I know it’s been beaten to death but I just finished re-watching all 9 + rogue one, and can confirm there’s no reason for anyone to go back to the sequel trilogy. TFA gets some credit as a solid popcorn flick but doesn’t change the fact it’s retreading ANH, just to have every original story beat crushed by TLJ. By the time I got to Rise of Skywalker I was totally checked out, it’s just noise and explosions with a plot that is borderline incomprehensible.
TLJ is what I think gave the sequel trilogy… hope.
TFA is very much a nostalgia grab re-tread of ANH. Which is the point. Evil has come back and something something it rhymes.
TLJ is all about breaking the cycle. The hero? She isn’t a chosen one. She is a random unhoused garbage goblin. The reluctant hero? He isn’t coming back for selfish reasons (wanting to bang Leia) and is instead realizing that he is part of something bigger than him. The confident scoundrel? He got told quite definitively that he is a childish moron who gets people killed and to do better.
And Luke? if he was really The Chosen One… why did everything repeat? The stories of our parents aren’t gonna solve things so let’s try something new. Let’s democratize force powers. Let’s ACTUALLY fight against tyranny.
And then China allegedly got pissed and Disney had JJ come back to undo everything in the first 30 minutes of ROS. And only really succeeded in making a movie that EVERYBODY hates.
That said? Rogue One and Andor were somehow snuck in there and those are very much a Star Wars made for people who grew up watching the prequels. And it is amazing for it.
Luke was never the Chosen One, I think you’ve misinterpreted. It was Anakin who defeated the Sith. Luke just scored an assist.
Luke was possibly a second try for the Force (which assumes some type of agency, but any of these theories do). Anakin met all the Chosen One criteria, except he turned (thanks to the Jedi Council and Palpatine’s manipulations of them all). Luke was both a redemption for Anakin, a removal of the breaker of the prophecy (Palpatine), and a hope for the future. A second Chosen One, one who might be as or more powerful than Anakin in his prime, since he has the blood and gift but not Anakin’s personal trauma that haunts and detracts him.
I think the biggest flaw of the sequels was the vagueness of why Luke couldn’t renew or reimagine the Jedi again in a better form. It’s glossed over to give a minimal backstory for Kylo, Snope is even more unclear and ended up being nothing, and why it drove Luke into isolation still isn’t really told.
I liked TFA. I didn’t like the start of TLJ. I expected a better thing that Luke just “meh” with the saber and the apathy towards everything. I wanted something deep and dramatic, tragic even. I was okay with Rey being no one special, that actually was the best part of TLJ (the end with the kid and broom). That seemed very interesting to follow.
Then it lost me fully.
Technically Anakin brought balance to the force. There used to be a bunch of Jedi and a few Sith. Because of Anakin, now there are a few Jedi and a few Sith.
Shoot, what was that comic where Yoda demonstrated his concerns about Anakin using salt and pepper? He dumped them both out, stuck his finger in the middle, and blew all the rest off the table. He lifted his finger, showing only a few grains of each left, and said “balanced, it is”
I hadn’t heard that China might have pressured Disney about the democratization of heroism, but… I could see it. I agree TLJ felt like a bit of a downer – especially coming from the abandoned Expanded Universe novels where Luke hadn’t done the best job but at least had set a direction for Jedi to come back into the galaxy. I still don’t love Rey’s encounter with the dark side.
But the disruption of every story beat, the possibility of being a hero because YOU choose to step forward, that was a great twist. The broom scene should have set the direction of the terribly named Episode 9…
Maybe I’ll slip Rogue One in and drop Episode 9. Still 9 movies, and only really regret the first one.
I loved young Jedi knights!
Luke was the son of the evil warlord who single handedly changed the fate of not just The Rebellion but also The Galaxy (and yes, I know the EU expanded on that to make it less the case). Was he the one in the prophecy? No. But from a narrative/trope perspective, he was 100% The Chosen One.
This comment really perfectly sums up how I feel … TLJ ends with SO MUCH POTENTIAL in my eyes.
Harumph.
Potential for a completely unrelated future story, not the end of the one they were trying to tell. TLJ is why RoS is as bad as it is. It sacrificed the future for a subversion level high score.
