DarthDementous

I'm waiting with baited breath for Lazarus, the new anime from Shiniichiro Watanabe I've greatly enjoyed all his work from Cowboy Bebop to Carole and Tuesday. the way he blends music into his work is exceptional and I feel this will be no exception

Series 1 had so many strong individual episodes that relatively the finale feels like a bit of a step down, but in isolation that two parter is really fantastic - pun intended

budget wise it looks more ambitious than Season 1/15/40 whatever had to laugh at the second companion of RTD's new era also being a medical professional, I do like the promise of tension between her and The Doctor though I really enjoyed Ruby but she got along perfectly with The Doctor from the beginning

Man what a good looking show

if that had happened STAR WARS would not even be on the periphery of pop culture even Lucas recognised this, which is why he set The Clone Wars into motion. in your suggested timeline not even Rebels would exist which is meant to be the successor to that Star Wars in its wilderness years after ROTJ almost fell into complete obscurity but it was the Thrawn Trilogy of books and then the Prequel Trilogy that revived it at the end of the day regardless of how you or I feel about individual entries, Star Wars compared to other legacy franchises is actually doing very well for itself in terms of maintaining relevance in a wildly different media landscape

After rewatching the first film for the first time in a while, this series is really going to need to nail just how authentic the child actors felt in that movie A lot of child actor performances feels like children acting with the abilities of adults, but that first film the trio genuinely feels like a bunch of kids and it's clear Christopher Columbus is a director that's very good at channeling that. It makes everything so much more charming and endearing, and if the new cast feel like actors then that'll be lost to great detriment I feel

He pretty much already has, Filoni is in George Lucas' position currently

Isn't the broom kid exactly an example of what you're talking about in terms of Harry Potter rules? TLJ also doubles down on the hereditary aspect with references to 'mighty Skywalker blood' as the reason for why Kylo was so dangerous of a student

I'd chalk up the release schedule to Gilroy requesting it more than anyone, so I don't buy the 'just rush it out there' argument, especially when Disney know how much goodwill they have from all sectors of the fanbase towards this show And yeah, dramatic trailer shots of characters like Eedie are why I love this show, because the character writing is so strong it becomes a selling point to say that someone's Mum is back

It's also worth pointing out that even in the dynasty exception of Skywalker, Anakin didn't inherit his Force ability from a long line of Skywalkers as he was conceived by the Force That fact I think more than anything implies that although the Force is genetic (midichlorian counts), it expresses itself quite randomly. To be honest it doesn't really make any biological sense and that was probably the biggest mistake of trying to present a scientific point of view on it in the Prequels

I don't think it's about binging, the season is made up of sets of three episodes with a year timeskip between them It'll be like getting a movie each week, and the gap between the next set will more naturally emphasise the time jump This makes the most sense for the format The trailer itself really shows that things have expanded in scope and I suspect the 'this isn't Star Wars crowd' may start to change their tune. Funnily enough it looks like a more inventive and comprehensive Rogue One, and I lived for every smug shot of Krennic. The biggest problem for me with Rogue One was the characters, so a version of that with incredibly compelling and nuanced characters I'm practically ecstatic about

That Puck article doesn't make clear what its sources are and no one in a position to confirm this had said anything, so I'd probably not jump the gun just yet

It's worth pointing out that Rian Johnson requested JJ to rewrite the final scene of TFA so it would be more in line with TLJ JJ had initially drafted it as Rey meeting Luke with multiple rocks floating around him as he meditated in the air, not unlike Rey in TROS. In Rian Johnson's script, Luke had cut himself off from the Force, so he requested JJ to change it to avoid the obvious contradiction I think that's why it overall feels tonally consistent with TLJ I'd argue this is still the status quo as the previous films set up that the Force doesn't take the form of dynasties, with the Skywalkers being the only exception The Jedi train anyone who is Force sensitive and there's no rhyme or reason to where they come from, nor do we see families or relatives in the Jedi Temple

I find a lot of critique of TLJ wholly unsatisfying because it begrudges the film for what it is not, and something that I wish it actually was - subversive The arc of TLJ is to ask 'is this all Star Wars is, the endless struggle between an authoritative force and a band of Rebels, and light and dark, no matter how much time passes and how much the galaxy changes?' Luke initially thinks that no, and in fact the Jedi aren't actually synonymous with the light However...and this is where the movie completely falls apart and wastes my time, is that the answer to the question posed is 'yes, that is all Star Wars is and that's good actually' because Luke completely changes his mind, and Kylo who is desperate to try and escape the cycle is unequivocally in the wrong. This, I think, is why the last act of the movie is especially derivative of past Star Wars films and at times lifting them wholesale because it's a deliberate and disappointing return to the status quo A good deconstruction will reconstruct something new in its place, TLJ deconstructs only to reconstruct the exact same status quo. In this way it is the worst of both worlds, it is neither a wholly fresh take on the material and it is also neither wholly in line with established Star Wars either. It opens Pandora's Box and then pretends like it just closed on its own, when it has instead asked many pertinent questions that it leaves dangling unsatisfactorily In that sense I'm not surprised people have come away with such radically different takes on it, as it's non-committal nature makes it quite an amorphous piece of media