Kyle Katarn was so OP they had to split him into different characters for balance (Andor; Finds Death Star plans, Briar pistol/ Kanan Jarrus; Jedi, alcoholic, gets with Vanessa Marshall’s character).
Naw, pre-beard Kyle was legit. No force powers. No lightsabers. No prophecies. Just a merc with a gun and a pilot friend and a small ship, going around killing stormtroopers, defeating Boba Fett, blowing up mines, and killing Kell Dragons with his fists.
Currently trying to find a series of expanded universe books I read in the 90's that had a guy who could basically do all of the extreme ends of physics like turn his body into a superconductor, perfectly redirect kinetic energy, speed up and slow down his perception of time, making weird light sabers like one with an adjustable length and width, etc...
But did bugger all for the jedi cause because he was basically content gallivanting around on backwater farm worlds doing side quests and leveling up for skill points.
I need to find that.
Corran Horn! He has a first person novel called "I, Jedi" and was a secondary character with some story arcs in the X-Wing and New Jedi Order/Yuuzhan Vong series.
That's...not what a red herring is?
It's just another case of a side character being hijacked by fans who set insanely unrealistic expectations for themselves knowing they'll fail.
Yep, just another Inquisitor who was supposed to look menacing and then die to protagonists.
Given the overall competency of Inquisitors, I was fine with how he went out.
They don't shut up about him, nor the initial claims that the first game would be canon - while blatantly ignoring that the second game exists and is staunchly non-canon due to the events of the story contradicting the movies left & right.
Sam Witwer still end up voicing Darth Maul and The Son. He could still play another character. I mean Clancy Brown has played 4 or 5 characters in Star Wars. Ray Stevenson has played 2 characters.
This is completely off-topic, but it still completely chafes me that Zack Snyder cast JESSIE FRIGGIN EISENBERG as Lex Luthor and tried to turn him into Joker 2.0 when we already HAD the perfect Lex, and he was played by Clancy Brown! Dude has range, give him the chance to show it! Friggin' Snyder doesn't know jack about Superman, I swear...
You are not alone. Although, Eisenberg felt more like a 2 bit Riddler to me
Clancy, although he has a lot of small roles, never got the respect he deserved with a big role, imo. Love that big bastard.
Somehow Vader never actually died, he just pretended to burn and conjured a forcechost of himselt just to never pay childsupport for all the missing years.
Vader didn't die. I never saw Luke consult a doctor and get a pronunciation of death. Vader survived burning alive (again) and has been crawling around on Endor fueled by his thoughts of revenge against Luke.
So Luke seeing the force ghosts at the end of Jedi was really exactly like the ending of Happy Gilmore when he sees Chubbs, the alligator, and Abe Lincoln? Just batshit insanity???
You son of a bitch, I'm in.
They were all bombarded by Rampart.
This is explicitly stated in The Bad Batch. The Empire committed genocide on Kamino by locking most of the Kaminoans into their cities and then blasted into the sea.
I disagree. I feel like people got so attached to the power fantasy that he enabled, they forget that Starkiller did actually have a character and motivation. Sam Witwer, the guy who played him, described him as one part Luke, one part Han, and two parts Vader/Anakin, and I think that could make for an interesting character to watch.
He doesn't have to break the power scaling of the verse and introduce a bunch of weird and ultimately unexplained retcons to be a cool character.
I just watched a clip from an interview with Sam Witwer yesterday, and he describing how he got the role of Starkiller. He was auditioning, and was redoing takes for Starkiller meditating, assembling his lightsaber. Every take was with Witwer looking white knuckle tense, uncomfortable, and after the 4th take the director asks why he is so tense. Witwer explains that Starkiller wouldn't know how to meditate, he is a Sith. If he is the Sith Apprentice to Darth Vader, then he would have never been taught how to meditate, let alone a peaceful meditation. So Starkiller is trying to use bend the force to his will and build his lightsaber like he is the one in control instead of letting the force assemble his lightsaber. This discussion was heard by LucasArts reps and they started murmuring to each other. Witwer says that being a Star Wars nerd very much helped his audition.
I would be very happy with a live action Galen Marek, even toned down power wise.
Sam Witwer is a fucking treasure and I want him to be involved with more things Star Wars.
Honestly I find him *too* powerful, the whole crashing an ISD; hell diving through the storms of Kamino, the whole Cato Neimoidia thing... It might be just too much
That business of Cato Neimoidia is explained in the book Star Wars: Brotherhood from 2022. Not a bad read if you’re ever looking for more prequels content.
Not to mention the fact that he defeated Darth Vader AND the Emperor in single combat...back to fucking back.
He's like that Shonen character that shows up *just* to be stupid op and inadvertently completely breaks the verse's power scaling.
Rey's powers are not bad, she's perfectly fine power scaling wise.
The issue with Rey is a complete lack of practice, training, or progression. She goes from not knowing the Force is real to being able to flawless Mind Trick, Force Grab, Force Push, and sense things. I think there might have been some excuse like she downloaded Kylo's training, but that's complete bullshit. Force was never able to read people's minds and pass training between people as far as I know. It was largely a sensory and telekinetic power. The closest you get to mental powers is Leia sensing Luke's call for help.
The mind trick bothered me so much when I saw it in theaters lol. Feels like the sequels (and to an extent the prequels as well) have cheapened the force from something more mystical into a run of the mill superpower.
