Disney + Star Wars Visions

#1 The Duel; a classic samurai showdown, the main character is neither Sith nor Jedi, and based on how many kyber crystals he has, he is damn good at staying alive. I learned that his lightsaber is damaged and always turn on, thus the need for a shethe for his weapon.
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#5 The Ninth Jedi; animation and storytelling is top notch, I really want to learn more about the characters and what happens next.
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#7 The Elder; the master - apprentice conversations are some of the best writings on what it is to be a Jedi, and on the nature of power and it’s use.

The other episodes I wouldn’t recommend based on what you already wrote, I don’t think you can “let go” about what Star Was can be beyond what we already know; it’s a valid view point, I just don’t share it. There is a lot of world building and storytelling in these three episodes, and hint of a wider galaxy.

Star Wars is after all a story of Space Wizards with Laser Swords ™, WW2 Combat IN Space! ™, wierd ass starships that make no practical function or engineering sense, thousands of humans with funny make up aliens, and rules on what Hyperspace jumps can and can’t do, based on which ever author or director thinks will “look cool”. I already accept the :bat: :poop: crazyness of the settings as a feature, not a bug, which is why SW Visions for me fits right in with no loss of credibility or suspicion of disbelief. :sweat_smile: :rofl: :joy:

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That’s actually pretty cool, and a good explanation for the sheath. At first, I thought it was just a nonsensical stylistic choice (like the lightsaber umbrella, which is even worse than Lego’s Darth Maul joke).

Just a note on that: Lego makes the best Star Wars “side content.” It is top-notch satire, and enjoyable for all ages. I just recently rewatched (most) of Droid Tales as a palate cleanser after Visions, and it was as hilarious as I remembered. I actually own several of their shows on DVD.

Yeah, but you can only push me so far. Part of why I love Star Wars so much IS the WWII in Space aspect, because (as you may have guessed from my identity as a sentient P-47) WWII history has always been important to me, and it carries over to Star Wars quite well.
(Worth noting that Jedi and the Force have always been the least interesting part of Star Wars for me.)

Star Wars has a certain quirky nature to it, and I love that about it. It isn’t so much “Visions has a quirky nature” that turns me off, but that Visions’ quirky nature breaks from Star Wars. That’s what I don’t like. The inconsistency more than the actual nature. The Ghibli-esque nonsensicalisms could be fine on their own, I just can’t like them in Star Wars.

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@P-47Thunderbolt ,

My favorite part about Star Wars is about the Force and it’s many interpretation and use by all manner of living beings, cultures, and force traddions; my least favorite part is the WW2 in Space! ™ combat and its obvious limitations in orbital and deep space encounters.

With such widely divergent viewpoints on what we like about SW, I think we are going to have many interesting conversations over the years. ;)

So, watched Visions last Saturday. I admit, I was hopefull but overall I was left dissapointed.
The only Episodes I liked were The Duel (1), The Ninth Jedi (5) and The Elder (7).
All other episodes were barely watchable to me due to the childish manga style and bad storylines.

I liked the main theme of The Village Bride though.

I really hope season two will have another approach but I fear that it won´t.
Also I would have liked some other storylines than Jedi ones, it´s a bit boring and limiting seeing the various possibilities in the Star Wars Universe.

To be honest that was not worse than the propelling lightsabers of the inquisitors in Rebells.

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I really enjoyed #1, #5, #7, and (despite the main character being a furry), #8.
That’s my couple seconds of input.

Agreed. I’d love to hear your opinions. Ive disliked every episode so far.

And why did you? Some more input?
As most episodes differed extremely in style and storytelling it would be interessting to know why you disliked each and every one.

Well, @Dreenan, you’re about to get a full dose, so hang onto your hat.

Okay, here goes. And warning, it does get a bit ranty at times:

Episode One: The Duel

It was okay, but I think it was trying far too hard to be artistic.
The art style wasn’t my forte, but it was okay. The story was unoriginal, but not terrible.
My main issues were the always-lit lightsaber, the umbrella lightsaber, and the prevalence of “Sith.”

The lightsaber that always stays lit and must be sheathed in Phrik or Cortosis or something is a cool idea, but it doesn’t make much practical sense. The problem is clearly not in the crystal, but in the mechanism of the saber itself, which should be fairly easily replaced or repaired as it is likely a fault in a single component. Additionally, always staying on means that it’s constantly draining its power cell. If the character is unable to acquire replacement parts, then a jury-rigged fix would be to simply modify the lightsaber such that the power cell is disconnected until he wants to use the saber. Otherwise, there will be times when his saber simply shuts off because it doesn’t have any power. Add to that, a lightsaber that is always on is a threat to everyone and everything. Unlike a sword, it doesn’t take much force to do a lot of damage.

