2d4chan - User contributions [en]

All Terrain Soup

2021-05-20T19:44:21Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* AT-AT */

==All-Terrain-Walkers.==

Legged [[METAL BOXES|metal bawkses]]. No, not [[Dreadnought|those]].

Star Wars's [[Stormtrooper#Star_Wars|Imperial Military]], and the [[Solar_Auxilia|Grand Army]] it usurped, really liked their acronyms (much like their real world counterparts). The most egeriogus examples being the assorted combat walkers, which all start with AT, an acronym for "All Terrain", which is supposedly one of the justifications for the legs in the first place. Note that the AAT is not a part of the soup, being "Armored Assault Tank". Star Wars being Star Wars we know that most, if not all, of these walkers are produced by Kuat Drive Yards and there subsidiaries Rothana Heavy Engineering.

The pseudoscience reason for walkers in Star Wars is that shields apparently "float" over grounded surfaces, so things can walk through shields, but ungrounded things can't float or fly through shields. Of course, if you can walk and stay grounded you can ROLL and stay grounded too...

But that's not why the empire uses them. They use them because they're intimidating as fuck giant walking metal bawkses.

==AT-RT==
[[File:Republic-at-rt-unit.png|thumb|[[Death_Korps_of_Krieg|Now in Flash grown Soldier Flavor.]]]]
Motorcycles with legs AT-TRs are fast moving recon units. A very prolific unit used both by the GAR and the Rebel Alliance, as well a a few outlaw bands.
There hasn't been a definitive reason the Empire phased them out, maybe they got out bid?

{{clear}}
===AT-RTs On the table top===
[[File:Swl04 spread.png|thumb|250px|[[FFG|A dead tree's worth of cardboard.]]]]

{{clear}}

==AT-PT==
[[File:AT-PT schem.jpg|300px|right|thumb]]
The oft forgotten (since it debuted in ''Dark Force Rising'' instead of the movies and didn't have a clear description till the ''Dark Force Rising Sourcebook'') little cousin to the AT-ST. For the most part the role it once had in the story has been replaced with the AT-RT, since that fits the role of "small pre-Imperial walker" but actually appeared in the movies. The modern (3E onward) [[Sentinel]] looks like one with less armor.
{{clear}}

==AT-DP==
[[File:Kanan shoots an AT-DP.png|300px|right|thumb|[[lascannon|One shot kill]].]]
All-Terrain-Defense-Pod.
An early design for the AT-ST that was reused by Disney. No clear reason for it to exist was ever given besides Disney wanting to have a different looking AT-ST. Possibly to have a light walker that was more intimidating than the AT-RT, but not have letting AT-ST lose its rep to being slapped around without too much effort.

In ''[[Star_Wars:Rebels|Rebels]]'' (it's only appearance so far) it's [[Pyrovore|less than ideal]], unable to gain even a temporary victory because they're the bad guys in a Disney cartoon, who aren't Thrawn.
{{clear}}

==AT-ST==
[[File:67298e40-12a2-11ea-ac51-8db074af2155 800 420.jpeg|450px|thumb|right|Greetings Citizen have you discussed your new Imperial taxes with your local representative yet?]]

"All Terrain-Scout Transport", aka "The Chicken Walker", aka "the thing that the [[Imperial Guard]] [[Sentinel]] is a shameless rip-off for". Basically a box-shaped control room built around a central heavy laser gun and mounted on two spindly legs; hardpoints on the sides can mount various heavy infantry weapons. [[Wat|Vulnerable to attacks from tribal teddy bears]] and [[Derp|conveniently-placed log traps]].

===[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Legion/Tactics/Empire#AT-ST|The AT-ST on the Table-Top]===
====In RPGS====
AT-STs are a quintessential part of a [[Star Wars]] campaign. They are an excellent choice for and [[GM]] who would like to avoid the big bad getting blasted apart by your PCs hotshot Corellian gunslinger or the [[Original_character,_do_not_steal|Mandalorian]] you somehow allowed in the game, without just having all the boss fights be in space. Big and scary without being completely out of the scale a party can reasonably deal with, though if you party lacks a Jedi or heavy weapons they might need to get creative, which the source material provides many examples of.

====D20 Star Wars Minis====
In addition to looking Derp as all get out the AT-ST was something of a middling unit, It was very tough and had DR10 but despite hitting hard it struggled to actually land those hits combined with how confined maps in usually were you had a unit that could struggle to kill its points back, but did an excellent job tanking for the rest of your army.

====In Legion====

Content.
{{clear}}

==AT-AP==
[[File:Atap.jpg|right|300px|thumb|One of the best pictures of these things, and it is not even the whole thing.]]

The [[Land_Raider#Ares|Ares]] to the AT-TEs [[Land_Raider]]. The Attack Pod replaces the dorsal mass driver with a heavy laser, slings a cannon underneath to cover the belly now that the whole hull has been put of two stilt legs, and then replaces the troop bay and forward cannons with Heavy Mass Driver. A third leg is retractable to add stability.

{{clear}}
===AT-AP on the Table top===
No game has ever tried to put these things in, even most videogames shy away form them.
However with the TX-130 already released the GAR is running out of "mid-sized" vehicles to make models of so we might see it. At more than twice the mass of the AT-ST it would be the biggest model in the game and would compare favorably to the likes of the [[Baneblade]] for sheer size.

==AT-TE==
[[File:LegoATTE.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Yes they can walk up mountains, good pictures of this are hard to find]]
Spider Tank.

Low slung and slower moving, the AT-TE is a pure infantry support walker with four blasters forward, two aft, and a dorsal fuckoff gun. Designed to be airmobile, lifted and dropped by a skycrane variant of the LAAT gunship.
{{clear}}

==AT-AT==
[[land_raider|"All Terrain-Armored Transport".]] These are the big, '''BIG''' bastards amongst the All-Terrain Walkers; enormous quadrupedal armored transports who look almost like giant robot camels, but who aren't so funny when you realize they can shrug off heavy artillery like it was nothing. Slow as molasses, but they ''will'' get to where they're going, and the head-like cockpit's twin heavy lasers can dish out a fair bit of pain along the way. Slow is something of a misnomer, whilst the movements are far from swift long legs can cover a lot of ground, allowing the walker to make nearly 40mph (or 66kph). Not quite speedy but more than enough to cover a lot of ground to deposit it's complement of troops without taking too much fire. The enormous legs are one of the vehicles defining features, and seem like weak points the truth is a bit more complicated. Ion (EMP) rockets and missiles large enough to threaten AT-ATs are rare and mostly built by Imperial manufacturers, mines large enough to do the same are not. The necessary sections of the legs are all mechanical, there are sensors and other things that are nice to have, but if a leg takes an EMP the walkers motive systems are unaffected.