I think a third part could have been really well done from where TLJ ended … you have a goodie who has literally come from nothing and maybe doubts herself as a result, and a baddie who got that way because he came from a dynasty of important people and believes his own press.
From there a story could be woven on the themes of them both changing who they are, how they see their respective worlds … to achieve success, or forgiveness, or love.
I’m not sure pivoting to a romance movie for the finale would have been any better received.
Love doesn’t necessarily mean romance - it was mentioned that Ren had been sent away too early, so his weakness for the dark side may have been there because of a lack of parental love, for example
Sorry, who is the reluctant hero and who is the scoundrel? I think the latter is Kylo, but who wants to bang Leia in TLJ??
Your… mom?
Rogue one and Amdor are indeed stories for people who grew up
TLJ wasn’t really a middle story, though. It was a downer ending. After that there was nowhere to go without a generational time skip and a completely new story that would be inappropriate for a trilogy. There was no big antagonist anymore, there was barely any protagonist left, and every dangling plot thread was ruthlessly cut short.
Contrast it with ESB and you see with that you while have a bittersweet end to the movie, you do not have an ending of the story. Lucas even left room to bring back Han who he just sort of killed.
Rogue One is the only one of these new movies that I really enjoy and re-watch. I really didn’t expect Disney to allow that ending for the rebels sent Scarif but I’m glad they did. I also kinda love how they blend it into Episode IV.
Rogue One was legitimately great. Probably because it broke the Star Wars mould.
Something that I think helps it stand out is that it doesn’t rely nearly as much on “marvel style” humor. There are some funny moments but they’re more character driven you know? Like when K-2 slaps Cassian to sell the idea to the Imperials that K-2 is in charge.
And I think Transformers 2 is one of the greatest films of all time, up there with The Godfather and Citizen Kane.
You can just say you didn’t like Rogue One you don’t need to be sarcastic about it.
Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane and the Godfather
Same, I started rise of Skywalker, and only after the ridiculous opening sequence I was already done with the whole thing. And I love Star Wars.
I still can’t believe some writer penned “some how, palpatine returned” into the script and didn’t light the whole draft on fire right there. I guess between the hamfisted bloodline reveal and the magical sith dagger guiding the way to the star destroyer parking lot - who cares at that point. Fuck it, send it.
Oscar Isaac did an interview recently where he revealed that line was added in reshoots. So that line was written in an attempt to fix whatever catastrophic wreck the script was in before then.
I’m imagining some writer going “wait a minute, did we ever explain why Palpatine was back?” And then writing that and leaning back with a smug “whew. Nailed it.”
As bad as it is, that line and “they fly now” are Lucas level shit dialogue and the only two memorable lines from the trilogy. Compare that to the atrocious dialogue of the prequels that have become such beloved memes you don’t even have to add the words.
That palps line represents so much more than the dialog quality to me though. It’s all about the context, TRoS built up nothing around this and suddenly jumps sideways into a plot that neccessated invalidating a significant moment of the original trilogy. It’s jarring as a viewer and there’s no explaination for why it’s happening. THEN the film has the audacity to imply through dialog, actually the audience should not worry about the details - this is what we’re doing. Almost feels insulting in some ways.
I agree. It’s just a snippet of Lucas level dialogue in a trilogy that otherwise isn’t Lucas grade throughout. SW fans may have shat on the Prequels when they came out but have more or less forgiven and embraced them for what they were because the hardcore fans know George is a great visionary, terrible execution. The actors did the best they could and there’s a charm to what the director wanted to convey but the clunkiness of the words. The shift from Hayden and Ahmed hate to fan love shows that realization. SW now operates in two realities. The realistic grimdark of Andor, or the classic good vs evil camp of Lucas. The sequels delivered neither.
I still can’t make it through rewatching the prequels, which premiered my first year of college.
I think nostalgia will probably polish the sequel turds just like it has done with the prequels.
I just want the in fucked with OG prints in 4K, and I’ll rewatch Andor and Rogue One, and even fucking Skeleton Crew one more time.
Sure hut fans where demanding it. I thought they where going anyone can have the force. They shown it with little kid and broom. But all fans where like she has to be somebody there is no way she can’t be a nobody. Has to be blah blah blah. And the SIMPs Disney are now they are like let’s give it to them.
