Thoughts on the Sequel Trilogy

It's been a year since the release of The Rise of Skywalker, so let's look back and reflect a little on the sequel series.

The biggest issue, I think, is a lack of motivation for the characters.  At the start of filming on The Force Awakens, the creators should have known the answers to:

1. Why has Han abandoned his family to wander the galaxy?
2. Why has Luke gone into hiding?
3. Why did Ben Solo turn to the Dark Side?

I don't think #1 is answered at all, and that Rian Johnson was left to come up with answers to #2 and #3 that are a case of misunderstandings-gone-wrong worthy of an episode of Three's Company, but not the core of an epic space opera trilogy.  

What would make sense as character motivations?

Why did Ben Solo turn to the Dark Side?

Let's start with the most important backstory to the sequel series, with the understanding that anything in this headcanon has to be better than, "Uncle Luke thought about killing me."

So.  Let's say Ben had a sister (nod to the Solo twins, though it needn't be a twin sister here), and they were both being trained by Luke as part of the new Jedi order, and she was killed during a diplomatic mission.  Ben wanted revenge for her death; Luke and Leia cautioned against it, but *Han* helps him get revenge, and so Ben is on the path to the Dark Side.  

Ben finds that revenge does not bring him peace, and becomes obsessed with the idea of "saving" his sister from death.  Han now sees that Luke and Leia were right, and tries to dissuade Ben from this dark path.  Ben leaves him behind and strikes out on his own.  Han reports back to Leia and Luke that he's lost Ben, but vows to bring him back.  Giving Ben a stronger motivation solves the question of Han's own motivation: he hasn't abandoned his family; he's out looking for Ben.

Ben spends his time researching old Sith holocrons, searching for a way to bring his sister back from the dead.  This allows us to tap into lore from Plagueis to Palpatine to Vader.  Note that this alters Ben's desire to "finish what you started"; instead of a weird reverence for Anakin's fall to the Dark Side, this becomes a reference to Anakin's failed attempts to save and then resurrect Padmé.  This allows us to bring back Hayden Christensen as a force ghost who tries to steer Ben back to the Light.

Ben needs funding for his researches.  He falls in with the First Order as the mercenary "Kylo Ren"; he trains their force-sensitives, and they fund his research.  There is no need for Snoke or Palpatine; Ben has no interest in becoming Supreme Leader.  Remember, he's not out to destroy his family; he's trying to save it, and he believes he's the *only* one who was willing to do what it takes to save it (this becomes a good bone for him to gnaw on, eventually driving him into more direct conflict with his elders).

He finally succeeds in cloning his sister, and through forced growth ages the clone body to young adulthood.  The Force Awakens begins with him performing the Sith ritual to call her soul back from the Force to this body.  According to his researches, it can take some time for the soul to return, and he is prepared to wait. Then he is called away on business, and he leaves the First Order's force sensitives that he is currently training to mind the store and contact him if anything happens. 

While he's away, the clone body wakes up, but doesn't know who she is.  This is Rey.  One of the First Order's force sensitives, Finn, feels a connection to her and helps her to bust out of the Sith lab and the two go wandering.  

Note that at this point, since Rey, our primary POV character, doesn't know her own backstory, it's a mystery to us, too, to be solved as the series progresses.  Finn is not much help because Ben has not shared the particulars of his research with his trainees or the First Order.  Moreover, when Han / Leia / Luke meet her, they recognize her as the spitting image of Ben's sister, and might suspect the body is a clone, but whether she is truly the same as that lost sister or someone new is a philosophical question to wrestle with.  Rey's and Finn's motivations are largely unchanged, but Finn is more explicitly Force sensitive, and having Ben and Rey kiss at some point gets a lot squickier.

The war between the New Republic and the First Order is all a backdrop to a much more personal story.  It's important, yes, because Leia must lead the New Republic's fleet in order to achieve a stalemate.  Wherever she goes, they are victorious; however, the First Order is making inroads as Kylo Ren trains their force sensitives faster than Luke can rebuild the Jedi Order (recall that the path to the Dark Side is quicker, easier). 

Luke has taken the Jedi Academy into hiding because they have been attacked by First Order operatives in the Core Worlds.  The stress of the situation can still weigh on him; the need to train Jedi for war can lead to teachings that stray toward the Dark Side, and every day is an internal test of his will to walk the path of the Light Side.

I love that huttlet!

For every product, there is a Star Wars version, and this includes the Top Trumps card game.  Connor was given a copy of the Clone Wars Top Trumps.  


The premise is simple: it's War with a twist. Each character is scored on Bravery, Cunning, Leadership, Fighting Skill, Battle Tech, and Jedi Power.  On each turn, the "starting" player draws their topmost card, looks at it, and decides which attribute will be used that round.  The other players draw their topmost cards, and the one with the highest value on that attribute wins.  