The AT-AT doesn't have a good parallel in modern armored fighting vehicles. It has fairly powerful weapons, but only in a narrow arc. It has capacity for a couple squads of passengers, but to disembark they must use jump packs or drop ropes. Its principle virtue is simply its absurdly heavy armor, such that it is effectively impervious to the scale of energy weapons that it could reasonably expect to face on the battlefield. In the face of massed blaster fire, the AT-AT simply plods along, smashing through resistance by virtue of being little more beyond a gigantic walking slab of metal. It's essentially a battering ram; a combination of assault gun and heavily armored APC for when you have to face a defensive line that would impress the French in order to bring down a high priority obstacle (like a shield generator).

Though it is worth remembering in Star Wars setups like Echo base are not uncommon. Unrestricted by size and power, ground based cannons and shields are vastly superior to their space mobile counterparts. After the Naboo attacks a lot of planets started self fortifying, and even more got scary stuff from either the GAR or CIS. The AT-AT is a [[Land_Raider|super heavy IFV]] for cracking these sorts of defenses. Poor Commanders (and writers) use them as MBTs but they aren't. The former exists because the Empire focused more on loyalty then skill in training and the latter because money is more important than accuracy( and because some legitimately good writers just are not well versed in military strategy.)

During the battle of [[Valhalla|Ho]][[Fenris|th]] Rogue Squadron's predecessor Rogue Group, equipped with modified T-47 Airspeeders, were able to destroy several walkers. The T-47 is based on a ship yard tug, refitted for cold weather combat. They kept the harpoon launcher from the default model. The harpoons were capable of adhering to the armor of walker using [[bullshit|specially designed magnets]], the cable had the tensile strength to haul around multi-ton ships mid construction, so with several loops were able to trip the walkers. However they suffered heavy losses during the battle and were unable to stop Blizzard Squadron from destroying the shield generator and overrunning Echo Base.

{{clear}}
===AT-AT <s>On</s> IS the table<s>top</s>===
[[File:D20ATAT.jpeg |300px|thumb|right|Told you that you could play an entire game on its base.]]
{{clear}}
====AT-ACT====
[[File:Star-Wars-Rogue-One-Concept-Art-Matt-Allsopp-07-Scarif-AT-ACT.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Sure go ahead and laugh. I will still eat your Infantry.]]
The armored Space Truck of Empire, possibly made from the repurposed hulls of the old model AT-AT seen in [[Star_Wars:Rebels|Rebels]]. They haul important things from one place to the next.
{{clear}}

==AT-M6==
The First Order's Bigger Scarier Gorilla walker, had an even bigger cannon on its back.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:LzK8wse.png|900px|Size Comparison
File:67298e40-12a2-11ea-ac51-8db074af2155 800 420.jpeg|After the Empire [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union#Legacy| fell apart] [[Looted|a ton of their stuff was left just lying around...]]
File:B0096ca333a8ed697c39a5d90e14d304.jpg|AT-TE going in for a combat drop.
File:Trandoshans At-PT EotE by Christopher Burdett.jpg|More stolen goods
</gallery>

==First Order Variant Gallery==
The First Order had a bunch of Fanboy variants of the walker's built.

[[Category: Star Wars]][[Category:Vehicles]]

All Terrain Soup

2021-05-20T19:42:54Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* AT-AT */

==All-Terrain-Walkers.==

Legged [[METAL BOXES|metal bawkses]]. No, not [[Dreadnought|those]].

Star Wars's [[Stormtrooper#Star_Wars|Imperial Military]], and the [[Solar_Auxilia|Grand Army]] it usurped, really liked their acronyms (much like their real world counterparts). The most egeriogus examples being the assorted combat walkers, which all start with AT, an acronym for "All Terrain", which is supposedly one of the justifications for the legs in the first place. Note that the AAT is not a part of the soup, being "Armored Assault Tank". Star Wars being Star Wars we know that most, if not all, of these walkers are produced by Kuat Drive Yards and there subsidiaries Rothana Heavy Engineering.

The pseudoscience reason for walkers in Star Wars is that shields apparently "float" over grounded surfaces, so things can walk through shields, but ungrounded things can't float or fly through shields. Of course, if you can walk and stay grounded you can ROLL and stay grounded too...

But that's not why the empire uses them. They use them because they're intimidating as fuck giant walking metal bawkses.

==AT-RT==
[[File:Republic-at-rt-unit.png|thumb|[[Death_Korps_of_Krieg|Now in Flash grown Soldier Flavor.]]]]
Motorcycles with legs AT-TRs are fast moving recon units. A very prolific unit used both by the GAR and the Rebel Alliance, as well a a few outlaw bands.
There hasn't been a definitive reason the Empire phased them out, maybe they got out bid?

{{clear}}
===AT-RTs On the table top===
[[File:Swl04 spread.png|thumb|250px|[[FFG|A dead tree's worth of cardboard.]]]]

{{clear}}

==AT-PT==
[[File:AT-PT schem.jpg|300px|right|thumb]]
The oft forgotten (since it debuted in ''Dark Force Rising'' instead of the movies and didn't have a clear description till the ''Dark Force Rising Sourcebook'') little cousin to the AT-ST. For the most part the role it once had in the story has been replaced with the AT-RT, since that fits the role of "small pre-Imperial walker" but actually appeared in the movies. The modern (3E onward) [[Sentinel]] looks like one with less armor.
{{clear}}

==AT-DP==
[[File:Kanan shoots an AT-DP.png|300px|right|thumb|[[lascannon|One shot kill]].]]
All-Terrain-Defense-Pod.
An early design for the AT-ST that was reused by Disney. No clear reason for it to exist was ever given besides Disney wanting to have a different looking AT-ST. Possibly to have a light walker that was more intimidating than the AT-RT, but not have letting AT-ST lose its rep to being slapped around without too much effort.

In ''[[Star_Wars:Rebels|Rebels]]'' (it's only appearance so far) it's [[Pyrovore|less than ideal]], unable to gain even a temporary victory because they're the bad guys in a Disney cartoon, who aren't Thrawn.
{{clear}}

==AT-ST==
[[File:67298e40-12a2-11ea-ac51-8db074af2155 800 420.jpeg|450px|thumb|right|Greetings Citizen have you discussed your new Imperial taxes with your local representative yet?]]

"All Terrain-Scout Transport", aka "The Chicken Walker", aka "the thing that the [[Imperial Guard]] [[Sentinel]] is a shameless rip-off for". Basically a box-shaped control room built around a central heavy laser gun and mounted on two spindly legs; hardpoints on the sides can mount various heavy infantry weapons. [[Wat|Vulnerable to attacks from tribal teddy bears]] and [[Derp|conveniently-placed log traps]].

===[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Legion/Tactics/Empire#AT-ST|The AT-ST on the Table-Top]===
====In RPGS====
AT-STs are a quintessential part of a [[Star Wars]] campaign. They are an excellent choice for and [[GM]] who would like to avoid the big bad getting blasted apart by your PCs hotshot Corellian gunslinger or the [[Original_character,_do_not_steal|Mandalorian]] you somehow allowed in the game, without just having all the boss fights be in space. Big and scary without being completely out of the scale a party can reasonably deal with, though if you party lacks a Jedi or heavy weapons they might need to get creative, which the source material provides many examples of.

