I'm half surprised there isn't already a thread like this one somewhere. Well, maybe there is, but if so, I dunno where it is.

My brother and I just finished a marathon of the main 9 Star Wars movies ( I to IX) and I enjoyed them. $32 for all 9 - seemed a good deal.

Honestly, I knew things were added to the original trilogy, but watching those DVDs just now, I couldn't remember some scenes and wondered if they also had additions and alterations made after their theatrical releases.

The series is fine, but it's obvious tech and skills seems to have stepped back in the middle trilogy - almost as if the remaining practitioners of the force arts were pretty feeble in their skills compared to those who had come before. Well, they were virtually wiped out, so I guess that makes sense. 1000 generations? But how long is a generation when some individuals live almost 1000 years? Since Ben said it, I must assume he meant human generations, and at 25 years per, let's say, that's 25,000 years. That's along ass time, except by astronomical standards. And it was all a long, long time ago.

I still don't fully appreciate all the mechinations Palpatine had going on - like he controlled all sides, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Still weak on science, but it's a space fantasy, so that should be expected. Just sorry he doubled down on the parsec mix up instead of fixing it.

And there's tons more SW stuff out there, much of which I'll never likely see.

What's out there yet that's a must see, in anyone's opinion?

I am currently enjoying the Mandalorian series, and the Andor series, even though I know how Rogue One ends up.

I hope others are still enjoying it, and if they don't already own it, maybe can catch some of it on TV this week, as May the 4th inspires airing of these movies, if nothing else.

Enjoy, and May the 4th be with you.

There was one, but out of date by now, though and with broken image links:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=87967&hilit=fourth

This was the first time that I had seen movies 2 and 3. I wasn't missing much, I thought.
And movies 7–9 didn't do much for me the second time around either.

If I were to watch them again, I would probably
• skip 1-3
• watch Andor seasons 1-2
• watch Rogue One
• watch the original trilogy
• maybe watch the Mandalorian after Return of the Jedi
• maybe watch the Bobo Fett series
• skip 7-9

I have decades of nostalgia in me helping to prop up Episode IV, so that helps it. V and VI are okay, but I would prefer
to see the versions that were "fixed" by Spielberg afterwards. Absolutely hated that Sebastian Shaw's force ghost scene
was overwritten by the movie II/II actor. Fuck that shit. Also hated the "Wesa Free!" across the galaxy montage shit at
the end of movie VI. Give me the stupid Ewok “Yub Nub" ending song instead. Who'd thought I'd ever champion that?

I may have liked the first season of Andor more than any of the movies, but I also suspect that it won't hold up all that well
on my second viewing, and I also suspect that season 2 cannot be as good as the first season, but maybe it can be.

And I'd still would like to see Splinter of the Mind's Eye maybe made into an alternate animated feature. That was the
only Star Wars novel I ever read, and I read it soon after seeing the original Star Wars.

I think the Clone Wars series really fleshes out that prequel era and makes the films better. But I wouldn't watch ALL of it. My fiancée and I recently completed a run through that and Rebels, and especially enjoyed the latter quite a bit. There is a list of essential Clone Wars to watch that I found on Reddit that seemed fine to me, with less than half of the episodes in it. I didn't feel lost at all, even though I had to skip around a bit at the start per the "viewing order" recommendation.

The new live action Ashoka series is going to feature characters from Rebels, so it might be worth watching so you know the background.

I think the Obi-Wan Kenobi series is worth watching and I quite liked it myself, even though it felt a lot more "TV" than Andor's very cinematic feel.

After the original Star Wars trilogy, the series lost its sense of ancient grandeur. It's basically 19 years.

I just wonder at their galactic society and how technology doesn't seem to improve much, even over a period of 1000 generations, or 25,000 years. I mean, I have to assume the Jedi Order (and the Sith Order) were space faring types with FTL tech to even be a big deal. What was tech like 1000 generation ago? FTL, certainly, but have they hit some sort of tech wall and not progressed much in all that time? Did they have light sabers that long ago? Are droids and artificial limbs only a recent advancement?

Well, just something to think about - and one of the problems of making up ancient orders that are way past Human experience for longevity.

