letting Luke have a small new Order like in the original EU and as Lucas had in his treatments was a really baffling decision.
Why there has never been a Noir-like smuggler or other story based on Nar Shadda is beyond me
Sounds like Star Wars 1313 which was canceled
They just couldn't keep it simple. The less we knew the better the Jedi were. The more we've learned the more they've unravelled and pissed people off.
Luke is recruited to become a jedi. Otherwise the story would ended there.
The young boy fighting old men war.
18:35 Yes! Someone finally said it. I never understood why people said Last Jedi was so different when it regurgitated so much iconography from previous films, brought back so many familiar elements just to go "yoink" when something brand new would be better, introduced so many ideas that didn't go anywhere within its own story (Finn being introduced to war profiteering only to declare himself Rebel Scum anyway) and has tonal inconsistencies throughout.
I always thought the sequel trilogy's main theme would be Reformation, and that desire is kinda there in Last Jedi. But because it spent two hours spinning its wheels just to re-establish the status quo, and that's why it failed in my eyes.
Great video and touches exactly on why Star Wars can't evolve the Jedi. They are basically discount Bene Gesserit, without any coherent story, philosophy and depth.
They're basically smoke and mirrors. They were cool space wizards bullshitting the audience with cool faux-philosophical statements, but no solid intention.
When the foundation is shaky, you can't build upon it.
Everyone will be pissed with any in-depth portrayal of the Jedi because it's not going to match the interpretation they have in their heads based on the vague elements the original introduced or the many hands that built upon it since the original in the Extended Universe and other entries in the franchise.
There's a fundamental dissonance that Star Wars diehard fans have that clash with what the story initially attempted to be: They view it as a incredibly complex and deeply layered story in their minds, but the movies are pretty much trying to be well-written pulpy space operas with dudes shooting lasers and lightsaber fights with some decent, but not in-depth, world-building elements.
It's not Lord of the Rings, Dune or Game of Thrones, it never tried to be.
The "clash" for the hardcore fans is Star Wars had a very extensive lore until Disney decided to reboot the canon in 2014 and drop 99% of it. There were some issues prior to Disney. Filoni and TCW was an absolute wrecking ball to the continuity, but lot of people were still trying to fit the pieces together. Part of the problem is when Disney cleaned the slate is they didn't clear out the cartoons as well.
All this exploration of the Jedi he's talking about. We had a lot of that and Disney went "too long, didn't read". The sequel trilogy is the cliffnotes version of Dark Empire and the Legacy of the Force which were two of the worst series in the Star Wars expanded universe.
There were hundred of books and comics stretching over thousands of year of history... and they were erased for a rushed cash grab. That's why the Star Wars fandom is still salty.
@@TheChristianPsychopath The "many hands" comment I did was exactly calling out the expanded universe. Lots of different entries from different authors, varying in quality.
It turned the original lore from vapid smoke into a quagmire of incongruity and contradiction.
Star Wars never really had the depth that old fans thought it had and they were kids and what they crave now they're adults with better critical thinking skills (mostly).
Star Wars is an iconic franchise, much like Indiana Jones. They're fun pulpy movies and should enjoyed as such, they're among the best in that style.
@@LightningRaven42 I admit my eyes skipped over that part. But the King Arthur myths were also a work of many hands over hundreds of years. The EU was not perfect, but the idea of a constantly expanding shared universe was different enough to be something special.
If Disney had evolved that, pulled out the best parts, tidied up the inconsistencies, then a reboot would have been more palatable. Instead we got something even less coherent that couldn't be bothered plotting an arc for the 3 anchor films. Why take away Jaina and Jacen Solo to give us pale shadow of Jacen and Jaina Solo? Why restore Chewie only to serial kill your way through Luke, Leia, and Han?
At it's core Star Wars is a fairy tale. Simplicity is part of the point. Distilling good and evil to its simplified forms was the point. Finding the shared threads of various faiths and mythologies. There are stories that build off that and did so very well, fleshing out all the bits in between. But if it not about the conflict of good and evil, either outside or in ourselves, it misses the core essence of Star Wars.
