DarthDementous

I see, so it's the added characterization of the Inquisitors as big game hunters by keeping a trophy of their kills. I could go into why that's a very odd addition given previous portrayals of the Inquisitors, but to keep it self-contained I'll just say it doesn't really make sense from a big game hunter perspective. Usually the point of trophies is to display them, not keep them in this dark super-secret basement, and also they're usually selective to demonstrate the skill of the hunter. The ones in the episode were very arbitrarily placed (you've got a literal council member placed with what look to be Jedi Knights and Padawans), and no one would consider killing a Jedi youngling an impressive feat at all If the point in the episode was to drive home how twisted the Inquisitors are (who the hell would proudly display a dead child?!) then I'd say that does work against the sympathetic angle they're going for with Reva. Also, I'd say there was an attempt to characterize the Grand Inquisitor and the Fifth Brother as more practical and in control contrasted with Reva's recklessness, and this weird room of preserved trophies doesn't really square with the Inquisitors generally being practical and focused

How was that world-building, let alone awesome world-building?

There was something uniquely bad about that shot, almost like the frame-rate on the CG render wasn't correct

That's Holt's Imperial theme I think, it keeps throwing me off because I keep expecting it to resolve the same way as the Imperial motif in ANH does

The cynic in me thinks that McFarlane had to market The Orville that way to executives in order to get it picked up. Looking at the modern TV landscape at the time, there really was zero attempt to make the kind of thought-provoking and optimistic sci-fi adventure show that Star Trek used to be, however McFarlane has proven himself to make really successful comedy shows and sci-fi comedies in particular are all the rage these days thanks to the gigantic success of Rick and Morty

Contradictions are inevitable in such a massive franchise across many different creators, many years, and such a large span of in-universe time, it's the systems you have in place to mitigate them that will determine if you have 'good' or 'bad' continuity. That is the lesson Disney Star Wars has taught us Again, there's this bizarre trend of using 'evidence' from pretty much everything other than the Kenobi show to make a point about the show. I find it really telling that whenever someone points out an issue, instead of using the actual Kenobi show as the foundation of their point, they have to make some wide assumption about every other piece of Star Wars media in order to try to counter it Guess what? It's bad there too. Point out a contradiction in any other Star Wars entry and I'll be there to criticize it as well. It's bad there and it's bad in the Kenobi show. Does that make the show as a whole bad? No, it's the sum of its parts, but 'continuity headscratchers' as you put them have the ability to subtract from it. Responding to a contradiction with another contradiction doesn't make the first contradiction go away

Holy shit. Not only was Episode 3 as a whole brilliant, the music for this show is so good For the love of god, please put Joel McNeeley on another Star Wars project

I did, it was pretty terrible overall. Completely missed everything that made Halo special, and I say that as someone who was open to very different events playing out. It just felt like any other sci-fi show, dangerously bereft of camp or a tone of heroism. Instead it was cynical and shallow The score was also a huge let-down, low brraaaaams when we see the Covenant Holy City instead of the religious exultation of choir that's used in the games also contributed to the tone feeling very flat

Well if that's your point then you're just flat out wrong that Star Wars has always had haphazard continuity. From the release of Heir to the Empire to The Clone Wars movie the continuity within the expanded universe was a huge consideration and meticulously handled. Any contradictions that arose would actually be addressed and 90% of the time resolved in future media or from members of the Lucasfilm Story Group themselves who took great time and care to respond to fan concerns. The amount of interconnectivity was also insane, you'd be reading a comic set in the Clone Wars and it would be simultaneously referencing events from the Knights of the Old Republic comics, as well as setting up elements for the Thrawn Trilogy which doesn't occur until post-ROTJ Now, when I say 'to The Clone Wars movie' I don't mean that they just stopped giving a shit about continuity after it came out, but rather the Lucasfilm Story Group faced some extreme continuity challenges. Your favorite person Chen, George Lucas, had allowed people to flesh out the area between the Prequel movies quite significantly on the stipulation that he wasn't going to touch it. However, in the mid 2000s he changed his mind and put together The Clone Wars which completely bull-dozed through the existing expanded universe to the point the story group had to come up with a band-aid fix known as 'T canon' which elevated TCW above all the rest of the expanded universe. Unfortunately, while this means that TCW could continue unfettered by any restraints to what was previously established in the era, other EU stories had to bend over backwards to blend the old stories with Lucas' and it became pretty messy. The interconnectivity remained however, and some of the best expanded universe works came out post-2007 so it wasn't a complete write-off Come post the 2013 Disney buy-out and everything is erased except TCW. Theoretically, with this clean slate, continuity should be easier than ever to maintain but the values of the Lucasfilm Story Group shifted significantly and no longer was there the same attention to detail in the pre-Disney expanded universe. However, a bizarre paradox arose where they had the ambition to have everything that was created, be it video game or novel, from now on to be on the same level of canon as the movies. This ultimately proved to be an utter disaster and fell into the MCU trap of alienating the general audience by having events in movies heavily rely on expanded material to understand So, from my point of view when I look at the absolute disastrous state of Star Wars these days I can't help but partly attribute it to de-prioritization of continuity. I also can't help but notice how unbelievably solid it was pre-Disney when that was a greater concern, and how it lead to richer stories and a far more cohesive-feeling universe that also managed to not feel homogenous That is why I do not tolerate the idea that Star Wars should just continue on the death-march it's currently on because 'that's what it did in the past', because not only is that not entirely correct but it's the kind of attitude that breeds stagnation

His sensibilities would fit like a glove

The only claim I made was that the idea of Vader being scarred as the result of a duel with Obi Wan existed as early as the creation of the first Star Wars, which Kaminski seems to agree with Before the conversation got very confusing I responded to you saying "The idea of a duel and certainly the idea of Vader being a burn victim were both later additions in and of themselves." with "Directly in the movies yes, but I wouldn't be so sure about those ideas not being in mind during the making of A New Hope." and then I provided a quote from the 1977 Rolling Stones interview as evidence

