Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 338: Weird Star Wars

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Issue 338: Weird Star Wars · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to the Note Palty. Hi. This is Nick and Ostasio, story
• 0:10
  editor on Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Star Wars bad Batch, and
• 0:15
  you are listening to Aggressive Negotiations. Hello, and welcome to Aggressive Negotiations,
• 0:29
  that Star Wars podcast that just likes to do things from a little bit different
• 0:34
  perspective, because as we know from my favorite character, it is all about
• 0:38
  perspective. And I am just one of your hosts. Here, Matthew Rushing,
• 0:42
  coming at you from the hallowed ground of Coruscants, Dex's Diner who make
• 0:48
  the best convery nerve steak omelets, and with me as he is every single
• 0:53
  week, the illustrious brinner Eater Jedi Master John Mills. Well, I mean,
• 0:58
  honestly, I'm more of waiting for them to launch Balen Skull's speer because
• 1:03
  obviously, if he's traveled to another galaxy to find a lost recipe for great
• 1:08
  power, obviously it's a brewery in a different galaxy that he is in search
• 1:12
  of, because I know that's the only thing that could get me to leave
• 1:15
  this galaxy. So there you go. Yep, high alcohol tantent, that's
• 1:19
  what matters. Uh, It's a minimum of fifteen percent ABV is where you'll
• 1:23
  go there you go, go, oh, well, different gravity too,
• 1:26
  So you never know who that's going to play into things. It's got to
• 1:30
  be a stout. It's there's definitely a stout, that's it. Oh,
• 1:33
  he's definitely a stout man or a quarter man either one. I mean he
• 1:38
  strikes me. He strikes me though as surprisingly a he's one of the well
• 1:44
  you know what, that's not really the place. Yeah, a whole other
• 1:47
  podcast. Yeah what what? What are what are the favorite drinks of our
• 1:51
  Star Wars characters? So that that's a you know what. We could talk
• 1:55
  about that during our Thanksgungan episode. Yeah, yeah, later this year.
• 1:57
  They're gonna be fun so well. Of course, you could find us wherever
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• 2:04
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  nerd Party. You can find us online at the nerd Party dot com.
• 2:45
  We're on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash the nerd Party, as well
• 2:49
  as Instagram at the nerd Party. So, John, we have just finished
• 2:57
  Ahsoka. That series is wrapped up now. We actually did our complete review
• 3:01
  of the series over in the six o two Club together, which was a
• 3:04
  blast. And this is something which has been percolating in my brain ever since
• 3:10
  we recorded that episode, and you mentioned something that I found really interesting,
• 3:16
  and it was this idea of the weirdness of Star Wars. And one of
• 3:23
  the things that I was thinking through the series is just how much weirdness there
• 3:30
  is and how I feel like that's in some ways something that's been kind of
• 3:38
  missing from Star Wars for a while, which is the truly weird, but
• 3:44
  also the truly weird that actually has something to do with the story. Well
• 3:50
  from live action, for sure, I think that animated has always embraced it,
• 3:54
  and I celebrated it so specifically because it feels like they finally kicked door
• 4:00
  down and they said, okay, we can get weird in live action as
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  well. And if anything, I think that follows an impulse that Lucas had
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  when he wanted to make this sequel trilogy. Yes, was he wanted to
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  get weird with it too, And I think that there has been an impulse
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  in a lot of movies, and I think Marvel this is once again the
• 4:19
  poison that Marvel has put out. There is the idea that you have to
• 4:23
  couch it in this scientific y sort of star Treki approach to things. You
• 4:28
  have to explain it, and you have to say, well, it's really
• 4:30
  the tachions interacting with No, there's the world between worlds, there's the Force,
• 4:34
  there's the Jedi, there's space hyenas, there's whales that can travel faster
• 4:43
  than any ship that exists. I mean, think about it. It takes
• 4:46
  Morgan Elsbeth how long to build her giant hyperspace ring. And never mind the
• 4:51
  fact that I love the fact that it's a hyperspace ring, because that just
• 4:56
  brings back a thing that's weird in and of itself. I remember when they
• 5:00
  they brought hyperspace rings into the prequels. I was like, Oh, that's
• 5:02
  cool, Like what a great explanation for how a small ship can go to
• 5:09
  deep space, because that was a big thing about the Tie Fighters was There's
• 5:13
  no way a ship that small could get this teep into space, is what
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  obi Wan says. And it's because by this point, obviously he knows the
• 5:19
  Empire's not interested in sending one man fighters out into deep space sort of thing.