No, it's not Dune or Lord of the Rings. Complex world building was not the main thrust. It was moral philosophy woven into more palatable adventure stories. There's a lot you can do with that, but moral relativism just isn't Star Wars.
Disney's trying to pedal this post-modern morality that at time plays at good and evil but side steps any actual moral issues or cause and consequence. It's drama and visuals without ethical substance. Andor gets a little closer than most, but it still penalizes or corrupts anyone who tries to just do the right thing and attempts to elevate the Sith as some kind of equal option.
The way you present your argument is almost as if "being stuck" is the only problem of the franchise.
I agree vision cohesion is part of the issue, but the stories being told are just bad. Bad in quality, bad in ideas, bad in morals, bad in logic.
Even in isolation, none of the ideas presented by Disney worked, thats why they tried A and it didn't work, then tried B and found out it also didn't work.
The writers dont understand Star Wars. And I think you don't understand it either. Your description of what a Jedi is, was very superficial.
For a really good analysis of What a Jedi is, check "What JEDI Used To Be" from youtuber schnee.
If you can't understand the Jedi, you can't create a Star Wars film WITH the Jedi. That's part of the reason the only stories that worked, didn't use the Jedi.
I mean he essentially said that they're not particularly well written either way, so I don't know what you're on about
An alternate timeline where TLJ didn't have the epic fan backlash would be nice to peak into.
I'm definitely more of a fan of the course correction back to the jedi in original+prequel series framing. I think that black and white framing is actually best for it because people can instill their own sense of gray for it. The original framing worked because it was a black and white story, so of course black and white jedi fit into it. The prequel worked pretty good because it could imply the gray without having to state it - if white can become black, is there gray? The sequels intent is planted in the gray and thus fall short because, in our desire to instill meaning, it makes the intent feel bland in the first place. We can sense where the gray is even without being directly told what is gray and what isn't.
To me it was all perfectly resolved in The Unifying Force novel in the EU. But then, they saw the dollar signs and decided to unresolve it in order to make Jacen Solo Darth Cadeus. At least Darth Cadeus was a much better character than "we have Darth Cadeus at home" Kylo Ren
Much as I detest Denningverse, I think there needed to be push back against the Jedi embracing the dark side. Vergere was absolute poison for the Order, but she did bring in an element of philosophical discourse that worked really well. But "we have Darth Cadeus at home" Kylo Ren is a perfect description.
You're right about a lot of things here. But I think a big part of the problem is that the modern writers at Disney don't seem to have sufficient grasp of where Star Wars comes from or even what "aspirational" means. I would argue that neither JJ Abrams nor Rhian Johnson understood the Force, the Jedi or their classical roots. Johnson tried to deconstruct them but arguably used a too narrow political perspective in questioning not only heroism and tradition but also things like religion, gender-roles and capitalism, making his messaging shallow and largely miss the mark. Abrams' approach was an even less creative repetition of visuals and soundbites without adding any substance or asking any questions.
But the deconstruction itself is not the problem. For instance, simply making a Jedi more human and vulnerable wouldn't make them any less of a heroic figure, or any less aspirational. The bigger problem is that many modern writers seem reluctant to deal with concepts like good and evil, heroism or idealism at all. Star Wars simply doesn't work without those components.
Had Andor not already been greenlit for two seasons, it would have gone the way of Acolyte with the goofy criticisms it got of not having lightsabers & showing gritty things like bricks & screws (I'm being fr). I think Star Wars is stuck cuz it has a needlessly whiny fanbase who's way too critical of some things that are alright & also praises the films that aren't actually good (imo).
A major part of it is that the writers behind modern Star Wars largely have antithetical attitudes towards them as compared to either the OT, Prequels, or most of the EU. You are not going to satisfy both the people who liked what they already were and those who want to deconstruct or subvert them.