That seems...awfully arbitrary. The track I linked you is solely credited to him. I think that track is pretty decent too, some traditional Star Wars stylings with more ethnically flavored stuff that has a nice groove to it

He has scored Star Wars already actually:

What an absolute fucking farce, look at what the reference for that claim is: Good enough for Kaminski who is one of the few sources Chen will actually trust, yet not good enough for Chen

Can you quote Kaminski directly in regards to the question of Vader being a burn victim as a result of a duel then? I can't stress how much I do not care about Lucas lying about other things I want to know if he's lying about this and you can offer NOTHING to the contrary other than conjecture. It's beyond infuriating You know what I've never heard a historian say? "We have this account from X about an event that happened a year before but I think they're lying about it?" "Why do you think that?" "I think they don't remember it correctly" "Why?" "Because memory is faulty"

Greenturnedblue nailed it. @Chen G. the reason I called you disingenuous has nothing to do with being affronted by the accusation that Lucas was lying, and everything to do with your continuous insistence that the primary sources of these information are lying. What's worse, is that it seems to always be in a case where it's a source that directly contradicts what you've claimed. It's like talking to a conspiracy theorist who will dismiss evidence they don't like because 'everyone is in on it man', when you get to arbitrarily decide what is and isn't a valid source it makes discussion less about finding out what the truth of the matter is and more about pulling out all the stops to be proven correct. Textbook bad faith/disingenuous/whatever you want to call it engagement You've written a remarkable amount without really saying anything. I do not care about all these other examples (especially ones from completely different people), I care about it on a case by case basis. Given a piece of evidence, if you want to discredit it by saying the person is lying you need to establish a motive for why on earth they would be lying in the first place, or use another piece of evidence to identify a direct contradiction with what they've claimed. Saying that someone's memory is faulty a year after the moment described and thus they gave an inaccurate account is wild conjecture and is frankly unprovable unless they had some kind of degenerative memory condition at the time. For all you know Mark Hamill has remarkably good memory even to this day, which is why this line of questioning is ridiculous

The fuss about creating the story group is hilarious to me because it already existed with very similar members to what it does now (e.g. Pablo Hidalgo). However the priorities for the story group shifted significantly, it's really telling to compare older quotes of Hidalgo to what he says now, he's almost done a complete face-heel turn They're not shy about it either, the story group has straight up admitted that continuity is not a high priority to them which is in direct contradiction to what their priorities used to be

The issue is that he's giving rise to those people by setting the precedent that Star Wars has never had strong continuity so it shouldn't value it now. That's really easy to take and run with into 'turn your brain off continuity isn't important for Star Wars' I wouldn't mind that stance so much if it wasn't built on ignoring evidence to the contrary To me it's abundantly clear how much caring about continuity is important for Star Wars because some of the greatest works came out at a time that was a significant consideration for the Lucasfilm Story Group, and it facilitated a remarkably interconnected universe that greatly enhanced the overall verisimilitude. It's the reason why 40 years of expanded material didn't result in a complete mess (except for TCW bull-dozing over pre-established canon but that's a different story), and why under a decade of the new canon has. It was even more insane with the rebooted canon to not care highly about continuity considering the new precedent was that everything was on the same level of canon, meaning unlike the EU, contradictions could directly affect new films being made

Goddamn it, I only just noticed and now I can’t unsee

I never thought they’d cover this, it’s going to be their new Picard isn’t it Maybe don’t keep saying primary sources are inaccurate or lying with literally no given reason if you don’t want to be seen as disingenuous. It very much comes off as ‘why yes that source does counter my point but actually I don’t like that source so it doesn’t count and no I won’t elaborate even when prompted’

I wouldn't be so sure, 'Turn Left' is another example of doing a lot with a little. RTD gets bombastic and kitchen sink-y for his finales there's no denying that, but he's a remarkably efficient storyteller. Much easier seen in his non-Doctor Who work Actually, I'd also nominate Children of Earth as an example of making something very effective by creating what is essentially a minimalist alien invasion. Works wonders for the terror of the situation and allows the focus to primarily be the effect on the people, which is something RTD has always excelled at in sci-fi and was sorely missed in the new era

Yeah exactly! A New Hope has a bundle of musical influences, not just romantic. It really is such an eclectic mix that I can't wrap my head around feeling 'creatively restrained' by the universe when it's such a melting pot

Hah, funnily enough I'm in the middle of listening to the Plagueis audiobook. I really like the way he frames the Sith to Palpatine as the original Force practitioners instead of the corruption the Jedi always paint them as because "darkness always exists before there is light", and his commentary about how the Banite Sith laugh at the Jedi's notion that getting rid of all the Sith would bring balance to the Force is also fascinating These are all perspectives that paint the Sith as a fully-formed ideology that I wish were in the Prequel movies so I could actually get a sense of what it means to be a Sith beyond a corrupted Jedi It'll never cease to be jarring going from current Star Wars to the old expanded universe (except for some of the novels I suppose), the gulf is actually mind-blowing. They pretty much are completely different universes

Mhmm, if writing a traditional Star Wars score is so off-putting then at least make sure it doesn't sound like everything else out there. More than anything I care about properties having a unique musical identity, personally I think the best way to preserve that is to work within what has already been established but if that's too creatively restricting then please don't just create something that could be applied to any other piece of adjacent media in the modern age

Had an amusing moment watching a bootleg version of Fast and Furious 10 with even more bootleg English subtitles with friends One of the characters is supposed to say "I'm Luke goddamn Skywalker" but it got translated as "I'm Luck fucking Skywaiker"