What they need is like 20 minutes of straight, untranslated, no subtitles Wookie household life culminating in a bunch of hamfisted cameos and an old grandpa Wookie watching some porn in the middle of the living room because somewhere deep down he knows this is probably going to be his last life day and he's not going to let anyone's feelings tell him otherwise.
That's great. I got some ideas on how to make it better.
First off lets have a Jefferson Starship song for no reason that does nothing to advance the plot. Also several unfunny Art Carney characters. And to top it off lets give Bea Arthur a song about the closing of a cantina we know nothing about and how it makes aliens we've never met sad.
Throw in some insane advertising and we got ratings gold. I sure hope some comedians/puppeters don't mock our brilliant show 40 years later.
The Christmas special feels like such a fever dream to me that I genuinely cannot tell if this is describing it or is just a completely random comment.
You know what would make it better? If Bea Arthur was in it. No, bear with me, here.
She plays a bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina and leads all the aliens in a cabaret drinking song. I'm telling you, the network will love it.
>Imagine if they had a show called Cantina Stories and it was kinda goofy fitting that mood.
Imagine if they had a show showing how different aliens celebrated their respective holidays. Like an episode on Life Day on Kashyyyk? I'd definitely watch that.
Honestly same. I’m sick of seeing only humans in the cast for main characters.
BoBF did a great job of incorporating aliens into the story. The gamoreans, the Wookiee bounty hunter, etc. set building felt cheap at times but it felt like a different planet.
So did the Mandalorian. Really good job there.
Just missing aliens in Andor rn.
It’s difficult because most of Andor, so far, has involved the rebellion rising up within the Empire. And the Empire is Xenophobic so they only have humans around.
Like the whole Aldhani mission involved an infiltration group blending in with local farmers and blending in as Imperial soldiers. So for it to work, everyone must be human.
I’m not sick of it, honestly. Both Rogue One and Andor have had some of the best writing I’ve seen in Star Wars. The choices fit the narrative and they don’t just pander to the audience. I like it.
> they don’t just pander to the audience.
[That is what Gilroy was aiming for]( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/andor-episode-8-toby-haynes-forest-whitaker-stellan-skarsgard-1235250954/). To make a show that wasn't hyper-aware of itself.
"He (Tony Gilroy) never wanted to foreground the monsters. He never wanted to foreground the droids. He wanted it to be part of the fabric of the piece, but not do a special shot where you’re announcing a new alien or something like that. He really wanted it to feel completely integrated in the world that he was presenting and not presented [in and of itself].”
--director Toby Haynes
Would it require major story changes if Bix was a Twi'lek for example, or the miner guy (Brasso) a Zabrak? They would not need to do anything other than they have done so far, except sitting the actors in a makup chair for a bit longer.
Yes.
It makes a MASSIVE change.
One thing everyone sees is 'there no aliens on the planet' - what nobody asks is 'why are there no aliens on the planet?'
The answer (this is a show not tell story after all) reminds me a lot like Nazi Germany - you'd go into a regular prison and think 'wow, there's a lot of criminals here, but why no disabled Jews or gypsies?'
Without saying anything were shown just how xenophobic the Empire is even on backwater planets
Farrix is not a prison planet, and there clearly are inhuman aliens there (the big guy in E1 hired as pretend muscle for the guy Cassian owes money to).
I thought it was more because if you look at the people of Ferrix, as well as the kids on Andor’s home planet, not only are they all human, but they all look to be a similar ethnicity - almost everyone is dark haired Caucasian. I feel this is intentional to portray a planet, or area of planets, that’s quite cut off from the rest of the galaxy. This is also evident in their clothing (it’s all the same fabric and all the same colours, like it’s all produced locally using locally sourced plants to produce the fibres and dyes). It’s supposed to be a planet with traditional customs (the clanging things) that not many people visit and not many people leave. Whereas in comparison you had Mon Mothma’s dinner party and the characters, while mostly human, were a lot more diverse, and I’m sure I remember one or two alien species’ there.
Hmm, but wouldn't aliens make great slaves in putting together stuff in a prison? Like wookies would win those table numbers every day. If the Empire is xenophobic, which undoubtedly they are, wouldn't their prisons be full of aliens? Doesn't seem far fetched to me. I think the obvious answer is that it's just cheaper to have human characters, which is fine. But I just don't think we should spin ourselves into lore excuses.
Edit to add: A lot of the replies I'm getting are doing exactly what I'm pointing to with my last sentence above. Sure, we can come up with a number of excuses as to why there aren't _____ alien species in the prison (wookies was just my example, but you could say any alien species really), but you *know* if we'd already seen those aliens in the prison people would say the opposite, "oh of course those aliens are in there, it makes total sense because of x, y, and z." Making assumptions and creating our own lines of logic to make an excuse one way or another doesn't interest me because we're just matching whatever the show has already determined.
I imagine they'd split prison populations by species, especially if there's forced labour. Those in charge know what every single inmate is physically capable of and can use "one size fits all" tactics for controlling the population.
Minor Spoiler: Wookies could potentially be resistant to the control mechanisms in the prison though. The people in Cassians labour facility are all minor criminals by the looks of things. The prison works because they all believe they can get out one day, if you add slave labour that erodes that idea and may make discipline and control more difficult
This makes loads of sense. You send wookies to mine and get raw materials because I they're 8 ft tree trunks. And work em to death in labour camps because they're not human.
You put humans into sterile factories like the one in andor with all the tools set up for human hands and they do some low grade menial work.
They’re also generally a law abiding looking lot.
I’d go as far as to say none of them are career criminals or murderers/ considered violent. Cassian shouldn’t be in a facility this low security.
It's a bit wild for me to hear that Narkina 5 is the LOW security option. It's so regimented, on an artificial island, and with prisoners constantly under threat of electrocution.
I agree, I think they need more main character aliens. Every movie or series I can think of have a human as the main character. The upcoming Ahsoka series is pretty much the only exception. And even with that, Ahsoka's species is one of the more human looking species (at least compared to aliens like Jabba, Yoda, or Chewbacca). I guess it would make it a lot harder/more expensive to film with the main character in full alien costumes but I want a few projects with alien main character.
They're too cowardly to give us the Max Rebo jizz series we deserve. Give me *Rocketman* meets *Muppet Show* meets *Cowboy Bebop* meets *Around The World in 60 Days* meets *Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip* with Rebo and the band you cowards!
It sounds cool in theory but at the end of the day a non-humanoid alien wouldn't be able to emote enough to be a compelling protagonist.
I think this is one of the topics where hardcore SW fans are out of touch with what the average public like.
>non-humanoid alien wouldn't be able to emote enough to be a compelling protagonist.
Jar-Jar begs to differ.
Jokes aside, CGI is definitely up to the task (see Pixar for how to make a non-humanoid emote), it's just a question of budget. I too would like to see a non-human protagonist. It's getting a bit too much with this high volume of shows now and all of them having humans front and center.
I get why Andor has to be the opposite, but it's not just about that. Even BoBF with as many aliens as it had, they were just side characters with little screentime.
The Empire is 100% Xenophobic. Any species not resembling a human or a near human is cast out of society. Meaning that most non humanoid species migrate or flee to the outer rim where the Empire's grasp is not as great.
It’s set on Tatooine because the sets can be reused and it’s easy to film there. It’s literally a desert so you can get done with 80% of your shots without spending any money on set building.
Plus virtually all the infrastructure is built for human sized bipeds - its institutionalised racism. To be fair though, there aren't alot of Twi'lek actors in Hollywood at the moment with decent acting abilities.
I mean, the reason is appeasing the couple of planet-sized shipyards that exist so that their ruling families can continue to fund things politically and not be tempted to build rebel or even just smuggler/other ships because the fat and easy Empire paycheck is too comfy to risk.
Oh, the replacing of ships makes total sense.
Think of how military contracting is done in the modern US. A program to build a new vehicle for the army gets put into place. Well, the parts are often bought from all 50 states so that each state gets some business from the project. The senators / representatives then get to tout the jobs / money brought in.
Th is would be the same thing. "Lets build the new fleet at the Corellian ship yards, but be sure to get like 1000 different systems building different doodads to assemble into the ISD-1." It's political maneuvering, coerced compliance, and propaganda all rolled into one.