The more exposure they get the less mystical they are. It's that simple. Expanding a fictional setting or story has a limited lifespan. You cannot do it forever because you spread the core ideas too thin eventually. You explore every worthwhile idea in time and so the quality necessarily drops.
-Schrodinger's plot-
Narrative Edging
The worst part about the Jedi Problem is that it has been visited In-Universe before, in what may be one of the greatest stories told outside the Original Trilogy: KOTOR2 (That's "Knights of the Old Republic 2"), and it hasn't been picked up as well ever since.
I won't spoil the story too much, but the central theme of the game is structured around borrows heavily from "Jedi fatigue": You meet people who are either apathetic to the Jedi and Syth or actively seek to avoid or even fight them. Your mentor, Kreia, is one of the most interesting people in fiction ever written and voiced, and she tries to direct the PC away from both the jedi and the sith side. It's an overall fantastic experience for people that want Star Wars explored on a more Meta-level while still in-universe.
The best part about that game is the revelation behind Kreia's motivations: she hates the Force and the idea of predetermined fate that seems to govern the lives of those in the galaxy. The best description I've seen of her is if Nietzsche were tossed into a world where good & evil were tangible forces for a select group of people to draw upon. She admires the protagonist for their ability to have absconded from that dichotomy, and now seeks to use that potential to deny the will of the Force from those in the galaxy, regardless of the havoc that would wreak. It's that option that's still very unique in the proposition it presents regarding a third option to the central conceit of the franchise: is it possible for us to choose beyond the two sides? Is there even a meaningful separation between the two?
@@thirdcoinedge Could't have put it better myself.
The result of them constantly switching from optimistic take to cynical take on the Jedi will inevitably leave audiences confused and unsure of what they're meant to represent in the story.
I love your work LSOO. Thank you so much for nurturing our passion for art and films
I'm still bitter that TFA gave us Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian in a movie with lightsabres and they didn't fight. Yes, I want Star Wars: The Raid.
19:18 THANK YOU! Glad someone said it. If you check out most of Rian Johnsons movies you'll see a fair share of this. Around 10 years ago he stopped world building and started leaning more into deconstruction/dismantling. The bathos effect that MCU does too, that's a heavy one. It's boring when EVERYONE is trying to force meta schtick.
a little confused by the take that LAST JEDI views the Jedi in a sociological lens... when I really think it's a strong continuation of the 'mythic' as opposed to anything involving political actors (which the prequels and THE ACOLYTE absolutely are)
I think someone might get thrown off about this is in Rian Johnson's default MO as a writer/director to take a deconstructionist approach to stories (not just with starwar). THIS is where a lot of the sense of subversion came from... not in anything regarding "THE JEDI MUST END" sentiment the trailers pushed... but the actual film's text directly refutes. It's truly mystifying how so many people completely misread this about the film.
The irony is that Abrams' movies really try to take the Jedi back to their mythic status (in desperately trying to pivot away from anything prequel-related)... but his MO as a filmmaker is so heavily built upon spruced-up nostalgic mimicry, that him simply trying to repeat the mythology only reveals how shallow it already is... resulting in the myth already losing its power
For me, this is what it really comes down to; I agree that Lucas' philosophies expressed through the Jedi are a shallow new-agey soup of various world philosophies that were made to FEEL mythic by strong visions and storytelling in the original trilogy. I don't care about the 'integrity' of the Jedi philosophy or their portrayal in itself beyond what it can do for a good story and an artist's own take on the material. So I can enjoy the childlike wonder towards the Jedi ideal in something like SKELETON CREW... while also greatly enjoying the Jedi being taken down a peg and built back up in LAST JEDI through Johnson honoring Lucas' prequel text (which Abrams desperately tried to avoid with FORWAKENS)
Anything franchise that gets milked this much and often is gonna have its myths demystified and limits tested, and I like seeing those limits tested for good or ill. There are a lot of reasons behind why a mega-franchise's mythic sheen has ups and downs... but keep this in mind; the Jedi aren't the only thing that got demystified with the Disney era. The origins of ROGUE ONE was built on the old playful/smug geek-stenchy nitpick about the Empire leaving a weak point in their superweapon. So even our favorite exhaust port couldn't maintain its MYTHIC STATUS for the purposes of the original STAR WARS
If anyone wants their favorite mythic franchise to remain mythic? LET IT END
Star Wars is done and over for me. There were some good projects in there, but the lack of vision/direction and incompetent writers killed it.