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  But let me throw this out at you. I think that for some
• 5:29
  fans who have watched it for a long time, they don't understand what a
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  fundamental shift it is to bring Pergol in at all to the series. That
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  in and of itself is a giant, weird hurdle to come into. And
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  it's why they have to keep teasing the Pergol a little bit. Oh look
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  they are a Pergol here. Oh wait, what are the purgole here for?
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  Oh, the Purgol are going where we want to go. And that
• 5:54
  winds up providing that context. Do you think it's possible that just longtime fans
• 6:00
  us have law basically we've been so spoiled by the weirdness that was in the
• 6:04
  animated series, including bad bats bad bats, like the bad bats themselves,
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  is that's a weird concept, and so we don't appreciate what a giant milestone
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  was reached by getting that weird with live action Star Wars. I think the
• 6:21
  thing that's so interesting about this because you bring up the perkle, which obviously
• 6:26
  is one of the weirdest things in Star Wars. The idea of space whales.
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  Of course, we had the flying whales in episode two on Camino,
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  which I always loved them as a species as well, and so apparently George
• 6:44
  Lucas just says a thing for whales even more than Star Trek Fida's and so,
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  which is great. But what I think the idea that there are these
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  creatures who are the only ones for the longest time that were traversing galaxies.
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  And then you get weird by saying it's the dath Mery witches who are from
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  another galaxy were the first to tame the the her goal to get to other
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  galaxies. Like that is weird man for Star Wars, Like that's crazy,
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  like a crazy idea. And then the fact that we're introducing two live action
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  the dath Miry witches and the Great Mothers, you know, I mean that's
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  never been seen in Star Wars. And that's I mean from the Clone Wars.
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  That was an incredibly weird addition, this idea that there were these witches
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  that had these magics and it was glinked to the force. But it's not
• 7:41
  quite the same. And of course, you know, I know, the
• 7:43
  Death Mary Witches come from the EU, but you know, but they're but
• 7:49
  they're their own thing here and and the the Clone Wars and then of course
• 7:56
  uh here in Ahsoka. So yeah, I mean, like, I think
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  you're absolutely right in just calling out this idea. That animation, I think
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  really set the stage for the things that we could get weird with. You
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  know, you think of the Zillo Beast, you know, one of the
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  weirdest things you've seen in Star Wars ever, really, and I feel like
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  one of the things that Dave Filoni learned from George and we see it here
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  specifically in Star Wars. It is these weird elements that kind of make Star
• 8:39
  Wars what it is. But these weird elements aren't just for the sake of
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  something being weird on screen, but they all actually really do have an important
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  story reason for existing, and so I think that's the thing that kind of
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  got lost in the live action ness of it. In fact, do you
• 9:01
  remember the and Or episode where they have the eye? You know that they
• 9:05
  have to go through, Yes, And it's just this really weird idea of
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  this kind of like mystical and yet scientific, and it's like the crossing of
• 9:13
  those boundaries there, and like even a show is grounded as that found a
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  way to do something weird that we'd never seen in Star Wars, right,
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  and it was for an incredibly interesting story reason. And so I think that
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  that's something Those are the type of things that have just kind of been missing
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  from Star Wars for a while in what we do in live action, and
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  I really appreciate that we're kind of diving back into that in a way that
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  makes it kind of like truly exciting, because coming to these type of shows
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  then I don't know what to expect, right, Well, there's there's very
• 9:56
  much the fact that Star Wars has always been classified as space fantasy science fiction,
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  and they're sound in space. There's the Force, there's all of this
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  stuff, and there is an embrace of the spiritual and the not quite physical
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  and for all of the accolades that I and everybody else on the planet throws
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  at the mandalorian when you're dealing with something like cloning, that's still sort of
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  a thing that's like a sci fi thing that people are, you know,
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  they're grappling with in their own minds because they know that we're approaching the point
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  where we could do cloning, although it's never going to be you know,
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  we're not going to be mapping a personality onto somebody. That's just not going
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  to happen. But like so, cloning keeps it in that sort of quasi
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  quote unquote realistic sort of vein of sort of things. I think the weirdness
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  that we're talking about is the fact that it's the weirdness that we're talking about
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  has nothing to do with being rational. It simply is. And I think
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  that's an important thing specifically, because if there's anything that spirituality, religion,
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  intuition speaks to, it's this belief and it's one that I subscribe to absolutely,
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  is that there is not always a rational explanation for what you're experiencing,
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  and so are we going to make an attempt to explain how the Purgle go
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  into hyperspace to traverse the great distances that they do. And the short answer
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  is no, no, we are not because we don't need to. All
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  we need to know is that they do it. There's no need to have
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  an episode where somebody tells us how they manage to figure out how the Purglar
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  are able to to do it. All we need to know is that the
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  Pergol do it. And that is the sort of thing that I think is
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  a difficult story element for people to grapple with sometimes is why did that happen?
