Star Wars Black Series

Super Camel said:
I wanted Xizor so much too. I don't know why, but I just loved his POTF Shadows of the Empire figure. It is still my hope that we get every character that had a POTF2 figure as a Black Series figure. And that includes the SotE and EU POTF figures.
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Those EU figures had my imagination in such a chokehold as a kid.

I never saw them in stores and only knew they existed because I'd see them hanging on a shelf behind the wall of the comic book store (which had an entire wall dedicated to POTF which already broke my 8-year-old brain). Seeing things like Luke as a Sith just made me so curious and confused as to what the hell was going on in the comics outside of the movies.

I've still not read them.
 
Super Camel said:
I wanted Xizor so much too. I don't know why, but I just loved his POTF Shadows of the Empire figure. It is still my hope that we get every character that had a POTF2 figure as a Black Series figure. And that includes the SotE and EU POTF figures.
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SOTE is what got me in to collecting really. See my cheap self plug here. That first set of EU figures was my bane. I only ever saw Palpatine, and the weird guard guy. I wanted Thrawn, Mara Jade, Kyle Katarn...not these nobodies.
 
TFitz said:
Yeah, I didn't like the show, but a Jedi Wookie... I can make my own lore with him. Screw the show.
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HA! Love it! You know I quit Black Series and got rid of it all a couple years ago but the new Han and Chewie drew me back in. Now I am thinking of buying figures, regardless of what show or movie era they are from, and building a world of adventure just around Han and Chewie. Give them different backstories and such because you know....toys. I do all this as an adult approaching 60 with the attitude that I am still 12 like when Star Wars originally released! Lol. So long winded way of saying awesome to your idea.
 
Sgt. Stinky said:
I haven't watched The Acolyte yet because of bad word of mouth and cliff hanger ending knowing it isn't coming back for season 2.
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Eh... yes they leave the ending for more story, but it's not a cliff hanger so much. It's not like Empire Strikes Back if they never did Return of the Jedi, but more like A New Hope if they never did Empire. Clearly more was intended, not the end of the world it's not happening in the tv series.

Bad word of mouth is really a shame. The show dared to do something very different from most Star Wars, in an era not covered in live action. It has a lot of stumbling bits, but I enjoyed the series as a whole despite its flaws. And it has one of the most incredible lightsaber battles I think ever.
 
Yeah - I really enjoyed Acolyte too, and here I thought I was alone in this! It truly felt like a Dark Horse comics stand alone mini series come to life to me, and that's the sweet spot that's been missing from all the live action stuff we've been getting (for me anyway).

Editing to add that I bought the Jedi Wookie on clearance the other day, and this will probably lead to me tracking down the rest of the line.... sigh.
 
I have one coworker who is a massive star wars fan but he is desperate to prove why most star wars "isn't star wars", looking more forward to the YouTube videos tearing Andor apart than the episodes themselves.

One thing I really appreciated about Acolyte is how it tried to expand what a star wars story could be while still feeling very star warsy, at least to me. It also helps to watch it while letting it be what it is rather than what you expect it to be. But like Ace said, it was a nice break from Filoni style.
 
While the Acolyte certainly wasn't to everyone's taste, if there's one thing I would love to nuke from orbit it's fanatical fan bases shitting all over something that isn't specific to their tastes to the point people won't even give it a shot. I won't begrudge anyone who gave Acolyte a shot and didn't like it. That through line of people sabotaging any project that doesn't fit their specific tastes is the most boring part of any franchise. It's certainly more boring than just not watching it. A hit that hits for everyone is far rarer than a show that resonates with a smaller audience.

Anyway. The Acolyte worked for me because I like tired old men filled with regrets about their bad decisions, I like stories about gloried institutions cracking at the foundation, I hate "sympathetic villains" but I love villains who look at the world and point out what's wrong with it and are not wrong, I like beautifully choreographed lightsaber fights, I like Jedi as detectives, I like weird lil guy aliens who are in a Star Wars project just to be weird lil guys, I liked the Old Republic being lined with golds and jade and opulence like an empire unaware how close it is to falling under the weight of its own arrogance, I like stories where there isn't a chosen one hero but a bunch of lesser protagonists bumble-fucking their way toward trying to do the right thing, so the whole project just felt good to me as a change of pace. It's no Andor, but nothing is Andor, and it's far from the worst project Star Wars has put out.

And anyway the Black Series action figures from the show are fucking BANGERS, even if you just use them as support cast background Jedi. The team did not fuck around when they designed these toys, they're gorgeous. Kelnacca's worth it even if you never learn his name and just put him as Jedi Wookie #1 in your display shelf.
 
I guess the biggest issue is when you have something like A New Hope or Avengers that busted blocks hard, some people expect everything that follows in the franchise to be for everyone as well. So when they dare to do a project that isn't that, they lose their shit and do everything they can to sabotage it. I assume when they grow up, they'll look back with pride at how hard they ruined the rotten tomato score for a show they didn't like.
 
