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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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 Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 11:53 am Post subject: Letting Go... |
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As I listen to the novelization of TFA, read the Captain Phasma comic, and just generally learn more about the new canon storyline, I've discovered one thing about myself...
And, that is that it's not as easy as I intellectually thought to just let go everything I've learned about the Star Wars universe over the decades.
Had there not been any EU, or comics, or novels and sourcebooks and rpgs--had that stuff not existed, and we just went from Episode VI to Episode VII straight, then I think the new story would not only make more sense (at least, to me) but be more easily swallowed. More easily accepted.
The new story really does make a lot of sense, if you just look at the films that precede it--and don't look at anything else.
It's all the extra Star Wars baggage--all the assumptions to what was true within the SW universe and our expectations after having lived a lifetime with a movie series that is embraced by the world--that gets in the way.
And, that's not something that is so easily swept away.
As I start to do just that--move the old aside in favor of the new--I've started to see my appreciation for the new growing by leaps and bounds. |
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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In other words...this.
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Whill
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:44 pm Post subject: Re: Letting Go... |
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Indeed!
| Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote: | As I listen to the novelization of TFA, read the Captain Phasma comic, and just generally learn more about the new canon storyline, I've discovered one thing about myself...
And, that is that it's not as easy as I intellectually thought to just let go everything I've learned about the Star Wars universe over the decades.
Had there not been any EU, or comics, or novels and sourcebooks and rpgs--had that stuff not existed, and we just went from Episode VI to Episode VII straight, then I think the new story would not only make more sense (at least, to me) but be more easily swallowed. More easily accepted.
The new story really does make a lot of sense, if you just look at the films that precede it--and don't look at anything else.
It's all the extra Star Wars baggage--all the assumptions to what was true within the SW universe and our expectations after having lived a lifetime with a movie series that is embraced by the world--that gets in the way.
And, that's not something that is so easily swept away.
As I start to do just that--move the old aside in favor of the new--I've started to see my appreciation for the new growing by leaps and bounds. |
Thank you, Wajeb. You're not alone and we run into that quite a lot here. It was a similar experience with the prequels and it is only worse now. The more time there is between continuity-updating film series, the more time for (1) non-film continuity, and (2) our own imaginations, to bias us against anything contrary to that. So many complaints about the new films are really based on "that's not the way it worked in the EU" but not everyone even admits that to themselves. Kudos for you to recognizing it.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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There are good things about letting the EU go, though. For example, I've always been flabbergasted and put off by the number of freighters in the EU that look like the Falcon. This is especially true for movie books, game supplements, RPGs and Computer games, and comics pre-the prequels (where Lucas showed us all sorts of new and different designs available in the big, wide galaxy).
As much influence as WEG had over the look and feel of the extended universe, if you look through the Stock Ships supplement, you can see the Falcon all over it.
It's OK if the ship is made by Corellian Engineering, like the Ghost or Dash Rendar's ship, the Outrider.
But, the similarities in design to the Falcon, especially the cockpit, is just too unbelievable for me, especially when Solo's ship is supposed to be an old, out of style freighter. I mean, we've never seen another YT-1300 even in the background of the nine Star Wars films to date.
Maybe we'll see some more, and learn more about the Falcon, in the new movie that comes out in a couple of months.
But, my impression is that the YT-1300 is a pretty rare ship by the time of Episode IV, and I'm not sure that Corellian Engineering designs dominate the market as the EU would have us believe. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 12:27 am Post subject: |
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My biggest hangup with the new EU is hyperspace travel times. From a realistic standpoint, the strategic situation of the Galactic Civil War is only possible if long hyperspace travel times prevent rapid reinforcement of engaged fleet units. Say, for example, that a fleet of three MC80 Cruisers engages three ISDs in an out-of-the-way system. Under the old EU, both sides would essentially be limited to the forces on hand, as the energy discharges of the battle would interrupt long range comms, and any assistance would be hours away even if they could be summoned. Under the new system, however, ships can travel from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter of hours, and thus be anywhere within a sector in a matter of minutes. The Empire could simply maintain massive nodal forces in various locations throughout the galaxy, then dispatch probing forces to seek out Rebel spacecraft. Once found, the Empire could simply dispatch a massive response force broken off from the nodal fleet force, of sufficient size to overwhelm any Rebel units.
Of course, why they didn't do just that in Rogue One when defending a high-value target adds credence to the old way of doing things, in that reinforcements simply weren't close enough to respond in time.
But then, it wouldn't really be an issue at all if the story group didn't seem insistent on having the action of each film be spread across the entire galaxy rather than focused into a single portion of it. The truncated travel times would make more sense if all the action in a given film was taking place within a few neighboring sectors, or a particular region of an Oversector.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:00 am Post subject: |
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The Star Wars universe has a mix of hyperspace travel times, though. It's all about obstacles.