Disney pitch room:
“Okay, hear me out. What if: … a bigger Death Star!”
“Excellent! What will we call it?”
“Hmm… how about Star Killer!”
“GENIUS.”
The best part about the whole modern star wars franchise is the endless parodies mocking them.
Jedi Party, by Auralnauts, is my preferred way of watching the Prequels.
Auralnauts is canon as far as I’m concerned.
BEHOLD! THE SINGULARITY ENGINNNNNNNE! CAN YOU SEE ME NOW, FATHERRRRR?!?
Auralnauts are geniuses of satire and of god damned audio mixing, it’s genuinely sublime what they made of it all. I really love their Larry! series.
Creepio, have you seen… anybody?
It’s the strangest thing, they’re all dead. You killed them!
Master sir, what are Midichlorians?
It’s Heroin.
I will give Rise of Skywalker one thing and one thing only: Babu Frik. I know he was probably designed by committee to be cute and endearing, but man I love that little dude.
As a fan of the Dark Empire comics, I had already accepted that Palpatine returning was a possibility. The lack of any real storyline hinting at that in the two movies leading up- I expected disappointment. And I got what I expected, though visually Exegol/life support Sheev was cool. The idea that he had an entire fleet of Death Star Destroyers fully staffed and just chilling was implausible. That they were dependent on one transmitter was ludicrous. That the attack run on them was a cavalry charge of space horses was one of the stupidest fucking thing I’ve seen on film.
What pisses me off about that movie is that they spend a fair bit of time building out that Rey has super powerful force healing. So, like, what if she healed Palpatine? What if the ending to this saga of endless galactic war was not more death, but an act of healing? Maybe Palpatine still dies, but he’s at least made aware of what he’s done or something.
Nope. Rey use two lightsaber. Rey block real good. Palpatine go dust dust.
HEY-HEY!
Fuck Disney.
This is the right and complete answer.
The last two of the new trilogy are borderline unwatchable. Just abysmal, b-movie level storytelling.
I think people have forgotten how to write good movies since it’s been such a long period of remakes and franchise garbage.
Plus corporate greed and algorithms have resulted in cookie cutter scripts that “should please the largest amount of people” or some shit like that.
Everything is made to me inoffensive to anyone and appeal to the widest variety of people.
There’s no movies that tailor to a specific audience anymore, where 20-30% of people will think it’s amazing, instead 40-60% of people might think “meh, might as well watch it”
I think people have forgotten how to write good movies
No, they still write good movies. The problem is that the money-men will not fund good movies because all they want is a big return on their investment. That means that they only fund sequels and spinoffs of previously successful properties. Only on rare occasions does anything new get funded and even then the decision is based on something other than the quality of the story.
There are lots of good stories out there that will never get turned into movies or shows simple because the people who make the decisions are trying to make money rather than art.
I have absolutely no desire to see any of the three again, sadly
Hey don’t insult b-movies
The Force Awakens was fine, for a near shot-for-shot remake of A New Hope.
The Last Jedi is underrated, and I would argue the worst aspects are the attempt to redo the battle of Hoth. Overall a valiant attempt to make Star Wars something other than “the Skywalker Files.”
I made it ~15 minutes into The Rise of Skywalker before I turned it off. When did Leia become a Jedi Master again? Sometime after TLJ and the start of TRoS?
The best of these movies was okay. Of course no one is watching them.
I may have my movies backwards, but I’m pretty sure space Jesus Leia is from TLJ and was one of the criticisms of that movie.
TLJ is where she pulls herself back into a ship after being thrown into space, but TRoS is where Rey refers to her “master” and the reveal is that it’s Leia. I’m…fine with the scene in TLJ, she’s Luke’s twin and in RotJ he says she’s strong in the force so instinctively rescuing herself is not a huge problem. But if she was a Jedi master in TRoS she should have at least had some indication of significant training in the two preceding films.
Flying through space while unconscious, something that’s never been shown possible by even trained conscious jedi, is fine, but not mentioning someone has training is a leap too far?
If you read Rian Johnsons reasoning for the space flight scene it depicts someone without a lot of care for the world of star wars and someone who just wants to make a scene.
