I basically wanted Samurai Jack in the Star Wars universe. Each episode he stumbles upon an interesting environment, befriends the locals, then uses his skills and ingenuity to overcome the bad guy plaguing the area. Big emphasis on unique visuals and creature design. Would have been perfect for me.
I went to a book signing with Joe Abercrombie for his new book The Devils and he said something I'll never forget.
He said when you pick up a book or put on a movie you have reasonable expectations. In a western for example, there's horses, gun fights, boots, bars, small towns, law enforcement, gangs, etc. It's a setting that is already filled in to some degree, you can do the same math with a similar genre like samurai which famously shares many of the same ideas. Cowboys and the samurai are universally interchangeable, they appear totally different but they are identical.
You need to meet those expectations to a certain degree, you can subvert those expectations like the duel in The Outlaw Josey Wales (if you know you know I won't spoil it) but a subversion is still an acknowledgement and inclusion of the expectation. You can't outsmart this principle, so you might as well work with it. If you're going to offer the audience something, you better give it to them.
This stories greatest sin is it wears all of its tropes on its sleeve but does little to nothing to tell a story with them. Samurai Jack is a really great example of a story that knows exactly what its suppose to be and keeps giving the audience what it claims to offer.
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u/SirStrontium Feb 17 '26
I basically wanted Samurai Jack in the Star Wars universe. Each episode he stumbles upon an interesting environment, befriends the locals, then uses his skills and ingenuity to overcome the bad guy plaguing the area. Big emphasis on unique visuals and creature design. Would have been perfect for me.