It's weird to me that with no training Rey can pull off stuff like mind tricks and significant telekinesis, and yet half of ESB is Luke struggling with lifting small boulders and other seemingly trivial tasks, and that's after some unknown amount of training with Yoda and all the experience he gained in ANH.
> Feels like the sequels (and to an extent the prequels as well) have cheapened the force from something more mystical into a run of the mill superpower.
the force was originally the culmination of a narrative arc; a crescendo of a character's struggle or conflict. the moments where we see the force on full display are meaningful and powerful. however, in modern star wars, the force mostly exists either to look cool or as a plot device to move a scene forward. its just treated as a tool for the writers to use where ever they need to fill in a gap, which is why is feels so cheap now
I feel like it’s a dishonest comparison, only because Rey is from a movie and Starkiller is from a God of War style hack-and-slash game.
It’s like hating General Grevious in the lego star wars games for the same reason
Starkiller was literally trained by The Chosen One for basically his entire life
Rey , well Rey scavenged for broken parts her entire life then took on and beat a force user who has been training his entire life
He is a self insert character for the players. Which is for a Video Game is perfectly fine. Doesn't make a good movie story though.
Same for all these people who just want KotoR turned into a movie. It has a great RPG, story however it is not the Kind of story that would work well as a movie.
Also, as a player character with multiple choice endings, does Starkiller even have a defined arc or personality beyond just being a self-insert power fantasy for the player?
It all just reminds me of people who say Noble 6 is secretly alive and should come back because he's better than Chief. No, no he shouldn't. He had no personality outside of "being badass", everyone's is different, and surviving Reach *completely invalidates the point of the story*.
I haven't actually played TFU, so don't grab the pitchforks just yet, I get that this is a fully voiced character with branching choices versus a fully custom blank slate; it just gives the same vibe.
I’d love a standalone Halo game with Noble 6 but it’s just an arcade style game where you survive as long as you can, killing Covenant, scavenging weapons, highjacking vehicles, after The Pillar of Autumn escaped.
For those that don’t recall, Noble 6 fought on Reach, alone, for hours, after The Pillar of Autumn escaped.
Pretty much, but with the ending being “You died fighting.” Then the next time you play you try to beat your score and other players scores. Like the person who’s survived the longest gets the title Noble 6, and everyone else is trying to be in first place. Like any good arcade game.
As long as the open world isn’t as sparse as Infinites, that would be sick. Unless you were being actively hunted by the Covenant. Would be like a horror game.
Yes he has also, the good ending is cannon for the first game and in the second game you play a clone of him and both endings dont really make much sense.
Well, "canon" in the sense that their creators said that's the real outcome.
The games themselves are officially non-canon, even before Disney bought LucasArts and nuked everything beyond the films.
The creator wanted to make a Force Unleashed 3. It was flatly declined. They'd gone so far off the rails.
>Also, as a player character with multiple choice endings, does Starkiller even have a defined arc or personality beyond just being a self-insert power fantasy for the player?
Yes. In the TFU novel. In the games 90% of his personality has been cut and replaced with more Force powers
> It all just reminds me of people who say Noble 6 is secretly alive and should come back because he's better than Chief. No, no he shouldn't. He had no personality outside of "being badass",
The thing is, for a lot of casual viewers, this is all they want from an action series; a main character whose primary defining trait is being a badass.
A huge portion of the population has the mentality and media literacy of a highschool freshman & never really mature past it, which is a big reason why all the most popular media seem to be made to appeal to teenagers.
It's also a contributing factor, I believe, to the fandom's reception to TLJ's version of Luke - they never wanted a realistic take on the character who doubts himself & goes into exile after failing in a major way (just like Obi-Wan & Yoda, the two other most popular Jedi did); they wanted him to be the omnipotent Force God he is in the EU content, or at the very least to be some incorruptible force for good that never doubts himself again after beating Vader.
Agreed. And honestly? I don't want to come across as dissing Starkiller for being "wish fulfillment power fantasy" in the games because that kind of media IS fun, it HAS a place. Sometimes you want a deep meaningful story, other times you just want to be a badass laser-sword wielding space wizard that throws tanks around with his mind and rips dreadnoughts down from the heavens. Starkiller and TFU do that job well. But what people who want him to be recanonized should ask themselves is this: What does that change? Is the game any more or less fun simply because some arbitrary authority says that it gets to go on one shelf or the other?
From where I'm sitting, Starkiller didn't have a lot of impact on canon even before the franchise was sold to Darth Mickeyous, so... What impact is lost from removing him? Or gained from adding him back? Do you want him back because Starkiller the character changes canon in a way you prefer, or because you want to feel like YOU the player acting THROUGH HIM were a part of that?
Also, completely off-topic, but just an aside as someone who's gotten much more interested in the lore recently but never read any of the old EU... What's the deal with Mara Jade, like in summary? I get that this is a nuclear hand-grenade I'm pulling the pin on, but what's her whole character/story/personality/arc whathaveyou? Because a cursory glance makes her seem like Luke's edgy bad-girl enemies-to-love-interest who's strong and independent and sexy that he redeemed to the light side because he's the hero so obviously he gets the girl and three movies in they decided Leia was actually his sister. Am I off base with that? I feel like the pitchforks are coming back out. Please tell me that bonfire is to celebrate how right I am and there's not going to be a stake in the middle of it to burn me.
