Bet against heavy odds - crossword puzzle clues & answers ...

To those who've know me I've written a variation of this post almost a year ago which you can find here: The Importance of Star Wars's lack of Source Material. Some elements from that post will be utilized and repurposed here.
Some quick clarification before we begin, when I say Source Material, I'm talking about traditional source material such as preexisting titles. Obviously we can talk about the many stories, movies and real life events that inspired Star Wars until you're blue in the face.
Star Wars is in a unique position amongst the "biggest film franchises if all time." It's not only one of the oldest ones still going to this day, it's one of the very few that doesn't have traditional source material. It all started with one movie and has since branched out both forward and outwards. In a nutshell, it's one gigantic story that has kept going for over forty years.
The MCU has comics, Harry Potter has books, Transformers has the G1 Cartoon, Resident Evil has video games, The Lego Movies have toys and Battleship had a board-game (Remember that one...).
Though not a franchise, Titanic, the third highest grossing film of all time, is still based off a real event. To really hammer this in one of the very first things you see in the movie is the actual ship. Not a model or CGI or anything but the actual physical wreck sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Funny enough Jack Dawson was a real person on the ship, except he was a Steward and he died that night. Even in real life there wasn't enough room on that wood for two (I Jokes).
It goes even further than that though, some of the most acclaimed and celebrated films of all time have some sort of source material.
Gone With the Wind was based off of a book, Hamlet (1948) was based off the play by Shakespeare, The Godfather was based off a book and Titanic was based on a real event.
Now this isn't me trying to say how "110% Originality is automatically better." There's a reason those films I mentioned above are as acclaimed as they are. As we shall discuss, 110% originality is not easy by any stretch and can create issues later on.
Star Wars obviously isn't the only successful franchise to lack source material. Alien, Terminator, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Fast and Furious, and probably the one that's lasted even longer than Star Wars; Star Trek. With the release of Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek has managed to keep its story going (for better or worse) since 1966. Star Trek is probably an even bigger accomplishment than Star Wars ever was considering how shows/ movies and countless other things it has gone through.
Star Wars does not have books, comics, stage plays, or anything of the sort in which it was derived from. It is the creation of George Lucas’s mind with the assistance of those who worked on the films. Sure it took great inspiration from other films/ stories and real world events, but that’s just all part of the process of making a movie.
This might seem like a "no duh" type post but I'd argue that this is ultimately what makes Star Wars, Star Wars. It isn't the X-Wings, it isn't The Force, it isn't Pod Racing, it isn't the Porgs, and it certainly isn't the God Damn CG flips.....
I'd argue it's the fact that Star Wars is this big, fantastical, mysterious, highly ambitious, huge concept, "universe" that exists in movie form. It has a different set of expectations than say most other franchises I mentioned before. It's a visual-auditory experience that is very hard to get anywhere else.
I also think it's important to understand where Star Wars has come from in order to understand where it might be headed. What does the future of Star Wars hold? I have no idea and that's kind of exciting wouldn't you say? Ultimately this is the sort of grand point I'm trying to make.
Next time you decide to watch the OT start to finish, really focus on the story of those three movies forget about everything that came before and after it and any stories set between those movies and pay attention on how each movie "leads to the next." You'd be surprised just how few clues there were for how the story unfolds. The films always kept throwing curves at us and be unexpected along the way. We sort of took it for granted and just wanted to see what happens next without giving it too much thought.
Sure the Rebels defeating the Empire is fairly obvious but let's say it's 1977, you just watched Star Wars and someone wearing a trench coat with a sonic screwdriver says to you, "this movie will have two sequels, the first one it will be revealed that Darth Vader is Luke's father and the second one Luke and Leia are related and Vader will return to the light and defeat the emperor."
Would you believe that? I wouldn't and yet that all happened anyways.
The structure that Star Wars has been running on since day one is fairly "complex" and some fans really don't want to learn about for one reason or another.
The OT is about as Hero's Journey as a story can get.
The PT on the other hand is more like greek tragedy. Everyone who went into the theatre when TPM was released in 1999 knew exactly how that trilogy was going to end. The part that interested everyone was the moment of catharsis where you go "Oh! That's why that happened."