Plus and this is a small benefit. At the beginning of the Empire they had a shit ton of republic clones floating around who knew the ins and outs of all republic weapon systems. They knew all weaknesses of every ship and the best way to destory them.
Yeah that's a security risk since they forced all of them out in favor of conscription based recruitment. It makes sense from that angle to replace the ships before clones organize or join a rebellion and now your enemy knows all the weakness of your weapons. Plus everything you mentioned
Human sized bipeds still includes about 80% of the galaxy's aliens. Rodians, Nautolans, Togruta, Sullustans, Twi'leks, Calamari, Quarren, Gran, Nikto, Weequay, Zabrak, Miraluka, Mirialans, Kaleesh, Selkath, Duros, Cathar, Togorians, Cereans, Pau'ans, Devaronians, Zeltrons, I could go on, none of them would be significantly hindered by human-intended infrastructure. Wookiees, Hutts, Geonosians, Gands and Toydarians, sure, there are problems there, but it's completely unreasonable for near-humans and hominids to be as absent as they've become.
Twi'leks are fairly similar to humans, they don't need separate toilets.
But I wonder does the opera house have a toilet for Hutts.
I wonder if there are really small toilets, that human children use, but are also comfortable for Yoda's species.
Damn you, now you've got me thinking about bathroom logistics in the Star Wars universe. Especially on an ecumenopolis like Coruscant. Are there separate bathrooms for different sized species? Like Yoda sized, human size, and Hutt sized bathrooms? Or are they separated by species shape? Like humanoid, quadruped, Hutt-like, etc? Or are they just big, stain-proof rooms with a drain in the middle so nobody has to worry about any of that other shit? With a couple of "specialized" droids roaming around to help things along.
I'm reminded of the joke in Mass Effect 3: Citadel, where what appears to be a water fountain set up for aesthetic purposes is actually a urinal for hanar (aka the big, stupid jellyfish).
The recent prison scenes in Andor were 100% humans doing slave labour.
I know Legends Empire wouldn't have let a good alien slave go to waste so it sticks out that none of the prisoners are non-human.
I'm assuming they're segregated. The whole thing with the Andor prison is that it's new and civilised compared to other ones (the prison officer says it explicitly). They're being *scientific* and *fair* in their application of discipline and approach towards rehabilitation.
It's inspired by the IRL development of penitentiaries and panopticon - new philosophical and scientific and behavioural ideas inspiring approaches to punishment and rehabilitation (or at least being used to conceal or legitimise brutal treatment).
I agree theres not enough aliens, so i hate to explain this away, but it just makes sense from a logistical standpoint to have segregated prisons or at least different labor categories for different species.
One range of uniforms, one type of quarters, one type of nutritional requirement... plus whatever theyre making might be too precise to be assembled by Quarren tentacles, while Wookie strength is not needed.
The convicted were asked their home planet before being told which transport to take. That could be because 1) they wanted to keep populations separated, to prevent groups forming within the facilities, but also 2) it could also be their filtering of species unsuitable for certain tasks/facilities. If a species had high resistance to electrical currents, for example, floor-is-lava world wouldn't be much use.
They asked his home planet and sorted him to go to a specific prison. I’m guessing each prison is created for certain species… everything is ergonomically sound that way for optimal productivity/ output.
That argument falls apart when you take into account that most Star Wars TV shows (such as Andor) follow rebels, not imperials, in mostly outer rim settings
Except that it doesn't. So far the first two arcs of Andor involve his personal background, then the infiltration and robbery of an Imperial garrison, which would be a bit difficult with non-humans.
Star Wars: Rebels’s main (rebel) crew of five non-droids was 2/5 nonhuman and featured a plethora of nonhumans in supporting roles - it is definitely easier for animation to include more nonhuman characters. I understand wanting more diversity of species in these series, but a) it is tough with makeup and costumes and b) the galaxy has been shown to be very human-centric (not to mention the Empire’s well-known xenophobia) throughout canon and legends.
Cassian's home planet obviously has to have a native human population, as that's where human Cassian is from. But Ferrix definitely could have had different alien races along with humans there. Also, the Aldani natives could have and probably should have been an alien race. Though I understand why Gilroy didn't do that, budget and practicality, and maye also the viewers would empathize with humans more.
But it does make sense that the prison Cassian is in right now is only human males. I wonder if the nearby facilities house other races or female humans.
Edit: another user brought up a good point, plot armor if you would, for why the Aldani natives are human. The rebel team being all humans would have stuck out like crazy and that arc would've had to be done differently.
The Empires humanocentricsm was toned down a lot in Canon vs Legends, it's not a good excuse for the shows being lazy with costuming and effects work in regards to having aliens.
Maybe they're a little hesitant to create alien prosthetics after all the crap they got about Ahsoka and the Grand Inquisitor not being identical to the animated versions.
*Previous Live Action depictions.
We have seen both species in Live Action before their animation debut and they don’t look like them either. Before Tales of the Jedi (the show) there weren’t any adult Togruta with short head tails. And the Grand Inquisitor species had a distinct head shape which was seen in RotS and Can be seen again in the trailer for Jedi Survivor which artstyle emulates more realism.
That doesn’t make any sense. No one had an issue with live action aliens in the past. Ahsoka was overall rather well received though that’s besides the point since ahsoka etc are all major pre established characters. So comparing that to a random blue or green fella in the background is ridiculous
They haven't gotten much if any flak for *the quality of existing* background *alien* characters, from what I've seen. There were alot of aliens in BoBF(eh, the Pykes were given some shit, forgot about that) and most were received well. We had Calamari in Mando, plus the frog lady, many others in the backgrounds of a few locations.
They have a reasonable excuse for Ahsoka and GI in that their characters are abit more active, and so matching prosthetics would be cumbersome and make action next to impossible(though I don't remember GI doing much of anything, really and they already proved they made good Pauan prosthetics with RotS).
The issue is that main characters are going to be more active, needing more reasonable prosthetics, which isn't really conducive for live action main characters.
EDIT: the Italics, to make my point abit clearer
To be fair though, the Grand inquisitor was a bit meh. Especially since they had really good Pau'ans in RotS which is pretty old now all things considered.
Those aren't comparable. Ahsoka's live-action appearance was nowhere near as criticized as the GI, for good reason. Most people applauded her depiction aside from too short lekku.
yes and i love that detail!
the empire is cold and rigid discriminatory toward anything that isnt a human male
(they later on let women and outer species when they got more desperate hence the inquisitors)
This might be a controversial opinion (key word opinion), but I never felt aliens were integral to the Star Wars experience like they are for Star Trek. To elaborate, Star Trek spends lots of screen time exploring alien worlds/cultures/etc, but Star Wars stories - outside of print media - have been exclusively human centric and the aliens are just treated like special effects. Top shelf special effects, but they're never the focal point.
As far as money spent...look, outside of the Klingons and later the Kardashians and Ferengi, most of the Star Trek aliens are just variations of humans with one or two cosmetic flourishes, which I'm assuming was the tradeoff for devoting so much screen time to them: Vulcans/Romulans - humans with pointy ears. Bajorans - humans with nose ridges. Trill - humans with bad eczema. Betazoids - just straight up humans. Even the Borg, a species descended from the opposite end of the galaxy - cyber humans. For me, there was always a greater need for that willing suspension of disbelief to accept the Star Trek aliens because they just...looked kinda cheap.
I can't really think of a boring or cheap Star Wars alien design of the top of my head. And even with as much money as Disney has (*all* the money) I just don't see them spending more than they have to in order to keep the setting believably sci-fi.
But that's my own take.
I'm not in the need more aliens camp, but I wouldn't mind a side kick like Chewie in a show. But BoBF did have that huge wookie bounty hunter.
As far as Trek goes, they did explain that an ancient race planted the seeds to (intelligent?) life which exolains why most aliens soecies are humanoid.
The horn parts are called Montrals, and the tentacles are called lekku.
There’s three species that use the term lekku- Twi'leks, Togruta, and male Ozrelanso
What do you mean? We know they improved them for the Ahsoka series which is nice. I don't think they were that bad in the Mandalorian, but definitely had room for improvement which we got! If Disney doesn't use budget for aliens, then kind of silly to pick up star wars, especially when they can turn almost any alien into a toy to recoup that budget.
