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Maybe Midichlorians correlate highly with Dementia?
Midichlorians are the powerhouse of the force.
Episode 7: Derivative but fun
Episode 8: Pure trash
Episode 9: Desperately trying to piece together the plot
How anyone thinks 9 is better than 8 is beyond me.
I’ve always said that the worst thing that 9 did was completely destroy any excitement for Star Wars in an instant.
Prior to 9 releasing, people didn’t like 8 and were already souring on 7, but there was still discourse, people caught up on Star Wars news, people were excited for the new content.
After 9, the excitement dropped like a brick. It was the closure of a trilogy in one of the most profitable IPs in the world. There was still more content planned to come out soon iirc (the shows, and I think there was talk of more movies), so it’s not like people stopped caring due to the lack of content. Nobody I knew was interested in discussing fan theories or analyzing the movies (except to rag on them, I suppose). It was as if millions of voices cried out in terror… And were suddenly silenced.
9 is just generic. It’s mediocre. 8 is an active train wreck. God, I remember sitting in the theatre and being baffled by the opening ‘conversation’ between Hux and Poe. I legit thought it might have been another one of those fan vids that they show in the Alamo Theatre before the actual movie began, despite the opening crawl.
“Somehow”, lightspeed skipping, 3PO not being able to translate from sith, the ancient dagger that is also the shape of the crashed death star from a highly specific angle, Palpatine fucks, whatever a diad is, 10,000 star destroyers.
I’m not pretending that 8 is a masterpiece, it isn’t, and it’s worse than any of the OT, but at least Johnson tried to do something to keep star wars at a galactic scale.
The worst bit of 9 is how small it makes star wars. Everything comes down to a tale of two families - Palpatine and Skywalker - in a way that nullifies everyone else’s involvement. For a story that spans a literal galaxy, having it come down to those two families, twice, is terrible writing.
I mean, I agree with all of your criticisms of 9, I just don’t agree that they make it worse than 8.
I mean, hell, “Finn immediately wakes up, loses faith in the rebellion”? The slow-motion chase through space? “Union negotiations” ha ha so funny? Carrie Poppins surviving for no real reason except perhaps to ‘subvert expectations’? 3000 attempted coups of Poe and the uninspired leadership of Admiral Replacement? “I’m going to let you out of the brig, not because you’ve learned anything, but because committing mutiny is why I keep you around”? Hyperspace jumps can now be weaponized? Hoth 2 (this time it’s salt) after an emergency landing with one ship? Twelve people survive out of the entire fleet so let’s celebrate?
The ENTIRE Canto Blight nonsense, top to bottom? Especially the weird shoehorned animal rights bit? Benicio del Toro the arms dealer who exists for ten seconds (waste of a fantastic actor) and leaves on the stunning line “Maybe”? Grand Leader Whoever in a bathrobe talking about how much ‘spunk’ young Rey has and then dying in his first few minutes seen in person? Whatsherface falling in love with Finn over the space of a day or two and then managing to race her land speeder faster than Finn’s, so she can catch up to him as he’s going full throttle on a suicide mission and then save his life by… ramming him at full speed and wrecking both of their vehicles right on top of the enemy?
Luke casually throwing away the lightsaber like it was a piece of moldy bread? “The Jedi Scriptures”? Luke drinking blue milk fresh from the teat? Not even acknowledging (or barely acknowledging, I don’t remember) Chewie coming back to see him, one of his oldest friends? The Porgs? Fuck. “Reach out and feel the force”? Luke decides to murder his innocent nephew in the middle of the night despite being such an idealist that he thought Darth Vader could come back from his atrocities? Casually brushing off his shoulder after getting his force projection blasted by the not-AT-ATs?
I’m probably missing so goddamn much. I’m not revisiting it. I saw it once, and once was one time too many.
There are only two things that 8 gave us that were good - the force bond on screen (and even that was tormented by the sheer awkwardness of it, especially asking Ben Swolo to put on a towel) and the almost Nietzschean philosophy embraced by Kylo Ren as a more articulate envisioning of the Dark Side. I do wonder if that was connected to KOTOR 2 or just one of those parallel evolution things.
As said, I don’t think Last Jedi is a good film, so my defence is going to be pretty half arsed, but just a few points I’d like to challenge.