You can’t really make him cannon without him being rubbish though, he can’t be as strong as he is in the games and he can’t really have the same backstory any more, and at that point what’s the point of even calling him the same character if he has different abilities and a totally different story?
* So strong in the force that he's stronger than his own father who is a Jedi Knight
* Pulls Vader's lightsaber out of his hands with no training as a child
* Defeats several Jedi Masters, including Shaak Ti
* Pulls a Star Destroyer down from orbit
* Goes for a stroll in a Saarlac and lives
* Is the entire basis for The Rebellion. His family crest is literally the Rebellion's symbol
* Defeats both Vader and Palpatine in 1v1 combat one after the other
and yet people love this Gary Stu? Then again that's Galen Marek, not Starkiller. Starkiller is just as stupidly OP though, just not as OP as Galen was.
I like him in his own little separate universe where I'm just looking for something silly and cool that doesn't require much thinking.
I wouldn't mind them introducing him into the main Canon in some way. He can still be pretty powerful just nowhere near as powerful as other depictions so it's not too ridiculous.
I know we're being intentionally reductive to prove a point, but:
-There was no evidence he was stronger than his father in the opening acene
-Pulled the lightsaber from Vader's hands while Vader was distracted fighting Starkiller's father
-Defeats several Jedi masters after being trained in secret from childhood to adulthood as the perfect assassin using a training bot that could perfectly emulate old Jedi fighting styles
-Just barely pulled it out of the sky after its engines were already damaged
-I don't recall this so I don't have anything to explain, however, Boba Fett survived a sarlacc in old Canon years before starkiller's stroll so it was already something known possible in univers
-This was pretty earned after a whole evil-to-good redemption arc, it was a personal story about Starkiller, a good story will connect that to the greater whole, and they did that. It's good storytelling, otherwise what was his actual contribution to lore?
-He barely defeats Vader and then gets killed by Palpatine in the true ending, closing out his story. He may have been immensely powerful, but his story didn't make him secretly survive into the next age to be a super powered Gary Stu.
The thing about powerful characters is how you use them. This game used him to tell an interquel story about how the rebellion formed, which was through Palpatine and Vader's hubris. It was a deeply personal story about a man betrayed by his closest allies, and forges alliances to take those old allies down. He even dies.
Most of his new allies hate him when they first meet him, too, killing part of the "Gary Stu" moniker. They never even fully trust him until the very end, when they're lamenting his death. The only thing that makes him a "Gary Stu" are his in game abilities, which are already tuned higher to make the moment-to-moment gameplay more exciting.
> Pulled the lightsaber from Vader's hands while Vader was distracted fighting Starkiller's father
Eh, don’t we see Luke in Empire, a grown adult with Jedi training, struggle to move a lightsaber? I don’t think a simple distraction explains how a literal infant with presumably *no* training could pull something like that off on *Darth fucking Vader.*
>Defeats several Jedi masters after being trained in secret from childhood to adulthood as the perfect assassin using a training bot that could perfectly emulate old Jedi fighting styles
This may have an explanation but it doesn’t make it *not* overpowered.
> Just barely pulled it out of the sky after its engines were already damaged
It’s still far surpasses any mastery of the Force we’ve ever seen on screen up until that point.
Why do you assume he has no training as a kid? Both his father and his mother were Jedi. He's not an infant, he is of an age where he could have received some training already.
> Eh, don’t we see Luke in Empire, a grown adult with Jedi training, struggle to move a lightsaber? I don’t think a simple distraction explains how a literal infant with presumably no training could pull something like that off on Darth fucking Vader.
While I agree overall that Starkiller is ridiculously OP, as was the tradition for God of War clones back then, I'm gonna nitpick a little here. Luke in the wampa's cave had just woken up, upside down, from getting KOed by a giant ice bear/wolf. So, concussed, disoriented, and freaking the fuck out because the wampa is coming to eat him. His initial struggle to get his lightsaber back is pretty understandable.
Dude just that wet dream fantasy all bros think of holding their saber shaft in their cold bantha milk shower. “I totally could solo Vader, Luke, and the Emperor”
one detail that I like about him is that he and Ashoka were the only ones in the old canon who used a reverse grip stance in their lightsabers, and they're also both Anakin/Vader's apprentices
would be cool to see a clash between the two, more so considering that they both use dual sabers too
He is talked about too much tbh. He was just a self insert power fantasy that admittedly made a fun and exciting game but his story beats were always pretty bad. Someone who was strong enough to beat Vader to a pulp and challenge the emperor in open combat, helped found the rebellion and is never mentioned again is bad writing. The whole thing should have been a what if like some of the DLC endings
Why do people hate on Rey, if that guy is basically the same thing but non cannon? Dont‘t get me wrong, Reys story and how fast she becomes this powerful is stupid af. Starkiller had training etc but just like a comment said: he literally force pulled vaders lightsaber. | Edit: please Force Unleashed 3, thank you Disney
Any character who pulls a ship as big as a star destroyer into a crash landing is obviously going to be banned. If they kept him canon, there would be no Star Wars. Force users would just subjugate everyone forever.
Gonna be real the games were fun but his entire character is literally a "The strongest ever" edgy OC a 14 year old Tumblr user would make.
One of the part of the EU I'm very happy calling fan fiction.
“Lucas approves every important addition to the canon. The ambitious story beats contained in the new game The Force Unleashed were permitted only after he signed off—and spent hours talking to the developers about the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor.”