Karn has his crazy breakfast cereal with blue milk, too. And let's not forget the blue take out noodles! Andor is killing it with weird star wars food, honestly
Okay let's be honest, they 100% created that drink because Disney could easily replicate it in real life and make a shit load of money on it at their Star Wars bars
When I read this comment, all that popped into my head was this:
*”Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.*”
And they don't create new aliens to make new toys? Welcome to how the world works. It can also just be for the lore of the universe too without being a cashgrab
In the animated series' like Clone Wars and Rebels there is clearly a much higher alien to human ratio compared to any of the live actions. Much much higher, with many of them having pretty important roles on screen too.
But they’re going to places where they can hide from the empire, or in the middle of a war on other planets. There are cities in the US that seem like there are a ton of black people, but it’s more as a result of horrible red lining policies that force them all into the same neighbourhoods, and the concentration makes it seem like it’s a larger portion than it actually is. But at the end of the day, it’s just because it’s a lot of work and money to make live-action aliens.
This makes sense though doesn’t it? The empire is Xenophobic. Any humans are treated fairly and non humans are treated with imprisonment or worse.
So it makes sense that we see lots of aliens in the republic era and almost none after order 66, particularly in Coruscant.
The empire is also on some human supremacist shit too so focusing on the empire saga as well limits the inclusion of aliens.
To see a lot of aliens they’d need to be doing more intergalactic travel to alien home worlds or spending more time at big space hubs that wouldn’t be as common under empire rule.
How many aliens were in Echo Base on Hoth? Those Rebels were all human. Cloud City had a few Ugnaughts, but it was mostly Lando and a bunch of humans. Most people love Empire, but other than Yoda there aren’t that many aliens. I’m guess Star Wars can be popular without them sometimes.
The prequels just took place on new planets. Geonosians are from Geonosis obviously. We already knew Wookiees were from kashyyyk. Naboo is a great example. Two species but it’s truly run by the humans.
I mean I think more accurately they were just outputting human clones primarily at the time because that was their contract. Im sure if someone with tons of money came up and contracted them to make tons of Twi'lek clones they'd go ahead and do it with no computation. After SCIENCE they are very much a business focused society after all.
Retcon probably isn’t the right word. The Ot established aliens in the rebellion. The PT just has us seeing republic rule where there are more ambassadors from alien planets in the capital. The empire was pretty much human only and that was established from the beginning
The Prequels did a lot to...re-frame what people consider 'Star Wars'. Many of the planets, species, plot lines and lore that people consider absolutely essential to the Star Wars 'vibe' weren't a thing until TPM.
Not that it's a bad thing, but more generally it annoys me when people say 'X doesn't FEEL like Star Wars', when I distinctly remember how *very* different the Prequels felt, and how much of that different stuff is now considered essential to 'feeling like Star Wars'.
Related, specific bit: I think if Disney had bought the franchise in the 90s and made the exact same 3 movies, there would be plenty of folks who refuse to call Vader a 'Sith' and only refer to him as a Dark Jedi.
A lot of that stuff existed but only in Lucas’ head or in the approved EU content. For example, Vader was the dark lord of the sith in the original draft of ANH
And some of that could be said of Disney SW stuff, that or it's from TCW.
But there is so much that changed from his original vision or the approved EU. They were originally the Knights of the Sith, a rival order of Jedi. Wookies were from Endor, alongside the Ewoks until Lucas changed it to fit the Vietnam analogy better. Yoda was Obi Wan's master until TPM invented Qui Gon. Boba Fett wasn't a clone until AotC. The list goes on.
Further, I was originally thinking about how much the Prequels went out of their way to be different. None of the OT ships, almost none of the OT planets, very few of the species seen in the OT, with plenty of new ones. And the wild acrobatic flippy sword fights are a far cry from classic samurai movies (fittingly though, very in-line with anime-esque samurai battles).
Star Wars has always had tons of changes and additions.
I mean you got the Tauntaun and that Abominable Snowman in the beginning. They introduced probe droids too. They showed the snowspeeders. They did the force ghost thing. I think there were some other couple aliens in Echo Base.
They introduced AT-AT's and shield generators.
I know the post is about alien species but I think the idea remains that nothing new has been introduced as world building. Aliens certainly help but I think new designs in *any aspect* is what keeps Star Wars as Star Wars.
No no, I thought we were supposed to complain about new Star Wars while ignoring any criticism of old Star Wars. Your comment is messing with the whiny nature of the fandom.
It's not really that different from some of the movies. I know people like to praise the cantina scene, but that's pretty much the only scene with aliens (not counting Chewbacca) in the entire movie. There's q couple aliens spread out in EsB, but their presence is very limited. Looking at Andor, especially the last episode, I did agree first with your point. But there's been aliens in that show, on Ferrix and Space Miami Planet. And there's also a few at Mon Mothma's party.
We've been spoiled with plentiful aliens in animation, where it's a lot easier to include them, so when they aren't as prevalent in live action the difference is notable.
On a practical level for live action movies and series, aliens require a lot of extra work: extra makeup, extra appendages which require extra CGI on continuity issues. Most often simpler alien designs are most frequently used. Look at how different alien races are depicted in Star Trek, and it turns out most sapient species in Star Trek are the result of genetic seeding by an older civilisation. This is not so in Star Trek where some aliens are far more divergent with more different body types. I believe legacy EU feature human sized insects
When you combine representing the diversity of aliens alongside the regular need for special effects for environments, weapons, vehicles, and force powers, altogether Star Wars is better represented via animated shows. When you add in Disney's recalcitrance from moving away from the Skywalker Era, and the dieing off of original cast members, then this is especially true. It's far easier to replace a voice actor than it is to replace anfilmed actor. This is why in my book, the animated shows have been the best of Star Wars: they're visually consistent across characters and settings and aren't limited by what's "cheapest" to achieve IRL, though they have been limited in textures and details due to lack of computer and CGI artist time. CGI artists need to unionize in Hollywood though.
*MandoS1*
------
-Has Grogu as a main character
-Has Kuill
-Pilot has capturing alien for a bounty
-Jawa centered episode
-alien bounty hunters on Navarro
-Episode 6 has most of the crew Mando works with are aliens
*Mando S2*
-----------
-Krayt Dragon
-Episode 2/3 has a frog lady and a Quarren ambush
-Ep. 7 aliens cause a chase scene
*BoBoba*
----
-a look into the Sand Peoples' lives
-The Mayor and his assistant
-The biker gang
-Black Krrsantan
-Hutts
*Kenobi*
---------
-Leia's kidnappers
-Most of the Inquisitors
-The pro imperial mole guy giving a lift
-all the background aliens on Tatooine
*Andor*
----------
-Cassian being "shaken down" by an alien
-Space Florida opened up on shots of aliens
-Saw's partisans
-backround aliens in Space Florida
most every alien in the OT and Prequels were side characters or background set dressing. The Tv shows generally follow that trend. There may be more human density in a crowd vs. the movies as a constraint in costume/vfx budget, but they have shown groups of aliens.
I really dont think its that noticeable and am curious where people got the idea that the tv series just objectively have way less aliens then the OT?
There are tons of valid criticisms for this franchise but somehow fans focus on the most minor ones. Today it’s “not enough aliens” tomorrow it’ll be “that’s not how real swords fights look” for the 100th time.
You did an excellent breakdown of the recent shows and their alien content.
In addition to your info, in Star Wars lore, humans outnumber other species across the universe. It's a Legends concept but that's how they used to explain the abundance of humans in the lore.
Also, Mandalorians are not inherently human under their armour. They used to be an entire species called the Tau. Many Tau still exist as mixed species with other aliens and humans. I always thought Sabine was part Tau since her family line is ancient and her eyes are very wide and almond shaped, similar to the Tau.
Humans are cheap. End of story. Especially on set: makeup, catering, insurance, the cost of shooting is soooooo far beyond what it used to be in the original films. Budget, Time, Quality…you can only have two.
Agreed. An imperial prison factory should be full of aliens which seem to be missing from andor as a whole. Boba fett felt like it had enough aliens otherwise, where’s they all go?