There could be a world, on a well traveled route, that is 10,000 light years away, and it takes 1 hour to get there.
Then, there is a closer world, only 1,000 ly away, that it takes a day to get to because of the trash in the way between the points. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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And now here we are, three movies in, where ALL the action takes place close to well-traveled, high-Speed routes? Where one of the “sides” deliberately looks for out-of-the-way hiding spots to protect themselves from their massively powerful opponent that would crush them if only it could find them?
BS.
Maybe it would happen on occasion, but not every single time.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 12:58 pm Post subject: |
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As I said above, the travel times would be more plausible if the distances involved were relatively short, but the SW Story Group seems insistent that all action in all the films must span the entire galaxy, for no readily apparent reason.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Solo4114
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:44 pm Post subject: Re: Letting Go... |
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| Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote: | As I listen to the novelization of TFA, read the Captain Phasma comic, and just generally learn more about the new canon storyline, I've discovered one thing about myself...
And, that is that it's not as easy as I intellectually thought to just let go everything I've learned about the Star Wars universe over the decades.
Had there not been any EU, or comics, or novels and sourcebooks and rpgs--had that stuff not existed, and we just went from Episode VI to Episode VII straight, then I think the new story would not only make more sense (at least, to me) but be more easily swallowed. More easily accepted.
The new story really does make a lot of sense, if you just look at the films that precede it--and don't look at anything else.
It's all the extra Star Wars baggage--all the assumptions to what was true within the SW universe and our expectations after having lived a lifetime with a movie series that is embraced by the world--that gets in the way.
And, that's not something that is so easily swept away.
As I start to do just that--move the old aside in favor of the new--I've started to see my appreciation for the new growing by leaps and bounds. |
Yeah, when I went into the new trilogy -- really the entire new Star Wars franchise after the sale -- I did so by mentally jettisoning the EU for the most part. I expected that they'd keep a few aspects of the worldbuilding that WEG did (just because there's a ton of absolute gold in there, and why throw the baby out with the bathwater?), and they've done that, but as far as "Who are these characters? Where have their lives taken them?" I think that stuff has been really hard for some folks to let go of.
By way of example, on another board where I'm a member, someone was complaining about what short shrift Admiral Ackbar was given in TLJ. Basically saying that he was blown into space and nobody really said anything about it, which struck them as horrible, given that Ackbar had been such a hero and an important figure.
Except, when all you look at is the films, he's really not. He's no different from, say, Admiral Raddus. Another Mon Cal who dies offscreen, who isn't eulogized, and who basically gets the same amount of screen time doing basically the same kind of thing (leading a fleet on a highly important, successful but costly mission). Holding Ackbar in such high regard -- based solely upon the films -- makes no sense. It's only when you start incorporating his backstory from the EU that he becomes a much more important figure. The only other explanation, I guess, is if you really loved your old Kenner action figure or are simply blinkered by nostalgia.
But that said, it's tough to mentally erect a wall between just the reams of accumulated "knowledge" we have about the Star Wars universe and recognize that so much of it comes from sources other than the films themselves. The new material is all premised on the idea that literally all you have (other than anything that's retroactively canonized) is the original trilogy, the Clone Wars cartoon, Rebels, and the prequels, and most of it is written to only really pay attention to the six preceding films.
As for the issue of travel time, I think the series has a long history of playing fast and loose with travel time and the passage of time in general. I don't think most of it really lends itself to close analysis or to trying to conform everything to a single uniform time period. The big one for me is in ESB where, I guess, the Falcon is traveling for several months to get to Bespin, or Luke learns to become a fledgling Jedi in a matter of days. Either way, it doesn't really make a ton of sense, and you're better off just accepting that Star Wars moves "at the speed of plot." (It was pretty glaring in TLJ, too.) |
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote: | The Star Wars universe has a mix of hyperspace travel times, though. It's all about obstacles.
There could be a world, on a well traveled route, that is 10,000 light years away, and it takes 1 hour to get there.
Then, there is a closer world, only 1,000 ly away, that it takes a day to get to because of the trash in the way between the points. |
But that's the thing, Wajeb. Outer space, despite whatever Han Solo said in ANH about calculating hyperspace coordinates, is almost unimaginably diffuse. The amount of empty space just between two adjacent stars is friggin' huge. Hell, even if two galaxies collided, almost no, if any, stars would smash into each other simply because there would be too much space between all of them. Even within a galaxy itself, the chance of a small thing like a spaceship (whether it's a light freighter or a capital ship, both things are tiny when compared to a star) colliding with a star or even a supernova are infinitesimal. No obstacle in space is going to be (or perhaps should be, IMHO) large enough or dense enough to matter for the purposes of hyperspace calculations.
