That's a healthy trauma response in my book. I think it helps that they're visually so incredibly different. My neurons fire different paths upon the visual.
I'm going to petition Disney to fix this for you guys. Just like old Georgey Boy crammed angsty teenager into RotJ and edited out the original actor, I'm going to petition Disney to edit over all of Vader's OT scenes with a new costume that's just Anakin's Clone Wars costume with a helmet. Really help you guys make that important connection between the characters.
And what's possibly even dumber is... I can look at any Boba Fett for maybe five seconds and tell you which version of the armor it is (not counting any weird touring costumes where they had the ESB helmet with part of the Pre-pro 2 armor and part of the ROTJ armor with a Pre-Pro jetpack or something). Or maybe that's actually similar to keeping the Vaders separate? I dunno.
I'm going to petition Disney to fix this for you guys. Just like old Georgey Boy crammed angsty teenager into RotJ and edited out the original actor, I'm going to petition Disney to edit over all of Vader's OT scenes with a new costume that's just Anakin's Clone Wars costume with a helmet. Really help you guys make that important connection between the characters.
And what's possibly even dumber is... I can look at any Boba Fett for maybe five seconds and tell you which version of the armor it is (not counting any weird touring costumes where they had the ESB helmet with part of the Pre-pro 2 armor and part of the ROTJ armor with a Pre-Pro jetpack or something). Or maybe that's actually similar to keeping the Vaders separate? I dunno.
I haven't been following this thread but just chiming in to say Andor is an incredible show and while I'd like to remain optimistic, I think that might have been peak Star Wars. Judging by the rest of Disney's output, I don't really see it getting better than that.
Make no mistake, I'd absolutely love to be proven wrong here. More projects of Andor's quality would be a magical thing.
That is to say - some things exist to create a sense of depth, history, and mystique. And it's very easy to rob your setting of those things by trying to explore too many nooks and crannies.
It's very interesting how "added info" affects an overall story. Reading that America Chavez was originally supposed to be in No Way Home and cast the spell - instant re-contextualization of why that story didn't work and how it would have. I just rewrite that in my head. Hearing Valentina was supposed to be in Brave New World? Ahhh, okay, that's one of the giant character-shaped holes in that film. That makes sense - and also doesn't.
My big thing like this is Wicked. I grew up loving Wizard of Oz - the books more than the movie. My grandmother had early editions (still don't know if they are first) she gifted to me and I devoured them. Ozma, Patchwork Girl, Polychrome - all that stuff. So when Wicked came out I resisted - I didn't really care to have that story recontextualized. Then I read the book and while I continue to HATE the writing style, the story is great. I love the musical so much (Act One, at least) and now every time I see Dorothy I think "murderous bitch."
Every. Time.
Hard to revisit Oz with her in the mix. And I'm really curious if Act Two of the movie is able to help in this regard at all. TBD!
All that to say, Clone Wars and Andor did this remarkably right. And I would like to say, in the words of Glinda, thank you, next!
I have, in my opinion, a pretty good answer for why not; it can retroactively damage the story - both intrinsically and in your memory. Don't tell me that Anakin being a little fucking bitch ALL THE GODDAMN TIME doesn't edge in a little bit to the mystique and even terror that the name VADER once inspired. You can never go back to the Vader that you knew at the end of RotJ. That version of Vader is gone forever.
Certain characters, in certain narratives, exist in this liminal space where they are interesting -because- you don't know. Anyone into world building will see this struggle play out a lot across fiction; the desire to tell the audience all the cool things (or, AS the audience - to learn all the cool things) without realizing that part of what makes them cool is specifically that the audience wants to know more.
If HP Lovecraft wrote an entire encyclopedia on all the gods and monsters and creatures and gave us their exact real names and ages and powers and we got little short stories told from all their perspectives and full descriptions of how the physics of all it work and what's magic and what isn't -etc etc etc.... Lovecraft's entire anthology collapses on itself. All interest in the stories themselves dissolves because NOT ever fully understanding what's happening is part of what makes those stories good.
Did Midichlorians - easily the stupidest thing ever introduced to Star Wars aside from, maybe, 'somehow the Emperor returned,' damage some of the mystique of The Force and who can manipulate it? Absolutely. No way around it.
Would a Grievous show be interesting? Potentially. Could it also make the character ultimately way less interesting or otherwise damage what that character is supposed to be? -Absolutely-. That's sort of my point overall here. Sometimes the dwarves can delve too greedily and too deep and now we have an entire show from the Balrog's perspective that recontextualizes his entire existence and now that famous scene will never be the same, even though the scene itself is completely unchanged.
That is to say - some things exist to create a sense of depth, history, and mystique. And it's very easy to rob your setting of those things by trying to explore too many nooks and crannies.