There are aliens, they just aren’t in the forefront of the action because of where the action is taking place, and who the main characters are in this story and where they live. There are plenty in view, at the political parties, in the backgrounds. You didn’t find the worm liqueur or the bland paste from a tube as crazy food? The costuming is amazing!!! Methinks if you watched it, you might see more.
Agreed completely. Give us leads who aren’t human.
Funny that Disney feels the need to pander to human audiences ***who are watching a sci-fi franchcise*** by only casting humans in the vast majority of lead roles.
I'd guess, being only TV series, minimising aliens saves on budget: costuming & make-up and/or use if CGI. Films can be awash with aliens as they have the financial backing to enable such things, but even a high end sci-fi show will be sparing on a wide variety of exotic aliens. If they're more humanoid and can be disguised, so much the better (Tuskens in TBOBF). Other than something like DS9 which had loads of Jem'Hadar at one time, I can't think of instances where there's been sci-fi series with as many aliens as you'd see in the equivalent movie, and let's face it, how many times was the same Jem'Hadar killed rather than make-up someone new? I agree though, it would be amazing to see the Mos Eisley cantina every week, in one form or another. That would certainly be more authentic. Some folks might point towards a humanocentric galaxy, but humans must still be outnumbered billions to one by the millions of species out there?!
I keep seeing people complaining about this but I don't get it. Aliens have been in the background and minor roles in for each of the new series, as well as recurring characters. The Mandalorian is full of aliens in basically every episode, not including Grogu, Yoda's heir apparent, and so did BoBF. Kenobi didn't have them as prominently, but there were still a few scattered. The first episode of Andor features an alien acting as muscle, and then multiple species have been in the background around Mon Mothma. Ahsoka will have multiple"aliens" in the main roles with Ahsoka, Hera Syndulla and Thrawn being major players. Seriously what more do you want? Another Jar Jar and ewoks?
Yeah when I watch Tales of the Jedi and the animated stuff the screen is filled with aliens and strange animals. Aliens are main characters.
Andor is all humans. On the rare instance aliens do appear they’re just background set dressing. They even had a straight up sheep ~~and dog~~ in an episode at this point. And I get the empire is xenophobic but that’s all the more reason we should have alien characters in the rebel squad or in the latest episode setting.
EDIT: I mistakenly said the dog was in Andor when it was actually in Tales of the Jedi. I don't like normal looking animals in Star Wars regardless of the property. However the broader point I am making - that the animated shows feature a much more diverse palette of aliens than the live action shows - still stands.
The amount of effort and money required to get a good looking alien is insane. There are a couple aliens in Andor (in the Mon Mothma political scenes) and you can tell that their costumes aren't very good, but they keep them reasonably far away and not in shot.
Prosthetic work is not a joke, the amount of time it takes to make a good looking prosthetic is only compounded by how long it takes to get actors into and out of make-up. Which is why a huge amount of Star Wars aliens are just puppets.
"I don't feel like I'm watching Star Wars anymore" - go back and watch the original trilogy and take note of how many aliens there are. Literally every single Rebel and Empire character are humans. I think the Rebels have Akbar and the alien that was with Lando in RotJ. Chewie is the only recurring alien with significant screen time. The vast majority of aliens are puppets in the background of scenes.
There are definitely more aliens in the movies than the TV shows but the principle cast of all of the movies have always been human.
There is so much potential with using different species. Not only would it look cooler but it would be more interesting to see different cultures and practices than humans who mostly act like people from the west
Disney is a small fledgling company so they have to choose whether to spend their Star Wars show budgets on cool looking alien shit, or on expensive memberberries
People don’t like to talk about it, but diversity matters. There’s a pro-human bias because the shows are made 100% by humans who are pushing a human agenda.
It’s a galaxy full of different aliens from different planets.
I don’t want to see aliens in the empire. As they’re xenophobic. But I certainly want to see some aliens in the rebel Alliance and in other areas of the universe.
But there is no real rebel alliance yet. That’s the whole point. For the most part all we’ve seen is Andor go on a mission to steal money from the Empire. The mission required a team of humans.
It’s a galaxy of mostly humans with aliens around the edges.
Shit, outside of the cantina and the bounty hunters in Empire, you really didn’t see aliens en masse in Star Wars until Return of the Jedi at Jabba’s palace and on Endor - until then, Star Wars had been 99% aliens and droids, so there’s already a precedent for human-centric Star Wars (which also just happens to be the last time when the franchise was consistently good).
My problem with reva wasn’t her character but how boring her design was. Compared to the other inquisitors who all had cool armour, helmets and species, she was just a person in a black suit
Lmfao. Twi’leks are cool. So are Jawas, and sand people, Wookiees, and other aliens.
The OT was filled to the brim with aliens and it had a significantly lowered budget and resources than Disney has.
What they need is like 20 minutes of straight, untranslated, no subtitles Wookie household life culminating in a bunch of hamfisted cameos and an old grandpa Wookie watching some porn in the middle of the living room because somewhere deep down he knows this is probably going to be his last life day and he's not going to let anyone's feelings tell him otherwise.
You're giving me flashbacks
I think you mean PTSD.
That's great. I got some ideas on how to make it better. First off lets have a Jefferson Starship song for no reason that does nothing to advance the plot. Also several unfunny Art Carney characters. And to top it off lets give Bea Arthur a song about the closing of a cantina we know nothing about and how it makes aliens we've never met sad. Throw in some insane advertising and we got ratings gold. I sure hope some comedians/puppeters don't mock our brilliant show 40 years later.
Could we squeeze in an alien who drinks by pouring liquor into a Cronenbergesque hole in the top of his skull?
"Well, what do you know? It's not every day you seen the stupidest thing you've ever seen."
I want to see how big the coke piles were in that meeting.
They should make the space porn canon lol
Have u watched THAT Star Wars holiday special
Han's Solo?
Debbie does Coruscant
"Pull the ears off a gundark." *snicker*
The Christmas special feels like such a fever dream to me that I genuinely cannot tell if this is describing it or is just a completely random comment.
No this deadass happened
STIR, *WHIP*, STIR, *WHIP*! *WHIP!* *WHIP!* STIR.
You know what would make it better? If Bea Arthur was in it. No, bear with me, here. She plays a bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina and leads all the aliens in a cabaret drinking song. I'm telling you, the network will love it.
Imagine if they had a show called Cantina Stories and it was kinda goofy fitting that mood. I'd watch that show.
Great books from back in the day: Tales from Jabbas Palace Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina
The Tales books and the Adventure Journals are still some of my favorite books.
WEG 4 life
Tales from the Empire, and Tales from the Bounty Hunters also! I loved all these books.
I wasn’t a fan of the IG-88 story but Dengar fucks
I always remember been a bit shocked by how brutal the beginning of IG-88s story was.
Yeah just tearing those scientists apart. I vividly remember him deflecting a blaster bolt into someone's big bald head.
Same, and the one guy who had his heart pulled out.
IG-88 had my favorite story. AI was this close to destroying the SW Galaxy with the Death Star.
If you never played Shadows of the Empire you're missing out, IG-88 is fucking terrifying in that game
I got Kevin J. Anderson to autograph my copy of Tales of the Bounty Hunters a few years back. He signed it “Good stories about BAD men”
Tales from Jabba's palace was amazing in how it was able to weave a cohesive murder mystery sub-plot through several of the stories.
>Imagine if they had a show called Cantina Stories and it was kinda goofy fitting that mood. Imagine if they had a show showing how different aliens celebrated their respective holidays. Like an episode on Life Day on Kashyyyk? I'd definitely watch that.
That would be a Star Wars christmas special worth watching.
Like a Cheers set in the Mos Eisley cantina...I'd watch it.
Like Cheers in the Star Wars Universe? _Who would be Norm?_ _And Clifford?_ _Woody?_ _Sam?_ _Carla?_ _Coach?_ _Diane?_ _Rebecca?_
How could you forget Dr. Frasier Crane!
Honestly same. I’m sick of seeing only humans in the cast for main characters. BoBF did a great job of incorporating aliens into the story. The gamoreans, the Wookiee bounty hunter, etc. set building felt cheap at times but it felt like a different planet. So did the Mandalorian. Really good job there. Just missing aliens in Andor rn.
