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I don't know if the series is going to directly reference KOTOR - although the writers clearly played and loved them given the entire first episode of this season is a shoutout to the Tatooine mission in KOTOR 1 - but my current pet theory is that Din's fundy sect originates from Canderous. In 2 you learn he obtained Mandalore's helmet and is the first to truly make a go at reestablishing their people after the Mandalorian Wars. He never takes the helmet off in that game (well, outside of cut content that is) and the stated reason is that by KOTOR 2 he's old as poo poo and badly mangled from decades of battle, so he's reliant on his armor and helmet's life support systems to function normally. Considering this was thousands of years before Mandalorian I could absolutely see how through the generations "The Mandalore who restored our people always wore his helmet in the presence of others" gets mythologized and misinterpreted into "the true, great Mandalorians of old never removed their helmets in the presence of others." Episode was really good, I have not watched any of Rebels or the 3D Clone Wars but even without knowing who Bo Katan was I still enjoyed her character for what it was here. I do wonder if her ambitions are going to come back to bite her in the rear end later this season since she almost got herself and her squad killed by trying to overreach and was only saved by some quick thinking from Din. Also as an aside I really liked the aesthetic of the port town. "Sci-fi fishing village" sounds dumb as hell on paper but they really nailed it: perfectly felt like a proper Star Wars location while also being this grimy backwater trawling operation, IMO Star Wars is at it's best when it really leans in on a more run down, used future aesthetic vs everything being sleek and shiny.
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Nov 16, 2020 10:37
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Sash! posted:I'm always a little surprised that lightsabers aren't more common in the Star Wars. Yeah, there's the whole "dangerous to use" thing, but that's never really slowed anyone down before with anything else dangerous to the operator. What makes lightsabers workable in a setting with laser guns all over the place is that Jedi have training, reflexes, and force sensitivity to deflect blaster bolts. Your average dude bringing a lightsaber to a fight would probably just result in them getting turned to swiss cheese.
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Nov 16, 2020 17:54
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I mean that's kind of been a weird problem in all of Disney's Star Wars material: Jedi somehow get mythologized into this long forgotten fable most people dismiss out of hand despite them having fought prominently in a gigantic, galaxy spanning war within living memory. Like I get that most people outside the temple wouldn't know too many of the specifics, but you'd think at least the bare minimum of "yeah the Jedi were these super powerful warriors who fought in the war decades ago. They used lightsabers and could move poo poo with their mind" would permeate through the Republic citizenry.
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Nov 16, 2020 18:49
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Big Mean Jerk posted:The galaxy had 20+ years of Sheev screaming FAKE HOLONEWS and I WON THE CLONE WAR. lol point
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Nov 16, 2020 19:35
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zoux posted:Also, if you are of an age to have Thought About Star Wars before 1999 - what did you think the Clone Wars were? I figured the Emperor showed up with a whole clone army and took over the Republic. I absolutely figured the clones were going to be the army the Republic had to fight. That it turned out the clones were the Republic force and the enemy was actually robots was... weird. Although I guess in the end the clones were still kinda the evil army as well? The prequels were a mess.
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Nov 16, 2020 22:07
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Azhais posted:Or just find some other ex rebel trooper to befriend Yeah honestly this would be better than recasting. The series already has a lot of episodic elements so there's nothing weird about Din bumping into new companions every season. Hell, I was surprised to find out Cara and Greef were returning since it kinda felt like their last lines in the S1 finale were meant to give the characters some thematic closure of what they'll be doing after leaving the story for good.
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Nov 16, 2020 23:37
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teagone posted:Lol, I found an image of the exact packaging of this action figure on eBay: "Broadband antenna"  Interesting that in that fluff Fett actually has some pre-exisitng antagonistic connection to Solo and delivering him up as a bounty was just as much personal as it was business.
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Nov 16, 2020 23:40
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Speaking of pod racing I really liked how the Deputy's speeder in the first episode of this season was clearly an old pod racer engine that he repurposed into a bike.