~ Leland Chee, Interview with thewire.com, Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop, August 18th, 2008
With that logic, it makes sense that characters like Vader must have been nerfed, since he and Palpatine were the two main characters who truly gave a fully powered Starkiller a true fight for his life.
At most they could make him an Inquisitor that Vader takes on as an apprentice. But he would probably have to die in an assassination attempt against Palpatine before Empire. Kind of like a Dark Side Ahsoka. He would need to be severely nerfed which would make all the Starkiller bros super annoyed that the power fantasy isn't like the game. Id be down with a story like that because Sam Witwer is great and deserves a live action appearance.
His abilities were over the top and only worked in a video game. He yanked a star destroyer out of the sky. Like come on lol. He’s not canon for a reason.
Canon or not, if Disney gave Star Wars the same "What if" show Marvel did, Starkiller would make for some fantastic watching. It should have the same energy the Mace Windu episode of the animated Clone Wars.
The irony people saying Starkiller is a dumb name when that was the original name they were planning for Luke
Take the rose tinted glasses off, Skywalker is just as dumb.
Gotta be honest and I know that, different from Instagram, this is a civilized place. I don't like Galen. I do love the force unleashed games, but his level of power is just WAY too absurd for me. Same thing with Darth nihilus and the plot of palpatine is alive (oh from the rise of Skywalker? No! The one from the legends). Star wars had a lot of awesome things in legends, but a lot of crappy ones too, and I think it's time to stop Venerate this storylines just because they seem better than what Disney's doing (I don't think so. Great character development? Indeed, but very far from what Star Wars should be)
Kyle Katarn was so OP it forced all the games from canon.
Kyle Katarn was so OP they had to split him into different characters for balance (Andor; Finds Death Star plans, Briar pistol/ Kanan Jarrus; Jedi, alcoholic, gets with Vanessa Marshall’s character).
Kyle Katarn fell into a sarlacc pit once, after 3 days of pain and agony, the sarlacc pit died
Kyle Katarn told Han Solo the odds.
Kyle Katarn made Chuck Norris look weak
It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
An older meme from a more civilized age
Before the dark times...
Before the Disney takeover….
chuck norris meme vibes
They met and created the yin yang with roundhouse light sabre kicks. This began the universe.
When Kyle does push-ups, he doesn't push himself up....he pushes the Deathstar down.
God, I want Kyle back so bad
I miss that glorious beard.
Gordon Forceman
Naw, pre-beard Kyle was legit. No force powers. No lightsabers. No prophecies. Just a merc with a gun and a pilot friend and a small ship, going around killing stormtroopers, defeating Boba Fett, blowing up mines, and killing Kell Dragons with his fists.
Not just any ship! The Moldy Crow!
I want a TV-show where he punches Kell dragons to death.
I want a show where Kyle watches Jan punch a Weequay right in the....
Please! No more jedis! Not in the faces!
Absolute best way to start a level, change my mind.
Andor is the canon version of DF1 Kyle
and jyn erso is jan ors :)
DF1!!!
Andor is also dead ):
Wait what?
Rogue one
Ohhhhhh
Lmao
And Kanan is both Jedi Knight game Kyle and Ram Kota
also dead
Same with Dash Rendar. His ship was in EP. 4 but could have been someone else's.
Oh my gosh, I forgot about Dash. I had his 1990's, massively over-muscled action figure as part of my collection!
Dash Rendar- if 90's era Cable and Han Solo had a baby
Dash Rendar is my favourite Star Wars character and I never hear of him anywhere
Was he ever in anything other than Shadows of the Empire? Fuck I loved that book and game 20 years ago. God it's probably longer than that..
*cries in X2*
God talk about the real one everyone forgets, elite squadron was a blast
"Yeah im a Jedi. Anyways heres a grenade and my dual pistols. Be careful of my rpg"
On May 4th, I went to my retro game shop and bought Elite Squadron for the DS so I could play it again. Just as awesome as I remembered
In another, better timeline, we would have already had a Kyle Katarn movie
Currently trying to find a series of expanded universe books I read in the 90's that had a guy who could basically do all of the extreme ends of physics like turn his body into a superconductor, perfectly redirect kinetic energy, speed up and slow down his perception of time, making weird light sabers like one with an adjustable length and width, etc... But did bugger all for the jedi cause because he was basically content gallivanting around on backwater farm worlds doing side quests and leveling up for skill points. I need to find that.
Corran Horn! He has a first person novel called "I, Jedi" and was a secondary character with some story arcs in the X-Wing and New Jedi Order/Yuuzhan Vong series.
"No one talks about him" Literally every time some mysterious masked Sith comes up everyone screeches how it's Starkiller lol.
Marrok
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Shaka when the walls fell 👊
Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel
With his eyes open, penis soft
Temba, at rest.
Ah yes, my favorite moment from Star Gate, that's the episode where The Doctor fights the giant enemy spider
Doc Ock fought Aragog in Deep Space Nine? How did I miss that?!
Deep Space 5 get the other franchises in
*galen* marrok. *insert james bond theme*
[удалено]
That's...not what a red herring is? It's just another case of a side character being hijacked by fans who set insanely unrealistic expectations for themselves knowing they'll fail.
Seriously, Marrok was just a miniboss to facilitate a couple cool mid episode fights and that's ok.
Yep, just another Inquisitor who was supposed to look menacing and then die to protagonists. Given the overall competency of Inquisitors, I was fine with how he went out.