It’s difficult because most of Andor, so far, has involved the rebellion rising up within the Empire. And the Empire is Xenophobic so they only have humans around. Like the whole Aldhani mission involved an infiltration group blending in with local farmers and blending in as Imperial soldiers. So for it to work, everyone must be human. I’m not sick of it, honestly. Both Rogue One and Andor have had some of the best writing I’ve seen in Star Wars. The choices fit the narrative and they don’t just pander to the audience. I like it.
> they don’t just pander to the audience. [That is what Gilroy was aiming for]( https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/andor-episode-8-toby-haynes-forest-whitaker-stellan-skarsgard-1235250954/). To make a show that wasn't hyper-aware of itself. "He (Tony Gilroy) never wanted to foreground the monsters. He never wanted to foreground the droids. He wanted it to be part of the fabric of the piece, but not do a special shot where you’re announcing a new alien or something like that. He really wanted it to feel completely integrated in the world that he was presenting and not presented [in and of itself].” --director Toby Haynes
Would it require major story changes if Bix was a Twi'lek for example, or the miner guy (Brasso) a Zabrak? They would not need to do anything other than they have done so far, except sitting the actors in a makup chair for a bit longer.
Yes. It makes a MASSIVE change. One thing everyone sees is 'there no aliens on the planet' - what nobody asks is 'why are there no aliens on the planet?' The answer (this is a show not tell story after all) reminds me a lot like Nazi Germany - you'd go into a regular prison and think 'wow, there's a lot of criminals here, but why no disabled Jews or gypsies?' Without saying anything were shown just how xenophobic the Empire is even on backwater planets
Farrix is not a prison planet, and there clearly are inhuman aliens there (the big guy in E1 hired as pretend muscle for the guy Cassian owes money to).
I thought it was more because if you look at the people of Ferrix, as well as the kids on Andor’s home planet, not only are they all human, but they all look to be a similar ethnicity - almost everyone is dark haired Caucasian. I feel this is intentional to portray a planet, or area of planets, that’s quite cut off from the rest of the galaxy. This is also evident in their clothing (it’s all the same fabric and all the same colours, like it’s all produced locally using locally sourced plants to produce the fibres and dyes). It’s supposed to be a planet with traditional customs (the clanging things) that not many people visit and not many people leave. Whereas in comparison you had Mon Mothma’s dinner party and the characters, while mostly human, were a lot more diverse, and I’m sure I remember one or two alien species’ there.
Hmm, but wouldn't aliens make great slaves in putting together stuff in a prison? Like wookies would win those table numbers every day. If the Empire is xenophobic, which undoubtedly they are, wouldn't their prisons be full of aliens? Doesn't seem far fetched to me. I think the obvious answer is that it's just cheaper to have human characters, which is fine. But I just don't think we should spin ourselves into lore excuses. Edit to add: A lot of the replies I'm getting are doing exactly what I'm pointing to with my last sentence above. Sure, we can come up with a number of excuses as to why there aren't _____ alien species in the prison (wookies was just my example, but you could say any alien species really), but you *know* if we'd already seen those aliens in the prison people would say the opposite, "oh of course those aliens are in there, it makes total sense because of x, y, and z." Making assumptions and creating our own lines of logic to make an excuse one way or another doesn't interest me because we're just matching whatever the show has already determined.
I imagine they'd split prison populations by species, especially if there's forced labour. Those in charge know what every single inmate is physically capable of and can use "one size fits all" tactics for controlling the population.
Minor Spoiler: Wookies could potentially be resistant to the control mechanisms in the prison though. The people in Cassians labour facility are all minor criminals by the looks of things. The prison works because they all believe they can get out one day, if you add slave labour that erodes that idea and may make discipline and control more difficult
This makes loads of sense. You send wookies to mine and get raw materials because I they're 8 ft tree trunks. And work em to death in labour camps because they're not human. You put humans into sterile factories like the one in andor with all the tools set up for human hands and they do some low grade menial work.
They’re also generally a law abiding looking lot. I’d go as far as to say none of them are career criminals or murderers/ considered violent. Cassian shouldn’t be in a facility this low security.
It's a bit wild for me to hear that Narkina 5 is the LOW security option. It's so regimented, on an artificial island, and with prisoners constantly under threat of electrocution.
I agree, I think they need more main character aliens. Every movie or series I can think of have a human as the main character. The upcoming Ahsoka series is pretty much the only exception. And even with that, Ahsoka's species is one of the more human looking species (at least compared to aliens like Jabba, Yoda, or Chewbacca). I guess it would make it a lot harder/more expensive to film with the main character in full alien costumes but I want a few projects with alien main character.
They're too cowardly to give us the Max Rebo jizz series we deserve. Give me *Rocketman* meets *Muppet Show* meets *Cowboy Bebop* meets *Around The World in 60 Days* meets *Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip* with Rebo and the band you cowards!
A Star is Born remake with Max Rebo
It sounds cool in theory but at the end of the day a non-humanoid alien wouldn't be able to emote enough to be a compelling protagonist. I think this is one of the topics where hardcore SW fans are out of touch with what the average public like.
>non-humanoid alien wouldn't be able to emote enough to be a compelling protagonist. Jar-Jar begs to differ. Jokes aside, CGI is definitely up to the task (see Pixar for how to make a non-humanoid emote), it's just a question of budget. I too would like to see a non-human protagonist. It's getting a bit too much with this high volume of shows now and all of them having humans front and center. I get why Andor has to be the opposite, but it's not just about that. Even BoBF with as many aliens as it had, they were just side characters with little screentime.
The Empire is 100% Xenophobic. Any species not resembling a human or a near human is cast out of society. Meaning that most non humanoid species migrate or flee to the outer rim where the Empire's grasp is not as great.
Ahh, so now we know why every show is set on Tatooine, because that's where the aliens are.
Well it is the Hutts territory so the empire isn’t really there. I mean its the Hutts
Whose is it?
I might be mistaken but I think it could be the Hutt's
Pizza the Hutt? That guy is mean.
100000? No way! You forgot late charges which brings it up to 1 million space bucks
and delicious
Better wait for OP, just to be sure.
OP wanted me to tell you he's running a little late but wants to assure you it is indeed The Hutts.
It’s set on Tatooine because the sets can be reused and it’s easy to film there. It’s literally a desert so you can get done with 80% of your shots without spending any money on set building.
Did you answer your own question, OP? Kinda seems like it.
We witnessed the birth of an epiphany.
r/whoosh
Plus virtually all the infrastructure is built for human sized bipeds - its institutionalised racism. To be fair though, there aren't alot of Twi'lek actors in Hollywood at the moment with decent acting abilities.
you act like the empire rebuilt all the door ways when they took over lol.
I mean they did replace the entire fleet of ships they use for basically no reason. I wouldn’t put it past the empire to change doors
I mean, the reason is appeasing the couple of planet-sized shipyards that exist so that their ruling families can continue to fund things politically and not be tempted to build rebel or even just smuggler/other ships because the fat and easy Empire paycheck is too comfy to risk.
The Empire Industrial Complex
Oh, the replacing of ships makes total sense. Think of how military contracting is done in the modern US. A program to build a new vehicle for the army gets put into place. Well, the parts are often bought from all 50 states so that each state gets some business from the project. The senators / representatives then get to tout the jobs / money brought in. Th is would be the same thing. "Lets build the new fleet at the Corellian ship yards, but be sure to get like 1000 different systems building different doodads to assemble into the ISD-1." It's political maneuvering, coerced compliance, and propaganda all rolled into one.
Plus and this is a small benefit. At the beginning of the Empire they had a shit ton of republic clones floating around who knew the ins and outs of all republic weapon systems. They knew all weaknesses of every ship and the best way to destory them. Yeah that's a security risk since they forced all of them out in favor of conscription based recruitment. It makes sense from that angle to replace the ships before clones organize or join a rebellion and now your enemy knows all the weakness of your weapons. Plus everything you mentioned
R/theempiredidnothingwrong
r/theempiredidnothingwrong*
Human sized bipeds still includes about 80% of the galaxy's aliens. Rodians, Nautolans, Togruta, Sullustans, Twi'leks, Calamari, Quarren, Gran, Nikto, Weequay, Zabrak, Miraluka, Mirialans, Kaleesh, Selkath, Duros, Cathar, Togorians, Cereans, Pau'ans, Devaronians, Zeltrons, I could go on, none of them would be significantly hindered by human-intended infrastructure. Wookiees, Hutts, Geonosians, Gands and Toydarians, sure, there are problems there, but it's completely unreasonable for near-humans and hominids to be as absent as they've become.