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Nov 18, 2020 00:54
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As Nero Danced posted:Do the Mandalorians have an equivalent to the Helots? I don't know enough about the extended universe. In KOTOR times yes: one of the optional party members you can get in KOTOR 2 is an ex-Mandalorian slave and she explains that during the war if you were found or captured by the Mandalorians they enslaved you and essentially made you logistical support for the war. The party member in question is an expert at demolitions, tracking, and ambush, which she explains by saying her slave job was to haul munitions for advanced scout squads in the field, so she had to get good at explosives fast not to blow herself up and got to witness a lot of covert ops. The main difference from historical helots is that there was a soft way out of slavery: live long enough and get good enough at fighting that you stop getting treated as a slave and instead are treated as a fellow Mandalorian warrior, because Mandalorians acknowledge battle prowess from any source, even external to their race. I haven't watched Rebels or Clone Wars so I'm not sure if that's still a thing come the era of this show. Din definitely wasn't enslaved and was instead brought into the clan, although he got adopted by a weird fundy sect that probably figured it could use any more members it could get it's hands on.
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Nov 19, 2020 22:00
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I'm not sure how I feel about X-Wing pilots just being cops now. Also dear god that scene between Cara and the X-Wing guy, gently caress me show you clearly know how to find good actors, why would you give such an extended dialogue scene to two people who cannot act at all. Also it's kinda dumb that the Razor Crest can 1v3 Ties in a dogfight given it's supposed to be a rickety pre-war rust bucket, but I'll overlook it because it was actually sweet as hell to see Din win the aerial combat because he knows how to properly energy fight.
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Nov 21, 2020 07:30
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Open Source Idiom posted:Paul Lee can act. I flipped through his IMDB and I haven't seen anything else he's been in, so I'll take your word for it and just chalk it up to bad direction or something. Because his line delivery was... really bad. It's a shame too because I think the hook that scene set up is pretty compelling for Cara's character, ignoring the poo poo with her actress. She's a career Rebel soldier who gave everything for the cause, and then drifted off the grid once the Rebellion transitioned into the New Republic because she was only in it to punch emps vs any genuine political revolution. But then here comes along another ex-Rebellion fighter who took the opposite path and goes "look, there's poo poo brewing and if we're going to stop it we need people like you who recognize that and can fight it." And now she's torn between continuing to enjoy the niche she's carved out for herself in life, or throwing herself back into the fight she knows needs to be fought even if it means aligning with a cause she doesn't really believe in. Arcsquad12 posted:Tie Fighters are not good in atmospheric flight. This has been a thing for a while in star wars. They're built for vacuum and every attempt in the EU to make them atmospheric has been a failure for the Empire because the dimensions do not hold up at all as an airframe. Also like I said even if Din's ship really isn't supposed to win that engagement he played it perfectly. Came in behind the formation and took one out by surprise. Then followed another one in a climb which he won because his ship is heavier and has more climbing ability, then spun around and did a nose-to-nose with an energy/height advantage. Somebody who really appreciates WW2 dogfight tactics storyboarded that whole sequence and I love it.
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Nov 21, 2020 07:46
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Another thing that surprised me about this episode is how hard it leaned into bringing back S1 characters. I figured with the semi-episodic nature of the show that we really weren't going to see anybody from S1, and even after I heard we'd be getting a Cara and Greef cameo I didn't think we'd see fish guy again of all people, certainly not in a main role for an entire episode. Presumably this show is going to keep going as long as Disney thinks they can milk it, so if they keep doing this season to season the cast is really going to pile up fast.
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Nov 21, 2020 07:51
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Basically the way the Force works in Star Wars, either you embrace the way of the Jedi and detach yourself from your ego so that you aren't tempted to use the Force for personal gain, or you don't and inevitably end up corrupted by the dark side even if your intentions started out pure like Anakin. There really isn't a middle ground. Unless you're this guy: In which case the middle ground is literally "refuse to do anything ever" which doesn't really help much. Even Jolee, the quintessential "grey" Jedi, ultimately comes down on siding with the light once you confront Bastilla in KOTOR. KOTOR 2 tries to do interesting things with this by having two characters who break this mold: Kreia who loving hates the Force and is actively plotting to destroy it, and the Exile who rejected the force so definitively that they created a wound in it, but even they struggle to escape this paradigm.