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  Well, it just did? Does it matter? And I think that
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  let me get your thought on this. Do you think that some people reject
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  it because we've been so conditioned to expecting explanation for it and the it being
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  whatever it is, we expect an explanation for the mechanics of it, whether
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  it's world between worlds, whether it's Pergol anything like, whether it's how the
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  sisters figured out how to tap into the force in their magical way. We're
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  never going to get that explanation. We're never going to get Jordie LaForge telling
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  us how that all works with invented terms. It's just going to be a
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  thing, the way that certain things in life are just a thing. Do
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  you think that that is a hurdle for people? You know, I think
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  that's a really good question. And as you were talking, I was thinking
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  about this idea, and I'm going to get super spiritual for a minute.
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  But you know, for you and I, we both come from the same
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  vein of thinking, which is that all of reality was created by God.
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  Yes, and therefore, because all of reality is created by God, in
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  many ways, there's no such thing as the supernatural because God is reality,
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  he created it, and he's what we would consider supernatural. So and that
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  kind of I think flows to my thought process about the craziness and the fantasy
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  elements of Star Wars. Right, these things are so woven into Star Wars
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  because what we know of the Star Wars universe is that the force binds it
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  all together, right, and so it's what allows there to be these kind
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  of crazy things happening, you know, whether it's space whales that can you
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  know, jump to the different universes, or you know, just midichlorians,
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  all of this type of stuff, right, all the weirdest stuff in Star
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  Wars. It all comes down to the fact that the force exists, and
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  I think that's the thing that I mean, at least for me, it's
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  one of those things where it makes it work for me. And I think
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  that's the thing maybe sometimes where people lose that aspect of Star Wars in some
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  ways, in the sense that we forget like you said, this is fantasy
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  as much it is is if anything, you know, it's sci fi fantasy.
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  It's those two things together, and fantasy has always had a much deeper
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  connection with magical, the mystical, the supernatural, all of those type of
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  things all come down to that there's something otherworldly that we can tap into,
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  and I think that that's a really interesting thing for me to be able to.
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  Then, I think it's when people miss that idea about Star Wars that
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  they do kind of get lost. Yeah, and that's where you know,
• 15:22
  you find people. I think that they just kind of miss it about what
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  Star Wars is and what can happen there. Well. I think also when
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  Star Wars gets weird, there is an embrace of the idea that there is
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  Star Wars getting comfortable with the fact that not all of the audience is going
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  to be along with them. And I think that's where your strongest storytelling sits
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  is whoever's at the helm, whoever it might be, not sitting down in
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  a boardroom and saying, well, whatever we construct has to appeal to the
• 15:56
  largest possible audience, but saying, look, they're either with us or they're
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  not, and let's just put it out there and we'll either have fans or
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  we'll have haters and that's fine, and we'll just walk away with it,
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  as opposed to yeah, I mean, look, the entertainment none of us
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  like is the stuff where we can tell that a board or a producer or
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  a room of producers or whomever sat in a room and said, well,
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  that's great, but can you give us this as well, because we want
• 16:27
  to try to tie in this sort of thing with it. And when Star
• 16:33
  Wars is weird, it is a commitment to the idea that we don't care
• 16:37
  about the merchandising half so much as we care about the storytelling. And I
• 16:44
  can respect something that says I don't care if you're along for the ride.