====D20 Star Wars Minis====
In addition to looking Derp as all get out the AT-ST was something of a middling unit, It was very tough and had DR10 but despite hitting hard it struggled to actually land those hits combined with how confined maps in usually were you had a unit that could struggle to kill its points back, but did an excellent job tanking for the rest of your army.

====In Legion====

Content.
{{clear}}

==AT-AP==
[[File:Atap.jpg|right|300px|thumb|One of the best pictures of these things, and it is not even the whole thing.]]

The [[Land_Raider#Ares|Ares]] to the AT-TEs [[Land_Raider]]. The Attack Pod replaces the dorsal mass driver with a heavy laser, slings a cannon underneath to cover the belly now that the whole hull has been put of two stilt legs, and then replaces the troop bay and forward cannons with Heavy Mass Driver. A third leg is retractable to add stability.

{{clear}}
===AT-AP on the Table top===
No game has ever tried to put these things in, even most videogames shy away form them.
However with the TX-130 already released the GAR is running out of "mid-sized" vehicles to make models of so we might see it. At more than twice the mass of the AT-ST it would be the biggest model in the game and would compare favorably to the likes of the [[Baneblade]] for sheer size.

==AT-TE==
[[File:LegoATTE.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Yes they can walk up mountains, good pictures of this are hard to find]]
Spider Tank.

Low slung and slower moving, the AT-TE is a pure infantry support walker with four blasters forward, two aft, and a dorsal fuckoff gun. Designed to be airmobile, lifted and dropped by a skycrane variant of the LAAT gunship.
{{clear}}

==AT-AT==
[[land_raider|"All Terrain-Armored Transport".]] These are the big, '''BIG''' bastards amongst the All-Terrain Walkers; enormous quadrupedal armored transports who look almost like giant robot camels, but who aren't so funny when you realize they can shrug off heavy artillery like it was nothing. Slow as molasses, but they ''will'' get to where they're going, and the head-like cockpit's twin heavy lasers can dish out a fair bit of pain along the way. Slow is something of a misnomer, whilst the movements are far from swift long legs can cover a lot of ground, allowing the walker to make nearly 40mph (or 66kph). Not quite speedy but more than enough to cover a lot of ground to deposit it's complement of troops without taking too much fire. The enormous legs are one of the vehicles defining features, and seem like weak points the truth is a bit more complicated. Ion (EMP) rockets and missiles large enough to threaten AT-ATs are rare and mostly built by Imperial manufacturers, mines large enough to do the same are not. The necessary sections of the legs are all mechanical, there are sensors and other things that are nice to have, but if a leg takes an EMP the walkers motive systems are unaffected.

The AT-AT doesn't have a good parallel in modern armored fighting vehicles. It has fairly powerful weapons, but only in a narrow arc. It has capacity for a couple squads of passengers, but to disembark they must use jump packs or drop ropes. Its principle virtue is simply its absurdly heavy armor, such that it is effectively impervious to the scale of energy weapons that it could reasonably expect to face on the battlefield. In the face of massed blaster fire, the AT-AT simply plods along, smashing through resistance by virtue of being little more beyond a gigantic walking slab of metal. It's essentially a battering ram; a combination of assault gun and heavily armored APC for when you have to face a defensive line that would impress the French in order to bring down a high priority obstacle (like a shield generator).

Though it is worth remembering in Star Wars setups like Echo base are not uncommon. Unrestricted by size and power, ground based cannons and shields are vastly superior to their space mobile counterparts. After the Naboo attacks a lot of planets started self fortifying, and even more got scary stuff from either the GAR or CIS. The AT-AT is a [[Land_Raider|super heavy IFV]] for cracking these sorts of defenses. Poor Commanders (and writers) use them as MBTs but they aren't. The former exists because the Empire focused more on loyalty then skill in training and the latter because money is more important than accuracy( and because some legitimately good writers just are not well versed in military strategy.)

During the battle of [[Valhalla|Ho]][[Fenris|th]] Rogue Squadron's predecessor Rogue Group, equipped with modified T-47 Airspeeders, were able to destroy several walkers. The T-47 is based on a ship yard tug, refitted for cold weather combat. They kept the harpoon launcher from the default model. The harpoons were capable of adhering to the armor of walker using [[bullshit|specially designed magnets]], the cable had the tensile strength to haul around multi-ton ships mid construction, so with several loops were able to trip the walkers. However they suffered heavy losses during the battle and were unable to stop Blizzard Squadron form destroying the shield generator and overrunning Echo Base.

{{clear}}
===AT-AT <s>On</s> IS the table<s>top</s>===
[[File:D20ATAT.jpeg |300px|thumb|right|Told you that you could play an entire game on its base.]]
{{clear}}
====AT-ACT====
[[File:Star-Wars-Rogue-One-Concept-Art-Matt-Allsopp-07-Scarif-AT-ACT.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Sure go ahead and laugh. I will still eat your Infantry.]]
The armored Space Truck of Empire, possibly made from the repurposed hulls of the old model AT-AT seen in [[Star_Wars:Rebels|Rebels]]. They haul important things from one place to the next.
{{clear}}

==AT-M6==
The First Order's Bigger Scarier Gorilla walker, had an even bigger cannon on its back.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:LzK8wse.png|900px|Size Comparison
File:67298e40-12a2-11ea-ac51-8db074af2155 800 420.jpeg|After the Empire [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union#Legacy| fell apart] [[Looted|a ton of their stuff was left just lying around...]]
File:B0096ca333a8ed697c39a5d90e14d304.jpg|AT-TE going in for a combat drop.
File:Trandoshans At-PT EotE by Christopher Burdett.jpg|More stolen goods
</gallery>

==First Order Variant Gallery==
The First Order had a bunch of Fanboy variants of the walker's built.

[[Category: Star Wars]][[Category:Vehicles]]

Star Wars:The Mandalorian

2021-05-20T19:38:13Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081:

[[Image:The_mandalorian.jpg|right|200px|thumb|[[Goblin Slayer|''Bounties?'']]]]
Because Disney didn't have enough money, they decided to try their hand at streaming services (despite already owning Hulu), and created Disney+ as a collection of their shows and movies. And with any streaming service, you need a flagship title. Thus, ''The Mandalorian'', the first live action Star Wars television series.

The show itself lives and breaths off your nostalgia for the Fetts, giving you a new lead character wearing the cool ass armor, bounty hunting, getting in gunfights, et cetera. The show's set five years after ''Return of the Jedi'', and leans into spaghetti western's so hard you wonder why Clint Eastwood hasn't shown up (John Wayne's grandson does do much of the stunt work for the titular character). Whether you like this show pretty much comes down to the question of can you accept [[Goblin Slayer|a show where the main character's face is never seen]] and whose name is almost never spoken (probably, considering this site's demographics), and can you stand a story wrapped entirely around the finger of a baby yoda who is the most well known spoiler since (joke.exe).