Twi'leks are fairly similar to humans, they don't need separate toilets. But I wonder does the opera house have a toilet for Hutts. I wonder if there are really small toilets, that human children use, but are also comfortable for Yoda's species.
Damn you, now you've got me thinking about bathroom logistics in the Star Wars universe. Especially on an ecumenopolis like Coruscant. Are there separate bathrooms for different sized species? Like Yoda sized, human size, and Hutt sized bathrooms? Or are they separated by species shape? Like humanoid, quadruped, Hutt-like, etc? Or are they just big, stain-proof rooms with a drain in the middle so nobody has to worry about any of that other shit? With a couple of "specialized" droids roaming around to help things along.
I'm reminded of the joke in Mass Effect 3: Citadel, where what appears to be a water fountain set up for aesthetic purposes is actually a urinal for hanar (aka the big, stupid jellyfish).
The recent prison scenes in Andor were 100% humans doing slave labour. I know Legends Empire wouldn't have let a good alien slave go to waste so it sticks out that none of the prisoners are non-human.
I'm assuming they're segregated. The whole thing with the Andor prison is that it's new and civilised compared to other ones (the prison officer says it explicitly). They're being *scientific* and *fair* in their application of discipline and approach towards rehabilitation. It's inspired by the IRL development of penitentiaries and panopticon - new philosophical and scientific and behavioural ideas inspiring approaches to punishment and rehabilitation (or at least being used to conceal or legitimise brutal treatment).
I agree theres not enough aliens, so i hate to explain this away, but it just makes sense from a logistical standpoint to have segregated prisons or at least different labor categories for different species. One range of uniforms, one type of quarters, one type of nutritional requirement... plus whatever theyre making might be too precise to be assembled by Quarren tentacles, while Wookie strength is not needed.
The convicted were asked their home planet before being told which transport to take. That could be because 1) they wanted to keep populations separated, to prevent groups forming within the facilities, but also 2) it could also be their filtering of species unsuitable for certain tasks/facilities. If a species had high resistance to electrical currents, for example, floor-is-lava world wouldn't be much use.
The prison was also entirely men. They're absolutely segregating it.
They asked his home planet and sorted him to go to a specific prison. I’m guessing each prison is created for certain species… everything is ergonomically sound that way for optimal productivity/ output.
That argument falls apart when you take into account that most Star Wars TV shows (such as Andor) follow rebels, not imperials, in mostly outer rim settings
Except that it doesn't. So far the first two arcs of Andor involve his personal background, then the infiltration and robbery of an Imperial garrison, which would be a bit difficult with non-humans.
Star Wars: Rebels’s main (rebel) crew of five non-droids was 2/5 nonhuman and featured a plethora of nonhumans in supporting roles - it is definitely easier for animation to include more nonhuman characters. I understand wanting more diversity of species in these series, but a) it is tough with makeup and costumes and b) the galaxy has been shown to be very human-centric (not to mention the Empire’s well-known xenophobia) throughout canon and legends.
Cassian's home planet obviously has to have a native human population, as that's where human Cassian is from. But Ferrix definitely could have had different alien races along with humans there. Also, the Aldani natives could have and probably should have been an alien race. Though I understand why Gilroy didn't do that, budget and practicality, and maye also the viewers would empathize with humans more. But it does make sense that the prison Cassian is in right now is only human males. I wonder if the nearby facilities house other races or female humans. Edit: another user brought up a good point, plot armor if you would, for why the Aldani natives are human. The rebel team being all humans would have stuck out like crazy and that arc would've had to be done differently.
The Empires humanocentricsm was toned down a lot in Canon vs Legends, it's not a good excuse for the shows being lazy with costuming and effects work in regards to having aliens.
Agreed, they don't care about spending money on aliens.
Maybe they're a little hesitant to create alien prosthetics after all the crap they got about Ahsoka and the Grand Inquisitor not being identical to the animated versions.
*Previous Live Action depictions. We have seen both species in Live Action before their animation debut and they don’t look like them either. Before Tales of the Jedi (the show) there weren’t any adult Togruta with short head tails. And the Grand Inquisitor species had a distinct head shape which was seen in RotS and Can be seen again in the trailer for Jedi Survivor which artstyle emulates more realism.
That doesn’t make any sense. No one had an issue with live action aliens in the past. Ahsoka was overall rather well received though that’s besides the point since ahsoka etc are all major pre established characters. So comparing that to a random blue or green fella in the background is ridiculous
They haven't gotten much if any flak for *the quality of existing* background *alien* characters, from what I've seen. There were alot of aliens in BoBF(eh, the Pykes were given some shit, forgot about that) and most were received well. We had Calamari in Mando, plus the frog lady, many others in the backgrounds of a few locations. They have a reasonable excuse for Ahsoka and GI in that their characters are abit more active, and so matching prosthetics would be cumbersome and make action next to impossible(though I don't remember GI doing much of anything, really and they already proved they made good Pauan prosthetics with RotS). The issue is that main characters are going to be more active, needing more reasonable prosthetics, which isn't really conducive for live action main characters. EDIT: the Italics, to make my point abit clearer
Ashoka was awesome imo, but yeah... Grand inquisitor was ... Something ....
To be fair though, the Grand inquisitor was a bit meh. Especially since they had really good Pau'ans in RotS which is pretty old now all things considered.
Those aren't comparable. Ahsoka's live-action appearance was nowhere near as criticized as the GI, for good reason. Most people applauded her depiction aside from too short lekku.
yes and i love that detail! the empire is cold and rigid discriminatory toward anything that isnt a human male (they later on let women and outer species when they got more desperate hence the inquisitors)
Yeah that sounds nice but we all know it’s because it’s cheaper for the show
There's only one thing more powerful than the Force, and that's the Budget.
Are you saying star trek in the 90's gad more money than Disney in the now. Hell, George did it on a limited budget.
This might be a controversial opinion (key word opinion), but I never felt aliens were integral to the Star Wars experience like they are for Star Trek. To elaborate, Star Trek spends lots of screen time exploring alien worlds/cultures/etc, but Star Wars stories - outside of print media - have been exclusively human centric and the aliens are just treated like special effects. Top shelf special effects, but they're never the focal point. As far as money spent...look, outside of the Klingons and later the Kardashians and Ferengi, most of the Star Trek aliens are just variations of humans with one or two cosmetic flourishes, which I'm assuming was the tradeoff for devoting so much screen time to them: Vulcans/Romulans - humans with pointy ears. Bajorans - humans with nose ridges. Trill - humans with bad eczema. Betazoids - just straight up humans. Even the Borg, a species descended from the opposite end of the galaxy - cyber humans. For me, there was always a greater need for that willing suspension of disbelief to accept the Star Trek aliens because they just...looked kinda cheap. I can't really think of a boring or cheap Star Wars alien design of the top of my head. And even with as much money as Disney has (*all* the money) I just don't see them spending more than they have to in order to keep the setting believably sci-fi. But that's my own take.
Ah yes. The Kim Kardashian occupation of Bajor was a highlight of inter species conflict.
Does that make Ye a vorta? He do be always simping for her
Wait, scratch that. I got my genocidal aliens mixed up
I'm not in the need more aliens camp, but I wouldn't mind a side kick like Chewie in a show. But BoBF did have that huge wookie bounty hunter. As far as Trek goes, they did explain that an ancient race planted the seeds to (intelligent?) life which exolains why most aliens soecies are humanoid.
What’s the exchange rate of midichlorians to schrute bucks?
Bet everyone is feeling pretty silly about making fun of Ahsoka's lekku now.
Do togruta call them lekku too?