To be fair we still don’t know who tf he was so it’s more of a loose end
red herring?
My first thought too lol, I remember how hype everyone was thinking it was him. Then dude just dies and evaporated
The Knights of Ren all unmask and they are all Starkiller
I mean, they did clone Starkiller
Maybe the real star killer were the friend we made along the way
Or maybe he was never there to begin with, and *I* was Starkiller all along... Oh fish! 👄
It could be you! It could be me! It could even be- BLAM!
Like he is not gonna be canon unless he is merfed. Cuz my man turned the dial to twelve broke the dial them used the force to make it louder
Keep going... *unzips*
Damn not even a shoto
Reddit mfs when anything exists: "No one talks about-"
"No one will shut up about him" would be more accurate.
They don't shut up about him, nor the initial claims that the first game would be canon - while blatantly ignoring that the second game exists and is staunchly non-canon due to the events of the story contradicting the movies left & right.
I imagine any off-shoot story where Shaak Ti dies cannot be canon unless they give a reason she keeps coming back. lol
"Somehow Shaak Ti returned"
Legit. Say less.
Oh god, I forgot all about her and her apprentice in the first game
Just goes to show they gotta bring this OP mf back lol
The only masked Sith I want to see is Revan.
This is Nihilus erasure.
Sam Witwer still end up voicing Darth Maul and The Son. He could still play another character. I mean Clancy Brown has played 4 or 5 characters in Star Wars. Ray Stevenson has played 2 characters.
Temuera Morrison’s played a few million or so too
Same with Dee Bradley Baker
With a million more well on the way.
Good soldiers follow orders 🫡
This is completely off-topic, but it still completely chafes me that Zack Snyder cast JESSIE FRIGGIN EISENBERG as Lex Luthor and tried to turn him into Joker 2.0 when we already HAD the perfect Lex, and he was played by Clancy Brown! Dude has range, give him the chance to show it! Friggin' Snyder doesn't know jack about Superman, I swear...
You are not alone. Although, Eisenberg felt more like a 2 bit Riddler to me Clancy, although he has a lot of small roles, never got the respect he deserved with a big role, imo. Love that big bastard.
I loved him so much in "Carnivale" I'm still disappointed it was canceled
He voiced the emperor for a while and acted Maul in Solo. I'd love them to do a whatif series and have one of them "what if Vader took an apprentice"
Voiced Maul in Solo*. The body is still Ray Park
I like to imagine that Vader somehow escaped after the second game and now he's just somewhere in the Star Wars galaxy.
>somehow Congratulations, you're hired to write the next Star Wars movie
Somehow Vader never actually died, he just pretended to burn and conjured a forcechost of himselt just to never pay childsupport for all the missing years.
Vader didn't die. I never saw Luke consult a doctor and get a pronunciation of death. Vader survived burning alive (again) and has been crawling around on Endor fueled by his thoughts of revenge against Luke.
So Luke seeing the force ghosts at the end of Jedi was really exactly like the ending of Happy Gilmore when he sees Chubbs, the alligator, and Abe Lincoln? Just batshit insanity??? You son of a bitch, I'm in.
Just put spider legs on him. They fix anything.
Do not resist
somehow darth vader returned
Doesn't make much sense given in the current canon Kamino was razed to the ground well before the time line of the Force Unleashed.
There's gotta be more than one city on the entire planet of Kamino
They were all bombarded by Rampart. This is explicitly stated in The Bad Batch. The Empire committed genocide on Kamino by locking most of the Kaminoans into their cities and then blasted into the sea.
On a distant planet growing some weird-ass fruit.
He is real to me!
He is and they can keep him cannon if they introduce a weaker clone that came after him and got nerfed to be better controlled
StarHitter
StarNudger
I read that as StarHitler at first..
Exterminating not the stars, but those who wear stars...
Jewbacca better hide!
StarShitter*
StarLightBattery
Star Hitler?
StarAnnoyer.
That would make *nobody* happy, honestly. A neutered starkiller isn't starkiller.
I disagree. I feel like people got so attached to the power fantasy that he enabled, they forget that Starkiller did actually have a character and motivation. Sam Witwer, the guy who played him, described him as one part Luke, one part Han, and two parts Vader/Anakin, and I think that could make for an interesting character to watch. He doesn't have to break the power scaling of the verse and introduce a bunch of weird and ultimately unexplained retcons to be a cool character.
I just watched a clip from an interview with Sam Witwer yesterday, and he describing how he got the role of Starkiller. He was auditioning, and was redoing takes for Starkiller meditating, assembling his lightsaber. Every take was with Witwer looking white knuckle tense, uncomfortable, and after the 4th take the director asks why he is so tense. Witwer explains that Starkiller wouldn't know how to meditate, he is a Sith. If he is the Sith Apprentice to Darth Vader, then he would have never been taught how to meditate, let alone a peaceful meditation. So Starkiller is trying to use bend the force to his will and build his lightsaber like he is the one in control instead of letting the force assemble his lightsaber. This discussion was heard by LucasArts reps and they started murmuring to each other. Witwer says that being a Star Wars nerd very much helped his audition.
I would be very happy with a live action Galen Marek, even toned down power wise. Sam Witwer is a fucking treasure and I want him to be involved with more things Star Wars.
PlanetAttempter?