Totally. It really just comes down to the material. Book of Boba Fett, for instance. Boba worked because the mystery was part of his character. The more we knew, the less interesting he became. Whereas one of the reasons why I loved Andor was that we got to know about Cassian more. He was a blank slate just like Boba, but the filling in of the gaps actually helped me appreciate him more, and they still managed to explain who he is and where he came from without taking away the nuance and gray area. There's still a fair amount about him we don't know, and unlike Boba, he didn't get unnecessarily sanitized in his own show. I know plenty of people didn't like Solo, but it actually endeared me to Han a little more as well, and at least in my mind, maintained enough of the character to keep it feeling like a natural progression.
So ultimately it depends on what story they're telling, why they're telling it, what they hope to accomplish with said story, and who is the one telling it. A tricky line to toe, for sure. You have to fill in the right blanks, but not too many, and still leave enough to keep them interesting from then on. It's why part of me is still kinda trepidatious about the Maul show next year- I like Maul well enough, and he is admittedly a pretty complex character that, for the most part, I think is done pretty well, but I do worry that the more we know about him, the less interesting he becomes.
Another character I wouldn't mind seeing more (well, anything, really) from would be Phasma. I know there was a whole novel based on her, but it's not like they haven't messed with canon before. She's one that I think could benefit well from a little fleshing out; not an entire series, per se, but something like a "Tales Of" segment- how she rose in the ranks, why she's so coldly steadfast, etc. The first prominent female Stormtrooper, at least in the films, is a big deal worth exploring. I'd rather a little backstory on her versus Morgan Elsbeth (even if it did give us one of the best Grievous moments since maybe the original 2D Clone Wars).
So ultimately it depends on what story they're telling, why they're telling it, what they hope to accomplish with said story, and who is the one telling it.
Absolutely. And if you're just trying to rush something to beat a pandemic shutdown to ensure your streaming service has new content, chances are it's gonna suck.
That is not why Book of Boba Fett sucked. I think that's how they forced LF/D+ into making BoBF - doing the tag the way they did - but that's not the timeline, aside from the tag.
Another character I wouldn't mind seeing more (well, anything, really) from would be Phasma. I know there was a whole novel based on her, but it's not like they haven't messed with canon before. She's one that I think could benefit well from a little fleshing out; not an entire series, per se, but something like a "Tales Of" segment- how she rose in the ranks, why she's so coldly steadfast, etc. The first prominent female Stormtrooper, at least in the films, is a big deal worth exploring. I'd rather a little backstory on her versus Morgan Elsbeth (even if it did give us one of the best Grievous moments since maybe the original 2D Clone Wars).
After her liberation, and in the light of the Rebellion, what's left of Palpatine seeks her out to help him rebuild the Empire once again - the truest true believer. Given the chance to redeem herself, she now scouts the galaxy looking for other orphans like herself to save by conscription. She's like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang but without the whimsy, or Wormtail in Harry Potter.
That is not why Book of Boba Fett sucked. I think that's how they forced LF/D+ into making BoBF - doing the tag the way they did - but that's not the timeline, aside from the tag.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mando S2 finished airing while Mando S3 was just starting to shoot. I don't know if the Fennec/Boba tag was always part of the Mando S2 finale or if that was shot at the top of S3 and added at the last minute, but I'm pretty sure "The Book of Boba Fett" onscreen promise was not done with studio approval. That's why everyone thought they were filming Mando S3 until about that time and perhaps why the two episodes are there without Boba.
BUT - the S3-but really-BoBF scripts were completed during the pandemic, which means they had plenty of time to work on them while S2 was in Post and everyone was in lockdown. If they rushed the scripts, that may have been part of hiding their desire and/or bait-and-switch to do BOBF. I'm not saying the pandemic didn't play a part in the awful - it surely did. But rushed scripts during a pandemic seems like an easy scapegoat for a from-conception bad project.
It's very interesting how "added info" affects an overall story. Reading that America Chavez was originally supposed to be in No Way Home and cast the spell - instant re-contextualization of why that story didn't work and how it would have. I just rewrite that in my head. Hearing Valentina was supposed to be in Brave New World? Ahhh, okay, that's one of the giant character-shaped holes in that film. That makes sense - and also doesn't.
My big thing like this is Wicked. I grew up loving Wizard of Oz - the books more than the movie. My grandmother had early editions (still don't know if they are first) she gifted to me and I devoured them. Ozma, Patchwork Girl, Polychrome - all that stuff. So when Wicked came out I resisted - I didn't really care to have that story recontextualized. Then I read the book and while I continue to HATE the writing style, the story is great. I love the musical so much (Act One, at least) and now every time I see Dorothy I think "murderous bitch."
Every. Time.
Hard to revisit Oz with her in the mix. And I'm really curious if Act Two of the movie is able to help in this regard at all. TBD!
All that to say, Clone Wars and Andor did this remarkably right. And I would like to say, in the words of Glinda, thank you, next!