But then comes the sort of issue Star Wars has face since the OT ended: The Expansion. This is an issue that just comes with time and progress really. To demonstrate what I mean, here is my attempt to present A New Hope from a 2020 perspective:
"So Darth Vader is chasing his daughter Princess Leia, a key member in the rebellion, who has stolen plans for a space station they just built. Said plans were literally stolen not even ten minutes ago with Vader watching them escape. But said space Station was in the works decades ago and the plans were first given to Count Dooku during The Clone Wars. The Clones of said Clone Wars were actually created by Dooku himself so that one day they could get rid of the Jedi altogether. They just so happen to fly over Vader's home planet where his son Luke and former mentor Obi-Wan are living. Obi-Wan has been living there for about twenty years doing "things" such as killing Darth Maul, someone who Vader himself was almost killed by when he was a child. Obi-Wan was also the one who brought Luke to tattoine in the first place as he had severely wounded Anakin forcing him to don the robotic black suit he now wears. Also the plans are being held by two droids, one of which Vader built while the other was his companion during many missions in his prime. Also on said planet is Han Solo, who played an unintentional role is starting the rebellion some ten years prior to and owes money to Jabba the Hutt, who once owned Vader and his mother as a slave some 40 odd years ago or so, is just chilling in a Cantina with Chewbacca someone that many Jedi of the past are familiar with. Also there is Greedo, someone Anakin knew when he was a kid, works for Jabba and threatens Han if he doesn't pay up the money he owes. Also it turns out the weakness in said battle station came about because the lead architect was forced against his will to work on it and installed a weakness so small that no one would notice."
Lord knows I probably missed some stuff but does that sound like the movie we all watched when we were eight years old?
Not in the slightest and that's my point. With the presence of so much extended material over the decades it can turn something like A New Hope, a movie that changed cinema forever, and make it feel like "Two Hours of Star Wars Content."
Reddit user u/Harold3456 highlights what I am trying to say:
"If there's one thing I kind of like about all the Star Wars movies (even the prequels... kinda) it's how minimalist they are with their exposition. They work as wish fulfillment space fantasy because they allow everyone to believe they could have these adventures. As such, they manage to give us the perfect minimum amount of exposition to ensure we believe Luke's journey."
For myself, trying to treat the Galaxy Far, Far Away as if it were a real tangible place and that all the movies/ books/ comics are "documentaries" of sorts for it just doesn't work for. It makes conversations about canon and lore to be incredibly boring and very skin deep. When was the last time you had any sort of meaningful conversation on the topic of Canon? I've never had one and I don't think I'll ever have one.
Fiction is fiction at the end of the day and I prefer to keep it that way.
And then we have the ST, a trilogy that for the first time in literal decades we had an open ended Star Wars story. How was it going to end? I couldn't have told you. I could have thrown some darts and maybe got a bullseye or two but I couldn't really say where anything was headed. I figured that this trilogy was largely going to be about Rey and Ben eventually coming together, I guessed the "Legacy Characters" were going to be these sort of "broken" versions of who they once were thinking back to the old days when things were much simpler, and that the whole thing was going to have a sort of 'meta' feeling to itself.
To point fingers for a moment, I think this is where some fans get confused. They are trying to put the ST through a lens that Star Wars has not had since the OT. Just about every major Star Wars production has been about pre-determined events and the moment of catharsis, or shedding some light on an aspect that hasn't been explored much.
And this isn't just a Star Wars issue but you see it with most of our entertainment. How many new shows like West World for example come along and most of the conversation is largely "how does it end" "What's the big pay off" "How does this set up something in the future."
Now these aren't bad questions to ask at all, the problem I've been noticing over the years is that "this is all anyone wants to talk about anymore." I never watched Game of Thrones but man oh man, whenever a season was airing and seeing the many social media posts/ comments about it day in and day out was just exhausting... and most of them were mainly "this is how this THING pays off in the future."
It's less about finding enjoyment or meaning in something you watch and more about "trying to be ahead of it," and never being wrong, ever. As if we all developed Atychiphobia and the very notion that we might be incorrect is just heresy. We're all too obsessed with the "Hollywood Ending" as it were with everything needed to be wrapped up nicely. It might explain the obsession with "plot holes" in the last decade or so as these things don't turn into meaning anymore just bullet points on paper, stripping away the emotion of it all.
To point to Marvel and the MCU for a moment....