I guess I think like Rian Johnson, because his explanation (it’s like a person instinctively clawing for the surface when drowning) makes sense to me. I’ve been in a handful of situations where I felt like my life was in danger and I managed to do things I could not accomplish if I was trying to do them consciously. There’s a big difference between (say) holding your breath for a number of minutes when waves are pounding you into the sand, and reaching another person how to swim.
The issue isn’t about drawing upon some inate power/competency, it’s the degree in which it’s done.
Holding your breath for longer or lifting a heavier car than you thought possible is enhancing a known capability. Surviving in the vaccum of space and flying aren’t known abilities.
I think we see this kind of thing done much better in The Mandalorian where we see Grogu manage to utilize the force in small ways initially (and not always as intended), then building things up over time. That’s what we’d expect from someone inexperienced in the force, able to call upon some elements of it when needed, but not pulling off feats someone trained in the force can’t do.
Thats why I say Rian had little respect for the franchise. He literally says he wants to subvert expectations, but in many ways he was just breaking existing lore and/or rules of the universe. That’s not good writing in my opinion. To subvert expectations you can’t just change the rules.
Edit: Spelling/grammer
Not that it’s a competition, but I was told it’s an “at at” (rhymes with hat hat), and thier justification was that they heard JJ say it that way.
Nobody, and I mean nobody with any say in the sequels understood the universe even at an elementary level. Everyone just showed up to flip the franchise up by the ankles and give a few shakes to try and dislodge its lunch money.
Listen. There are only a handful of hills I am willing to die on. And one of those hills is that the “rhymes with ‘hat hat’” pronunciation is objectively wrong. Like even Lucas could say it and it’s wrong. “AyTee-AyTee” is the pronunciation. This is because there are other vehicles in that series, most notably the AT-ST. So what do you call that? The “Aht-EssTee?”
takes swig from flask
Flying through space while unconscious, something that’s never been shown possible by even trained conscious jedi, is fine, but not mentioning someone has training is a leap too far?
Unconcious? She’s up and walking around in that scene when she gets back on the ship.
Maybe this isn’t the full scene, but it shows her getting blasted into space unconscious, eyes bolt open and she flies through space, then she’s on the ship unconscious. So like, I guess maybe technically she was conscious during the flying, but that’s still pretty weak.
heh, I’ll be honest, I thought she landed earlier and walked to the door. Less “up and walking around” and more “slumped against a door”.
It’s been a while since the movie came out, and I haven’t re-watched it, so that’s on me.
I had to look up the scene to remember what happened.
It’s amazing how it would have been a very powerful scene had they just let her character die, now it’s a point of contention in the fan base.
I understand Rian wanting to give Leia her moment, but I feel like that understated her existing role. Leia was already the commander and that had been demonstrated in the originals and the sequels. She didnt need to be a force user to be valuable, but if she was it should have been through a subtle subterfuge or in a commanding manner, not an involuntary life saving throw.
“Somehow, Palpatine returned”
No shit no one wants to watch this.
MarvelDisney just milks IPs for a super long time and anyone thinking otherwise are blind and gullible.Edit: whoopsie :l
Largely everything Disney makes now is trash. Everything is written by an executive and it’s always bad.
Onward is a good movie though
Any original projects seem to be left mostly alone, so the creators can actually do their jobs…
All their sequels and IP though… they reek of focus groups and decisions made by Excel spreadsheets ….!
(Now I just remembered how Wish became a husk of its original plan… so disregard all that 🤣)
I can agree with that
Literally put that on yesterday just as a background noise while cooking. Forgot about cooking for the most part to enjoy the movie.
Well, don’t worry because now everything will be written by AI!
Same reason I dont read the Mr Men books anymore.
Actually no, the Mr Men books arent completely shit.
Do you know who Poirot or Ms. Marple are? Ever heard of Agatha Christie? If so you might want to check out the two newest Mr. Men / Little Miss books.
Solid Freudian slip.
I mean, aint Marvel under Disney wing for a while? Same feathers, same bird.
The difference is marvel said in the beginning that wanted to milk it for multiple storylines. Disney just does it because they breath money, not oxygen. It’s a good pairing.
Andor shits on the rest of Star Wars, also Solo was good.
The rest? Mediocre at best.
