Star Wars VII-IX, what do you think?

[Elok]

I strongly suspect, given the hesitation and cryptic dialogue that preceded it, that Han's death was a Snape/Dumbledore deal of some sort, and that Han went out on that bridge expecting to die.

As for Ren, while his performance was much better than Christensen's, I think I'd find him much more interesting if I had any idea at all why he went to the dark side in the first place.  Okay, Snoke "seduced him."  That's a who, not a why.  Did he resent his parents for something?  Feel inadequate and sense that the dark side was the only way he would become powerful?  Lose somebody and want revenge?  Or is he just scared of Snoke?  I might like the character a lot more if I had any idea what was going through his head.

But he's like the rest of the movie: "This is like ANH, only with added twists and complications, whose significance we will not trouble to explain."  How did the original Rebels screw things up so badly?  Why are they only fighting the First Order through covert funding of another rebel movement?  Who the hell is Snoke, and why does he have such a silly name?  Why is Luke's location being passed around by such insecure means in the first place?  Who was that random old geezer from the beginning who acted vaguely important and significant before getting cut down?  Who is Rey waiting for?

Okay, we're all pretty sure the answer to the last is either "she's Luke's kid" or "she's Han and Leia's secret second kid," and the latter would also explain why Leia hugs her and disses Chewie.  And one way or another it's obvious they'll answer it in 8 or 9.  But flashbacks just don't fit in with the accepted SW storytelling style, so this in media res approach can only ever be resolved, if it is at all, with clunky and easily-missed asides or answers embedded in promotional books, etc.

[Buster's Uncle]

I just wanted to say Thrawn.  Has everyone seen the Rebels trailer already?

[Unorthodox]

nope.

edit:  Rebels = cartoon, right?

Or are you talking about the movie Rogue 1?

[Buster's Uncle]

Cartoon.  I'll go find you that trailer.

[Spacy]

Copy of it over at WPC, in the off topic titled Thrawn. 

It looks good. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Buster's a big fan of that show - I've meant to ask if she knew about this...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmXp802sFgQ" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmXp802sFgQ</a>

[Unorthodox]

I remember watching like the first episode and being 'meh'.  will check the trailer when I can. 

[Dale]

Meh.  Call me when Thrawn isn't a cartoon.

[Unorthodox]

Hm. 

It seems at least a bare bones transition of the character.  But, as a cartoon villain, it will be hard for them to bring about the level of threat he presented. 

I also saw news Zahn is writing a new book to bring the character in-canon.  Not sure about THAT either.  I tried to read some other Zahn works, and got the impression his star wars series being good was the exception rather than the rule.  But a lot of that might be my intolerance of scifi reading. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I think it was a Zahn SW novel that was the only one I ever read a bit of -something about a tall crimelord of a green-scaled species who had pheromones that made him attractive to humans- and I couldn't say why I was reading in the first place, or why I didn't read more; it wasn't bad or anything, if not terribly interesting...

I hate it when my machine's being sluggish and I spot a typo while posting -pheromone(s) needed to be plural- have to wait for it to finish and then wait to load the edit screen, edit and wait for it to post again...

[Unorthodox]

I couldn't say why I was reading in the first place, or why I didn't read more; it wasn't bad or anything, if not terribly interesting...

That's my impression of most of his writing.  Even the original Thrawn series falls into that whenever Thrawn is not in there.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, it's usually a bad sign that an author of any craft at all keeps doing the professional fanfic for long instead of thinking up their own sandbox.  This is certainly true of the Star Trek novels, of which I read absolutely everything -and most three times or more over the years- up to about 1988...

(Protip:  DO NOT miss reading The Final Reflection, and you'll have covered all truly great ST novels of my experience - though almost all of the rest are at least competent, if not terribly memorable.)

[Unorthodox]

He has original stuff out there.

I remember Warhorse fairly well.  Some space creatures an alien race tamed to use as ships, and the utter failure of humans to be able to bond with them because the human mind was too much predator.  It was tolerable.   

There was another I vaguely recall about aliens in ceramic ships that were killed by radio waves, so the very act of trying to communicate with them was declaring war.  I didn't finish that one...

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm trying to resist going into some grumbling about what I call 'paycheck books' and taking liberal swipes at Kevin J. Anderson.

-And I realize I misspoke in saying that was the only SW novel I ever tried to read - I think I reread, just a few years ago, the Star Wars novelization "by George Lucas" that Allan Dean Foster ghosted and I've talked (in this very thread?) about his Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which I understand was the very first professional SW fanfic, not counting a lot of Marvel comics.  -Both Foster's aforementioned books were mediocre, if you ask me, but that's Foster for you - he's not terrible.

-And again, hating that moment when I realize I'd dropped a word while the post is posting...

[Elok]

I think it was a Zahn SW novel that was the only one I ever read a bit of -something about a tall crimelord of a green-scaled species who had pheromones that made him attractive to humans- and I couldn't say why I was reading in the first place, or why I didn't read more; it wasn't bad or anything, if not terribly interesting...

Might not be Zahn you're thinking of.  Shadows of the Empire was a whole pseudo-canon thing with a videogame and everything, circa 2000, that prominently featured such a character.  Zahn later wrote a book (Scoundrels, a young Han Solo heist novel) featuring one of his subordinates--I think it was a 2010 book or thereabouts, and the green guy played a relatively minor part.

I don't find Zahn irresistibly compelling, but he's pleasant enough as reading material when you don't want to do intellectual heavy lifting.  He has written a good deal of original stuff.  Angelmass was sorta fun (weird alien particles that have the power to induce moral behavior), and the Night Train to Rigel series (extremely silly, trains in space).  I think he does best when he's playing with SW, though.

I read all the SW books I could get my hands on until age 15 or so, when they got 15 years out from ROTJ and I said, "okay, that's far enough, guys."  I was later puzzled to read numerous scornful references to KJA--I liked his Jedi Academy trilogy!  Then I recalled that I was a big fan of Redwall around the same time.  Found a copy of one of the Jedi Academy books when I was subbing, and read two pages.  Gott in himmel.  It was like a scenery-chewing actor, but in print.