"So essentially what Star Wars to me was, a boy who is stuck at home and dreams of joining a war. And so it's like, let's tell a story of a girl who is stuck in a war and dreams of going home. It was like a mirror." - Gareth Edwards, 2023
one star war viewing experience that i think has been totally 100% lost to time / cultural dominance: obi-wan being a mysterious and lowkey dubious figure in a new hope. he’s introduced doing this absolutely terrifying screech (which he never does again? before or since?), in a cloak with his face covered (classic villain coding, also very close to the emperor’s exact look) and this comes after a build up of him being some “old wizard” luke is told is dead, that he shouldn’t be going to see at all—and his dialogue only raises more questions than answers. a big part of it is alec guinness’ expert ptsd performance, of course, but there’s such a real strangeness to obi-wan’s debut. he’s a mentor, but he’s also a hardened warrior, also a deliverer of some incredibly ominous lines, also a disembodied voice, an undead, unkillable entity. i don’t think it was some accident that the “fake twist” used to hide the real twist in empire was that obi-wan killed luke’s father, is all i’m saying really. i think there’s an undercurrent in anh that, as the jedi/obi-wan/star war grew in popular culture and the light side/dark side lore got more ironed out, isn’t really accessible now. but it’s fun
I think one of the best and unintentionally funniest worldbuilding aspects in Star Wars is the reasoning of why did Bail and Breha adopt Leia instead of having their own children. Leia is first established as the princess of Alderaan before she is written to be Luke's sister. So now we need to figure out how she got to Alderaan. She was adopted because she needed to be hidden and separated from her brother. Bail was placed there to be one of the only people who knew so there would be a reason why it was them who got her. They specifically wanted a daughter. Why? Because Alderaan is a matriarchal society, so they needed a princess. Why didn't the Queen and her husband have biological children? Because they can't. Why? Because the Queen can't have kids. Why? Because she got injured as a teenager and got her internal organs replaced and her body can't handle a pregnancy. How did she get injured so badly? She fell off of a mountain. How did that happen? She was climbing it. Why was the future Queen climbing a mountain in the first place? Because she needed to go through three challenges in order to inherit the throne and one of them required her to go through something physically impressive. Why? Because before that they just held a Battle Royale for all the heirs and the one left alive got the throne and they at some point figured out that maybe they shouldn't be doing that, actually. Oh, okay.
Poor Zeb just perpetually third-wheeling until Sabine joined the crew
shmi & anakin, chris travis / the virgin and child with saints, duccio di buoninsegna / anakin, padmé & luke, brian ashmore / mother and child (madonna), egon schiele / leia with jaina and jacen, russ walks / madonna of the rose, raphael
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