Mandelorean S1 was great
As is season 2.
Boba was Mando season 2.5 and while the Mando moments are good, it comes too soon and the Boba story is messy.
Mando season 3 also has good moments, but it needed at least two seasons to tell the story, but instead it’s rushed it so they can make a film.
People complain about having to wait 2 years for 8 episodes of TV, Mando season 3 to the film is waiting three years for about 2-3 episodes.
I preferred S1 where it’s just a dad on the run with his adopted son, before they started trying to add all these tie-ins to more “mainline” Star Wars lore.
So I agree, but it’s impossible to keep Baby Yoda in a bottle. Any other Jedi or potential Jedi species and you can play that out however you want. But Baby Yoda? You can’t ignore that.
I understand conceptually the idea of not tying it to mainline lore… But Baby Yoda? You can’t ignore that.
Sure you can. Grogu is a rare and powerful species, but nothing about the story necessitates meeting CGI Luke Skywalker.
Ahsoka was fun.
I liked rogue one.
I actually watched the second one twice, because I literally forgot I watched it the first time. Like, I saw it on the listing and said to myself “hey, I heard this is lousy, but maybe I can give it a try, I bet its at least fun and entertaining.”
I got fully halfway through the movie before I realized that I had actually watched it before. I usually have a pretty good memory for films, but this thing has so little substances and held so little of my interest it just sorta slips through my brain without leaving anything behind at all.
I know for a fact that I have seen it twice because of that memory of realizing it halfway through the second viewing, but you know what? I still don’t remember the movie at all. I have zero memory of it. I cannot tell you what its about or what happens. Nothing at all. It is like getting surgery. You are awake and then you are awake again a couple hours later. Nothing in between.
I saw all three in theaters when they came out.
Force Awakens was okay. It had a few problems, but I was willing to over look some of them because it was a new company trying to write something they had never written before. I was more forgiving towards Force Awakens.
Last Jedi ruined the entire trilogy. And honestly, if Rian Johnson actually still gets his trilogy, I will tell everyone I know to NOT see them. That guy deserves no money from Star Wars. Nothing in Last Jedi moved the plot forward, it closed off every possible loose end from 7 and left absolutely nothing for 9 to wrap up. Last Jedi is the reason Rise of Skywalker is so bad. Rian acted like his movie was the end of the series and forgot he was writing the middle movie of a trilogy. Basically half of the movie could be deleted with zero consequence. I almost walked out of the theatre mid-movie like 3 times, but I stayed just to see how bad it really got.
Rise of Skywalker is bad, but I honeslty feel really bad for JJ Abrams. What was he supposed to do in this situation? All the story strings he set up in 7 were cut in 8. At the same time, the writing was so bad that I couldn’t even believe it was real.
If I had to rate them, all three are at the bottom of the barrel. Belong in the bargain bin direct to home video DVDs you find in those thrift shops that have the super thin DVD case. But in order of best to worst: 7, 9, 8.
I am never watching them again. I have not desire or need to.
I completely agree with your post…
If I want to watch a single Star Wars movie, it will mostly be A New Hope, but every now and again I will pop on TFA for a popcorn flick.
If I have a spare day where I want to watch Star Wars, it will be R1, 4, 5 & 6
Binge Andor before R1.
Feel bad for JJ? This is how all his projects end. The man can NOT do an ending to save his life. It’s why Lost and ep 9 will follow him to the grave
Being bland is worse than being bad.
I can watch comically bad sci fi. But… I can’t remember a thing about the last two movies of the trilogy. And I remember a whole lot of “meh” sci fi.
I can watch comically bad sci fi
Ordinarily I agree but dear god stay away from Rebel Moon, worst shit ever and not in a remotely fun way
I remember that one of them, I think the second one, is called The Scargiver. I couldn’t tell you who had a scar or who gave it. Those movies wish they were trash.
My favorite-least-favorite part is that in the first one, they give the fascist (who is a Hellsing-tier Nazi [love Hellsing tho], he’s not a fascist with an actual ideology, he’s just eviiiiil because he’s so eviiiiil) a shillelagh. Why? Who the fuck knows. And then in the end of the movie (no spoiler warnings, I am sparing you) he gets stabbed with it. He gets stabbed with a relatively blunt stick and that’s how he dies.