If you like the 2012 [[Judge Dredd]] movie you will like the show. It also might be one of the closest depictions of a Space Marine we are going to get for the foreseeable future on the "big screen". The Mandalorians (this group at least) have become almost a cult regarding "The Way," their warrior code. Highlights include a [[Looted]] [[All_Terrain_Soup|AT-ST]], getting to watch a [[Men_of_Iron|IG-11]] aimbot entire groups of hostiles multiple times (hell just watching IG-11 ''move'' is amazing), and an episode shot like a horror film except that [[awesome|the protagonist is the hunter]]. The final two episodes are a callback to almost every episode except "The Prisoner" & "The Gunslinger" and numerous characters return and get to be their own brand of awesome. The show also brought back the old style Mandalorians - it's a creed and a way of life, not a species or race. You are a Mandalorian because you chose to be, and because you follow the Mandalorian code, not because you're born that way.

There are several hiccups in writing but those might be smoothed out later, or can just be written off as the galaxy being just that big and individuals not having the same info as the audience. Overall it is the most well received addition to Star Wars since ''Empire''. With the show actually understanding why and how certain reveals should work, ie. not making there be anything special to us (the audience) about the Mandalorian's face/name, it is special because of his code not because he has laser eyes or something.

A second season (it was inevitable) was announced in November 2019, finished filming in March 2020 and arrived on Disney+ in October 2020. Several characters from elsewhere in the franchise such as Boba Fett, Bo-Katan (Duchess Satine’s redhead sister from the Clone Wars, who also happens to be the last known wielder of the Darksaber before Moff Gideon turned up with it in the final episode of season 1) and Ahsoka Tano have made appearances, plus Luke Skywalker himself showed up in the final episode of Season 2.

A third season is slated but is in serious doubt, due to conflicts between Disney staff factions [[SJW|putting identity politics before good story]] and those who just want to make good Star Wars; the former centered around Lucasfilm President <s>Sauron</s> Kathleen Kennedy and the latter around the show's director Jon Favreau (plus Dave Filoni). One of the effects was Kathleen and her ilk carrying out a workplace bullying campaign against Cara Dune's actress, Gina Carano, which culminated in them firing Gina. Around this time, lead actor Pedro Pascal was approached for a major role in a series adaptation of the video game series "The Last of Us" and is considering it. Between these two events and the growing strife within Disney, the future of the show is in flux.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
{{spoilers}}
*Mando/Din Djarin is a cool protagonist and Pedro Pascal manages to play him really well despite having his face hidden behind a helmet most of the time
*Baby Yoda/The Child/Grogu
*IG-11
*Moff Gideon, played by Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad-fame, as the main villain
*Several good strong female characters showing Rey how it's meant to be done, from returning favorites like Bo-Katan to newcomers like Cara Dune.
*Mando's ship, the Razor Crest
*Callbacks to Mandalorian-related things from [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars]] and [[Star Wars:Rebels]]
*Live action debut of Ahsoka Tano
*Return of Boba Fett. He is a Mandalorian and the thing about Almec saying Fetts aren't Mandalorian in TCW (he was clearly biased against them due to his position) is now set to rest.
*Worldbuilding
*Redesign of TIE Fighter with folding wings
*Brings aspects from the old EU into Disney Canon
*Shows that the Empire didn't just disappear overnight and that there are still remnants out there
*Clearly made by people who love and understand Star Wars
*Dark Troopers. If you thought all battledroids are just cannon fodder relying on their numbers to win, think again. Dark Troopers are basically [[Necrons|Terminators]] and can be genuinely terrifying. Not only are they blaster-proof, they can also fly using rocket boosters.
*Tons and tons of fan service
*Luke Skywalker makes an appearance, not the old grumpy disgrace we saw in The Last Jedi but Grandmaster Luke Skywalker
*Makes use of some pretty groundbreaking special effects techniques, continuing the Star Wars tradition of trying to push special effects to new levels. Bye bye greenscreens, hello future. <ref>https://www.starwars.com/news/the-mandalorian-stagecraft-feature</ref> (see more below)
*Has single-handedly restored hope in the franchise after many had lost it due to the sequel trilogy

== Almost-Holodeck Soundstage ==

So we mentioned above there is new special effects in play here. The Mandalorian makes use of a brand new soundstage that consists of a large circle of extremely high resolution LED screens surrounding the actors on almost all sides, projecting distant scenery rendered in real time with Unreal Engine, controlled by the camera's movement. This can be shot directly by the camera, with a computer figuring out the compositing later with a higher quality render for the final cut.

The biggest impact it has is on reflections and ambient lighting on the subjects. Using conventional green screen tech, getting the lighting to match the setting is quite difficult, and getting reflections requires extensive post production work to the point of not being practical in most cases. With the screen set used for Mandalorian, any reflections on metal surfaces (such as shiny, polished armor) are natural and the lighting of the final composite shot will PERFECTLY match the principal photography.

==Bad qualities==
*Some episodes can feel like filler
*It's not [[Star Wars:Rebels]] but bad guys can still sometimes feel pretty incompetent.
*While not overrused, baby Yoda can be grating to those who despise "cute".

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-20T19:18:32Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-20T18:55:58Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!) */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots and Han's sidekick for most of the movie is [[What|a self-built female droid social justice warrior]] named [[/v/|L3-37]]. Audiences ''cheered and applauded'' when that <s>man</s>human-hating self-insert character finally fucking died. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-20T18:46:03Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* The coming of the prequel trilogy */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots and Han's sidekick for most of the movie is [[What|a self-built female droid social justice warrior]] named [[/v/|L3-37]]. Audiences ''cheered and applauded'' when that <s>man</s>human-hating self-insert character finally fucking died. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2021-05-20T18:43:25Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* The rise of the original trilogy */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making their own, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'' .

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside, and if you came to see a pair of lightsaber-wielding punks involved in one of the greatest lightsaber battles of the franchise, you ''WILL'' be pleased. The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act) added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots and Han's sidekick for most of the movie is [[What|a self-built female droid social justice warrior]] named [[/v/|L3-37]]. Audiences ''cheered and applauded'' when that <s>man</s>human-hating self-insert character finally fucking died. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were for a short time shelved indefinitely, and the only side-movie still being worked on is the obligatory Boba Fett origin movie, which is more likely to sell tickets based on the name alone.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars: Rebellion

2021-05-20T18:33:10Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* The Empire */

{{Game Infobox
|name = Star Wars: Rebellion
|picture = [[Image:StarWarsRebellion.jpg|450px]]
|type = Wargame
|playno = 2 (With options to play in teams of 2)
|time = 2-3.5 Hours.
|publisher = [[Fantasy Flight Games]]
|authors = Corey Konieczka
|year = 2016
}}
[[Category:Board Games]][[Category:Wargames]]

As [[Fantasy Flight Games]] continue their ongoing crusade against the existence of trees and oil, the company turned to our favourite [[Space Opera]] [[Star Wars]], and the result is pretty fucking good. Star Wars Rebellion is one of the rare two-player games, pitting players against each others as the Rebellion or the Empire. The game is pretty much just all the coolest things about the original Star Wars trilogy. Luke can seek out Yoda on Dagobah, while Grand Moff Tarkin blows up planets for fun and Vader tortures Lando for information on the Rebel Base.