- Finn joined the resistance because he witnessed an atrocity as a trooper and didn’t want to be a bad guy. He got disillusioned and questioned whether the resistance were actually good because they had to do things that also killed lots of people. He ultimately decides it’s justified. I’d argue that characters overcoming struggles and having a bit of depth is a good thing.
- Carrie Poppins was a bad, bad, choice, agreed.
- Poe leading a mutiny because he didn’t know what was going on, because he’d been demoted, because he didn’t follow orders, demonstrates that while he may be a great pilot, he’s far too impulsive and his own actions are what holds him back. This shows where his character can, and needs to, grow if he’s ever going to be at the top table.
- Canto continues with the strong anti-imperialism of the original trilogy. The purpose of that entire piece is as a commentary on the military industrial complex, and how it has conflicted goals as it benefits more from continued war than peace.
- “The animal rights bit” - dude, the culmination of RotJ was the Empire being beaten by teddy bears, this again is a constant theme throughout the OT, that exploitation occurs everywhere within an imperialist system.
- it’s been 30 years since we last saw Luke, and even then his training was incomplete, because he’d run away impulsively to get back to Han and Leia. Luke is flawed - my biggest peeve with certain parts of the old EU was how some authors painted him as almost christ like and perfect, perfect is boring - and ultimately failed to rebuild the academy. He fucked up so badly that, yes, he misunderstood a vision, and thought Ben was going to go to the dark side. He then caused this, couldn’t forgive himself, and lived in self-imposed exile as penance. Of course he didn’t want the lightsabre that he’d already given up. Wouldn’t it be even weirder for him to be all “oh, thank you so much for giving me back the sabre I purposefully discarded after I tried to murder my nephew and turned him away from the light, it would look great on my wall!”
- don’t kink shame blue titty drinking! 😂
Again, was it a great film? No, far from it. But at least it tried to give depth to characters, had them tackle challenges, and overcome them and/or grow through failure.
With Palpatine coming back, somehow, in 9, it completely destroys Anakin’s redemption, because it turns out that he didn’t actually kill Palpatine after all, so no final great act, no meaningful sacrifice, Vader dies for nothing.
For all its faults, and there are many, nothing Last Jedi did destroyed the main character of the fanchise’s arc quite like that.
Of course he didn’t want the lightsabre that he’d already given up. Wouldn’t it be even weirder for him to be all “oh, thank you so much for giving me back the sabre I purposefully discarded after I tried to murder my nephew and turned him away from the light, it would look great on my wall!”
That was actually Anakin’s lightsaber, the one given to him by Ben that he lost in the duel on Bespin, that most people presumed was lost forever after having been shunted out of a trash chute into the atmosphere of a gas giant. He didn’t make a conscious decision to give that one up, though I understand his reluctance to accept any lightsaber in the first place what with everything that happened that we learn about throughout the movie, but the casual toss-over-the-shoulder for laughs was pretty inappropriate considering the tone of the same scene at the end of 7, explicitly framed in such a way implying that Luke had an emotional reaction to seeing either Rey or the Lightsaber again.
Fair point, but let’s not pretend that that scene in 7 was anything more than JJ’s usual mystery box, set up with no plan for execution, writing.
How on earth Disney allowed a trilogy of films in a franchise as massive as star wars to not even have a speculative outline for an overall arc blows my mind.
I knew it was bad news the minute they did that whole “can you hear me bit” at the beginning between Hux and Poe. It was clearly them forcing marvel level humor into star wars and it felt sooo stupid.
It’s like the exact opposite of Han on the intercom in the first ( or fourth) movie. There Han knows he’s messed up and tries to play it up, but the bluff is immediately called. The humor is in the ridiculousness of the attempt. With Hux, it’s played the opposite and it just raises more questions about how Hux and the First Order ever became a serious threat.
I see it the other way, 8 was an alright movie if it was standalone and not part of SW. The things most people disliked are fine if it was some generic sci-fi action movie. “Jake Skywalker” is a nonissue if you don’t think he’s supposed to be Luke, the quippy lines were common, the weird bits like the Mary Poppins scene or the Holdo maneuver are acceptable in some other sci-fi movie. Wouldn’t have been a masterpiece, but it’s still relatively put together.