It’s just so bad. I’m in a similar boat as you, I’ll watch scifi even if it’s garbage. I watched all of Dark Matter, which is a scifi series that feels like Star Trek fanfiction written by an edgy 13-year-old goth kid (I am qualified to say that as a former edgy 13 y/o goth kid). It was miles more enjoyable than Rebel Moon. Even Morbius got me to laugh often, Rebel Moon just made me want to self immolate.
TLJ had me leave the theatre saying “that was terrible” haven’t touched it afterwards.
The writing was just… so atrocious in the last trilogy. Like, no coherent themes or through lines, characters were bland and poorly executed, dialog was clunky and stilted, pacing was none existent and the story was disjointed with completely un-engaging stakes.
Like, some say “oh well that’s true of all the previous star wars films” and no, it wasn’t. Some of that was true of some elements of the first and second trilogy. But none were all of that at once.
I just have… no faith they’ll do anything interesting. Once is a fluke, twice is bad luck, three times is a pattern. Disney’s modern methodology for producing films is clearly flawed at some fundamental level. The chance that the corporate machinery has realized there is a problem, correctly identified it, and then actually fixed it is close to zero.
Plus Kylo-Ren is not scary or intimidating
He just seems like a force wielding spaz
So there is no threat, or sense of danger…zzzz
Having Kylo Ren and the First Order be a bunch of larping dweebs was almost fun back when the ‘alt-right’ was just a bunch of larping dweebs. I wish they’d kept the spirit of that interpretation.
Plus Kylo-Ren is not scary or intimidating
Adam Driver is terrible. He should stick to bad italian accents.
I feel like it was more direction?
He def conveyed petulant, angry force wielding spaz…and clearly no one told him not to
His acting in Marriage Story was pretty good, I agree that the directors/writers are mostly to blame for Kylo-Ren
Sequels trilogy is not canon! (・へ・)
This. Mandalorian sets the new canon (BoBF is non-canon though).
Yeah, cause collectively they were mid asf.
Force Awakens was reheated “A New Hope” leftovers, but I guess if you had to start with something memorable for a reintroduction to the Star Wars universe, you can’t go wrong with a soft remake of the one that started it all.
I actually found The Last Jedi to be an interesting story, if not a decent movie with interesting ideas that could be capitalized on in the sequel.
Unfortunately that was not the case, and Rose of Skywalker, along with Obi-Wan and Mando season 3 torpedoed any interest I had as a relative newcomer to the Star Wars franchise. Side projects like Visions have kept my interest only because the anthology format allows for unique narratives and perspectives. It’s why I loved Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars.
I keep hearing amazing things about Andor and Maul: Shadow Lord, and I believe the hype wholeheartedly, but damn, after being inundated with Disney Star Wars year after year after year, I’m sick and tired of (modern) Star Wars.
Ok but for real Andor is only a Star Wars show because of setting. The story, dialogue, etc are all a cut above anything else. Most of the things you think of with Star Wars (light sabers, the Force, etc) are really not part of the story. I hope you’ll give it a chance because I’m not a huge fan of Star Wars (OT is good but that’s about it for me) but Andor is fantastic.
Just finished episode 8 of the second season of Andor and it is really something special.
Taking a break for a day or two to process what happened. The thinly veiled analogy strikes hard.
Star Wars doesn’t need lightsabers or the Force any more than Marvel needs Iron Man or Captain America. They’re both good, and they’re a couple of the most iconic parts of the franchise, but both Star Wars and Marvel are big universes, and they can both tell stories totally separate from those popular touchstones.
Andor is by a large distance the most fully-realized and profound Star Wars anything and they manage to do it in all directions: the action is good and in the spirit of the original Star Wars trilology, the characters are believable and not cardboard deep (unlike the original triology), the context of the story is one of fully realized believable societies
The story is mainly consistent and believable, with various threads that criss-cross in a natural and coherent way and are eventually brought all the way to a conclusion and no further - the latter a rarity for TV Series, which tend to end not at a natural conclusion of a story but instead past the end of the story and after “just one more” (sometimes two) seasons are forced in, which are shit. In Andor, maybe only a few things in the last few episodes of the last season felt like they’ve been forcefully wrapped up to reach a conclusion but mainly the whole thing just naturally reached an ending.
