True, and the Breha idea is really interesting. That could absolutely work. BUT... you'd lose a lot of my favorite bits of the show, like her asking Obi-Wan about her parents. I get it doesn't jibe, totally get why that's any issue. But I loved those moments too much.
Oh yeah. I try to look at it with two different lenses at once: the stuff I like and the stuff that would have made a better story. Just because I liked watching something doesn't mean it served the narrative. You can have a very cool moment or a very sweet moment that also breaks the entire story. In which case, I don't think those moments are worth preserving (if you had a magic time machine or something, obviously).
Just for instance, imagine if it's the hidden child of a Jedi Anakin killed, and Ben has to explain to the child what happened to his father. That could be an interesting conversation as Ben says very little, but we can see writ on his face that it's all his fault. He didn't kill Anakin when he had the chance and Darth Vader caused untold suffering afterward. His failure to act essentially being thrown in his face.
Bring on Kiera Knightley and have Ben explain to her how he failed Padme. Lots of potentially great, powerful moments were lost so we could have 'sassy kid-Leia.' Although I, too, loved those moments that we got. It's only kind of in retrospect that I can look back and say 'I really enjoyed that, but it also doesn't make any sense that any of this happened.'
It IS cool. I actually liked Solo a lot better on rewatch than initial viewing. Of course, there's a lot of things I'd change, but maybe not as much as other people. A big one is to just stop trying to fucking explain every goddamn trinket the guy owns as some important thing from his past. Can't he just have a blaster? Does it have to be a special blaster he got from some other dude....? Like.. ick.
That's fair - I liked we saw some of Leia and how she would have become the radicalized Princess of the films.
Oh definitely. I actually think young Leia could be a really interesting show on its own. I just don't think it needs to be conflated with a show about Ben and Vader. Something more like Andor would serve Leia really well, I think.
I admit, I was one who really liked the Obi-Wan show because it gave me just enough of a glimpse to not have Obi-Wan being a hermit for 20 years and Alderaan just being a plot point and Leia somehow being a leader of the Rebellion. So any inconsistencies are less important to me because I think it makes the story told in ANH better, the same way Andor does. So as is often the case, we all are more likely to defend what we like.
I actually like Kenobi's show as well, actually. Just to be clear - I like most of Star Wars to some extent or another. I think the only piece of Star Wars media I outright despise and refuse to accept is Rise of Skywalker, and even then I probably could have accepted it with some relatively small changes.
When I sit and draft up these big theses about how it could have been, it's just a thought experiment on what I think did the story no justice or could have been done better - not me saying the movies and shows are all bad and ruin everything, or anything like that.
From that perspective - I like Obi-Wan, but I also think the things it accomplished could have been accomplished without the things it did badly or shouldn't have done. And, of course, that's all from my own perspective and to my own personal tastes.
Kind of how I can pinpoint the moment I lost confidence in the ST was when in the aftermath of Han's death you have Leia hug Rey as Chewie saunters by in the background.
My god. I was furious.
I'll watch it and see. I have no animosity to Rey or the characters they introduced, and I'd kind of be happy to see Rey in a story that isn't undercutting the OT and a story based around rebuilding the Jedi Order could be interesting
I'd phrase it this way - the fact I think they messed up with the ST doesn't change that I like the OT
But I think my question would be (and maybe right now there is no answer or you don't care to give it or think about it or whatever) - if this new thing you're 'watching and seeing' is good, but also references a lot of events in the ST - making things you didn't like essential to the new thing you do like. Do you retroactively say 'okay fine' and accept the ST as canon? Like.. how do you deal with liking a thing that relies on a thing you don't like? Maybe that's a question that can't really be answered until/unless it happens.
The ST can't ruin the OT because you can ignore it. But can the ST ruin what comes -next-, even if it's good, because that next thing relies on the ST to exist and references its events and relies on it as canon?
Regardless of how many Jedi survive aside from Ben and Yoda the story doesn't hold up. Yoda almost took out Palpy alone and Ben took down Anakin at his peak. Together they could have taken out each individually. The PT and OT don't square with each other.
This is correct. The only way it works is (as they should have done) to end the Yoda/Palpy fight with Yoda diminished immediately - unable to reach prior levels of power or functionality so that the idea of actually fighting any Sith becomes a non-option, as well as to really press on the idea that Vader is more powerful than Anakin, not less powerful. Then you can explain Ben/Yoda not immediately teaming up. But even then, that relies on there being almost no Jedi left.
There's a lot of ways to write it that it could make sense - they just didn't choose any of them.
And, of course, 'Jedi are cool' and Star Wars, as we discussed earlier in this thread, decided at some point to become way more Jedi-centric. Which invariably meant constantly introducing new 'oh yeah, this guy survived too' Jedi to the story and fucking the narrative all up. It's such a weird decision, too, because there's like a thousand year period where you could write stories about all the Jedi you want. But everyone wants to do it like right in the middle of the OT or whatever.
As far as being able to enjoy a story even though it follows a story I've deleted from head canon, I'm definitely ready for that. If nothing else, I'm eager for more Boba Fett, even if it continues his adventures on tatooine. In fact, they made it real easy to ignore that show since he and Fennec are left in the exact same position as the very end of Mandalorian Season 2: in control of the planet via the crime organization. I don't need to consider how he got his own wookiee comrade and all that.
You don't need to consider it. But how enjoyable is that show going to be if it's constantly referencing events from Book of Boba. At what point do you check out and say 'they keep mentioning the exact things I hated' even if it's mostly a good show on its own merits? That's where the spinning, twisting head-canon comes into existence, and you have to start picking and choosing which movies and shows 'exist' for you, but which pieces of them exist, which lines of dialogue you have to pretend they didn't say, etc.
Again, not saying it can't be done. Just saying it sucks and makes having your own head canon way harder.