The game takes place on a fuckhueg galaxy map of 38 planets and players move fleets of star ships, ground forces and of course the great Death Star(s) around the map (And no, that's not a typo; you really can build two Death Stars). That's not the main core game-play though; both players alternate activating Leaders, many who are placed on Missions. Now, Missions can be anything from gaining loyalty in systems (which lets them build units for you), capturing Rebel Leaders to interrogate and/or freeze down, make stealthy attack runs on Imperial patrols to converting a Leader with promises of the Dark Side and blowing up entire planets. The thematically of the Missions makes them feel Star Wars, and the specific actions you take make it feel less like a war game.

==How to Play==
Each player start the game with four Leaders, who act as "Action Tokens". In the Assignment Phase, both players either assign one or two Leaders to Missions from their hand, placing the Mission card facedown with the Leader(s) on top of it. Any Leader not assigned stays in the Leader Pool and can be used to oppose enemy Missions or move units on the board. The Rebel player places Missions first.

In the Activation Phase, each player alternates choosing a Leader to active. If you activate a Leader on a Mission you flip it over, place the Leader where the Mission assigns it. If the Mission does not automatically "Resolve", the opposing player can choose a non-assigned Leader in their Leader Pool to oppose that Leader. If so, you roll dice against each other (with opposing Leaders winning ties). If successful, the Mission does not happen and both Leaders are stuck on the planet.

The player can also place a Leader on a planet on the board, which allows you to move units to that system from adjacent systems. In either case, you can never place a Leader somewhere where there's already one of your Leaders, regardless of how it got there. Units in a system cannot be moved if another of your Leaders are in that system. This is a system close to [[FFG]]'s own [[Twilight Imperium]], which uses Command Tokens in the same manner.

After both players pass, you go into the Refresh Phase where all sorts of shit happen: Leaders are retrieved, the Rebel player draws an Objective, the Empire player draws Probe cards (revealing two systems where the Rebel Base isn't at) and both draw two Missions. You also retrieved any Starter Missions (of which both players have four). The first four turns, each player gains a new Leader (and a corresponding Action card if you play with those) and every even-numbered turn, your planets produce units, which are placed in the building queue. Then, all units are moved one space down the queue, and any that leaves the queue is placed on the map.

It's then time to start the next Assignment Phase.

===Leaders===
[[File:StarWarsRebellionMission.jpg|thumb|right|400px|A Rebellion and Empire Mission respectively.]]

Leaders have two important values: Skills and Tactic Values. Tactic Values are numbers in the bottom, which is how many Space and Ground Tactic Cards you draw when you assign that Leader to a combat. A Leader also has to have Tactic Values to be able to move units on the board. Skills are used for Missions and come in four colors:

* '''Spec Ops:''' Red; How badass the Leader is in a tussle. Rebels use it to destroy Imperial units, sabotage systems and mess with their building queue. Imperials use it to capture Rebel Leaders and gain information from them, and occasionally to move units around. Examples: Darth Vader (Three Spec Ops, two Diplomacy) and Chewbacca (Three Spec Ops).
* '''Diplomacy:''' Yellow; the character's political and diplomatic might. Both Rebels and Empire use it to gain Loyalty in systems. Examples: Emperor Palpatine (Three Diplomacy, two Intel) and Mon Mothma (Three Diplomacy, one Logistics).
* '''Intel:''' Blue; how sneaky the Leader is. Rebels use it to gain Objectives and choose what Objectives you'll get over time. Imperials use it to gain more Probe cards and occasionally to interrogate Captured Leaders. Examples: Admiral Pett (Two Intel, one Logistics) and Obi-wan Kenobi (Three Intel, one Diplomacy).
* '''Logistics:''' Grey; how good at planning and overseeing the Leader is. Uniquely among Skills, Leaders never have more than one in Logistics and no Missions require more than one. Many of them are also Resolve Missions, meaning they can't be countered. Rebels use it to augment their Rebel Base, move fleets to and from the Base and, if needed, place a new Base somewhere. Imperials use it to draw Project cards and remove Sabotage. Many of their Project Missions are often Logistics Missions as well. Examples: Grand Moff Tarkin (One Diplomacy, Intel and Logistics) and Admiral Ackbar (Two Diplomacy, one Intel).

To assign a Leader to a Mission, the Leader has to have as much, or more points in the Skill the Mission requires (so a Mission that require two Diplomacy requires the Leader to have two or three Diplomacy). You can also add an additional Leader to the Mission, but that's generally not a good idea and slows you down. After you place the Leader, the other player may oppose it by placing a Leader of their own on the same system as your Leader (alternatively the Leader is opposed if there was already an enemy Leader in the system when you placed it). Both players then roll dice equal to the amount of Skill points their Leader(s) in the system has in the same color of the Mission. The opposing player wins ties. If the opposing player wins, the Mission does not happen; otherwise the player performs the rest of the Mission.

The identity of the Leader is important as well. Some Missions gives you two automatic "hits" when you activate it with the Leader featured in the top-left corner. In addition, some Mission just gives you a straight bonus if the right Leader performs it. If you play with Action cards, you draw two Action cards in the beginning of the game that can be used by some of your Starter Leaders, and every turn for the first four turns you draw an Action card and gain a Leader featured on it. Action cards can do a bunch of different things but almost always require a specific Leader to perform it.

==The Factions==
The basic mechanics of the game are the same for both the Empire and the Rebellion. You use Leaders the same; you either move units on the map, attempt Missions or counter enemy Mission. Ships and Ground Forces fight the same (though the factions do get slightly different units, but more on that). Units are produced the same as well... And that's where the similarities end.

===The Rebellion===
The Rebellion's main goal is to gain Reputation, which reduces the End Game counter. When the Turn Counter meets the End Game counter (which start at 1 and 14, respectively), the Rebellion Player wins as the galaxy is engulfed in total, open rebellion. Getting there is slightly more difficult, however...

The Rebellion are constantly the underdog, as they should be. You will have fewer ships, weaker ships and little coverage over the map. However, you also have the advantage of movement and knowledge. Your Rebel Base is somewhere on the map, hidden from the Empire Player and it is paramount that you keep it from being discovered from them! Your Missions allow you move units to and from the hidden Rebel Base to make raids on the Empire, discover Objectives, Sabotage the Empire's production base and stuff like this.

The Rebellion gains their Reputation from performing Objectives. Objectives are often risky, all-or-nothing moves that require you to destroy enemy units or gain Loyalty across the galaxy.

Unique to the Rebellion are Structures (Shield Generators that gives a Tactic card every combat turn and Ion Cannons that reduce the power of enemy ships) and the fact that their X-Wings and B-Wings don't require transports to move. This means that the Rebellion are great at defending themselves on the ground and better at making smaller, cheap fleets of fighters.