As for the prevalence of Sith, I can remember when there was a rule of two and Sidious ordered Ventress eliminated since she was too much like Dooku’s apprentice. I let them get away with the Inquisitors. After all, it makes sense for the Empire to use fallen Jedi to hunt down Jedi, eliminating any surviving Inquisitors once their usefulness has waned. But the constant addition of new red-saber-wielding Force users bothers me, especially with the hint at the end of the story that he’s killed about a dozen.

I have the same problem with Jedi surviving the purge. I can remember back when it was Yoda, Obi-Wan, and a couple people who soon died, or turned to the dark side and then died. The purge is starting to seem like a really ineffective genocide, and I bet you we have more Jedi confirmed as surviving the purge than we do Jedi confirmed to have been killed in it.

Turning a crystal red is, in canon, a fairly arduous process and requires a decent amount of knowledge. That’s really cool. But their prevalence does not make much sense with that explanation, which frustrates me.

Episode Two: Tatooine Rhapsody

Meh, until we get to the end.

I couldn’t stand the animation style, and chibi Boba Fett made my oil congeal, but it wasn’t so bad. Credit to them that they didn’t have someone escape Fett, considering that it happens far too often for him to be the “best bounty hunter in the galaxy.” I think he is or at least should be, but they will often show “this character is cool!” by having them escape him, which bothers me. Han Solo didn’t even escape him!
(So this one handled that okay.)

The end is whence my exasperation arises.
The “be yourself” song is trite, unoriginal, and unimpressive. I struggle to believe that it would not only electrify every person on Mos Espa (surely they would at least have differing tastes?), but Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt himself as well! If I were in his place, I’d have hung ALL of them!

The singer has an unpleasant voice, and the content of the song is ludicrous. “Be yourself” is such a terrible message in so many ways, but they miss the sheer irony that this is directed at JABBA THE HUTT whose “self” is not exactly something you want to encourage. “Yes, let’s sing to an intergalactic gangster and mass murderer that he should be himself. That’s a great idea!”

I love rock and metal (it’s pretty much the only music suited for a warplane of my caliber, after all), and this was an affront to all I enjoy. After all, rock at its best can be extremely meaningful and philosophically stimulating. This was the antithesis.

Anyway, moving on…

Episode Three: The Twins

*Exasperated screaming*
Opening shot: *Exasperated screaming* WHY DID YOU JUST SLAP TWO STAR DESTROYERS TOGETHER AND SAY SuPeR WeApOn? That’s not how this works!
Move to starboard bridge, where we witness a classic example of exposition, as the droid proceeds to detail to the girl stuff she obviously already knows, just to clue the idiot viewers into the fact that ThE DoUbLe sTaR DeStRoYeR Is a sUpEr wEaPoN. Yes, we gathered that. Yet another planet destroyer, much wow.

THAT’S NOT HOW KYBER CRYSTALS WORK. They aren’t “sources of immense power,” they can channel, lens, and focus power! And they do it well! But they aren’t sources of power themselves! BWAAGH!

LIGHTSABERS DON’T WORK LIKE THAT!!!
AND YOU CAN’T BREATHE IN SPACE.*
AND WHY DOES HE HAVE AN X-WING? AND WHY DOES IT WORK LIKE THAT? YOU CLEARLY DON’T UNDERSTAND HYPERSPACE!!!

As you can probably tell, I liked literally nothing about it. The whole thing was a disaster of epic proportions, and nothing made sense. The dialogue was clunky and rather absurd, and the situations were absurdist. This is basically everything wrong with Visions crammed into a single episode and cranked up to 10.

*Yes, I know for some of the time they would’ve been within the Star Destroyer’s shield bubble, but I don’t think it works like that, at least not according to what we’ve seen before. Additionally, there were parts where he was totally exposed to vacuum and definitely not within the DISD’s shield bubble.

Episode Four: The Village Bride

What kind of a man uses his granddaughter as a hostage in his stead? That was not only implausible, but completely sickening. Any man who would agree to that deserves in no way to be the chief of the village or tribe or whatever it was.
To quote Don Corleone, “What’s the matter with you? You can act like a man!”

That alone would make me dislike the episode, but all the new-agey “one with nature” hippy Forcey stuff was weird and I just couldn’t get on board with it.

Aside from all that, it was pretty meh. The art was pretty good, though.