Funny how two video games from over twenty years ago, star wars knights of the older republic, one and two define the sith, and the jedi, clearly that made defined in clear ideals of the philosophy of what jedi and sith both believe
I love your videos, this one is just great!
Thank you for once more putting into simple terms something I have been struggling to describe
21:51 - spot on man, thanks for sharing.
I never liked the prequels.
Because they made Jedi uninteresting by portraying them in a completely inflationary and shallow way. Every Jedi wears 60 pound brown robes at all times, never changes his clothes, and never needs any equipment except his lightsaber.
So they fly, dive, and sit around. At some point a hundred Jedi show up and have over-choreographed dance fights.
The depth and variety of a Fortnite skin. On top of that, you have the completely superfluous and false portrayal of Yoda and the Emperor as they are jumping around with lightsabers. Like so many things, that should never have been portrayed. The Jedi should have been portrayed in the prequels as a kind of secret society or special unit that only rarely appears as helpers in crucial situations.
Oh, and the sequels... dont let me start.
In the original trilogy, Jedi are space samurai/cowboys. The magic is in the creative synthesis of samurai movies and westerns in a science fiction setting. Everything else after is various degrees of death of the author.
I have been waiting patiently for this day. I knew you could fix Star Wars if you tried.
JJ got so close to course correcting but I think because of what Ryan Johnson left him to work with he had to overcorrect. I'd love to see more of JJ's vision IF he takes a leap and expresses a real creative vision, expanding on the previous movies AND the EU comic verse.
If they told the Old Republic stories, they would make bank. Very compelling story lines, easy definition of Sith and Jedi: just another branch of the Republic’s and Empire’s armies
I agree with a good bit of your points here, but I do think there's space for both "Noble Jedi" and the examination of these ideals when put into trying times. But there has been a failure to actually work on this idea in a material way. Funnily enough, the closest we got was the Acolyte, because it took pains to show how all these Jedi were largely good people, but that the currents of politics and tradition messed everything up.
I think what needs to be done more clearly is framing the ideals of the Jedi against the realities of the Jedi. There SHOULD be space for just flat out bad Jedi, because if being a Jedi is just a blank check for goodness, it makes the feats of the heroes LESS special. If every Jedi can just resist temptation, then Luke's rejection of Palpatine is just another Tuesday. And this is going to mean some of these people got positions of power, and they are going to leave ripples from their actions. Plus, people don't really ever see THEMSELVES as evil. In their mind, everything they do is ultimately a net benefit to the world.
And there's also room for the idea that while the ideals and methods of the Jedi are well intentioned and did good for many, that the traditions are starting to no longer fit in the modern world. How these noble aims step on toes, but at the same time we shouldn't forget what the Jedi STOOD for. You can make a "Man out of Time" type story, like Captain America or Blast from the Past. Some Jedi who is trying to do good, but the world makes doing good hard. The drama of "will they compromise their beliefs, or will they do the good but foolish thing?"
But I also think one aspect of the discourse that shouldn't be forgotten is that a SIZABLE portion of the hate for these Star Wars ventures doesn't actually have anything to do with Star Wars. It's just grifters and bigots throwing shade at the target du jour. And even if they only make up a tenth of the crowd critical of these pieces of media, they are still coloring ALL of the conversations. A lot of people will just parrot incredibly bad takes they heard one time, and even once a claim has been unequivocally refuted it will still get repeated for ever and ever because some people don't CARE that it's wrong, they just want to talk smack about the stuff. Especially with all this "anti-DEI" stuff that has now filtered up to the level of global politics.