'''Tips and Tricks'''
* '''How to Mon Mothma:''' Of your four starting Leaders, Mon Mothma is the one the Empire Player will hate the most. With three Diplomacy and one Logistic Skill but no tactic values (which is what a Leader needs to be able to move units or do battle), she is a predictable diplomatic monster that will reliably give you Loyalty in Systems far from the Empire every turn or counter the Empire's two-three Diplomatic Leaders. The Empire Player knows exactly what Mothma will do every time you place her on a Mission and will hate you for it, since their only Leader that can reliably oppose her is Granddaddy Palps himself, and he's better used elsewhere. Use her ruthlessly, constantly and efficiently and she'll give you a fleet in no time.
* '''Don't play a wargame:''' Yes, you have fleets of star-fighters and ships but you are 1) hilariously outmatched in size and 2) you gain nothing from moving fleets. Your fleets are a bit like a Damocles' Sword; always dangling close to the Empire and threatening to attack them, but if need be you can retreat them into your Base to attack somewhere else later. Your fleet can sometimes give you the option to attack smaller Empire fleets and get an Objective point or two, which is totally viable, even if you lose a Cruiser doing it.
* '''Fighters and You:''' Your X-Wings and B-Wings are fantastic, and here's why: They don't require transport, and you get them as cheaply as the Empire gets TIEs, who function like X-Wings that has to have a carrier to move it. This means that you should get as many Fighter-producing planets as possible, since they can go anywhere and attack anything (B-Wings giving the crucial Red Die that can damage larger Ships). Your capital ships are fine but you have less than the Empire, so get them if you can but accept it if you don't.
* '''Place the Rebel Base away from the Death Star:''' The Rebel Base gets extremely difficult to crack really fast, even for the Empire's AT-AT's. You know what cracks defenses real fast though? That's right, green planet-destroying death-beams. So even if it's predictable, don't place your Base close to the Death Star. No need to make the inevitable invasion easy on the fascists!
* '''Don't Lose Hope!:''' You'll lose a lot of engagements. Missions you thought were in the bag will be countered, Leaders will be captured and tortured and your hard-earned fleets will be overwhelmed and destroyed. It will seem like the cards were stacked against you from the very beginning, and in many ways they were... But that's the nature of being insurrectionists trying to fight a ruthless militarist empire. You win with time; you just need to live that long. This is also why Objectives are so important since they reduce the time you have to survive. Even if you know you'll be dead in a turn or two, keep going and make the Empire pay for every step they take.

===The Empire===
The Empire's goal sounds simple. Crush the Rebellion by destroying their Base!... And just like with the Rebellion, it really isn't that simple at all. There are 38 planets on the map and 6 of these are currently controlled by you, so 32 Planets may hold the Rebel Base; and once you get there, you need to have a force that can actually beat the Rebel Base, which is likely as fortified and closed-up as your closet.

To your advantage, you start out strong and only get bigger and meaner after the fact. You can produce on planets if you have any Ground Troops on them (you can't make an omelet without breaking a few civilian skulls after all), your units are statistically better and you really don't have to take risks. Compared to the scrappy Rebellion, the Empire is a slow, pondering machine that requires a weird combination of finesse and planning to get to sing. Your Missions let you get Project Missions to build super-weapons, capture and torture Rebel Leaders and gain information to look for the Rebel Base.

The Empire's unique faction features are efficient units like AT-ATs, which the best Ground Force in the game and all ships have more transport capacity and you get super-weapon like Super Star Destroyers and the Death Star. You get Project Missions that increase production and let you build Death Stars, fire the Death Star beam and make Super Star Destroyers. You also draw Probe cards from a deck of all the planets that ''don't'' have the Rebel Base on it. Your Ground Forces Subjugate planets, letting you use a lesser amount of their production capacity without gaining Loyalty there first.

'''Tips and Tricks'''
* '''Learn the strengths of your Leaders:''' Compared to the Rebellion, Empire Leaders tend to be either high-skill powerhouses like Vader (Two Diplomacy, three Spec Ops) or Palpatine (Three Diplomacy, two Intel) or Moffs with only a few skills each like Grand Moff Tarkin (One Intel, Diplomacy and Logistics). This is at once a problem and a boon, but it requires that you know what you're doing. You mostly need to assess whether or not you can afford using your heavy hitters for simple things like moving fleets or one-Skill Missions that some poor shmuck could do instead. If you play with Action cards, keep in mind that your Moff Leaders can be pretty dang powerful as long as you know when and how to use those cards.
* '''Always have a Plan B:''' The Rebellion is gonna mess with your everything, that's just how it is. You deal with that by making sure that it doesn't matter even if they're successful. Sabotage on your Star Destroyer-creating planet? Whatever, you have another one rearing to go. Discovered that the Rebel Base isn't in the Region you thought it'd be? Well you are assembling a fleet somewhere else either way, so who cares. The Rebel scum took over a planet with a rebellion? Who cares, that won't save their Base from being Death Star-ed. Never, ever make a game plan that can actually be halted entirely by the Rebellion.
* '''Quantity is a quality all of its own:''' Your fleets and Ground Forces are area denial more than anything. As you expand and take more planets you gain more production, but crucially you make the Rebellion's life tougher. You box them in, deny them possible sources of production and make it more dangerous to move fleets around. Yes, your Star Destroyers fuck shit up and they can bring all the TIEs on the way to the keg party, but their main strength is that the Rebellion has to use ''way'' more planning and resources to do anything about it. Even just leaving two Stormtroopers on every Subjugated planet is enough to deter most attacks, and if the scum come knocking anyway? Who gives a Gundark's ass! Everything that is happening is transpiring according to your design!
* '''"Win-More" actually makes you win more:''' A "win-more" move is gamer-slang for any move that doesn't win the game for you, but just makes your win more likely. It's generally a bad thing in most games (it's better to make moves that help you win when you're behind rather than overdo your own win), but surprisingly, it's one of your strongest tactics in this game. "Win-more" moves as the Empire is many of the Projects (like the Super Star Destroyer) and capturing Rebel Leaders. You don't really need to do any of these, and if you do manage to get them it just means you're winning already. It works because the Rebel Player is so starved for options that if you manage to take a Leader from him or build an unassailable superweapon, it changes their position from ''"Cornered but not out"'' to ''"Why did I even wake up today"''.
** '''Don't do a Hitler:''' ... That said, don't keep overdoing Projects and Capturing Leaders. It's great and feels awesome when you finally do it, but they rarely actually help you finding the Rebel Base. You'll be halfway through the game and suddenly the Rebellion is three turns from winning and you have ten Probe cards. There's a reason the Research Division of Nazi Germany gave Hitler the finger when he wanted to make the Ratte tank; one big thing doesn't win a war.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars: Rebellion

2021-05-20T18:29:58Z

2603:8001:3500:CB:D0DE:C39:731:1081: /* The Empire */

{{Game Infobox
|name = Star Wars: Rebellion
|picture = [[Image:StarWarsRebellion.jpg|450px]]
|type = Wargame
|playno = 2 (With options to play in teams of 2)
|time = 2-3.5 Hours.
|publisher = [[Fantasy Flight Games]]
|authors = Corey Konieczka
|year = 2016
}}
[[Category:Board Games]][[Category:Wargames]]

As [[Fantasy Flight Games]] continue their ongoing crusade against the existence of trees and oil, the company turned to our favourite [[Space Opera]] [[Star Wars]], and the result is pretty fucking good. Star Wars Rebellion is one of the rare two-player games, pitting players against each others as the Rebellion or the Empire. The game is pretty much just all the coolest things about the original Star Wars trilogy. Luke can seek out Yoda on Dagobah, while Grand Moff Tarkin blows up planets for fun and Vader tortures Lando for information on the Rebel Base.

