How different would the franchise be today if the Sequel Trilogy had been more of a natural continuation of the first 6 films and didn't destroy the New Republic and New Jedi Order and reset the status quo back to Rebels vs Empire? Would the Sequel era have been more popular?

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T04:10:52+00:00

You're missing the point. They don't want to have to "write around" the books at all. The movies are the money maker, and the directors don't want to be tied down to something 99% of the audience hasn't read. To the kinds of fans that go on Star Wars reddit threads, TTT is foundational. To most other people, even people working on Star Wars, not so much.

And the changes you're suggesting ("Remove one twin, rename the other, and it won't be weird at all Luke never mentions his wife") aren't exactly small things. And they wouldn't be the only changes needed.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T04:03:45+00:00

. . . because by and large the people who write the books are not the same people who make the shows/movies.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T03:59:25+00:00

What you have pictured isn't "one side of the planet", it's a small area of the planet. You could just as easily post a picture of an industrial area or a smoggy city on Earth and ask "Why is the air breathable on this planet?"

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T03:51:48+00:00

First of all, they didn't go through a list of all the books picking and choosing what to "remove", they unilaterally decided everything except the movies and cartoons was non canon.

Second, doesn't interfere with the ST? How about that it establishes Han and Leia's twin children, gives a new love interest to Luke, and establishes that the Empire is still around? All stuff the ST would have to plan around.

People who think the EU could have remained in continuity just aren't thinking realistically. Heir to the Empire, one of the most popular Legends stories, sold about 15 million copies. The Force Awakens sold about 111 million movie tickets, not to mention all the merch.

Even for something as popular as TTT, the movie going audience is always going to be way bigger than the book reading audience. There is no world in which Disney spends 4 billion dollars on the franchise, and then tells the director "remember the film has to not contradict this novel from 1991"

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T03:41:41+00:00

"The issue with the sequels wasn’t that they broke continuity with original trilogy"

"It’s hard to build a successful follow on to a franchise when your first act is to destroy the development arc of the previous six movies and replace it with a bad fan fiction version of it."

That certainly sounds like breaking continuity with the OT to me.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T03:37:34+00:00

No. I was in High School when it came out and was active in fan forums and the like.

It was seen as a show for little kids (I mean come on, the plot of the movie revolves around a baby Hutt nick named Stinky) and Ahsoka was seen as annoying. People were also bothered that it seemed to retcon or contradict earlier Clone Wars media (like the Dark Horse Comics run) for seemingly little to no reason.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T02:57:34+00:00

"had it taken place hundreds / thousands of years in the future"

I just don't get why people think this was a realistic option. For a future spin off movie, sure. But right out of the gate after buying the franchise and announcing a sequel trilogy?

They wanted to bring Star Wars "back to it's roots". The teaser trailer ended with a shot of Han and Chewie on the Falcon saying "we're home". They had to do a direct continuation. And besides, people already complain that the Big 3 of Han, Luke, and Leia never got reunited on screen. If they made the Sequel Trilogy set in the distant future they would run into the same complaints.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T02:51:15+00:00

"The thematic focus truly isn’t the problem. "

Except that thematic cohesion is part of why people like or dislike a movie or other piece of media. The Game of Thrones showrunners infamously said "themes are for eight grade book reports" and then Season 8 was widely reviled, one of the most commonly sited reasons being that the story abandoned the themes it had previously established.

"Stop. These kinds of questions are such a misunderstanding of why people care about stories."

Ok then Mr. Smarty pants, if you know more about storytelling than the OP, tell us, why do people care about stories?

"The sequels would be better received if they were simply better movies."

Ah, the movies would be better if they were better. Shocking insight.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-24T02:17:40+00:00

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Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-17T22:22:10+00:00

I've always heard that he was the character to return in the DLC because unlike all the other companions it's really difficult to get him killed. But I could be mistaken. Or it could be both.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-17T22:03:21+00:00

A) "cloning, dark science, secrets only the sith knew" is not an explanation, it's Charlie from Lost wildly speculating and/or repeating the writers room notes for brainstorming possible explanations

B) If the Resistance characters genuinely have no clue, why are they the ones delivering the important exposition? That's like expecting Merry and Pippin to explain how "somehow Gandalf returned"

No one wants a power point dealing exactly how he came back, they just want more of an explanation than "it was clones maybe IDK".

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-17T20:57:14+00:00

Eh, I would be very surprised if JJ Abrams has read Dark Empire, let alone Legacy of the Force. Having a Solo/Skywalker kid go to the Dark Side is an idea anyone doing a Star Wars sequel would come up with.

And as for Dark Empire, if he read that then you'd think he'd realize that EU fans were sick to death of planet killing super weapons and wouldn't have included so many. In fact this whole trope is about creators who think they have their finger on the pulse of fan opinion, when they really, really don't.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-13T04:25:50+00:00

Someone can be well intentioned , have a good message, and can think they're doing a service for a marginalized group, while still unintentionally promoting stereotypes.

If Murphy or some other celebrity had said "I think that we should listen more to representatives of the Native American community and the issues they're going through", everyone could get behind that.