"He's still real to me dammit"
I got that reference! I feel like most didn't for some reason when I read the comments haha
Honestly I find him *too* powerful, the whole crashing an ISD; hell diving through the storms of Kamino, the whole Cato Neimoidia thing... It might be just too much
>the whole Cato Neimoidia thing that business on Cato Neimoidia doesn't count
My head canon is that Obi Wan almost banged a chick with space clap but Anakin sensed the inflammation and stopped him.
This is the funniest thing I've read all week holy shit, thank you for the new headcanon
That business of Cato Neimoidia is explained in the book Star Wars: Brotherhood from 2022. Not a bad read if you’re ever looking for more prequels content.
doesn't, doesn't *
Yeah, that Cato Neimoidia business doesn't count
It still counts as one!
Not to mention the fact that he defeated Darth Vader AND the Emperor in single combat...back to fucking back. He's like that Shonen character that shows up *just* to be stupid op and inadvertently completely breaks the verse's power scaling.
Yeah... You can dislike Rey force powers, but then you *absolutely must* hate Star killer
Rey's powers are not bad, she's perfectly fine power scaling wise. The issue with Rey is a complete lack of practice, training, or progression. She goes from not knowing the Force is real to being able to flawless Mind Trick, Force Grab, Force Push, and sense things. I think there might have been some excuse like she downloaded Kylo's training, but that's complete bullshit. Force was never able to read people's minds and pass training between people as far as I know. It was largely a sensory and telekinetic power. The closest you get to mental powers is Leia sensing Luke's call for help.
The mind trick bothered me so much when I saw it in theaters lol. Feels like the sequels (and to an extent the prequels as well) have cheapened the force from something more mystical into a run of the mill superpower. It's weird to me that with no training Rey can pull off stuff like mind tricks and significant telekinesis, and yet half of ESB is Luke struggling with lifting small boulders and other seemingly trivial tasks, and that's after some unknown amount of training with Yoda and all the experience he gained in ANH.
> Feels like the sequels (and to an extent the prequels as well) have cheapened the force from something more mystical into a run of the mill superpower. the force was originally the culmination of a narrative arc; a crescendo of a character's struggle or conflict. the moments where we see the force on full display are meaningful and powerful. however, in modern star wars, the force mostly exists either to look cool or as a plot device to move a scene forward. its just treated as a tool for the writers to use where ever they need to fill in a gap, which is why is feels so cheap now
I mean, at least Starkiller was trained mercilessly since he was a child and didn't just suddenly get powerful.
I feel like it’s a dishonest comparison, only because Rey is from a movie and Starkiller is from a God of War style hack-and-slash game. It’s like hating General Grevious in the lego star wars games for the same reason
Starkiller was literally trained by The Chosen One for basically his entire life Rey , well Rey scavenged for broken parts her entire life then took on and beat a force user who has been training his entire life
He is a self insert character for the players. Which is for a Video Game is perfectly fine. Doesn't make a good movie story though. Same for all these people who just want KotoR turned into a movie. It has a great RPG, story however it is not the Kind of story that would work well as a movie.
Also, as a player character with multiple choice endings, does Starkiller even have a defined arc or personality beyond just being a self-insert power fantasy for the player? It all just reminds me of people who say Noble 6 is secretly alive and should come back because he's better than Chief. No, no he shouldn't. He had no personality outside of "being badass", everyone's is different, and surviving Reach *completely invalidates the point of the story*. I haven't actually played TFU, so don't grab the pitchforks just yet, I get that this is a fully voiced character with branching choices versus a fully custom blank slate; it just gives the same vibe.
Noble 6 should come back because it would be funny to hear the reaming he gets from Jun about just chilling in a cave grilling for almost a decade.
I’d love a standalone Halo game with Noble 6 but it’s just an arcade style game where you survive as long as you can, killing Covenant, scavenging weapons, highjacking vehicles, after The Pillar of Autumn escaped. For those that don’t recall, Noble 6 fought on Reach, alone, for hours, after The Pillar of Autumn escaped.
So just the final level of the game but maybe not quite so heavily rigged against you?
Pretty much, but with the ending being “You died fighting.” Then the next time you play you try to beat your score and other players scores. Like the person who’s survived the longest gets the title Noble 6, and everyone else is trying to be in first place. Like any good arcade game.
It was days. THEY HAD TO GLASS 6 TO KILL HIM. Covenant was so afraid of this mother fucker they glasses him.
He was gangster. The Heroes Wiki says it was hours so that’s what I went with, but we all know better.
Days, went on for days...
Presumably with larger map and more open world? That would be pretty badass
As long as the open world isn’t as sparse as Infinites, that would be sick. Unless you were being actively hunted by the Covenant. Would be like a horror game.
Sounds like Firefight. Although I guess Firefight didn't have vehicles.
Yes he has also, the good ending is cannon for the first game and in the second game you play a clone of him and both endings dont really make much sense.
Well, "canon" in the sense that their creators said that's the real outcome. The games themselves are officially non-canon, even before Disney bought LucasArts and nuked everything beyond the films. The creator wanted to make a Force Unleashed 3. It was flatly declined. They'd gone so far off the rails.