The game takes place on a fuckhueg galaxy map of 38 planets and players move fleets of star ships, ground forces and of course the great Death Star(s) around the map (And no, that's not a typo; you really can build two Death Stars). That's not the main core game-play though; both players alternate activating Leaders, many who are placed on Missions. Now, Missions can be anything from gaining loyalty in systems (which lets them build units for you), capturing Rebel Leaders to interrogate and/or freeze down, make stealthy attack runs on Imperial patrols to converting a Leader with promises of the Dark Side and blowing up entire planets. The thematically of the Missions makes them feel Star Wars, and the specific actions you take make it feel less like a war game.

==How to Play==
Each player start the game with four Leaders, who act as "Action Tokens". In the Assignment Phase, both players either assign one or two Leaders to Missions from their hand, placing the Mission card facedown with the Leader(s) on top of it. Any Leader not assigned stays in the Leader Pool and can be used to oppose enemy Missions or move units on the board. The Rebel player places Missions first.

In the Activation Phase, each player alternates choosing a Leader to active. If you activate a Leader on a Mission you flip it over, place the Leader where the Mission assigns it. If the Mission does not automatically "Resolve", the opposing player can choose a non-assigned Leader in their Leader Pool to oppose that Leader. If so, you roll dice against each other (with opposing Leaders winning ties). If successful, the Mission does not happen and both Leaders are stuck on the planet.

The player can also place a Leader on a planet on the board, which allows you to move units to that system from adjacent systems. In either case, you can never place a Leader somewhere where there's already one of your Leaders, regardless of how it got there. Units in a system cannot be moved if another of your Leaders are in that system. This is a system close to [[FFG]]'s own [[Twilight Imperium]], which uses Command Tokens in the same manner.

After both players pass, you go into the Refresh Phase where all sorts of shit happen: Leaders are retrieved, the Rebel player draws an Objective, the Empire player draws Probe cards (revealing two systems where the Rebel Base isn't at) and both draw two Missions. You also retrieved any Starter Missions (of which both players have four). The first four turns, each player gains a new Leader (and a corresponding Action card if you play with those) and every even-numbered turn, your planets produce units, which are placed in the building queue. Then, all units are moved one space down the queue, and any that leaves the queue is placed on the map.

It's then time to start the next Assignment Phase.

===Leaders===
[[File:StarWarsRebellionMission.jpg|thumb|right|400px|A Rebellion and Empire Mission respectively.]]

Leaders have two important values: Skills and Tactic Values. Tactic Values are numbers in the bottom, which is how many Space and Ground Tactic Cards you draw when you assign that Leader to a combat. A Leader also has to have Tactic Values to be able to move units on the board. Skills are used for Missions and come in four colors:

* '''Spec Ops:''' Red; How badass the Leader is in a tussle. Rebels use it to destroy Imperial units, sabotage systems and mess with their building queue. Imperials use it to capture Rebel Leaders and gain information from them, and occasionally to move units around. Examples: Darth Vader (Three Spec Ops, two Diplomacy) and Chewbacca (Three Spec Ops).
* '''Diplomacy:''' Yellow; the character's political and diplomatic might. Both Rebels and Empire use it to gain Loyalty in systems. Examples: Emperor Palpatine (Three Diplomacy, two Intel) and Mon Mothma (Three Diplomacy, one Logistics).
* '''Intel:''' Blue; how sneaky the Leader is. Rebels use it to gain Objectives and choose what Objectives you'll get over time. Imperials use it to gain more Probe cards and occasionally to interrogate Captured Leaders. Examples: Admiral Pett (Two Intel, one Logistics) and Obi-wan Kenobi (Three Intel, one Diplomacy).
* '''Logistics:''' Grey; how good at planning and overseeing the Leader is. Uniquely among Skills, Leaders never have more than one in Logistics and no Missions require more than one. Many of them are also Resolve Missions, meaning they can't be countered. Rebels use it to augment their Rebel Base, move fleets to and from the Base and, if needed, place a new Base somewhere. Imperials use it to draw Project cards and remove Sabotage. Many of their Project Missions are often Logistics Missions as well. Examples: Grand Moff Tarkin (One Diplomacy, Intel and Logistics) and Admiral Ackbar (Two Diplomacy, one Intel).

To assign a Leader to a Mission, the Leader has to have as much, or more points in the Skill the Mission requires (so a Mission that require two Diplomacy requires the Leader to have two or three Diplomacy). You can also add an additional Leader to the Mission, but that's generally not a good idea and slows you down. After you place the Leader, the other player may oppose it by placing a Leader of their own on the same system as your Leader (alternatively the Leader is opposed if there was already an enemy Leader in the system when you placed it). Both players then roll dice equal to the amount of Skill points their Leader(s) in the system has in the same color of the Mission. The opposing player wins ties. If the opposing player wins, the Mission does not happen; otherwise the player performs the rest of the Mission.

The identity of the Leader is important as well. Some Missions gives you two automatic "hits" when you activate it with the Leader featured in the top-left corner. In addition, some Mission just gives you a straight bonus if the right Leader performs it. If you play with Action cards, you draw two Action cards in the beginning of the game that can be used by some of your Starter Leaders, and every turn for the first four turns you draw an Action card and gain a Leader featured on it. Action cards can do a bunch of different things but almost always require a specific Leader to perform it.

==The Factions==
The basic mechanics of the game are the same for both the Empire and the Rebellion. You use Leaders the same; you either move units on the map, attempt Missions or counter enemy Mission. Ships and Ground Forces fight the same (though the factions do get slightly different units, but more on that). Units are produced the same as well... And that's where the similarities end.

===The Rebellion===
The Rebellion's main goal is to gain Reputation, which reduces the End Game counter. When the Turn Counter meets the End Game counter (which start at 1 and 14, respectively), the Rebellion Player wins as the galaxy is engulfed in total, open rebellion. Getting there is slightly more difficult, however...

The Rebellion are constantly the underdog, as they should be. You will have fewer ships, weaker ships and little coverage over the map. However, you also have the advantage of movement and knowledge. Your Rebel Base is somewhere on the map, hidden from the Empire Player and it is paramount that you keep it from being discovered from them! Your Missions allow you move units to and from the hidden Rebel Base to make raids on the Empire, discover Objectives, Sabotage the Empire's production base and stuff like this.

The Rebellion gains their Reputation from performing Objectives. Objectives are often risky, all-or-nothing moves that require you to destroy enemy units or gain Loyalty across the galaxy.