Your videos and your voice are unmatched. Beautiful work with incredible insights, thanks for your channel my friend ❤
The collective consciousness is exhausted with Star Wars (and most forms of modern storytelling) because stories are no longer there to temporarily take us into a quiet space and give us something thought-provoking that we can take back to the real world. Franchises are the destination - the end in-and-of themselves. The complexity of life, coupled with the technological capacity to create endless media, derail the integrative superpower we have to make action out of meaning. Instead we're left with endless, fantastical worldbuilding that only serves to sap our lives, take our money, and delude us into a false sense of safety, which we masturbate to every night through high-definition visual archetypes.
Please, LSOO, break your own statis and get back to myth, sincerity, and real intellectualism.
The only man who actually understands Star Wars is no longer part of it. That simple.
I really like the analysis of the problem: that SW writers/exec's can't "pick a lane" about the Jedi. But I think that prior to deciding what kind of storytelling to do, they need to figure out what they're telling a story about. And as the video notes, SW has never really known what the Jedi are. What are their teachings beyond a few "vaguely Buddhist and Stoic" lines? I think the official canon needs to do some worldbuilding about what the Jedi actually believe and practice, and step 2 would be what kind of story they want to tell about it.
I agree with the thesis that the problem with current Star Wars is that it has lost the mythic structure in favor of sociology(I also love the term Schrodinger’s Jedi), but I think that the real problem here is not with the Jedi, it is with the Force itself. The nature of the Dark Side is such that it has an almost natural allure, and it easily corrupts emotions from those who use the Force unless they willfully suppress them, in the process also corrupting the very motive that caused their fall in the first place as they are driven towards more power for its own sake (Yuthura Ban in KOTOR states this directly and it is also evident in Anakin's fall).
This then means that Jedi are doomed to perpetuate an eternal recurrence that means the Wars can never truly end. Jedi orthodoxy forbids attachment because attachment serves as a strong source of emotion that can be corrupted. As this is against human intuition, some Jedi will inevitably resist and be drawn towards the Dark Side especially when combined with the fact that the Jedi Order itself is inevitably politically corrupted and forced into actions that make the Jedi Council hypocrites. This then leads to Sith coming about and either wiping out or severely depleting the Jedi. These Sith inevitably die to a combination of infighting in their endless quest for power, Jedi action, and the occasional redemption. This then allows the Jedi to be restored in which they are inevitably drawn back into the same games of orthodoxy and hypocrisy.
If a version of the Jedi Order tries something different, it always fails. Emotional connections for Jedi are just too dangerous, as while some individuals can handle it there will always be those who cannot. Luke’s Jedi Order in both Legends and Disney canon had several apprentices fall to the Dark Side for this reason. The attempt at a third option to Jedi and SIth, Gray Jedi, is sometimes popular among fans but is doomed to embrace apathy rather than finding a better path because they are incapable of decisive action (the Bendu in Rebels and Jolee Bindo in KOTOR both clearly show this).
Most alternative traditions are like the Nighsisters (or the Korunnai of Haruun, Jensaari, or Rakata) in which they are overtly using the Dark Side to a lesser extent than Sith. There are a couple of slightly more obscure groups who merely use the Force passsivley (like Lasat Mystics and the Dagoyan Order), but they then rely on either the Jedi or others as protection against external threats of the Dark Side making them no better than Gray Jedi.
The underlying problem here is that the Force itself is almost a colonized take on Eastern mythology. The Legend of Korra had a similar problem with Raava and Vaatu. To repeat what I said earlier, it's an encapsulation of the Taoist binary into a Christian worldview via the Campbellian monomyth, one that leaves no room for the actual symbiosis of the Yin and Yang because they are combined with good and evil. This problem means that Jedi and Sith are inevitably caught in an eternal recurrence of violence that feels like it can never be broken. There really is something genius about the nature of Star Wars and the Force and how it encapsulates so much about religion into a single spiritual ideology, the trouble is that it's also terrible from any sort of in-universe perspective such that if you examine it with any detail it doesn’t hold up. Star Wars worldbuilding in general has always been a castle resting on a foundation of sand with everything from the inconsistent scale of the galaxy, the nature of droids as comedic servants, the dynamic of Rebels without a clear ideology, to the nature of the Force itself.