I've never read Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I do remember when it came out all those years ago. It was the first "Star Wars" novel ever published, wasn't it? It's historically significant for that alone, even if it has never been considered in any sort of series continuity. I think I did read Han Solo At Star's End when my brother borrowed it from a friend. That and one of the Thrawn stories by Timothy Zahn are all the "Star Wars" fiction I've ever read.

The biggest flaw in the whole thing. They should have had a lot more history with the emperor instead of tying his ascent into Vader's turning. Easy enough to do by setting the first movie in the early days of the empire, then moving to Anakin and company in the second one as "50 years later" or something. The Phantom Menace set too many time constraints and messed things up. The less said about the sequel movies, the better; those dropped the ball entirely.

The idea behind it was this:
Alan Dean Foster was given the task of writing the novel version of the first Star Wars movie and was given
movie scripts and sneak images to work off of. So there must have been a novel adaption of Movie VI, but
I don't recall seeing it. Foster then was to write Splinter of the Mind's Eye to be a potential low-budget sequel
if the first Star Wars movie didn't turn a huge profit. That way they could churn something out on the cheap.
So, Splinter didn't feature Han Solo because he hadn't signed on yet to do a second. And most of Splinter was
to take place on a misty world where a movie could be filmed cheaply.

Ah, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker is the novelization of the 1977 film Star Wars, ghostwritten
by Alan Dean Foster, but credited to George Lucas. It was first published on November 12, 1976. So it came out before
the film looks like.

I read it but I don't remember anything from it!

My big take away from it was that Leia was swinging Luke's light saber and fighting with Vader.
Other than that, there was a prison, I think, and a lot of tunnels, a couple of new alien friends.

I suppose I might still have it somewhere in paperback.
Might be worth something with all these Star Wars fans out there.

Nope. A quick scan of eBay shows it's barely worth the shipping cost to mail it somewhere.

I was a voracious reader as a child and a star wars nut (member of the fan club, even), so I devoured these books as they came out, and re-read them a bunch.

As an 8 year old, I thought "Splinter" was pretty good, but in hindsight it was a pretty boiler plate pulp fiction adventure story, with Luke substituted for Allan Quartermain or Indiana Jones, Leia as the plucky female, the Yuzzumi as the Noble Savage pack bearers, and the Crystal as the MacGuffin. And it definitely highlights that Leia being was definitely not something that was in mind yet.

The Han Solo trilogy were okay; relatively harmless generic plots (prison break, taking down a thieving crime syndicate, and robbing a vault). Fun, but disposable. But I do like how it ended with the "hey, let's get Jabba to back us" set up, easily putting the toys back in the box at the end.

The Lando ones I don't remember at all. I only read one of them, and didn't enjoy it.

The thing with Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire Trilogy is that similar to Neil Gaiman's issue of Spawn, it introduced a bunch of great new characters, expanded the scope of the universe, set up a potential direction for the Post Imperial age, and set a foundation that could have been the basis of what came after. Too bad that Disney elected to go in a different direction. And I get it was too long between the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy for the cast), but they could have done so much worse than simply filming the Thrawn trilogy.

then the only other thing I tried - under the 2015 comics came along - was the Jedi Academy trilogy. It was not good. So I stopped pursuing the EU. Felt too much like panning for gold.

And I know there's some stuff from the Old Republic (Revan and another linked to him?) that were great, but I've never checked that out.

They adapted Splinter of the Minds Eye into a comic several years back, if anyone is interested in that take on the story.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1569712239/?tag=imwan-20

It was a long time before I learned that Foster wrote the original movie novelization. That was the first "Star Wars" I ever read. Read it some years before ever seeing it on the screen, in fact. I missed them all when they first came out, although my brother didn't. I didn't include that one in my short list of "Star Wars" reading because I associate it so closely with the movies and not the "Expanded Universe."

Let's see...our newspaper carried the comic strip by Russ Manning and Al Williamson for a time too. I've always liked Manning's distinctive take on the world of Star Wars. And I read a couple dozen issues of my brother's Marvel "Star Wars" comics.

Manning always had a nice clean style when he drew Magnus Robot Fighter, so I imagine that even when getting
older he probably still was doing a decent job on Star Wars and its various droids. I never saw any of those strips.