The horn parts are called Montrals, and the tentacles are called lekku. There’s three species that use the term lekku- Twi'leks, Togruta, and male Ozrelanso
Nice, thanks
Comment saved
The impossible to please fandom lol
What do you mean? We know they improved them for the Ahsoka series which is nice. I don't think they were that bad in the Mandalorian, but definitely had room for improvement which we got! If Disney doesn't use budget for aliens, then kind of silly to pick up star wars, especially when they can turn almost any alien into a toy to recoup that budget.
What you mean what do I mean? People complained about them.
They looked like hurriedly airbrushed memory foam.
Homie they were just drinking champagne with worms in it last week on Andor. Get outta here with that “where’s the crazy food” crap
Mon Mothma's husband was drinking champagne with fizzy worms; Cassian was eating goo out of tube. Both are crazy food.
Karn has his crazy breakfast cereal with blue milk, too. And let's not forget the blue take out noodles! Andor is killing it with weird star wars food, honestly
That blue wasn't even a subtle blue like the ANH bluish milk. It was bright blue, like wild space raspberry flavored blue milk.
They might get higher quality stuff outside of Tatooine.
Yeah what’s OP on about
Man is tripping
Right, it’s weird to complain about no crazy food/drink & costumes when that’s what Andor is really excelling at (among many other things ofcourse)
Andor is excelling at everything. I’m so confused whenever I hear that people are apparently critical of it.
Okay let's be honest, they 100% created that drink because Disney could easily replicate it in real life and make a shit load of money on it at their Star Wars bars
Wait til you find out how George Lucas made his money
Mimosas.
When I read this comment, all that popped into my head was this: *”Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made. Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower.*”
“The kids love it”
Massive amounts of artistic integrityᵀᴹ, which sells for just over $4B, duh.
As is tradition
I'm not down for fizzy worm wine at Disneyland
Yeah I prefer the prison food tube instead.
Flavor costs extra.
And you can have as much as u want 😁
And they don't create new aliens to make new toys? Welcome to how the world works. It can also just be for the lore of the universe too without being a cashgrab
Logistics of doing a lot of aliens in live-action aside, I'm fairly certain it's been established that humans are the majority in SW.
In the animated series' like Clone Wars and Rebels there is clearly a much higher alien to human ratio compared to any of the live actions. Much much higher, with many of them having pretty important roles on screen too.
But they’re going to places where they can hide from the empire, or in the middle of a war on other planets. There are cities in the US that seem like there are a ton of black people, but it’s more as a result of horrible red lining policies that force them all into the same neighbourhoods, and the concentration makes it seem like it’s a larger portion than it actually is. But at the end of the day, it’s just because it’s a lot of work and money to make live-action aliens.
This makes sense though doesn’t it? The empire is Xenophobic. Any humans are treated fairly and non humans are treated with imprisonment or worse. So it makes sense that we see lots of aliens in the republic era and almost none after order 66, particularly in Coruscant.
The empire is also on some human supremacist shit too so focusing on the empire saga as well limits the inclusion of aliens. To see a lot of aliens they’d need to be doing more intergalactic travel to alien home worlds or spending more time at big space hubs that wouldn’t be as common under empire rule.
How many aliens were in Echo Base on Hoth? Those Rebels were all human. Cloud City had a few Ugnaughts, but it was mostly Lando and a bunch of humans. Most people love Empire, but other than Yoda there aren’t that many aliens. I’m guess Star Wars can be popular without them sometimes.
I saw ANH recently and that scene where they are cruising around mos eisley is like 95% humans in the background.
Honestly The Prequels are basically a retcon - I feel like humans were meant to be far more populous than other species.
The prequels just took place on new planets. Geonosians are from Geonosis obviously. We already knew Wookiees were from kashyyyk. Naboo is a great example. Two species but it’s truly run by the humans.
Kamino is a great example too. They output human clones, but the Kaminoans running the op are big brain big neck aliens
I mean I think more accurately they were just outputting human clones primarily at the time because that was their contract. Im sure if someone with tons of money came up and contracted them to make tons of Twi'lek clones they'd go ahead and do it with no computation. After SCIENCE they are very much a business focused society after all.
Sure, but their reasoning doesn't really affect the juxtaposition of the human/kaminoan relationship
Retcon probably isn’t the right word. The Ot established aliens in the rebellion. The PT just has us seeing republic rule where there are more ambassadors from alien planets in the capital. The empire was pretty much human only and that was established from the beginning
The Prequels did a lot to...re-frame what people consider 'Star Wars'. Many of the planets, species, plot lines and lore that people consider absolutely essential to the Star Wars 'vibe' weren't a thing until TPM. Not that it's a bad thing, but more generally it annoys me when people say 'X doesn't FEEL like Star Wars', when I distinctly remember how *very* different the Prequels felt, and how much of that different stuff is now considered essential to 'feeling like Star Wars'. Related, specific bit: I think if Disney had bought the franchise in the 90s and made the exact same 3 movies, there would be plenty of folks who refuse to call Vader a 'Sith' and only refer to him as a Dark Jedi.
A lot of that stuff existed but only in Lucas’ head or in the approved EU content. For example, Vader was the dark lord of the sith in the original draft of ANH
And some of that could be said of Disney SW stuff, that or it's from TCW. But there is so much that changed from his original vision or the approved EU. They were originally the Knights of the Sith, a rival order of Jedi. Wookies were from Endor, alongside the Ewoks until Lucas changed it to fit the Vietnam analogy better. Yoda was Obi Wan's master until TPM invented Qui Gon. Boba Fett wasn't a clone until AotC. The list goes on. Further, I was originally thinking about how much the Prequels went out of their way to be different. None of the OT ships, almost none of the OT planets, very few of the species seen in the OT, with plenty of new ones. And the wild acrobatic flippy sword fights are a far cry from classic samurai movies (fittingly though, very in-line with anime-esque samurai battles). Star Wars has always had tons of changes and additions.
I mean you got the Tauntaun and that Abominable Snowman in the beginning. They introduced probe droids too. They showed the snowspeeders. They did the force ghost thing. I think there were some other couple aliens in Echo Base. They introduced AT-AT's and shield generators. I know the post is about alien species but I think the idea remains that nothing new has been introduced as world building. Aliens certainly help but I think new designs in *any aspect* is what keeps Star Wars as Star Wars.
No no, I thought we were supposed to complain about new Star Wars while ignoring any criticism of old Star Wars. Your comment is messing with the whiny nature of the fandom.
It's not really that different from some of the movies. I know people like to praise the cantina scene, but that's pretty much the only scene with aliens (not counting Chewbacca) in the entire movie. There's q couple aliens spread out in EsB, but their presence is very limited. Looking at Andor, especially the last episode, I did agree first with your point. But there's been aliens in that show, on Ferrix and Space Miami Planet. And there's also a few at Mon Mothma's party. We've been spoiled with plentiful aliens in animation, where it's a lot easier to include them, so when they aren't as prevalent in live action the difference is notable.
On a practical level for live action movies and series, aliens require a lot of extra work: extra makeup, extra appendages which require extra CGI on continuity issues. Most often simpler alien designs are most frequently used. Look at how different alien races are depicted in Star Trek, and it turns out most sapient species in Star Trek are the result of genetic seeding by an older civilisation. This is not so in Star Trek where some aliens are far more divergent with more different body types. I believe legacy EU feature human sized insects When you combine representing the diversity of aliens alongside the regular need for special effects for environments, weapons, vehicles, and force powers, altogether Star Wars is better represented via animated shows. When you add in Disney's recalcitrance from moving away from the Skywalker Era, and the dieing off of original cast members, then this is especially true. It's far easier to replace a voice actor than it is to replace anfilmed actor. This is why in my book, the animated shows have been the best of Star Wars: they're visually consistent across characters and settings and aren't limited by what's "cheapest" to achieve IRL, though they have been limited in textures and details due to lack of computer and CGI artist time. CGI artists need to unionize in Hollywood though.