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Ru1977 said:
I guess the biggest issue is when you have something like A New Hope or Avengers that busted blocks hard, some people expect everything that follows in the franchise to be for everyone as well. So when they date to do a project that isn't that, they lose their shit and do everything they can to sabotage it. I assume when they grow up, they'll look back with pride at how hard they ruined the rotten tomato score for a show they didn't like.
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Someone did a study about viewership and how people want things to be almost the exact same, over and over again, with JUST enough variance to feel new. So any time a franchise someone's attached their entire personality to (not just talking Star Wars here, it's everything, Trekkers or like, Twilight fans apply just as well) tries something new a certain population of the fandom will lose their shit. And because the internet has created a trumpet people can nestle into their rectum, those opinions get very loud.

Which is too bad, because one of, say, Marvel's strengths is that each project for a long time was a different genre. This is a spy thriller, this is a Shakespearean drama, this is a sitcom, this is a found family story. So absolutely not everything was meant to be for everybody, but modern audiences expect everything to be crafted in a way that it appeals to the mass audience.

Oddly enough, one of the great strengths of the Clone Wars cartoon was that it leaned into this idea VERY heavily. This episode is a murder mystery. This episode is a KAIJU movie. This episode is a WWII homage. It was a playground of ideas for Star Wars to play with, which was a brilliant storytelling process. I do think live action Star Wars viewers are far, far, farrrrrr more rigid in their expectations of what Star Wars brings to the table. (If Andor wasn't once in a lifetime great television, we'd hear so much more complaining about the lack of lightsabers and aliens, but the brilliance of the production makes it somewhat immune to those complaints.) I don't think the Acolyte, while I liked it, was what I'd call brilliant, and so it lacked that armor from anti-fans. (And this doesn't even get into the bigotry factor but that's an entirely different conversation and I don't have THAT in me on this particular Friday.)

But anyway. I do think it's funny how maligned the Acolyte is but they got just amazing figures of almost every core character, while we Andor fans are over here wondering if we'll ever get Melshi, Maarva, or Syril...
 
docsilence said:
Someone did a study about viewership and how people want things to be almost the exact same, over and over again, with JUST enough variance to feel new.
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I guess I get that, to a degree. Or, I mean I can be that way. I dunno. Maybe not. I tend to get really exhausted by lots of fight scenes and such but appreciate when they come up with something new I haven't seen before, or at least new for the genre I'm watching.
docsilence said:
So any time a franchise someone's attached their entire personality to (not just talking Star Wars here, it's everything, Trekkers or like, Twilight fans apply just as well) tries something new a certain population of the fandom will lose their shit.
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Well... I don't think I lost my shit exactly, but I definitely went on at length about the faults of the prequels in the early 2000s. More than anything though, I came at it as a writer than a fan. As a fan, I kinda blew it off, but as a writer... they should have done this, that, and the other. As a writer and a fan, I just turned away from the sequels.
docsilence said:
And because the internet has created a trumpet people can nestle into their rectum, those opinions get very loud.
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Brilliant.
docsilence said:
Which is too bad, because one of, say, Marvel's strengths is that each project for a long time was a different genre. This is a spy thriller, this is a Shakespearean drama, this is a sitcom, this is a found family story. So absolutely not everything was meant to be for everybody, but modern audiences expect everything to be crafted in a way that it appeals to the mass audience.
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Right, and I've said this several times in a few Marvel threads, but that's why I think not everything needs to have a mega budget. Do low budget superhero movies that will appeal to smaller audiences, then your Avengers and such can do the hundreds of millions of budget.
docsilence said:
Oddly enough, one of the great strengths of the Clone Wars cartoon was that it leaned into this idea VERY heavily. This episode is a murder mystery. This episode is a KAIJU movie. This episode is a WWII homage. It was a playground of ideas for Star Wars to play with, which was a brilliant storytelling process. I do think live action Star Wars viewers are far, far, farrrrrr more rigid in their expectations of what Star Wars brings to the table.
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Definitely true. It's like the people who vote only every four years.
docsilence said:
(If Andor wasn't once in a lifetime great television, we'd hear so much more complaining about the lack of lightsabers and aliens, but the brilliance of the production makes it somewhat immune to those complaints.) I don't think the Acolyte, while I liked it, was what I'd call brilliant, and so it lacked that armor from anti-fans.
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Really good point.
docsilence said:
(And this doesn't even get into the bigotry factor but that's an entirely different conversation and I don't have THAT in me on this particular Friday.)
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Fair enough. I kinda blocked that out some as I couldn't really recall the exact form it took, though I know there's a couple options with the lead... but I imagine a lot of them chose "all the above" for what they attacked.

And you know what? I liked the song. So what?
docsilence said:
But anyway. I do think it's funny how maligned the Acolyte is but they got just amazing figures of almost every core character, while we Andor fans are over here wondering if we'll ever get Melshi, Maarva, or Syril...
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True. And I'm over here quietly wishing for more comic figures heh. Marvel Legends, I'm movie only. Star Wars, I want comic guys.
 
Ru1977 said:
I definitely went on at length about the faults of the prequels in the early 2000s. More than anything though, I came at it as a writer than a fan
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This. And I still do.
As a fan I was just, like, in shock that they could be so bad. As a writer? Hooooo boy. Dreck.
 
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