Episode Five: The Ninth Jedi

This one was okay. I mostly liked it, except for a few things:
The Ghibli-esque absurdism, as I have already discussed, is not something I feel should have a place in Star Wars. Mainly just the asteroid fishing rods.

Does the Force require no practice anymore? She jumps up on the back of her speeder bike and effortlessly parries blaster bolts while also not crashing into anything. Anakin Skywalker? Sure. A girl who has admittedly no training? No, absolutely not. I miss the old days when, like Luke, you had to work to get good (absent the guiding hand of the Force for the DS-1 shot).

This episode also messed up Kyber crystals: They don’t immediately turn color to match the wielder’s Force proclivities, especially not red. To turn red, kyber crystals must “be made to bleed.”
As for the other colors, my understanding of it is that each crystal has its OWN color, and certain crystals (let’s call them “veins”) certain veins of crystal call to certain sorts of Force users. Guardians etc. get blue, typically, while Consulars tend to get green.

“That’s just the style, it doesn’t affect Canon.”
Sure, but I wish they’d be consistent with Star Wars, particularly because the canonicity of this series is of undetermined degree.

Lastly, Jedi surviving the purge. I mentioned this before, so I’ll only recount it briefly. It happens far too frequently, and turns “nearly every Jedi in the galaxy was wiped out in the purge” to “almost all of the 10,000 Jedi were wiped out in the purge, except for the 9,900 that survived.”

That’s all I have watched so far. I intend to watch The Elder, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

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I do agree that some of the stuff is like:
“What? Make it so it makes no sense? OK!”
But it is legends after all. Just take a look into a legends comic or two and you’ll find the same sort of thing. I agree that it seems that “most” of the Jedi survived in the purge when in reality it was extremely rare that they did. In fact I hate having an entire party be force weilders because I feel like they’re more rare then that.

And lets be honest, I don’t think any true Star Wars fan liked chibi Boba Fett.

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Oh yeah. There’s a whole lot I don’t like about Legends, especially the stuff that takes place past ~10 ABY.

However, within the period of ~60 BBY to ~10 ABY, it’s usually pretty sane. At least from what I’ve seen, read, and heard about.

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I echo your summary of those episodes. Feels to me like the creators of the episodes really struggle to make logical and believable stories that could be seen to fit into the SW universe. Each of the first 4 episodes grated on me terribly.

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I just assumed ships have sound replicators in order to give pilots an idea of what’s going on around them.

I enjoyed all of these! Even cute little chibi Boba. :smile: I would watch sequels to a few. May have to pick up the Ronin novel.

If they do another series, it would be really cool to see a whole new animation style highlighted.

God, that episode chase me out of my world. It was sequel trilogy written all over it.

The first one was fine, except that lightsaber umbrella. I particularly liked the ending of the duel, very clever. Howrver the dialogues were cringy and bad…

The Tatooine Rhapsody was too childish for me which was fine for the format, however they probably missed the target audience (which is not the current 10-13 year old boys). It also suffered from stupid lines and that song was terrible.

Still, I hope for the rest.

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Finally got around to watching The Elder, and it was pretty good. Nothing stellar, but much better than the others.

I just wish they’d stop with the goofy lightsabers. They don’t do that!

Other than that, it was just that the master’s hair was ridiculous. Everything else was pretty good, even Dan surviving (because if you read between the lines, the Elder had some pretty good reasons to not want him dead, yet).

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Glad you enjoyed it P-47. There is always some good In the bad yes?

No. But there was some good in this bad. :D

Well, I’m making slow progress as this series is really not trying hard to mske me binge watch it. The Village Bride was acceptable.
The Ninth Jedi had some pretty idea, but For the Emperor’s sake why are so many force users in the GCW era!
TO-B1 was straight up ridiculous Pinocchio rendition, it would have been an interesting story without the robot Force crap and yet another jedi hunter Vader copy.

I think they were all great. Different and not very deferential to doxa.

I finished it and while the last 3 episodes had a bit more merit still not really impressed.

The Elder was finally something that felt Star Wars, was era-appropriate (thank god they put it into the Republic - the other episodes still have too many jedi in the Dark Times…) and didn’t feel like a cringe-collection.

The bunny-one was interesting, I felt similarly to the Duel or the Wedding Bride that I see a Japanese story in Star Wars skin.

These episodes captured what I expected from this series (Japanese stories in Star Wars / Star Wars stories in Anime) and saved it from the terrible cringe of the “Twins” and “Tatooine Rhapsody”.

The last one, I want to like it, I really do but… The story was interesting, I liked thecharacters but the graphics were disgusting. I guess it’s a style, but still ugly. And that “opponent” at the end… well that felt like a Netflix casting choice.

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