The problems are that:

1. each attribute is scored on a wildly different scale; Jedi Power seems to range from 0-10, a Fighting Skill of 41 is very low and 130 is very high, and a Bravery of 24 is very high.  Maybe this is supposed to be a "feature" so that it's harder for players to remember a particular card's relative rank on each attribute, but instead it comes across as arbitrary. 
2. and this is a much greater problem, many of the rankings don't make any sense.  The Jungle Rancor has the highest fighting in the game at 140; General Grievous has greater Bravery than Anakin; the typical Clone Trooper has Fighting Skill equal to Kit Fisto and greater cunning than Jabba the Hutt...

...annnnd, speaking of Jabba, his son, Rotta the Huttlet, has a Jedi Power of 5.  This is less than any Jedi or Sith, but greater than any other character.  Hunh?  Is Rotta supposed to be Force-sensitive?  What gives?  But... thinking a little more along those lines, that would actually have made the plot of the animated Clone Wars movie actually make sense.  If Rotta were Force-sensitive, the premise could be that the Jedi Order asked Jabba if they could take him for training.  Jabba refused, but when Rotta is then kidnapped and Dooku comes with "information" that the Jedi have done this in order to train Rotta in the ways of the Jedi, Jabba actually has a good reason to believe Dooku.  We could even have a discussion between Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan as to whether it's right for Jabba to refuse his son the chance to learn more about his special gifts, and whether it would be just for the Jedi to actually take Rotta and train him.

Sigh.  Can we retcon this ASAP?

Farmer Deathwatch

My kids love Star Wars and Legos, and just had their birthdays, so naturally each is now in possession of a Mandalorian Battle Pack. And, because they're 4 and 7, the pieces are hopelessly mixed up with pieces of other sets.  While sitting on the floor and looking through minifigures with them the other day, I noticed the distinctive Mandalorian helmet on a guy and immediately picked him up to play with, because the Mandalorians are inherently cool...


Then I noticed the body:

And in that moment, the legend of Farmer Deathwatch was born.

Traveling through hyperspace on a camel ain't like dusting crops, boy!  Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

top 10 suggestions to fix episodes 1-3

About 4 years too late to be relevant, but Connor has watched the "Clone Wars" animated movie recently and it's stirred up the mud.

10. Don't try to be scientific.  This is Star Wars, not Star Trek.  There is absolutely no reason to have midichlorians; the Jedi can simply sense when one is really, really strong with the Force.  Anakin should draw the attention of the Force-sensitive like a lighthouse, which should cause the Jedi to question: even with him living on a backwater like Tatooine, how did we miss this kid?  Answer: the Sith were cloaking his presence (again, no need to go into details of how, it's just something the Sith can do).

9. The movies need to stand on their own.  When watching Episodes 4-6, it was clear there was a larger story with lots of details we weren't seeing ("that bounty hunter we ran into at Ord Mantell changed my mind"), but everything we needed to understand character motivations within the movies was provided within the movies.  Reading the ancillary material should only be necessary to get your fix, not to understand why Dooku particularly dislikes Anakin, or why Anakin mistrusts Master Windu (and see below).

8. Less stupid sidekicks; more Mace Windu.  If, god help us, the Gungans are really necessary, don't refer to them as "primitives" when they have forcefield technology that allows a living being through while keeping the water out. 

7. Make the Jedi/Sith philosophies more coherent.  The kernels are there, but the "only 2 Sith" rule is weak at best as currently explained, and the "Jedi cannot love/marry" rule is a nonsensical plot contrivance at best.  If lamas can marry and still try to achieve Nirvana, why can't Jedi?  If you want a reason why Padme doesn't want her marriage known to the world, make it that all Jedi spouses are kept on the Jedi planet for safekeeping so that they can't be taken hostage.  Padme doesn't want that, so she refuses to "officially" marry Anakin.  Anakin can of course take this the wrong way and believes the real reason she doesn't want to officially marry him is because she doesn't really love him and is hoping for someone better to come along (or around, see below).

6. Sorry, George, you can't write. Lucas has wonderful ideas, but needed to hire a scriptwriter with experience in political thriller/intrigue movies so the dialogue doesn't fall flat.  In fact, before that, hire a novelist in advance to smooth out the rough patches in the plotting.  Terry Brooks did a great job with the novelization of Episode 1; is there any reason he couldn't have done that in 1995?