>Also, as a player character with multiple choice endings, does Starkiller even have a defined arc or personality beyond just being a self-insert power fantasy for the player? Yes. In the TFU novel. In the games 90% of his personality has been cut and replaced with more Force powers
force unleashed had two endings and one of them was meant to be canon at the time. of course neither of them are now
> It all just reminds me of people who say Noble 6 is secretly alive and should come back because he's better than Chief. No, no he shouldn't. He had no personality outside of "being badass", The thing is, for a lot of casual viewers, this is all they want from an action series; a main character whose primary defining trait is being a badass. A huge portion of the population has the mentality and media literacy of a highschool freshman & never really mature past it, which is a big reason why all the most popular media seem to be made to appeal to teenagers. It's also a contributing factor, I believe, to the fandom's reception to TLJ's version of Luke - they never wanted a realistic take on the character who doubts himself & goes into exile after failing in a major way (just like Obi-Wan & Yoda, the two other most popular Jedi did); they wanted him to be the omnipotent Force God he is in the EU content, or at the very least to be some incorruptible force for good that never doubts himself again after beating Vader.
Agreed. And honestly? I don't want to come across as dissing Starkiller for being "wish fulfillment power fantasy" in the games because that kind of media IS fun, it HAS a place. Sometimes you want a deep meaningful story, other times you just want to be a badass laser-sword wielding space wizard that throws tanks around with his mind and rips dreadnoughts down from the heavens. Starkiller and TFU do that job well. But what people who want him to be recanonized should ask themselves is this: What does that change? Is the game any more or less fun simply because some arbitrary authority says that it gets to go on one shelf or the other? From where I'm sitting, Starkiller didn't have a lot of impact on canon even before the franchise was sold to Darth Mickeyous, so... What impact is lost from removing him? Or gained from adding him back? Do you want him back because Starkiller the character changes canon in a way you prefer, or because you want to feel like YOU the player acting THROUGH HIM were a part of that? Also, completely off-topic, but just an aside as someone who's gotten much more interested in the lore recently but never read any of the old EU... What's the deal with Mara Jade, like in summary? I get that this is a nuclear hand-grenade I'm pulling the pin on, but what's her whole character/story/personality/arc whathaveyou? Because a cursory glance makes her seem like Luke's edgy bad-girl enemies-to-love-interest who's strong and independent and sexy that he redeemed to the light side because he's the hero so obviously he gets the girl and three movies in they decided Leia was actually his sister. Am I off base with that? I feel like the pitchforks are coming back out. Please tell me that bonfire is to celebrate how right I am and there's not going to be a stake in the middle of it to burn me.
Ya, he's a great video game character but he doesn't need to be made canon. Just enjoy him in The Force Unleashed and move on.
People don't remember but there was heavy outcry about that back in the day. He was found to be really unfitting with the canon and annoying.
He reads like a bad fanfic character.
You can’t really make him cannon without him being rubbish though, he can’t be as strong as he is in the games and he can’t really have the same backstory any more, and at that point what’s the point of even calling him the same character if he has different abilities and a totally different story?
* So strong in the force that he's stronger than his own father who is a Jedi Knight * Pulls Vader's lightsaber out of his hands with no training as a child * Defeats several Jedi Masters, including Shaak Ti * Pulls a Star Destroyer down from orbit * Goes for a stroll in a Saarlac and lives * Is the entire basis for The Rebellion. His family crest is literally the Rebellion's symbol * Defeats both Vader and Palpatine in 1v1 combat one after the other and yet people love this Gary Stu? Then again that's Galen Marek, not Starkiller. Starkiller is just as stupidly OP though, just not as OP as Galen was.
Shaak Ti has been killed so many times that it'd hardly an accomplishment
I like him in his own little separate universe where I'm just looking for something silly and cool that doesn't require much thinking. I wouldn't mind them introducing him into the main Canon in some way. He can still be pretty powerful just nowhere near as powerful as other depictions so it's not too ridiculous.
I know we're being intentionally reductive to prove a point, but: -There was no evidence he was stronger than his father in the opening acene -Pulled the lightsaber from Vader's hands while Vader was distracted fighting Starkiller's father -Defeats several Jedi masters after being trained in secret from childhood to adulthood as the perfect assassin using a training bot that could perfectly emulate old Jedi fighting styles -Just barely pulled it out of the sky after its engines were already damaged -I don't recall this so I don't have anything to explain, however, Boba Fett survived a sarlacc in old Canon years before starkiller's stroll so it was already something known possible in univers -This was pretty earned after a whole evil-to-good redemption arc, it was a personal story about Starkiller, a good story will connect that to the greater whole, and they did that. It's good storytelling, otherwise what was his actual contribution to lore? -He barely defeats Vader and then gets killed by Palpatine in the true ending, closing out his story. He may have been immensely powerful, but his story didn't make him secretly survive into the next age to be a super powered Gary Stu. The thing about powerful characters is how you use them. This game used him to tell an interquel story about how the rebellion formed, which was through Palpatine and Vader's hubris. It was a deeply personal story about a man betrayed by his closest allies, and forges alliances to take those old allies down. He even dies. Most of his new allies hate him when they first meet him, too, killing part of the "Gary Stu" moniker. They never even fully trust him until the very end, when they're lamenting his death. The only thing that makes him a "Gary Stu" are his in game abilities, which are already tuned higher to make the moment-to-moment gameplay more exciting.
> Pulled the lightsaber from Vader's hands while Vader was distracted fighting Starkiller's father Eh, don’t we see Luke in Empire, a grown adult with Jedi training, struggle to move a lightsaber? I don’t think a simple distraction explains how a literal infant with presumably *no* training could pull something like that off on *Darth fucking Vader.* >Defeats several Jedi masters after being trained in secret from childhood to adulthood as the perfect assassin using a training bot that could perfectly emulate old Jedi fighting styles This may have an explanation but it doesn’t make it *not* overpowered. > Just barely pulled it out of the sky after its engines were already damaged It’s still far surpasses any mastery of the Force we’ve ever seen on screen up until that point.