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Nov 21, 2020 10:47
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Bust Rodd posted:What the gently caress role did the blue fish guy serve? I don't understand why we couldn't just have Grief and Dune make all the quips and fill the dead air instead of this weird portly pufferfish who just pushes buttons. Grief can drive, he can push buttons, Mando just literally flew to the end of the level and activated cheat codes for them, that was funny. At least for me, he added some tension because I was convinced he was going to betray the group in some manner to the imperials and try to quietly slip away in the chaos. He already has beef with Mando, and the first thing we get established about him is that the whole reason he got into this mess is because he cooked the books which means he was at least at one point untrustworthy, and then Greef and Cara spend most of the early episode making GBS threads on him and lording his centuries of indentured servitude over his head. I was definitely waiting for a shot of the other three running down a hallway before going "hey wait where's fish face?" and then an alarm goes off or something.
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Nov 22, 2020 21:34
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lol that they brought back midichlorians but were too scared to actually say the word "midichlorians", so instead we had to hear about Baby Yoda's M-Count.
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Nov 22, 2020 22:26
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A lot of the original EU is dumb as poo poo. Like, makes the Prequels look competent levels of dumb, hell, makes the SEQUELS look competent levels of dumb, but I am all in for the Kyle Katarn show.
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Nov 23, 2020 03:06
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Kennedy was definitely doing more than writing checks, at least the way Disney framed it she was essentially the supervisor of all things Star Wars, basically think Eiji Aonuma for Zelda: not a director or a writer, but somebody who provides an overall vision and direction for the franchise and acts as a high level gate keeper for projects brought to them. That said it is very clear that even if she was supposed to nominally be in charge that there was a LOT of executive meddling from people who went over her head because they'd just dropped a fat $4 billion on the franchise and wanted to justify that to investors ASAP. It is obvious enough that I think if Favreau had been in the spot from the start and we got the same or similar ST mess the internet would in general be a lot more forgiving because he's not a politically outspoken women: the greatest threat imaginable to internet turbonerds.
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Nov 23, 2020 19:39
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Big Mean Jerk posted:The Rian/JJ beef is another thing invented wholesale by the “Kathleen Kennedy FIRED?!?” YouTube crowd. Yeah imo it's pretty clear RoS taking a poo poo on TLJ and running back to the safety and security of the OT was less JJ having it out for Rian and more that Disney freaked out over the divisive reaction to TLJ and wanted a safe, formulaic movie that would make money without making waves. Hell by all accounts even after Abrams agreed to return Disney execs were going over his head to make loads of changes, to the point that there was still work being done on the movie the week before it hit theaters. hobbesmaster posted:I mean, I'm just going off the evidence on the screen where each sequel does a hard turn from where the previous was going and its funny to attribute that directly to the director. As somebody who didn't particularly care for TLJ, I didn't really get any sense of animosity for Abrams or Star Wars from Rian like a lot of CHUD's like to claim. It came off more that Rian didn't want to make "yet another Star Wars movie" like JJ did with TFA, so he decided to completely change the paradigm and set up a series that could go in a different direction than "not-Luke is trained by not-Yoda to fight not-Palpatine and redeem not-Darth Vader." I think the result is a mixed bag but hey kudos for actually trying to drag people kicking and screaming away from the same poo poo over and over.
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Nov 23, 2020 20:35
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Imagine making a score for a movie series and then twenty years later they want you to come back and do it again. Then another twenty years after that they want you to do it a third time. Irrespective of crunch or production fuckery I do not blame Williams at all for being completely done with Star Wars and that being evident in his composition come the time of the Sequels.