With Avengers: Endgame, I knew exactly what was going to happen in that movie right down to the time travel plot (though it is becoming more and more difficult to even be surprised by MCU movies but that’s a discussion for another day). You can look to the source material to make an educative guess as to what things may or may not happen. The source material is a sort authority to the films. Even moments like Captain America using Thor’s Hammer have been done in the comics before so it isn’t so surprising to see it finally happen.
Of course changes can be made to fit whatever story is being told. Thanos wanting to get the Infinity Stones to wipe out half the universe in Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin, which Infinity War is loosely based on, was to attract Mistress Death, while in the film Thanos does it as he believes that over population will lead to end of everything as what happened to his planet. But the overall “goal” is still wipe out half the universe for reason X. Needless to say I’m glad they went with what happened in the movie because if they seriously tried to use the version in the comic… yikes.
Listening to interviews with Josh Brolin and the Russos it seems they took inspiration from many Marlon Brando movies and performances, specifically Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (more on this one in a bit) when developing Thanos.
But Source Material isn't the be all end all when it comes to movies that are adapted from. Many great adaptations have taken their source material and made their own thing out of it. Giving it a new identity that in some ways is better. I recommend watching the Gigguk video Source Material Is Irrelevant for more insight into this.
The Godfather is a great example of this. The Godfather book written by Mario Puzo, while a best seller, isn't regarded the same way as the movie is (I can only read descriptions of Sonny's huge Penis for so long....). But Francis Ford Coppola found a way to turn that into a cinematic work of art that is still widely celebrated to this day.
And then there is Apocalypse Now. One of the greatest war movies of all time and a movie that has weirdly been in the "shadows" of Star Wars since day one... even though it came out a few years after. The movie was based off of the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and was written in 1899. Fifteen years before even the first world war and was largely centred around Cornad's travels in the Congo River. Coppola more or less took the basic idea, set in the Vietnam War (very fitting) and made dramatic changes that helped make it into the movie that it eventually turned into.
But that's one major example of source material being used to create something dramatically different than what was before.
The same can be said about the many Shakespeare adaptations. Romeo and Juliet) and Romeo + Juliet are inspired by the same stage play but are both wildly different movies.
Source material can be a sort of authority or guidance for that matter. If you've ever watched a movie based off a book you have read sometime before it's a completely different experience than say watching a movie based on a book you haven't read. That was my experience watching the Hunger Games movies. Myself and two other have read them all while out fourth friend had not but wanted to watch them anyway as he was a fan of Jennifer Lawrence. Needless to say we had a bit of a different experience with the movies. Though we all agreed that Catching Fire was the best one.
Star Wars doesn't really have that though. There's an endless sea of Lore you could memorize but aside from answering next week's crossword puzzle or winning some trivia contest it doesn't really have that same feeling.
There aren't any guidelines, blueprints, architects for how Star Wars film are supposed to be. March of last year, The Last Jedi Novelization Writer Jason Fry wrote a wonderful thread talking about how The Empire Strikes Back, when you splice it, is a very strange follow up to A New Hope. Both in a Story and a Filmmaking perspective.
But then comes to double edged sword of this all. Because there is no source material and you have to look outside the movies in order to get the answers you might want, it creates a connection that can ultimately be destructive if not kept in check.
Reddit user u/sccorby writes as follows:
"On the one hand this universe is so appealing to the imagination because the stuff we conjure up in our heads becomes the source material in a way.
When we fill the void left by not having pre-existing (and accepted) source material with our own thoughts, we create a powerful personal connection with this story.
But with that connection, comes a sense of attachment to the stuff we come up with. And because there is no “guide” to keep our imaginations in check, for better or worse we as fans take on a sense of ownership of “what I think it should be” that can inevitably turn us away from enjoying what we eventually see on screen... simply because it wasn’t what we imagined so vividly.
That’s the experience I had as a 9th grader with the prequels when TPM came out. I had spent my child hood imagining what this story would be like, what the Clone Wars were, how Anakin fell, and ultimately couldn’t accept the prequels because they were so vastly different from what I imagined.
When people feel like that, it’s often not accompanied by a ton of self-awareness around why they feel like that, and simply dismiss the film as “bad”."
I'd argue this outright explains some of the more... "extreme" reactions to put it lightly. The connection we get with thus stuff is oftentimes greater than say anything that happens in a... (throws a dart) Marvel movie. With Marvel, there's thousands of comics to look at and say "well this is gonna happen based in this particular issue, all these exact characters were in this location when X occurred meaning it eventually build up to Y appearing which will cause Z to happen and that's what Avengers 5 will be about."