Shit, even the architecture and wardrobe design are consistent and memorable in those things which weren’t “inherited” from previous Movies and Series in the Star Wars universe - Ghorman especially is visually a fully believable and realized environment nicelly entwinned and consistent with traditional Star Wars universe elements.
Andor is, however, not the pure roller coaster of action that the original triology is.
I would recommend the Original Triology and Rogue Squadron as exciting roller coasters of action in a fully realized futuristic sci-fi environment and Andor as a good long-form story, with depth, well written, fully realized, well acted and with great production values that happens to take place in the Star Wars universe (so it also ticks the pleasant memories of those who grew up with the Triology) and does have plenty of Action, whilst being a lot more than just that.
Kathleen Kennedy shit all over that franchise. What a waste.
in 2015 it was revealed Lucas’s sequel outline had been discarded.[78][79] The sequel trilogy also meant the end of the Star Wars Expanded Universe stories, which were discarded from canon to give “maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience.”
I really loved The Last Jedi and how Rian tried to take it in a new direction. But the sequel series was honestly all over the place.
The Force Awakens was good but essentially a copy & paste of A New Hope. While Rise of Skywalker just did a 360 to change what The Last Jedi built upon and threw in Palpatine out of nowhere.
The original trilogy is the only one where all of them were good.
TLJ has 2 major issues IMO.
-
Rian severely overdid subversion of expectation. It just doesn’t really work if you do it like 8 times in the same movie, viewers will just stop expecting anything.
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Those giraffe-horses should have been podracers.
Agree on the other points though. RoS was just complete garbage from start to finish.
In regards to 1, eh… I actually kinda wish he’d fully committed to the subversion and had Kylo turn to the Light Side as a kind of “poetic” bookend to Anakin (making the third film one about his redemption; this would also allow us either to learn more about Snoke OR turn Hux into the villain, which I would prefer over what Abrams did to him).
As for 2, when Rose goes “are those…?” I was on the edge of my seat, tapping my friend’s shoulder thinking we were about to see podracers (which is funny because I still really hated The Phantom Menace at that time) and was definitely disappointed when it turned out to be giant cats.
The Last Jedi is my favorite Star Wars film. I also happen to think it’s the best of the entire series. But I dare not speak of this much on the interwebz because Star Wars fans are, as we all know, tame and not given to strong opinions.
Kylo and Rey should have switched sides during the throne room scene.
The main problem with TLJ is it completely destroyed any potential plot moving forward. That’s why RoS is the way it is; they had to rebuild the story before starting the conclusion.
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Rise of Skywalker stands as maybe the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It’s the rare big-budget blockbuster where you can actually watch the thing fall apart right in front of your eyes. I swear they filmed the first draft of that script. It also feels like Abrams tried to cram his ideas for Episode VIII in there too. Just an awful, awful film that makes Attack of the Clones look like a Kurosawa film in comparison. And that’s really saying something because Attack of the Clones is a bloated mess of a film that is only saved because the casting director is a genius (and, though “fans” hate it, few things match the absolute delight of seeing a little kid’s reaction to Yoda rave-dance fighting after growing accustomed to him as a feeble old muppet–this effect is highlighted if you watch the films in either release or Machete order)
The first half of The Last Jedi is feeling off. I liked the second half though. When the ship is crashing into that monster ship it was such a cool moment in the cinema. Everyone was quiet and then that sound. So cool. I loved how Luke showed up. The betrayal on Snoke and the fight between Kylo and Rey was great too.
But in general I expected something fresh. They could have said that Luke fucked off to learn about Jedi and that not everything is black and white, but no, it has to stay black and white. Jedi good, Sith bad, no in-between. Would’ve made a better story. And then in part three they could’ve solved the issue with coming together for once.
I understand what you mean. I think it would have been nice to have something unique like not all sith are pure evil or not all Jedi are good.
I know some of the other shows portray this concept to varying degrees.
Tap for spoiler
What I liked the most with The Last Jedi was how Rey was just an ordinary person. Not a Skywalker or someone special and I felt that was really the most interesting aspect to me.
