LogFAQs > #946163280

Order 66 Survivors
I guess this goes without saying, but why not? Having anyone besides Yoda and Obi-Wan surviving the Purge devalues the idea of Luke being the last Jedi and all hope resting on his shoulders. It also raises the question of why they apparently were doing nothing the entire twenty years where the Empire ruined the galaxy.

Lensman Series
Sorry, I've never read the Lensman series, and it's too complicated and long for me to easily rank even by reading a synopsis of it. I won't rank this one, but I will note that I've heard it's the first space opera of all time, which is an interesting bit of history.

Eric Butts Reaction
I'm usually pretty good at telling if something is ironic or not, but this guy is beyond my powers of deduction. I can obviously tell that he's playing up his reactions for the camera, but if he feels genuine excitement, I don't know. I do know that he says "Oh, it's gorgeous" about a random patch of desert, so I suspect this is bull. If it is genuine at all, though, well, I know people should be able to feel any emotions they want without feeling bad about it as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, but eh, maybe sometimes you should feel ashamed.

Also, this guy is exceptionally ugly.

Max Landis
I know nothing about Max Landis as a human being, though I think he's one of the earlier instances of the #metoo movement?

As a director, all I've seen from him are Chronicle and Bright. Chronicle is fine. People seemed to like it way more than I did. I don't really like found footage as a gimmick, and I don't like realistic examinations of superheroes (though I dislike the superhero genre in general), so it's not really my thing. Bright, though, is just complete garbage. I don't want to go into it because it's not really Star Wars-related, but Bright is one of the worst things I've ever seen.

The High Ground
George Lucas must have thought he was being so clever when he wrote this line, like the idea of combining the literal high ground and the moral high ground made him the smartest filmmaker of all time. This line and the subsequent defeat of Anakin are so dumb that my friends and I quoted it to each other for our entire senior year of high school whenever any of us were even slightly elevated over the others. I can't give it a bad rating, though, because this line has genuinely brought me more joy than any other line in Star Wars. I can't emphasize enough how many times like I would step up one stair, turn to my friend behind me, hold out my arms, and say "It's over, James, I have the high ground," and then James would screw up his face and scream "YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER."

Star Wars Halloween Costumes
I mean, sure? Who really cares? It's not like trick-or-treating will be a thing in 2020, or maybe ever again.

Cloning in Star Wars
The implications of cloning are not explored at all in the movies. No one gives a thought to sending billions of clones to go fight robots, to the point where even the kid's cartoon casually shows clones dying, like they're not real people. It's very bizarre how even the Jedi are completely okay with the morality of this. Furthermore, no one really explores the more interesting idea of cloning Jedi. Like, if you clone one, does the clone still have Force powers? If so, why not clone Jedi to increase their numbers? If not, then why do Force powers seem genetic? I realize that in the context of the simple stories the movies have, this would be needlessly complicated, but the mystical nature of the Star Wars universe raises questions that you don't get in, say, Star Trek. For a series where clones play a central role in two movies out of six, nothing is done with them whatsoever.

Man, can you imagine someone trying to resolve Anakin's worrying about Padme's impending death by just cloning her? You could have a Padme clone show up, Darth Vader get angry and just stab her, it'd be great.

Soul Calibur IV
In the grand tradition of Soul Calibur guest characters, SCIV definitely has the weakest lineup, and that includes SCIII, the one with no guest characters at all. SCII has Link, Heihachi, and Spawn, SC Legends has Lloyd Irving, SC:BD has Kratos, SCV has Ezio, and SCVI has Geralt, 2B, and Haohmaru. What does SCIV have? Darth Vader, Yoda, and the Apprentice.

I said before that Star Wars seems like a natural fit for a fighting game, so what went wrong here? Well, I think it's partly just that the Star Wars aesthetic clashes so heavily with SC's Renaissance aesthetic. Star Wars has fantasy elements, but compared to SC, it's still firmly in the realm of science-fiction, so throwing robot-y Darth Vader and laser sword sounds into the fray just does not work. And yet, to be fair, Spawn and 2B also have clashing aesthetics and tones, yet they fit into the general SC aesthetic much more easily, so I don't know why Star Wars is such an outlier. I still think Star Wars is too sci-fi to be a good guest series, though. Next time, get Lord of the Rings. You can even replace Yoda with Gollum to have another short guy.

All of this is ignoring how the Apprentice was an advertisement for an unrelated upcoming Star Wars game that has been long forgotten by now. Instead of a character people care about, like Obi-Wan or Luke, we got this boring bald jackass. What a missed opportunity. And don't forget how the original release gave you Vader or Yoda depending on the console, which is just obnoxious. At least when SCII did it, it had the decency to use characters actually associated with those consoles (except Spawn, but I guess he's still a better Xbox choices than Blinx the Time Cat or whatever).

Also, I'm just going to say it: Soul Calibur was never that good. SCII came out at a time when 3D fighting games weren't reliably good, and just being competent made it stand out. Having Link in it was the cherry on top. Yeah, the series has gotten worse since then, but it's not like there's a huge gameplay difference between SCII and SCV (the bad one). So SCIV being a disappointment is just par for the course.

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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005