Unique to the Rebellion are Structures (Shield Generators that gives a Tactic card every combat turn and Ion Cannons that reduce the power of enemy ships) and the fact that their X-Wings and B-Wings don't require transports to move. This means that the Rebellion are great at defending themselves on the ground and better at making smaller, cheap fleets of fighters.

'''Tips and Tricks'''
* '''How to Mon Mothma:''' Of your four starting Leaders, Mon Mothma is the one the Empire Player will hate the most. With three Diplomacy and one Logistic Skill but no tactic values (which is what a Leader needs to be able to move units or do battle), she is a predictable diplomatic monster that will reliably give you Loyalty in Systems far from the Empire every turn or counter the Empire's two-three Diplomatic Leaders. The Empire Player knows exactly what Mothma will do every time you place her on a Mission and will hate you for it, since their only Leader that can reliably oppose her is Granddaddy Palps himself, and he's better used elsewhere. Use her ruthlessly, constantly and efficiently and she'll give you a fleet in no time.
* '''Don't play a wargame:''' Yes, you have fleets of star-fighters and ships but you are 1) hilariously outmatched in size and 2) you gain nothing from moving fleets. Your fleets are a bit like a Damocles' Sword; always dangling close to the Empire and threatening to attack them, but if need be you can retreat them into your Base to attack somewhere else later. Your fleet can sometimes give you the option to attack smaller Empire fleets and get an Objective point or two, which is totally viable, even if you lose a Cruiser doing it.
* '''Fighters and You:''' Your X-Wings and B-Wings are fantastic, and here's why: They don't require transport, and you get them as cheaply as the Empire gets TIEs, who function like X-Wings that has to have a carrier to move it. This means that you should get as many Fighter-producing planets as possible, since they can go anywhere and attack anything (B-Wings giving the crucial Red Die that can damage larger Ships). Your capital ships are fine but you have less than the Empire, so get them if you can but accept it if you don't.
* '''Place the Rebel Base away from the Death Star:''' The Rebel Base gets extremely difficult to crack really fast, even for the Empire's AT-AT's. You know what cracks defenses real fast though? That's right, green planet-destroying death-beams. So even if it's predictable, don't place your Base close to the Death Star. No need to make the inevitable invasion easy on the fascists!
* '''Don't Lose Hope!:''' You'll lose a lot of engagements. Missions you thought were in the bag will be countered, Leaders will be captured and tortured and your hard-earned fleets will be overwhelmed and destroyed. It will seem like the cards were stacked against you from the very beginning, and in many ways they were... But that's the nature of being insurrectionists trying to fight a ruthless militarist empire. You win with time; you just need to live that long. This is also why Objectives are so important since they reduce the time you have to survive. Even if you know you'll be dead in a turn or two, keep going and make the Empire pay for every step they take.

===The Empire===
The Empire's goal sounds simple. Crush the Rebellion by destroying their Base!... And just like with the Rebellion, it really isn't that simple at all. There are 38 planets on the map and 6 of these are currently controlled by you, so 32 Planets may hold the Rebel Base; and once you get there, you need to have a force that can actually beat the Rebel Base, which is likely as fortified and closed-up as your closet.

To your advantage, you start out strong and only get bigger and meaner after the fact. You can produce on planets if you have any Ground Troops on them (you can't make an omelet without breaking a few civilian skulls after all), your units are statistically better and you really don't have to take risks. Compared to the scrappy Rebellion, the Empire is a slow, pondering machine that requires a weird combination of finesse and planning to get to sing. Your Missions let you get Project Missions to build super-weapons, capture and torture Rebel Leaders and gain information to look for the Rebel Base.

The Empire's unique faction features are efficient units like AT-ATs, which the best Ground Force in the game and all ships have more transport capacity and you get super-weapon like Super Star Destroyers and the Death Star. You get Project Missions that increase production and let you build Death Stars, fire the Death Star beam and make Super Star Destroyers. You also draw Probe cards from a deck of all the planets that ''don't'' have the Rebel Base on it. Your Ground Forces Subjugate planets, letting you use a lesser amount of their production capacity without gaining Loyalty there first.

'''Tips and Tricks'''
* '''Learn the strengths of your Leaders:''' Compared to the Rebellion, Empire Leaders tend to be either high-skill powerhouses like Vader (Two Diplomacy, three Spec Ops) or Palpatine (Three Diplomacy, two Intel) or Moffs with only a few skills each like Grand Moff Tarkin (One Intel, Diplomacy and Logistics). This is at once a problem and a boon, but it requires that you know what you're doing. You mostly need to assess whether or not you can afford using your heavy hitters for simple things like moving fleets or one-Skill Missions that some poor shmuck could do instead. If you play with Action cards, keep in mind that your Moff Leaders can be pretty dang powerful as long as you know when and how to use those cards.
* '''Always have a Plan B:''' The Rebellion is gonna mess with your everything, that's just how it is. You deal with that by making sure that it doesn't matter even if they're successful. Sabotage on your Star Destroyer-creating planet? Whatever, you have another one rearing to go. Discovered that the Rebel Base isn't in the Region you thought it'd be? Well you are assembling a fleet somewhere else either way, so who cares. The Rebel scum took over a planet with a rebellion? Who cares, that won't save their Base from being Death Star-ed. Never, ever make a game plan that can actually be halted entirely by the Rebellion.
* '''Quantity is a quality all of its own:''' Your fleets and Ground Forces are area denial more than anything. As you expand and take more planets you gain more production, but crucially you make the Rebellion's life tougher. You box them in, deny them possible sources of production and make it more dangerous to move fleets around. Yes, your Star Destroyers fuck shit up and they can bring all the TIEs on the way to the keg party, but their main strength is that the Rebellion has to use ''way'' more planning and resources to do anything about it. Even just leaving two Stormtroopers on every Subjugated planet is enough to deter most attacks, and if the scum come knocking anyway? Who gives a Gundark's ass! Everything that is happening is transpiring according to your design!
* '''"Win-More" actually makes you win more:''' A "win-more" move is gamer-slang for any move that doesn't win the game for you, but just makes your win more likely. It's generally a bad thing in most games (it's better to make moves that help you win when you're behind rather than overdo you own win), but surprisingly, it's one of your strongest tactics in this game. "Win-more" moves as the Empire is many of the Projects (like the Super Star Destroyer) and capturing Rebel Leaders. You don't really need to do any of these, and if you do manage to get them it just means you're winning already. It works because the Rebel Player is so starved for options that if you manage to take a Leader from him or build an unassailable superweapon, it changes their position from ''"Cornered but not out"'' to ''"Why did I even wake up today"''.
** '''Don't do a Hitler:''' ... That said, don't keep overdoing Projects and Capturing Leaders. It's great and feels awesome when you finally do it, but they rarely actually help you finding the Rebel Base. You'll be halfway through the game and suddenly the Rebellion is three turns from winning and you have ten Probe cards. There's a reason the Research Division of Nazi Germany gave Hitler the finger when he wanted to make the Ratte tank; one big thing doesn't win a war.

{{Star Wars}}