On a personal note, I’m also struggling with this concept of Schrodinger’s heroism more broadly with my own writing in terms of whether I should build a straightforward heroic faction. Should I embrace actual heroism or let my heroes be more complex and less heroic in the process? Actual heroism often feels hollow today especially at the level of a heroic organization as we realize the complexities of the world, but at the same time as someone else noted in the comments if all I do is deconstruct heroism I am left with nothing.
I'd say that DC is heading to a really bad take with the characters. At least in terms of quality, the stuff looks bad. The story might be just okay, but who knows.
But if you see MoS, then BvS to end it with ZSJL, every novie went with a different tone depending what each movie needed to continue the story and yet they feel perfectly connected. The first one being a "what if Supermen were in our real world?", then "what does it mean to the world there is a Superman?", and then we get the mythological aspect with ZSJL.
Bad take how? Everything Gunn has said gives more reason to him adapting these characters faithfully.
And the thing with the DCEU is that on surface-level is does look like that if it was only MoS & ZSJL. But then BvS comes in the middle & completely ruins it with the most boring sauceless adaptations of these characters.
I disagree with where you draw your lines.
‘Modern Star Wars’ didn’t start with the Disney films.
The series almost entirely abandoned the mythological elements over the course of episode 5, and Lucas began deconstructing the Jedi starting with episode 6.
The issue is that directors are still slavishly following Lucas’s ideas decades later, without meaningful innovation.
We’ve been deconstructing the Jedi for 7 consecutive films and 2 shows, and no director has actually tried to reconstruct them, to write what comes next.
The Lost World - the sequal to the OG Jurassic Park - did the same thing for me: it basically destroyed the magic of that first movie and lost any real interest in the entire Jurassic universe.
Also, the 3(!) Hobbit movies have nearly done that for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The problem with the Jedi is just a symptom of the fact that the people who are writing the Jedi fundamentally don't understand the Force.
The believe that the Force is a morality or about motals when its not. And they believe that "balance" in the Force is some mixture of the Light and Dark.
Both of these assumptions are not only misguided but functionally wrong, and they are ruining the underlying mythology of the purpose of the Jedi and Star Wars as a whole.
All of this could have been easily avoided had Disney gone with the orginal source material from Legends. Luke reforms the Jedi and Leia helps do the same with the New Republic. All of this is on Disney and their absolute disrespect for the starwars lore.
I should also add that the best Jedi turn out to be ones that have actually turned at some point and come back. They recognize clearly the ridiculous and cloying nature of their dogmatism having broken it.
One influence on modern Star Wars has to be the video game Knights of the Old Republic. The political nature of the Jedi vs Sith we see today, IMHO, orignates there. Though even there they managed to keep the Sith as villains but giving them a logic to their actions beyond being cackling bad guys. However that has been lost in modern tellings, opting instead for a more grey relativism that is clearly inspired by Game of Thrones.
"Somehow Palpatine returned." - the worst sentence of dialog in all of the Star Wars movies.
Man, you hit the nail on the head!
Dave Filoni was a disaster for my interest in Star Wars. The difference between Andor’s deep and personal storytelling contrasts *starkly* with his shows that feel like a kid smashing his toys together while debating power levels with his friends
Another banger comment.
In my opinion this is a problem introduced in the original trilogy and a big part of why I didn't like empire or return, Star wars is a small universe. The emphasis on jedi and the skywalker family only made it smaller.
Everything is having an identity crisis. Everything Everywhere All At Once caught this spirit I believe. Only rocks are sure what their identity is. Movie characters too are having similar identity crisis, which is why getting to the essence of a character is getting difficult for best of writers.
The best course correction for Star Wars is towards retirement. It has left a permanent mark in pop culture a long time ago, it should now rest in the museum of great things from the past, not suffer the indignity of being endlessly milked for profit.