Star Wars doesn't have that. There's "I think this is gonna happen because.... reasons."
And No, The EU (Legends) is not, repeat, is not source material. Say it with me, The EU (Legends) is not source material. It's an entire different type of flying... altogether. If anything it's sort of the opposite, the movies are the source material for the books/ comics/ etc as they build off stuff from there. i can guarantee, half these books that get written are a "response" of sorts to whatever movie is about to come out.
It's interesting when the EU was dubbed "non-canon" seeing the myriad of responses. Most of them were... stupid but like my experience with the Hunger Games movies they highlight a sort of mentality that some fans have.
First off, the EU (Legends) was not as widely consumed as some might have built it up to be. Heir to the Empire, the series that basically started the whole thing, sold about 5 million copies per book.
Star Wars (A New Hope) sold 178.1 Million Tickets through release and multiple re-releases. The Last Jedi Sold 67.7 Million Tickets in its initial run. I think Solo sold more tickets than Heir to the Empire sold copies but that's just speculation.
So in addition to not being on the same level as consumption to the movies the reactions to when that news struck revealed an interesting revelation of sorts.
First off, fans mad that their collective knowledge that they have spent years/ decades memorizing and impressing chicks at the bar with was now flushed down the can. They'd be going into any new movie cold turkey and there was nothing they could do about it. Sure they could shout and say "Well it's still canon to me!" but that doesn't really do anything except make you look like an entitled dick.
Secondly, and I think this might be at least A major reason, fans would no longer be able to say "I know what's gonna a happen next." But that advantage is now "taken away" so to speak. No longer will they be able to pick up chick and wins bar bets (ok that's an exaggeration but you get the idea). They would have been in the driver seat with both hands on the wheel.
We live in a society (*Wink* *Wink*) where spoiler culture is dumb and stupid. And I get it, I don't want to be spoiled but something I'm looking forward to. Movies/ games/ book/ television, I want to be surprised and experience this stuff for myself as does anyone else. But the extremes people go to and how much they obsess over it is ridiculous. When Marvel released that video titled "Don't Spoil the Endgame" I rolled my eyes something fierce. Is this the level we are at now?
The worst part is, everyone who worked on Endgame and the way Marvel talked about it all pointed to to the same thing: "Everyone and their dog knows whats going to happen in this movie." Even the lengths the Russos went to Keep Their Cast in the Dark about it was ridiculous. Because that certainly leads to better performances.....
If you're like me (at least not too much like me) you probably look at these live action remakes of classic Disney films and ask "why?" Then you see their opening weekend number and then their final box offices and go "Oh, that's why." Seriously, The Lion King made like Jurassic World level box office and this surprised no one at all.
Secretly, Audiences loves knowing spoilers ahead of time. It's why these remakes do so well in box office. To further this, The More spoilers you know ahead of time, the more you're likely to enjoy something.
Two of the best selling video games of recent memory are Persona 5: The Royal, an updated version of Persona 5 with largely the same story but with added content and Final Fantasy VII Remake, a remake of the 1997 classic Final Fantasy VII. If you're playing either of these games, you've probably played the original versions of them. I certainly have and enjoy them both greatly.
All fo this is to say that the EU being nuked for some fans wasn't just having their collective knowledge being thrown away, it was a signal that "you're not in the driver seat." That might be a bit extreme but that's how I see it.
To anyone who says the EU "ShOuLd hAvE bEeN AdApTeD" into movies, go outside, preferably practicing social distancing, and smell the roses.
But don't take this massive post to say "no source material is better," because it isn't. At the end of the day whether your movie is 7th in a franchise or whatever you're still trying to tell a story at the end of the day that will resonate with people on some level.
With Star Wars, you're sort of working from scratch and the same cloth at the same time. You have to actively make everything. The characters, the locations, the costumes, the ships, the droids, ETC. And so far that has yet to reel any sort of results. The approach so far seems to be "hand this filmmaker a trilogy and let them go nuts," but we have yet to see that and how it plays out. It doesn't help when some of these directors that have been fired (and there have been a lot) it's done so in such a public and dramatic fashion that you can't help but wonder "everything good?"
Pheeeeeeewwwwww.
This is probably the longest post I have ever written.... but I felt this sub needed some "different" content outside of what we usually do. If there is something you feel I missed, please let me know, I have some other think pieces I'd like to present here.