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Nov 23, 2020 21:52
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Herostratus posted:Out of genuine curiosity, how come the original trilogy had none of these issues? At least tESB and RotJ must have faced executive meddling. All of the originals were production nightmares as well, Lucas came really close to having ANH die in production a number of times, and was really lucky to have some studio execs with pull who genuinely believed in him and the project and put their jobs on the line to let it finish. Empire of Dreams is a phenomenal documentary on the first three movies and goes pretty deep into the production woes for all of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-ux9jn1tRU
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Nov 23, 2020 22:19
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nine-gear crow posted:Another video to watch alongside the SF Debris Shadow's Journey videos is Freddie Wong's How Star Wars Was Saved In The Edit, about how the first draft of A New Hope was kind of an epic disaster fire, and Lucas's then-wife locked herself in an editing booth and chopped the film into the version we now know and love today. And that was after Lucas had already fired another editor because he told Lucas his edit was poo poo and refused to cut the movie the way George wanted it. If you learn about the pre-production for the OT what you come out learning is that while Lucas created an incredible story framework and had a genius eye for pushing the envelope of special effects, he was also a terrible director, a terrible editor, and a terrible script writer. The OT is a direct result of Lucas ultimately leaning on others to cover those weaknesses to lift up his vision into something extraordinary. The PT is a direct result of Lucas telling all those people to take a hike and trying to write, direct, and dictate the edits all by himself.
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Nov 23, 2020 22:50
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404notfound posted:Star Wars is so loving dumb sometimes and I
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Nov 24, 2020 10:27
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TK-42-1 posted:Honestly I just don’t care at all about him anymore. Friendship with Boba ended. Din is my new best Mando. Yeah it's this, Boba Fett does nothing in any of the movies aside from walk around in a cool costume, otherwise honestly he kinda sucks? Half-blind Han accidentally hits him in the back with a pole which sends Boba flying completely out of the movie and until the EU his presumed death. I never got all the hype around him. Din does all the cool mando poo poo you would presumably hope for out of Boba, so why do we need a retread? Definitely smacks of some higher up looking at Mando's ratings and going "well hey I guess the people like Mandalorians, let's do a series about that Baba Frett guy everybody keeps talking about!"
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Nov 24, 2020 18:56
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Azhais posted:gently caress tattoine. Seriously this, even Mando which I'm really enjoying is WAY too goddamn obsessed with a planet that was supposed to be a complete backwater even by Outer Rim standards. "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from" apparently means "somebody visits there in every loving game/movie/show/comic/book/etc ever.
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Nov 24, 2020 21:20
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"You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done!"
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Nov 24, 2020 22:20
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thrawn527 posted:I was about to say that Windu would be one hell of an rear end in a top hat for sitting everything out this whole time if he was alive, but, well, Yoda. Wasn't Windu's whole deal in the EU that he could channel his anger and briefly tap into dark side power without falling to it, or some poo poo? You'd think that guy would have a bone to pick with Anakin.
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Nov 24, 2020 22:26
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Phylodox posted:How about they don't bring Mace Windu back? Have the show be about his Force ghost having to ally with someone alive to resolve some of his unfinished business or something. To bad by the time time we're done milking this series for every TV show its worth it'll turn out that Order 66 was a huge failure and literally every Jedi "killed" in the purge actually miraculously lived, but scattered to the far corners of the galaxy and did nothing to challenge the rise of the empire because they all suck.
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Nov 24, 2020 22:41
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thrawn527 posted:Had no one else ever done this before? I don't remember if KOTOR has been officially decanonized or not, but if not then force ghosts are old hat, Ajunta Pall shows up as a force ghost and he's already ancient at the time of KOTOR, which is 2000 years before ANH.
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Nov 24, 2020 22:56
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thrawn527 posted:I think the "official" stance on KOTOR is, "It's so long ago, we're going to go ahead and not rule on whether it's canon or not." Yeah I saw that after I posted. 
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Nov 24, 2020 23:01
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Revan is so heavily retconned in KOTOR 2 that they might as well not even be the same character as the one that appears on KOTOR1/TOR. Bioware Revan is just an extremely powerful Jedi who fell to the dark side, was redeemed, and ran off into the unknown regions to find the True Sith and got their rear end kicked by them. Obsidian Revan is also a powerful jedi but was also a galaxy brain genius who never really fell to the Dark Side and was instead pretending to have fallen to set themselves up as an unstoppable big bad that would force the Republic and the Jedi to mobilize and militarize respectively, in preparation for True Sith's impending invasion.
