Small Tweaks
I’m returning to the concept from two weeks ago where I try to tweak one small thing in a movie.
Continuing the task of forcing my wife to watch the Star Wars prequels, we finally got around to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. She hasn’t drawn up divorce papers yet, so that’s probably a good sign.
Once again, I will not be trashing the movie. I will actually be quite reverential, keeping the overwhelming majority of it untouched.
A bit of a cop-out this week, sort of. It’s not a new story, but it still required quite a bit of writing, so I’m going to count it.
Here’s the experiment: Someone else comes to me with their story and wants some help. I don’t get to entirely re-write it. It’s their story, their ideas, they just want my input on how to tweak/fix some things that I might think are fundamentally broken. So, I have to set aside my impulse to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch and make it my story. It’s theirs, I’m just helping.
Where to start? Where to start? Oh, I know!
Recently I forced my wife to endure Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in its entirety. She had never seen it. She was not exactly impressed, but it got us both talking about little tweaks that could potentially salvage at least some of the movie. For once I will not be trashing this movie. I will actually be quite reverential, keeping the overwhelming majority of it untouched.
Continue reading “Small Tweaks – Star Wars: Episode I”With the Ahsoka series trailer finally dropping I can admit that I actually have access to the script for the first episode. I’m not going to give everything away, but I’ll share with you the opening scene. It’s the literal first few minutes, so hardly some major reveal of where the series is going. Enjoy!!!
Continue reading “Ahsoka Episode 1 Script… LEAKED!!!”So far Andor is the best Star Wars anything since The Empire Strikes Back… and I do not say that lightly. It still has time to shit the bed, it is Star Wars after all, a series with a history of falling to pieces as it continues.
I’m trying my hardest to justify how Andor can exist in the same universe as the Original and Prequel Trilogies. They are telling stories built upon one another but have such shockingly different approaches and tones. And here’s what I have come up with…
Continue reading “Justifying Andor”Boy oh boy… halfway through this stinker. Here are my stream of consciousness thoughts on the first three episodes. Some of my thoughts are wrong and contradicted later, but I have no plan to fix what I wrote on the day.
Continue reading “Obi-Wan Kenobi Episodes 1 – 3 Watch Notes”I was watching a video about the Galaxy’s Edge attraction at Disney and the statement was made: “The Sequel Trilogy won’t age the same way as the Prequel Trilogy”.
You said that right, my man…
Continue reading “How Will the Sequel Trilogy Hold Up?”
When I recently re-watched Star Wars I wasn’t just keeping track of Stormtrooper deaths. I was curious if the stock Imperial fighter, the TIE Fighter, was also always a piece of disposable junk.
TL;DR: no, it was not, but please keep reading anyway!
Continue reading “The Myth of the Worthless Imperial Fighters”
In The Mandalorian there are multiple references to how worthless Stormtroopers are. Bill Burr’s character, Mayfeld, is a former Imperial sharp shooter. Mando isn’t impressed. He retorts “Hey, I wasn’t a Stormtrooper!” Later we see two scout troopers who literally cannot hit a rock 2 meters away from them. In the third episode of the second season (I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers) a character says that Stormtroopers “couldn’t hit the side of a bantha”.
As that episode progresses we see a handful of characters kill easily forty or more Stormtroopers directly. Granted, these characters are implied to be elite mercenaries, but still the message is clear: Stormtroopers are worthless cannon fodder and of no real threat to our heroes.
Has this always been the case?
Continue reading “The Myth of the Worthless Imperial Troops”
A common device in many narratives is the plan that goes sideways and the protagonists have to improvise to make it work. Maybe they have to cut the wire to the alarm to get into the diamond vault, but… there’s no wires. They’ve moved them, or replaced it with a new system! Now what?
Where this device falls apart is when the author doesn’t give any thought to how the plan would have gone if it went as originally intended. On a recent re-watch of Star Wars I got to thinking about this. How would each of the Star Wars Original Trilogy movies have played out if the plan went without a hitch?
Continue reading “Following Through on a Plan (Star Wars OT)”
Armchair Screenwriter 