5. Introduce the droids in a sensible manner.  Anakin is a slave boy grease monkey, so naturally in his spare time he builds... a protocol droid?!  What?!  Please, if Anakin is going to build one of the droids, let it be one that actually makes sense for him to want to build, like an astromech droid!  Padme is the queen of Naboo.  It's easy to introduce C3PO as part of her entourage to Coruscant.  And that way you save us some of the embarrassment of Anakin not recognizing C3PO on Bespin -- "Hey, isn't that the droid I *built* who was one of the *witnesses* at my illicit wedding and was always hanging around my long-dead wife?"  Even after 18 years, I think he'd remember Threepio.  Anakin never sees R2D2 in Episodes 4-6, except through the crosshairs of his TIE Fighter gunsights.

4. Steal even more from Empire Strikes Back.  ESB has a split middle section with the action alternating between Luke training on Dagobah (relatively mild action-wise but important to setting the table for his confrontations with Vader) and Han and Leia being chased by the Empire and realizing that they love one another (sniping at each other the whole time in wonderful fashion).  Attack of the Clones has a split middle section with the action alternating between Obi-Wan doing some detective work (important to advancing the plot) and Anakin and Padme gadding about on Naboo and finally realizing they love one another, topped by Anakin faking his own death by trampling as a show of his affection.  Uh, say what?  Look, Anakin and Padme go off on their little vacation to Naboo because of fears for Padme's safety.  Instead of having them spend the whole time on Naboo with nothing to do, let them get chased across the galaxy by would-be assassins, let them save each other a couple of times (sniping at each other the whole way in true Star Wars fashion), and finally realize they love one another!  The scenes on Tatooine could then be a necessary stop for ship repairs *on the way* to Naboo instead of... whatever it ended up being.

3. One less Darth. I hate to say it because Darth Maul looked cool, but the character was ultimately frustrating because he dies before we know anything about him.  Dooku (suitably masked) could be the "mystery Sith" in Episode I; he'd fight Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan on Naboo because Qui-Gon openly defies the Jedi Council and plans to train Anakin (see below).  Episodes I-II then become at least partly about Dooku's fall and presage Anakin's fall.  Have Dooku kill him off and try to turn Obi-Wan to the Dark Side (for the first time, and keep trying).

2. Introduce important characters sooner.  Dooku's past includes a stint on the Jedi Council, and he doesn't like Anakin, so he should definitely have been on the Council during Episode I and speaking eloquently in favor of having Anakin not be trained as a Jedi!  (see "Hire a novelist to smooth out the plotting" above... and more Christopher Lee never hurts, either.  He actually knows how to hold a sword.)  Likewise, whatever is inside General Grievous needs to be introduced in Episode II at the latest.  You can't be telling us about these characters for the first time in the title text; that only worked in Episode 4 when we didn't know *anything* going in (see "Movies must stand on their own" above).

1. Give Anakin a believable reason to turn.  Let me get this straight: he's afraid that Padme will die in childbirth in a society that has medical technology that can replace his arm, and so when he implicates himself in the death of Mace Windu, the next semi-logical step is to murder all the children at Jedi school.  Hunh?  Let's try again: 

  a. the Jedi Council never takes a shine to Anakin and do not allow Ben to take him on as a Padawan (see "Dooku speaking against it" above) at the end of Episode 1 -- Anakin is not to be trained as a Jedi, and will instead be sent to a Jedi-controlled planet to receive training in meditation to control his anger (this is effectively a prison sentence).  Obi-Wan pleads Anakin's case and they eventually allow Obi-Wan to take on Anakin as a valet/pilot, and Obi-Wan will take personal charge of Anakin's meditation training.  Of course, he secretly teaches Anakin everything, and their "cover" is blown sometime in Episode 2 when Anakin has to save someone important (say Palpatine, in an event staged by Palpatine) in a gratuitous display of his prowess.  The Council is angry with Obi-Wan, but are in need of Jedi with Anakin's talents to fight the Clone Wars, so he is allowed to continue under Obi-Wan's supervision but is *never* officially recognized as a Jedi Knight.  Anakin has real reason to mistrust the Jedi Council, and Palpatine works this in Episodes II and III.  Obi-Wan's statements about "thinking he could do just as well as Yoda" in training Anakin then also make more sense -- right now, the Council consents to Obi-Wan training Anakin. 

  b. in Episode I, Ben and Padme have a natural kinship and become good friends who are always able to talk to each other (in general, Ben should have a way with people of all walks of life; we get tastes of this in Episode II when they go into the seedy bar and later when he visits the diner, but it's not developed further).  We see that there is no sexual element to the relationship; they're just really good friends, but in Episode II Anakin is jealous of the easy way Ben communicates with Padme, in contrast to his own fumblings.  Palpatine works the jealousy angle hard in Episodes II and III, until Anakin is paranoid that the twins might be Ben's, and confronts Padme with, "You love him, don't you?" but of course with much darker undertones than Han's question of Leia in Episode 6.