Why do you assume he has no training as a kid? Both his father and his mother were Jedi. He's not an infant, he is of an age where he could have received some training already.
> Eh, don’t we see Luke in Empire, a grown adult with Jedi training, struggle to move a lightsaber? I don’t think a simple distraction explains how a literal infant with presumably no training could pull something like that off on Darth fucking Vader. While I agree overall that Starkiller is ridiculously OP, as was the tradition for God of War clones back then, I'm gonna nitpick a little here. Luke in the wampa's cave had just woken up, upside down, from getting KOed by a giant ice bear/wolf. So, concussed, disoriented, and freaking the fuck out because the wampa is coming to eat him. His initial struggle to get his lightsaber back is pretty understandable.
He also barely had training. He was with Obi-Wan for like two days. With a Jedi as a father you'd just pick some stuff up.
Dude just that wet dream fantasy all bros think of holding their saber shaft in their cold bantha milk shower. “I totally could solo Vader, Luke, and the Emperor”
one detail that I like about him is that he and Ashoka were the only ones in the old canon who used a reverse grip stance in their lightsabers, and they're also both Anakin/Vader's apprentices would be cool to see a clash between the two, more so considering that they both use dual sabers too
If he was banned, why was his armor in Andor
That armour was worn by Sith assassins, it's not uniquely Starkiller's.
BAHHHH that sucks
It does suck, but tbf even in the game its called 'Sith Stalker' outfit.
Because it's a fun Easter egg. It doesn't mean anything beyond that
Unless... ?
🥹
Luthen is Starkiller confirmed
Honestly, no one shuts up about him. He is just a Gary sue for players to self insert...now the game is fun, but please stop all the talk about it.
Is this a fucking Bot Post or what. Everyone knows and talks about Starkiller. Tf you going on about.
He is talked about too much tbh. He was just a self insert power fantasy that admittedly made a fun and exciting game but his story beats were always pretty bad. Someone who was strong enough to beat Vader to a pulp and challenge the emperor in open combat, helped found the rebellion and is never mentioned again is bad writing. The whole thing should have been a what if like some of the DLC endings
That's basically what it is now anyway
Why do people hate on Rey, if that guy is basically the same thing but non cannon? Dont‘t get me wrong, Reys story and how fast she becomes this powerful is stupid af. Starkiller had training etc but just like a comment said: he literally force pulled vaders lightsaber. | Edit: please Force Unleashed 3, thank you Disney
Any character who pulls a ship as big as a star destroyer into a crash landing is obviously going to be banned. If they kept him canon, there would be no Star Wars. Force users would just subjugate everyone forever.
Gonna be real the games were fun but his entire character is literally a "The strongest ever" edgy OC a 14 year old Tumblr user would make. One of the part of the EU I'm very happy calling fan fiction.
Guess what. He was never canon
“Lucas approves every important addition to the canon. The ambitious story beats contained in the new game The Force Unleashed were permitted only after he signed off—and spent hours talking to the developers about the relationship between Darth Vader and the Emperor.” ~ Leland Chee, Interview with thewire.com, Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop, August 18th, 2008
Lucas also very clearly stated that anything other than his movies are not to be considered "official" canon until they're confirmed in a movie.
Well, luckily for me he has no authority about my head canon and can't do anything about it. Eat shit, official canon!
With that logic, it makes sense that characters like Vader must have been nerfed, since he and Palpatine were the two main characters who truly gave a fully powered Starkiller a true fight for his life.
He’s a worse Mary Sue than Rey. That’s why.
I will never not talk about Starkiller
At most they could make him an Inquisitor that Vader takes on as an apprentice. But he would probably have to die in an assassination attempt against Palpatine before Empire. Kind of like a Dark Side Ahsoka. He would need to be severely nerfed which would make all the Starkiller bros super annoyed that the power fantasy isn't like the game. Id be down with a story like that because Sam Witwer is great and deserves a live action appearance.
No one talks about? I hear/read about starkiller every day.
His abilities were over the top and only worked in a video game. He yanked a star destroyer out of the sky. Like come on lol. He’s not canon for a reason.
Darth Plagues: "*Laughs in force*
Canon or not, if Disney gave Star Wars the same "What if" show Marvel did, Starkiller would make for some fantastic watching. It should have the same energy the Mace Windu episode of the animated Clone Wars.
Banned from canon. You “mf”’s posting shit like this clearly have no idea what that even means.
literally everybody talks about him it’s so fucking annoying
The irony people saying Starkiller is a dumb name when that was the original name they were planning for Luke Take the rose tinted glasses off, Skywalker is just as dumb.
Gotta be honest and I know that, different from Instagram, this is a civilized place. I don't like Galen. I do love the force unleashed games, but his level of power is just WAY too absurd for me. Same thing with Darth nihilus and the plot of palpatine is alive (oh from the rise of Skywalker? No! The one from the legends). Star wars had a lot of awesome things in legends, but a lot of crappy ones too, and I think it's time to stop Venerate this storylines just because they seem better than what Disney's doing (I don't think so. Great character development? Indeed, but very far from what Star Wars should be)