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  There are times where I don't respect it because I think where you also get
• 16:56
  into it is when Star Wars gets weird, it's also throwing down on the
• 17:00
  Gauntlet and saying, if you haven't been paying attention up to this point,
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  I'm not going to slow down for you. You have to make a commitment
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  to keep up or disengage. And this is the sort of thing that I
• 17:12
  struggle with is I'm always a big fan that if you come into a sequel,
• 17:18
  you should get up to speed and be able to plug in with what's
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  going on. I've said that numerous times, and I think the Ahsoka series
• 17:25
  does it. I think bad Batch does it. I think Tales of the
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  Jedi does it. But I will admit that if you haven't watched the material
• 17:34
  leading up to it, the weirdness gets lost on you. The distinction of
• 17:40
  being able to look at Balen's skull and Shinhati's lightsabers and say those aren't quite
• 17:48
  red? Why are they not as red as Darth Vader's saber? Why are
• 17:52
  they orangish? And Star Wars doesn't explain it, but leaves it there for
• 17:59
  you to say, yeah, so why is it different? And it's one
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  of those things where they tease you with the idea there's good there could be
• 18:08
  an explanation, or like the Pergle, there might not be right, and
• 18:14
  it's something for you to discuss. And I like that. I go along
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  with it. I like not being spoon fed everything. I like the fact
• 18:22
  that we can sit here and we can say, is it because Balen Skull
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  and Shinhati are a little bit different? Is that why their sabers are a
• 18:30
  little bit different? Is there something significant about the color of their sabers because
• 18:33
  they actually have a compatriot who has a truly read saber. Why is his
• 18:38
  saber that read? And why is there's not quite red? And you wind
• 18:41
  up talking about it and it's uh again, it gets back to the no
• 18:48
  definite answers sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you
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  on that, and I think that's one of the things that I find,
• 18:56
  you know, so interesting just about the series in general, and just where
• 19:03
  Star Wars does seem to be going and kind of embracing that idea of the
• 19:07
  weird. And I'm excited that that's the case because I find that to be
• 19:15
  where the Star Wars series is so subtly unexpected, right, you know,
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  and it allows you to be kind of odd, and I think that's something
• 19:32
  that we kind of miss a lot of times in our entertainment these days,
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  I think where we're just able to kind of sit back and go, wow,
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  that's cool, right, And part of that is just being able to,
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  I think, really enjoy the weird, the crazy, the out there,
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  the fun, and you know that's I love that kind of thing,
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  and I appreciate in many ways that Star Wars is allowing us to be able
• 20:04
  to experience that again through a series like Ahsoca or what they're doing something like
• 20:10
  you know, the stuff we've seen, the bad Batch or you know,
• 20:12
  any of that. I think it just makes it so much fun. And
• 20:18
  yeah, I really really enjoy that aspect of this show specifically. I think
• 20:25
  Ahsoka has done a great job in that, and I think that this will
• 20:29
  happen, but I hope that it's something that continues, right. I hope
• 20:33
  that it's something to where we're not afraid to get crazy. You know,
• 20:38
  let's just get weird with it. And at the same time, I think
• 20:42
  it's worth saying that this is not weird for weirdness sake. This is this
• 20:48
  is stuff that they're doing that's truly there to move the story forward, but
• 20:56
  also to give us that kind of wow moment that is an important distinction because
• 21:02
  you can get wacky with something like there's a difference between wacky and weird,
• 21:07
  and we're just getting wacky. It doesn't land the way that this does.