Then again, this is Star Wars and the key word is verisimilitude, not realism, so maybe I'm overthinking this.
All that said, I agree with CRM about how the writers seem to want to have all the action of their films take place across the entire galaxy rather than confining it to a reasonably small portion of it. It's that sort of BS that led to "I can see Hosnian Prime blowing up from my house" Syndrome.
I'm still pissed at J.J. Abrams for frakking that up. Granted, he needed some sort of device that would let the characters know about the destruction of the New Republic capital in real-time, but he could have done better than that.
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Solo4114
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Sutehp wrote: | | Wajeb Deb Kaadeb wrote: | The Star Wars universe has a mix of hyperspace travel times, though. It's all about obstacles.
There could be a world, on a well traveled route, that is 10,000 light years away, and it takes 1 hour to get there.
Then, there is a closer world, only 1,000 ly away, that it takes a day to get to because of the trash in the way between the points. |
But that's the thing, Wajeb. Outer space, despite whatever Han Solo said in ANH about calculating hyperspace coordinates, is almost unimaginably diffuse. The amount of empty space just between two adjacent stars is friggin' huge. Hell, even if two galaxies collided, almost no, if any, stars would smash into each other simply because there would be too much space between all of them. Even within a galaxy itself, the chance of a small thing like a spaceship (whether it's a light freighter or a capital ship, both things are tiny when compared to a star) colliding with a star or even a supernova are infinitesimal. No obstacle in space is going to be (or perhaps should be, IMHO) large enough or dense enough to matter for the purposes of hyperspace calculations.
Then again, this is Star Wars and the key word is verisimilitude, not realism, so maybe I'm overthinking this.
All that said, I agree with CRM about how the writers seem to want to have all the action of their films take place across the entire galaxy rather than confining it to a reasonably small portion of it. It's that sort of BS that led to "I can see Hosnian Prime blowing up from my house" Syndrome.
I'm still pissed at J.J. Abrams for frakking that up. Granted, he needed some sort of device that would let the characters know about the destruction of the New Republic capital in real-time, but he could have done better than that. |
I lay a lot of the blame about people's problems with the new Star Wars films at JJ Abrams' feet. Including many people's criticisms of TLJ. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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JJ Abrams certainly deserves a good portion of the blame, but this was decidedly a group effort. Rian Johnson and the SW Story Group have, if anything, compounded the problem.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:38 pm Post subject: Re: Letting Go... |
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| Solo4114 wrote: | By way of example, on another board where I'm a member, someone was complaining about what short shrift Admiral Ackbar was given in TLJ. Basically saying that he was blown into space and nobody really said anything about it, which struck them as horrible, given that Ackbar had been such a hero and an important figure.
Except, when all you look at is the films, he's really not. He's no different from, say, Admiral Raddus. Another Mon Cal who dies offscreen, who isn't eulogized, and who basically gets the same amount of screen time doing basically the same kind of thing (leading a fleet on a highly important, successful but costly mission). Holding Ackbar in such high regard -- based solely upon the films -- makes no sense. |
That's EXACTLY my point. You've made a brilliant example of what I'm trying to say.
We think that we've let the old go, but when you see Admiral Ackbar die like that, without fanfare, our knee jerk reaction in our guts is, "Whaaaaa?? They just took out Ackbar, and that's it?"
We feel that way not because of the films, but because of the way Ackbar has grown and become a strong character in the EU.
| Quote: | | As for the issue of travel time, I think the series has a long history of playing fast and loose with travel time and the passage of time in general. |
True. But, my point is that you can have two star systems, B and C, which are within 100 ly of each other. You're at star A, which is 1500 ly from both stars B and C.
Because we're talking about obstacles and not distance as the biggest influence on the time factor, it could take you...
A to B = 1500 ly at 1 hour.
A to C = 1500 ly at 3 days.
B to C = 100 ly at 1.5 days.
That's very possible given the system of how we've been told hyperspace works. It doesn't make any sense at all if you plot it out on a map.
This has the added benefit of a travel time in a film, or a travel time in a D6 Star Wars campaign, to be....whatever the filmmaker/GM wants to be. Travel at the speed of plot. |
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I could put a Star Wars logo on a dog turd and not only would some people still pay $20 to stare at it for two hours, they’d walk away praising the production quality and the brave new direction the series is taking.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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| Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I could put a Star Wars logo on a dog turd and not only would some people still pay $20 to stare at it for two hours, they’d walk away praising the production quality and the brave new direction the series is taking. |
Probably so.
I don't agree that the new direction is bad, though. Just different.
And, as indicated by the OP in this thread, probably not the way I would have taken the series. But, they didn't ask me.
And, I am enjoying what I'm getting much more than I enjoyed (I didn't) the prequels. |
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