I'm only about halfway though the video but I'm thinking to myself that maybe Lukes New Jedi in the media following the fall of the Empire should have pivoted to Stoicism versus the seemingly Buddhist that the Old Jedi Order were.
While I'm not fully educated on either topic and they seem to have quite a lot of overlap, Buddhism seems more self-reflective, spiritualist and to have a common doctrine of peace/anti-violence at all costs, Stoicism seems more about having accurate judgements about yourself and the world around you. Cal Kestis and Qui Gon are Stoics as they have accurate judgements and *can be* proactive in their use of force (har har) for others from a position of love, which is why we like them, while the Jedi as a whole were blind to the reality of the politics and the galaxy at large, and were strongarmed into the Clone Wars as the supposed "keepers of the peace" which secured their destruction and hypocrisy; also Dooku is a tragic figure who *thinks* that he has accurate judgements which on some level we understand, but is also acting for selfish reasons and from a position of hatred, he isn't doing what he is doing in an effort to protect or save anyone.
"stop debating how to be a good man, and be one" - Marcus Aurelius
"philosophers have merely interpreted the world, the point is to change it" - Karl Marx
As far as the “failure to commit” I believe Time Period is the solution.
Star Wars jumps around in time a lot and shows us a bunch of institutions in different contexts. But if all of the depictions of a single institution are consistent with each other in the same time period, then I don’t think there’s a problem.
In other words, if the Pre-Empire Jedi (or at least Post-Ruusan Pre-Empire Jedi) are the problematic “detachment” ones - but Luke Skywalker’s Sequel Era Jedi are the more lenient enlightened “Marriage is ok” ones - and the franchise depicted that consistently, I don’t think it would be a problem. It wouldn’t be a contradiction because if you follow t he story chronologically, the Jedi themselves evolve and then commit to their new state.
As long as it makes sense chronologically, then different depictions of the Jedi can work.
The problem is that you have The Acolyte saying one thing, then the Prequels another, then the Originals another - then the Last Jedi kind of doing a loopty loop back to the Acolyte.
We’re getting conflicting things said about the Jedi in the same time periods, so it doesn’t feel like an organic evolution of the institution through chronology. It just feels like a haphazard disagreement from any given writer at any given time.
19:18
“I think it’s a misguided idea that the sort of postmodern deconstruction that we’ve been seeing a lot of in popular media is the only way to add complexity and depth to a story.” THANK YOU
7 years + 1.5 months != 8 years
I just find Jedi boring. What made them interesting was being this long dead legend, and what made us care was that we wanted to see Luke aspire to the heroic greatness of their myth and legend. Otherwise they're just samurai with inconsistent magic powers and an overinflated sense of importance.
When Disney said they were going to make new spinoffs, I was really hoping we'd get some fringe stories with characters who are not linked to anything major in the galaxy at all. No jedi, no Skywalkers, no famous figures. I wanted smaller stories that didn't just wind up back at the jedi once again. We got that with Mando for like one episode before it all became about the force and Jedi again. The only show that managed it was Andor.
I would have loved a crime thriller along the lines of The Wire featuring the Black Sun crime syndicate. Or a Rome-esque story of intrigue and politicking in the Imperial Senate following a Royal guard or something.
So much potential wasted. If I was in charge of Star Wars I'd delete the sequels and every tv show except Andor.
Season 1 and 2 of Mandalorian and Andor is great 🙏
The real p[roblem with Star Wars is they don't have good enough storytellers. They don't understand story to the same level as George and Rian Johnson.
Putting Rian Johnson in the same side as "understanding" story is wild to me. I believe he has repeatedly demonstrated his complete inability to write a coherent story.
@@AfutureV all the opposite. If anything, I'd say Rian Johnson understands Star Wars in a way that not even Dave Filoni does. His movie is a literal love letter to the main themes of the franchise. Sadly, The Last Jedi is a movie that tried to move the franchise forward sandwiched between two movies that want to keep it rooted to its past.
