I don’t think it’s confusing at all. The current canon can selectively incorporate elements of the old EU. Some classic EU being incorporated does not recanonize everything around those elements. It is best, for canon purposes, to treat the incorporated EU elements as if you don’t know about the EU.

I say this as someone who deeply enjoys the EU, and prefers it to the state of modern official canon.

I concur that for headcanon the tier list should be “things I personally enjoy>end”.

That’s a different discussion than how the canon is formally treated. If somebody asked what is canon, I would give a very different answer than if somebody asked what I personally consider an enjoyable interpretation of Star Wars.

I agree. That is what feeds into both my opinion that the plot is bizarre, and my enjoyment of the worldbuilding.

I have long thought that showing such a young Anakin was pointless, aside from establishing that he was born as the chosen one, which could have been covered in a flashback, timeskip, or just some dialog. All the other elements of the plot that were relevant to the trilogy would have worked with a 16 year old or so Anakin that was already in training. The plot of the movie just doesn’t quite work.

Putting that aside, I just really like Naboo. I like the planet, the designs, the society. Gungans (Jar-Jar aside) are actually really interesting. I like the dynamic they have with the Naboo human population. Plenty of room for side stories there.

Podracing, despite utterly dragging down the pace of the important story, is awesome. The designs, the vibe.

Darth Maul is, at least visually menacing. He is so interesting that later writers retconned his death and turned him into a real character.

There’s so much rich unique design and worldbuilding in Ep1 that it feels like skimming through a visual encyclopedia or something.

Unfortunately, the “promise” by Disney upon deleting the EU was a unified canon where all their Star Wars material would be equal. The reality is a lot messier now because canon conflicts still happen, but can’t be resolved officially by tiers.

The entire problem that older Star Wars fans have had with Disney Star Wars is that Disney is exceedingly inconsistent when it comes to what they consider canon and non canon.

Can you elaborate? It was my understanding that from the time Disney erased the EU everything that was newly produced by Disney (plus the existing movies and the Clone Wars cartoon) were all considered canon. Disney originally proposed eliminating tier structure of canon the EU had, which I know has led to some canon snarls in Disney canon, but those snarls are exactly because everything they produce is canon.

I like the faux multicam color choice for the camo.

heist

noun:

armed robbery

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heist

Yes. I always kind of glanced at these guys on the WGA website but finally digging in, I really like how there are actually visually distinct factions. It would have been so easy to make one set of models and tell people to paint the differently.

The vehicle designs from the 15mm and 6mm versions are nifty and really make me want to scratch build something in 28mm.

EP1 isn’t a good movie, if just looking at the main plot. The pacing is bizarre. A full 40+ minutes of that movie are dedicated to podracing. I remembered the podracing of course, but on a recent rewatch I was actually surprised by how much there was. Even as I kid I remember enjoying the podracing but thinking something was really weird about how it was taking time away from Naboo and the trade federation situation that was clearly more epic.

I think what EP1 did was have a vision about the universe of Star Wars. Even if the plot was bizarre, EP1 captured that magic of having a world that dangled lots of intriguing things in front of me that made me want to know more. It didn’t just feel like “The Original Trilogy (Again)”. The republic era was different structurally and aesthetically while being believable as the same universe as the originals.

The amount of EU material set in the prequel era illustrates what kind of creative playground the movies left behind for others.

The railgun tech was being developed by BAE and General Atomics, who aren’t exactly homespun upstarts when it comes to having a say in things.

I think it was more a matter of the technology not quite being mature enough for the desired application. There tends to be an overlapping period in military tech development where the technology exists and even works, but it doesn’t work well enough to displace existing systems. There’s always a kind of hindsight factor when new tech, especially radical new tech, get adopted. It’s either adopted too early and everyone complains about the perfectly good, tried & true systems being replaced by fancy high tech junk, or it’s adopted once it’s fully mature and people shake their heads and ask why not sooner.