we shouldn’t also say “oh, they were 17, so it doesn’t count.”

It’s not just that “oh she’s 17 it doesn’t count”, it’s that it was 10 years ago and she is not repeating that behaviour now. The controversy is inane.

I grew up with an elderly dad who was definitely old school. It took a good couple of years being away from that for me to drop a lot of those viewpoints that had become normalized for me.

Being homophobic and bigoted at 17 shouldn’t disqualify you from a job if you’ve used the intervening decade of adulthood to grow and mature into someone who understands why your prior actions were hurtful.

Diane Duane is the GOAT of TOS novelists. Rihannsu forever.

The fact that this wasn’t adopted as canon is a crime.

I’m fine with Lucas’ basic structure of the trilogy - most of my head-version is built on small tweaks - but AotC is just two and a half hours of wasted time in the middle of this thing. I’d keep “Anakin serves as Padmé’s bodyguard and travels with her to Naboo” acting as the central pillar of the movie, but it’s set…

Nah, it wasn’t “padding” from Jackson’s perspective, it was his self-indulgence with a studio blank check. All those overlong sequences were lovingly done, however much they wore out our welcome. The infamous bug scene was what you get when the director of Dead Alive/Braindead gets a chance to resurrect a deleted…

Also: man, Ninja Yoda SUCKED

Yes!  Palpatine beating on the “their scared because it’s different, but how can the force be evil?”  drum.  That’s believable.  Much more so then “I had a bad dream about my wife; better kill some kindergarteners!”

. . . they connect just right to the Original Trilogy.

Yeah, making Anakin the same age as Luke in ANH works so much better on a narrative scale. Being too old for training at 9 was just confusing, and it makes the Jedi look weird and unrelatable that they clearly have no idea how to council Anakin’s fear of loss. Yoda’s all like “ehh don’t miss them” but he sure as shit…

Yes, Lightsaber Yoda was fucking awesome . . . for, like, six seconds. Dooku (I still can’t abide that name) tears through Obi-Wan and Anakin and then . . . Yoda appears. Drops his cane. And pulls out a lightsaber. Fucking amazing!
But that is, of course, the problem. The movie trades a lot of logic and thematic ideas …

Somebody said the prequels are a good story told poorly and the sequels are a bad story told well. That’s a little reductive, but not far off.

Portman has an off switch where she clearly doesn’t give a shit and bother to act if she thinks she’s better than the movie she’s in. This definitely shows in the Prequels and in her other big franchise turn as Jane Foster in the MCU.

Jackson is an incredibly gifted actor, but in a specific range, if that makes sense. No one is better at playing Sam Jackson characters than Sam Jackson, but casting him against type has never fit quite right.

As much as people like to dog Christensen’s work, look at how BAD Portman and Jackson are in these movies. Both of them have done fine work elsewhere but in the Prequels they stink on ice. Just absolutely inert, lifeless performances. Aside from Neeson, McGregor and McDiarmid are the only actors who actually managed…

Well, my point was that it’s not necessarily a refusal to deal with rejection in a story sense, or character-identification sense (though of course, there’s plenty of that too), but a sense that the game is not playing fair as a game.

I think this comes down to a question of viewing games through a story lens or a gameplay lens.

Why would anyone want to pay to get rejected? They can get that for free in real life.