• 21:14
  And I know that there are probably people sort of like banging on whatever device
• 21:17
  that they're listening to, saying like, oh well, I didn't love Ahsoka
• 21:19
  as much as that. And that's the thing is I think what pushes me
• 21:23
  over the edge of Ahsoca is for all of the stuff that I would typically
• 21:26
  sort of nitpick in terms of technical stuff, is it gets back to exactly
• 21:30
  what you're talking about, where it's like, I know the weirdness has a
• 21:33
  story purpose, just like I knew in the prequels when something happened where I
• 21:41
  wasn't quite with it at first, I was like, okay, I know
• 21:44
  there's a like you know what, I'll throw Metichlorian's right out there where my
• 21:48
  first thing was like huh, and I have to walk out, and I
• 21:51
  started thinking about it. I actually wound up warming up to episode one very
• 21:56
  quickly and really digging it because I realized that a gauntlet was thrown down where
• 22:00
  it said this is a wacky idea. You have to think about this what
• 22:06
  does that mean for these sorts of things, And it's like, yes,
• 22:10
  like you said, it has a story purpose, it has a reason,
• 22:11
  it has a driver behind it. It's not just a decision for the sake
• 22:17
  of a decision. It has a purpose to it. And you can feel
• 22:22
  that there's a purpose with these things that we see here, and you know,
• 22:27
  to pull it out of the context of Ahsoca and put it in just
• 22:32
  to the second season of The Bad Batch. There are some crazy concepts in
• 22:34
  that as well. There's a crazy concept at the core of Bad Batch about
• 22:40
  Omega also being a clone of Django fet and it's something that I think my
• 22:48
  hope is that the reaction to Ahsoka has been positive enough with the weird aspect
• 22:52
  of it that it'll bring people over to other storytelling that's happening in Star Wars
• 23:00
  that also embraces the weird tales of the Jedi embrace the weird. Yeah,
• 23:06
  just that you know, the storyline with Dooku or the thing that happens with
• 23:11
  Ahsoka where you know, when she's an infant, like all of this stuff,
• 23:15
  and it embraces the weird, and that's what's interesting, That's what that's
• 23:19
  what keeps it from just being a plain old sequel to something Yeah, I
• 23:25
  agree, I agree. You know, I think I can't wait, you
• 23:30
  know, to see what's gonna happen next. You know, one of our
• 23:33
  friends, Bruce Gibson, we were talking back and forth the other day and
• 23:37
  he was like, I can't wait for what comes next for Star Wars.
• 23:41
  I don't want to wait, And I'm like, man, I'm right there
• 23:45
  with you. Man, I just I don't want to wait either, you
• 23:52
  know. And I'm excited to see where we go next with this. This
• 23:56
  Soaka and Ahsoka is a big part of that, but you know, I'm
• 24:02
  just as excited about Bad Batch three and and or season two and all the
• 24:07
  I mean, even the idea of the the Skeleton Crew sounds really interesting to
• 24:11
  me as well. You know, So all of these things that are coming
• 24:15
  here, I'm ready for and I can't wait to see what happens next.
• 24:21
  But you know, if John, if people wanted to catch up with you
• 24:23
  and talk about their favorite weird elements of the Star Wars universe, where would
• 24:27
  they find you? Well, gosh, they would find me out there between
• 24:32
  galaxies. As Kessel Junkie sending out a random signal that occasionally gets picked up.
• 24:37
  You can also find me right here on the Nerd Party Network co hosting
• 24:41
  a show called house Lights that I co host with Tristan Riddell and Darren Moser,
• 24:48
  where we talk about the works of directors through different combinations. And you
• 24:52
  can actually find me appearing every so often on the six point two Club over
• 24:56
  there on TFM Network with you, mister Matthew Rushing. Well, I'm excited
• 25:02
  about that. I always love when you join us, and hopefully people will
• 25:06
  check that out. You can find me all over the place on social media
• 25:10
  under the name Matt Rushing, Joe two, Twitter, Instagram, Letterbox,
• 25:12
  and Vero. You can also find me here on the network with Olpost talking
• 25:18
  about Harry Potter One Chapter a Time with drey Kaufman. You can also find
• 25:22
  me over on the TFM Network with a bunch of shows. Like John said,
• 25:26
  you can find me there in the six oh two Club talking about all
• 25:29
  those franchises that we love outside of Star Trek. Then you can find me
• 25:33
  inside the Star Trek universe with literary tracks the Orb Warp five, Artificial Tango,
• 25:37
  and Saddle Up. But John, you know, I think it's time
• 25:41
  to get back to the temple. I hear that gone ringing for our nightly
• 25:45
  meditation session, so I think it's time to close these negotiations. I shall
• 25:51
  continue meditating on what Balin skulls preferred brewery would be, and Master Rushing I
• 25:57
  agree these negotiations. Workers join the revolution, Join the Nerd Party.