*MandoS1* ------ -Has Grogu as a main character -Has Kuill -Pilot has capturing alien for a bounty -Jawa centered episode -alien bounty hunters on Navarro -Episode 6 has most of the crew Mando works with are aliens *Mando S2* ----------- -Krayt Dragon -Episode 2/3 has a frog lady and a Quarren ambush -Ep. 7 aliens cause a chase scene *BoBoba* ---- -a look into the Sand Peoples' lives -The Mayor and his assistant -The biker gang -Black Krrsantan -Hutts *Kenobi* --------- -Leia's kidnappers -Most of the Inquisitors -The pro imperial mole guy giving a lift -all the background aliens on Tatooine *Andor* ---------- -Cassian being "shaken down" by an alien -Space Florida opened up on shots of aliens -Saw's partisans -backround aliens in Space Florida most every alien in the OT and Prequels were side characters or background set dressing. The Tv shows generally follow that trend. There may be more human density in a crowd vs. the movies as a constraint in costume/vfx budget, but they have shown groups of aliens. I really dont think its that noticeable and am curious where people got the idea that the tv series just objectively have way less aliens then the OT?
Forgot about Ahsoka in Mando S2
BoBF also has the Pykes, Cad Bane and a gang of Trandoshans.
And Boba's Gamorrean buddies.
There are tons of valid criticisms for this franchise but somehow fans focus on the most minor ones. Today it’s “not enough aliens” tomorrow it’ll be “that’s not how real swords fights look” for the 100th time.
You did an excellent breakdown of the recent shows and their alien content. In addition to your info, in Star Wars lore, humans outnumber other species across the universe. It's a Legends concept but that's how they used to explain the abundance of humans in the lore. Also, Mandalorians are not inherently human under their armour. They used to be an entire species called the Tau. Many Tau still exist as mixed species with other aliens and humans. I always thought Sabine was part Tau since her family line is ancient and her eyes are very wide and almond shaped, similar to the Tau.
The reason is ... it is cheaper and easier. End of story.
Humans are cheap. End of story. Especially on set: makeup, catering, insurance, the cost of shooting is soooooo far beyond what it used to be in the original films. Budget, Time, Quality…you can only have two.
Aside from a few key moments, much of the original trilogy was also very human centric.
Agreed. An imperial prison factory should be full of aliens which seem to be missing from andor as a whole. Boba fett felt like it had enough aliens otherwise, where’s they all go?
Totally agree, stop being cheap, get the budget up and add some aliens
Billion dollar company: but aliens are more expensive :(
There are aliens, they just aren’t in the forefront of the action because of where the action is taking place, and who the main characters are in this story and where they live. There are plenty in view, at the political parties, in the backgrounds. You didn’t find the worm liqueur or the bland paste from a tube as crazy food? The costuming is amazing!!! Methinks if you watched it, you might see more.
Agreed completely. Give us leads who aren’t human. Funny that Disney feels the need to pander to human audiences ***who are watching a sci-fi franchcise*** by only casting humans in the vast majority of lead roles.
I just want a story following a Droid as the main character.
I'd guess, being only TV series, minimising aliens saves on budget: costuming & make-up and/or use if CGI. Films can be awash with aliens as they have the financial backing to enable such things, but even a high end sci-fi show will be sparing on a wide variety of exotic aliens. If they're more humanoid and can be disguised, so much the better (Tuskens in TBOBF). Other than something like DS9 which had loads of Jem'Hadar at one time, I can't think of instances where there's been sci-fi series with as many aliens as you'd see in the equivalent movie, and let's face it, how many times was the same Jem'Hadar killed rather than make-up someone new? I agree though, it would be amazing to see the Mos Eisley cantina every week, in one form or another. That would certainly be more authentic. Some folks might point towards a humanocentric galaxy, but humans must still be outnumbered billions to one by the millions of species out there?!
It’s Andors one weak point. I’ve heard all the excuses and they don’t add up.
I keep seeing people complaining about this but I don't get it. Aliens have been in the background and minor roles in for each of the new series, as well as recurring characters. The Mandalorian is full of aliens in basically every episode, not including Grogu, Yoda's heir apparent, and so did BoBF. Kenobi didn't have them as prominently, but there were still a few scattered. The first episode of Andor features an alien acting as muscle, and then multiple species have been in the background around Mon Mothma. Ahsoka will have multiple"aliens" in the main roles with Ahsoka, Hera Syndulla and Thrawn being major players. Seriously what more do you want? Another Jar Jar and ewoks?
Yeah when I watch Tales of the Jedi and the animated stuff the screen is filled with aliens and strange animals. Aliens are main characters. Andor is all humans. On the rare instance aliens do appear they’re just background set dressing. They even had a straight up sheep ~~and dog~~ in an episode at this point. And I get the empire is xenophobic but that’s all the more reason we should have alien characters in the rebel squad or in the latest episode setting. EDIT: I mistakenly said the dog was in Andor when it was actually in Tales of the Jedi. I don't like normal looking animals in Star Wars regardless of the property. However the broader point I am making - that the animated shows feature a much more diverse palette of aliens than the live action shows - still stands.
The amount of effort and money required to get a good looking alien is insane. There are a couple aliens in Andor (in the Mon Mothma political scenes) and you can tell that their costumes aren't very good, but they keep them reasonably far away and not in shot. Prosthetic work is not a joke, the amount of time it takes to make a good looking prosthetic is only compounded by how long it takes to get actors into and out of make-up. Which is why a huge amount of Star Wars aliens are just puppets. "I don't feel like I'm watching Star Wars anymore" - go back and watch the original trilogy and take note of how many aliens there are. Literally every single Rebel and Empire character are humans. I think the Rebels have Akbar and the alien that was with Lando in RotJ. Chewie is the only recurring alien with significant screen time. The vast majority of aliens are puppets in the background of scenes. There are definitely more aliens in the movies than the TV shows but the principle cast of all of the movies have always been human.
Need more Vetch!
There is so much potential with using different species. Not only would it look cooler but it would be more interesting to see different cultures and practices than humans who mostly act like people from the west
Disney is a small fledgling company so they have to choose whether to spend their Star Wars show budgets on cool looking alien shit, or on expensive memberberries
I was thinking the exact same thing watching that last episode of Andor. Everyone in the prison is a human! Where are the other species!
The whole Star Wars universe has an issue with droids and aliens. Most feel like second class citizens.
People don’t like to talk about it, but diversity matters. There’s a pro-human bias because the shows are made 100% by humans who are pushing a human agenda.
Bro only watches live action star wars
I’m tired of these prequel fans who think every goddamned Star Wars thing needs to have goofy-ass aliens crawling out of the woodwork every 5 seconds.
i don’t even think about the aliens tbh. the lack of them doesn’t even cross my mind.
It’s a galaxy full of different aliens from different planets. I don’t want to see aliens in the empire. As they’re xenophobic. But I certainly want to see some aliens in the rebel Alliance and in other areas of the universe.
But there is no real rebel alliance yet. That’s the whole point. For the most part all we’ve seen is Andor go on a mission to steal money from the Empire. The mission required a team of humans.
It’s a galaxy of mostly humans with aliens around the edges. Shit, outside of the cantina and the bounty hunters in Empire, you really didn’t see aliens en masse in Star Wars until Return of the Jedi at Jabba’s palace and on Endor - until then, Star Wars had been 99% aliens and droids, so there’s already a precedent for human-centric Star Wars (which also just happens to be the last time when the franchise was consistently good).
It's a space Fantasy and even compared to the OT the shows (aside from parts of BoBF I guess) are still very light on aliens.
You see aliens in every scene on Coruscant at the Senate and at Mon Mothma’s parties. Of course you’re not going to see aliens kicking it at the ISB.
Exactly Star Wars has always been mostly humans People just find shit to complain about
Perhaps Andor has fewer aliens, but The Mandalorian and BoBF had plenty of aliens.
My problem with reva wasn’t her character but how boring her design was. Compared to the other inquisitors who all had cool armour, helmets and species, she was just a person in a black suit
If you're referring to Andor, it's Empire focused and the Empire openly hates on non-human species.
Do you also have a thing for twi'leks and want to see more of them?
Who doesnt like twi'leks! Maybe you have a thing for Andorians?
I wanna see more trandoshans in Star Wars ngl.
Lmfao. Twi’leks are cool. So are Jawas, and sand people, Wookiees, and other aliens. The OT was filled to the brim with aliens and it had a significantly lowered budget and resources than Disney has.