@@AfutureVYou have no idea what you're talking about. The last jedi is technically the only post-george film that actually qualifies as a story.
and two episodes of Kenobi were they brought in outside help
@@DartagnanMagic What makes Rogue One "technically" not a story?
You should check out the comic series Starwars Legacy. It'll just make you pissed off of what Disney took away. There was already well written characters, world building, etc and they just threw it all away.
I say this as a massive Star Wars fan: great video, LSOO, and I agree.
I'll expand a bit further with moly take. Star Wars was stuck since 1983. You could always enjoy it if you let your tastes match with it and you can always put one thing down to enjoy another Star Wars installment because even back then there was a ton. And it's juggled multiple identities since A New Hope.
I recently watched the nine films in full with a critical eye, and the sixth episode is fraught with tonal dissonance and Disneyfication decades before Disney touched it. I suspect Lawrence Kasdan was an unspoken genius behind our favorite scenes because amidst the drama of a son thinking he's a Jedi but succumbing to darkness on his path to defeat his father only for the father to forsake the dark and spare his son, there was an entire scene dedicated to aliens dancing to their *specific* genre of music and an entire story line dedicated to wonky antics with teddy bears who don't know what helmets are when they're actively wearing one, replete with lines that definitely parallel and surpass "they fly now". Its identity there fought itself and showed cracks in it's own logic (e.g. borrowing yin yang aesthetic from eastern philosophy to say the force needs balance then forgetting that by destroying one side of the force and favoring the light).
It foreshadowed the tonal dissonance we'd see in the Prequels where Lucas took full control - e.g. a 9 year old boy destroying an entire army of trained combatant pilots when trained allies failed, yelling "now this is podracing," (which again shows cringey Disneyfication decades before Disney "ruined it") all cut in the middle of our father figure slain during Duel of Fates.
The ensemble direction of the Originals polished them (actors contributed to direction and scripts, Lucas's wife recut and edited the final product for a more satisfying close, etc) and spared them from Lucas's infamously clunky but hollow dialogue that reflected hollow characters who were primarily aesthetic focused and never deep. It's why Padme was absolutely butchered in the Prequels. It's why there's so much nonsense dialogue and filler that required an entire team of writers dedicated to the specific mission of making sense of it in the Clone Wars series. That's why there are midichloreans now. That's why the Jedi Order was militaristic government agents in the Prequels, which betrays their ideals and core - which is, you're right, vaguely pacifist spiritualism that bears the aesthetic of Buddhism. The Prequels depiction contrasts heavily with the Originals, and the Originals' Jedi depiction aligns more closely to the Sequel's. Luke has the jaded whimsy of Yoda yet the iconic Jedi wit of letting an opponent destroy themselves with darkness without ever stooping to their level - not commanding battleships. He learned from his mistake with Solo and recognized his internal battle requires constant vigilance, not violence. The Prequels was the first series to lose the spirit of the Originals and it's been in freefall, exploring itself through a myriad of genres and foci ever since.
It's a hot take to many in a fandom compromised by bandwagons and grognards, but the first films ep 4 and 5 were cinematically sound, yes, but certainly still fraught with errors, yet generally consistent in tone, pace, character, and core. Every film after that falls into question. But none marks the fall better than ep 6 and none cements the fall better than the Prequels. Again, I enjoy Star Wars, but fans really must take an honest look at the franchise if they want it redeemed.
Now, knowing my Star Wars community, they will glance at this, see that I didn't spit exclusively on Disney's productions, dismiss the legitimacy of the points I addressed, ignore them to focus on ones I didn't in hopes that somehow makes my points go away or just instinctually say I'm wrong.
LSOO, good video, and I agree.
The chief problem of everything Star Wars is that Lucas chose to become a toy franchiser instead of a storyteller(and he wasn't a particularly original storyteller to begin with) and this kept everything at a sophomoric level after Empire.
And the endless circling of Skywalker, Death Star and Palpatine has been simple cash grab laziness since Return..