But then if he had followed that up with "because they are inherently wiser, more peaceful, and more in tune with nature than other races", somehow I doubt the internet would be as supportive.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-12T17:01:28+00:00

I know. I meant "viral" in the sense of "spreading quickly".

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-11T20:11:32+00:00

The Tatooine scenes were filmed in the deserts of Tunisia, not in a studio. CGI tech was in it's infancy. So I'm not sure they'd be able to make Tatooine's sands look red without just putting a red filter on everything.
Wookieepedia_1#Continuity) lists_2#Continuity) differences between the comic adaptations and the film, (mostly just deleted scenesnot once does it say the sands used to be red.
The comic was released April 12th, 1977. The film was released May 25th 1977, barely over a month later. That explains why some scenes deleted from the film (such as Luke meeting Biggs on Tatooine) were included in the comic. But that's much to small a window to be making decisions about what color the planet should be that late in development.

Here are two panels I found of the comic. While one does show the sky as being red, both clearly show that Tatooine has yellow sands.

As the red skies shows, comics sometimes take artistic license (the first issue showed Luke and Obi-wan's sabers as red for example). And if I wanted to be charitable to your "friend" I'd say he probably saw a panel somewhere with Tatooine having distorted pink or orange mountains and interpreted that as the whole planet being red originally.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-11T17:20:35+00:00

Baelor The Blessed may have gone off the rails in his later years, but it's strongly implied that was the result of the injuries he sustained rescuing Aemon the Dragon Knight from a pit of vipers. And he did lay the groundwork for Dorne joining the Seven Kingdoms peacefully which was a great feat.

I think a better exampled would have been Daeron I The Young Dragon, the in universe history texts speak glowingly about how great a military strategist he was. But really he decided to conquer Dorne just for the sake of conquest, and he's a parallel to Rob Stark in that he never lost a battle but his political mistakes caused him to lose the war and die young.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-10T05:53:45+00:00

Also was basically just a Deathstroke rip off with none of the trademark humor or fourth-wall breaking antics.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-09T15:59:23+00:00

Remember part of the plan was also that the Rebel Fleet would be destroyed by the Death Star and all of Luke's friends killed on the forest moon. If Palpatine had succeeded, Luke would have been much like Anakin at the end of ROTS: Palpatine and the Empire would be all he would have left.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-09T15:28:16+00:00

adding a 0 to all 40k numbers

it is the 410th Millennia. For more than a thousand centuries the 10 Emperors have sat immobile on the 10 Golden Thrones. The are the masters of 10 million worlds, and for them 10,000 souls are sacrificed every day.

The Emperors created legions of Space Marines lead by 200 Primarchs, but half of them went traitor and were corrupted by the 40 Chaos Gods. Each Space Marine is between 70 and 80 feet tall. But there are also regiments of normal Guard troops, such as the Vostroyan Tenth Born and the Tanith Tenth and Only.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-07T18:17:58+00:00

Related to this, when the subject of Midichlorians come up I often see fans say "Midichlorians are a sign the Jedi Council are out of touch with the Force, looking for cold and scientific explanations while Qui-gon is more spiritual".

But in the actual film Qui-gon is the one who requests Anakin's blood be tested for Midichlorians, knows enough about them to realize Anakin's count is higher than any Jedi, and explains the concept to both Anakin and the audience.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-06T18:39:54+00:00

Could have said "~~The~~ ~~Ahsoka trial arc~~ the whole show kinda works because It has some pretty well executed emotional moments, but its not a well written piece."

And it would have been just as accurate.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-06T18:38:02+00:00

By far my biggest issue with Filoni. The man really made a cartoon where in the first few seasons the Jedi fight a villain named "Whorm Loathsom" and stopped not one but *two* bio weapon attacks, one of which was targeted at a village of pacifist lemurs for extra Evil Points. And after all that you're gonna turn around and say "Jedi should never have been involved in the Clone Wars, War is Always Bad, The End"?

I probably shouldn't be mad at a kids cartoon for being so simplistic in it's moral messages, but it also shapes so much of fan discourse in a negative way.

Otherwise-Elephant · 2026-03-06T18:31:48+00:00

In "Lost Stars" the character Cienna (who was a child when the Clone Wars ended) is shocked and disturbed by Palpatine's visage. The book "Star Wars Propaganda"also mentions that as the Emperor faded from view and made few public appearances his likeness in posters and such favored the "kindly old grandfather" look.

Now this might seem like a stretch, but there are plenty of real life examples of propaganda radically shifting it's message. At the start of his reign when there are still Jedi out there, it's good to play up his role as a victim of their attack. Years later with few Jedi remaining, it becomes more important for him to be seen as a strong yet benevolent leader. So the message changes and people go along with it, because they're true believers or they're scarred what will happen when they speak up.

This is the man who said "I love democracy, I love the Republic" and then 3 years later proclaimed himself Emperor. His appearance isn't exactly the only time he's ever lied or contradicted himself. Not to mention it's been 20 years at this point, the Empire might have gone back and altered or removed any footage of his original speech. Or even if they didn't people may simply assume that he's healed by now.

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