counterpoint, remember all of those random people that died assaulting the “battering ram” on the salt planet from the finale? They were speeding at the target in formation, getting cut to pieces. They knew if they didn’t take it out, it would mean the end of the Rebellion. So they willingly went on a suicide mission…

This is such a polite reply yet somehow still an absolute smackdown. Well done.

You can completely do that in a way that still honors the original characters, and pays off on things that were literally established in the last film. This movie was a failure (not a complete failure), but went a long way towards killing my interest in anything Star Wars related going forward.

Sure, but make that the point in the last ten minutes of Episode IX, not VIII. Geez...the fans will crucify Johnson for that faux pas, and man, did they.

Rogue one already did that. And actually did it well. This movie, not so much. This movie was like watching a spoof of Star Wars. They even made a Hardware Wars reference at one point with an iron

But I don’t go to movies to see “random people”...

Yup, because when everyone is special no one is. Star Wars is just another disney whore now. Enjoy!

I’ve seen this defense a lot, and in theory I think that moral could have worked really well. Yet, wasn’t the whole point of A New Hope that anyone, even a backwoods farm boy, can do something extraordinary and be a hero? Sure, that got muddled a little, when Luke was retconned to be Darth Vader’s son, but still at…

But objectively, they don’t.

People are selfish, hence the moaning.

“the moral of the movie was that random people matter just as much as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.”

I could be wrong, but I THINK that the enchantments were put in place AFTER the events with Voldemort the first time (when Lily was killed), which is about 30 years after this movie?

FWIW, there was a space monkey in the original series.

Antibiotic resistance is nasty, but not an existential threat. The global population managed to reach more than 1 billion before pasteurization was even invented, let alone antibiotics.

Didn’t he show up in the Clone Wars? Maybe it was one of the books set during the clones wars....

a Dungeons & Dragons movie

Star Wars, as a fantasy epic taking place in space, loves the whole “good vs. evil” thing, and I’m not necessarily criticizing that. Even the characters that are a little more complicated, like Han Solo, are clearly on the good side. But Pellaeon was truly one the EU’s more nuanced characters, where he could be an…

I sort of believe that in the new Thrawn novel, Eli is Pellaeon’s replacement. In fact, “Eli” as a name sort of sounds like “Pellaeon”.

I did enjoy his character, but I seriously doubt anyone but Zhan could make him as compelling.

I always loved Pellaeon, but doesn’t the First Order (*bleugh*) and all the handwaving around the New Republic in the latest batch of books make this hard to do? I guess there’s thirty years where he can still be relevant... Sigh. I like some of the elements of the new movies, but, boy, the world-building is…