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Nov 25, 2020 00:09
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Episode slapped, this whole season has been fantastic so far goddamn. We've now got Bo and Ahsoka and separate missions to find imperial folks, so presumably they're going to be recurring characters rather than one offs. Also at just the most casual Thrawn name drop, EU folks foaming at the mouth right now.  Fartington Butts posted:This episode has some very good Princess Mononoke vibes and I love everything about it. Ahsoka presumably could have just used the Force to sweep her off her feet into the water, or drown her, or whatever. But she wanted her alive so she could milk some info, and seemed to also be willing to offer a fair duel.
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Nov 27, 2020 10:38
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*offers a duel instead of surrendering* Ahsoka: "lmao fine by me, come at me scrub."
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Nov 27, 2020 10:45
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Gotta say I'm a bit disappointed he didn't even graze her with his space shotgun. How you gonna deflect 6+ bolts at once? This was actually a way to deal with Jedi in very early Star Wars tabletop settings. Almost all the rulesets required a deflection roll per blaster bolt, so if you got up close to a Jedi and unloaded shotgun they'd have to make like 12 deflection rolls at once and invariably they'd fail a couple and take big damage. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:He's going to have enough beskar to make a whole ship out of it by the end of season 5 Nah if they did that then Mando's ship couldn't get hosed up constantly and justify his constant diversions to backwater planets for repairs.
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Nov 27, 2020 11:12
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HK-47 would be beside himself with how much more poo poo his successor models got. He goes nuts over the HK-50's but at least they could still get the business of done albeit in a way he didn't respect. The HK-87's were goddamned pathetic.
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Nov 27, 2020 11:20
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I thought their brief exchange did a good job getting across that while Din could hold his own better than most thanks to his armor and weapons and training, in another world where he's actually there to kill Ahsoka he's absolutely hosed in a prolonged fight. Honestly the episode did a good job showing just how loving terrifying a single Jedi is in a more low level environment. Din's assistance was only really needed in being a second pair of hands to make sure nobody slinked off to kill the prisoners behind Ahsoka's back, otherwise she could have easily solo'd that entire garrison.
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Nov 27, 2020 22:12
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niethan posted:Din could have solo'd the garisson too imho. I was expecting Kyle Reese to get sniped while being distracted by Ahsoka. Sure but the garrison has a chance against Din. We've seen already in his fight with the bounty hunters in 1-3 that while he can put up a hell of a fight he can be overwhelmed by superior numbers. That said I'm now chuckling at the thought of an alternate scene where Din clears out the garrison, approaches the magistrate who hefts the spear and offers a duel in that beautiful garden set, and Din just whips out his pistol and blasts her Indiana Jones style.
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Nov 27, 2020 22:26
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I will give Disney credit for finding the perfect way to thread the needle with all the EU/non-movie stuff by taking the stance of "it's not canon unless we acknowledge it, and then it is" which lets them lift the stuff that was actually good like Thrawn, Ahsoka, all the Mandalorian elements, etc into their new stories while also being able to ignore the remaining 95% which is at best dumb and at worst aggressively terrible.
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Nov 28, 2020 00:18
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teagone posted:Where do Kyle Katarn, Dash Rendar, and Mara Jade fall on that dumb/aggressively terrible spectrum? Or are they in the 5% that's good? Kyle Katarn/Jan Ors good, Dash Rendar aggressively terrible, Mara Jade sliding across the entire spectrum depending on who's writing her.
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Nov 28, 2020 00:28
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Arcsquad12 posted:They look like Morrowind Silt Striders. The whole planet gave me Morrowind vibes, complete with the low draw distance.
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Nov 28, 2020 01:25
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I'm giving them a ton of slack on effects/sets/etc because a) the show is real good otherwise and b) getting this season done and out the door this year must have been an absolute loving nightmare on just about every level.
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Dec 4, 2020 18:33
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