Wicked is a really interesting one for recontextualization. I saw the film first as a kid, read the books as a teenager which recontexualized htem, read McGuire's book which changed the perspective again (TBH, I found his book really unpleasant and chaotically constructed, but I thought it was a fascinating CONCEPT so I respect that), and then saw the musical and was like "this is absolutely not the same story as the book" so it almost feels like the entire DNA of Oz has been sent through a series of transporters or something. It's not the same cellular structure that went in.
Star Wars is in a state of constant recontextualization, and sometime it's amazing (Clone Wars, Andor), sometimes it's intriguing but not really noticed (a LOT of the old EU books, or those fairly recent Certain Point of View books), and sometimes it feels like it kind of lessens the whole thing (not to punch on Book of Boba, but I know I for one didn't walk out feeling enriched by it so much as meh'd by it).
As much as I love Star Wars, Marvel, etc etc etc, in my heart I wish we had more room in our consumer/creative society for stories THAT FUCKING END. It's okay to tell a whole story! Writers should be allowed to do that. But the demands of an IP insist that you constantly throw coal into the engine to keep audiences that refuse to let go coming back.
Hell, I'm a Z-list author and just yesterday I had readers actively, like, bullying me to write more books in my first series. I worked on that series for ten years. I'm TIRED. I want to write other stories, about other people, in other settings. But I make more money from my first IP, so I must drudge back into the same story elements and try to find a way to entertain myself and be proud of it while doing it. In a way, Star Wars et. al. being hit or miss is kind of that - how do we feed an audience who is never full, never satisfied, with stories that don't feel like money grabs? It's a bit of a deal with a devil having an IP that people want constantly expanded upon. At a certain point you're going to fail. I think Star Wars in the modern era has a pretty solid success rate though. They could be slapdashing out a whole lotta slop if they wanted to, and audiences would devour it and then complain about the indigestion. Not everything is top shelf perfection, but they hit the target more often than not in my solo opinion.
I don't know that there is anything definitive about motivations and such, but the timeline, as I understand it, was Favreau was working on the scripts for season 3 before season 2 finished filming. (Filming wrapped 3/8/20.) It started airing that October, and season three started production in late November, or so the entire cast and crew thought. In December, the Disney investor day presentation happened and Kennedy said "the next chapter in the Mandalorian will premiere in December 2021," with that specific wording. She was aware of the switch to Book of Boba Fett, but kept the wording vague because the end of season 2 hadn't aired yet. In mid-December, the cast and crew learn they're actually filming BOBF. Late December is when the finale airs, with the BOBF stinger, which even took a lot of Disney people by surprise. Production also shut down for a month due to COVID, and wrapped in June 2021.
What seems to be the case... is Mandalorian season 3 was to have a subplot with Boba Fett. The COVID situation and safety protocols put a lot of question marks on how production would be handled, but they needed a new season to put on Disney Plus by the end of the following year. Somewhere between Kennedy, Filoni, and Favreau, it was decided to take the Fett arc and stretch it out into its own season with Favreau and Robert Rodriguez taking lead, while Filoni keeps working on Season 3. Keeping the show mostly about Boba and Fennec walking up and down the street keeps the cast, locations, props, and sets (digital and practical) down. For all I know, the two Mandalorian episodes were filmed at the beginning of the schedule.
I would sincerely love if Favreau and Filoni ever shed light on this. Do a "Book of Boba Fett: What Went Wrong" book or something, I don't care. Either way, they really turned me around on bringing Boba Fett back (I was VEHEMENTLY against it when they announced the Boba Fett movie in 2015 or whenever) with his appearance on Mandalorian, then they set that completely on fire with his own show. So I still don't agree with the idea that less is more, don't show things etc... I love seeing him on screen, and am all for more of that. But seriously, just give him a cool story. I don't need him to be a good guy or redeem himself or any of that. Keep him a criminal, fine. Give him a code, I can be down with that. But I don't think more Boba definitely equals bad story.
I am with you. I appreciate long form story telling, several seasons and all that, but I LOOOOOOOOVE a great ending so much. There is one very popular show I thought was okay as I watched it, but didn't grasp why people were so into it... then the ending turned me around and I have rewatched the show twice because the ending was so well done.
Definitely not a good thing but... and I know is shitty and naive, but there is a very very small part of me that is envious? Not the bullying part but that people are reading you AND want more, heh.
In a way, Star Wars et. al. being hit or miss is kind of that - how do we feed an audience who is never full, never satisfied, with stories that don't feel like money grabs?
Right, we are really fortunate to have Andor. But it's such an interested double edged sword because you have something like Marvel that people were so hungry for, then they pump out more (some of it, admittedly, was definitely lackluster) and fans feel like they're getting too much. Too much was the issue apparently, not the quality of the work.