9 struggled to be a film. Remove it from SW and it’s almost worse— 8 could feasibly be greenlit and released by lazy execs, but 9 would’ve been cancelled in production. Pacing was jarring to the point of feeling unfinished, plot was one of the least coherent in a mega blockbuster, and story conveniences were nauseatingly poor even if it wasn’t Star Wars. It feels like they just put something together real quick without the editors and it got leaked. None of it was serviceable. And god, not to repeat myself, but the pacing and story were horrid.
Add it back to SW, and the Sith life transfer/dyad nonsense is as much an affront to Lucas’s story as TLJ Luke. Possibly more: sure, doing that to Luke was shit, but TRoS butchered basic Force principles. It’s like a bad DM fucking up a pivotal NPC vs fucking up the entire game system.
I dislike both of them nearly equally, but I could probably watch 8 again. 9 is like an indecisive amateur’s attempt at Lego Star Wars machinima, down to poor editing and an inability to order scenes. Didn’t see another movie so sloppy until Thor: Love and Thunder.
In short, it’s a JJ Abrams film.
9 was a reaction to the challenge of actually having to tell a story. The challenge was not accepted.
9 failed as a follow up to 8 so badly I can’t even tell if it’s worse than 8.
Episode 7: derivative boredom
Episode 8: I like thi—WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING? WHY??
Episode 9: JJ desperately trying to piece together a plot
“Poe commits mutiny for the 12th time; learns nothing.”
I would have rather the first order take the place of the rebellion and committed terrorist attacks in Luke’s paradise
I wish they had kidnapped Kylo and disillusioned him
The rest of 7 could have played out the same
For 8 get rid of Holdo, it’s stupid to bring in a character that out ranks everyone and serves only to delay the plot
You can have silly casino planet in First Order occupied space to show they grew since the last movie. Make Rose more relevant, have them looking for a Jedi temple for Finn. Have her so she previously worked as a librarian in Jedi archives before the first order destroyed it. Now she knows all these locations and things about the force even though she can’t use them. Luke is hiding because he blames himself for the people the First Order killed and he doesn’t want to pit anyone else in harm’s way, trains Rey but she still has dark visions and connects to Kylo. Have Rey turn evil, her and Kylo defeat Snoke (can be the same way) then take the first order to fight Luke because she knows where he is, the two of them together are enough to kill Luke
The last movie if you want Palpatine to return do it through Rey’s body and have her be the final boss. You can parallel 6 with the Skywalker turning good and saving Finn, this time have them team up against full Sith Lord Rey in the fight. Or have Finn take them on one by one while Rose stops their doomsday plans and Po deals with a space battle
On top of this, get rid of Snoke and have Thrawn lead the First Order. He forces Imperial holdouts to join him or be destroyed. He’s smart enough to use Empire loyalists in the New Republic to dismiss his threat until he’s strong enough to go on the attack.
I know they’re building to this in Ashoka, but it should have been this way from the start.
As mine was a light rewrite I don’t find Snoke significant enough/having enough screentime to warrant replacing with Thrawn
He would have to be the overarching villain whose defeat is the climax of events
On top of this, get rid of Snoke and have Thrawn lead the First Order.
One of the things that made the Thrawn trilogy work was the way it played out the inevitable decay of the old Empire, even with a brilliant strategist at its helm. The rot went too deep and the ideology that drove the Imperial movement couldn’t hold it together. Militarism wasn’t enough to keep the imperial regions united, while the New Republic offered allure that couldn’t be easily rebutted.
The movies could conceptualize this imperial decay or recognize the New Republic as a powerful political force drawing the fractured galactic planets together again. They had to reset the state of the setting to “Bad Guys Strong, because Big Lasers and Ships” while the Republicans were once again weak, scattered, and on the run.
I might say you could salvage Snoke (as a reskin of Joruus C’baoth) and Sloane and Hux and Kylo Ren, cast within this desperate grasping to Retvrn To Tradition. Then rename “The First Order” as “The Last Order”, implying they follow the last command of the now-dead Emperor Palpatine. And you can even lean in to the ghost of Palpatine and the echoes of fascism that do provide some lingering cohesiveness to the dying Imperial movement.
But these climactic space battles that are decided by One Brave Starfighter Defeating The Big Imperial Machine aren’t able to resonate in the final series, because they don’t answer the question of what comes next. At some point, the New Republic needs to be a thing we care about and the conflict needs to move away from “How do we beat the Empire?” and into a “How do we make the New Republic do better than the Old One?”
Dude, the new shows and everything are actually making me root for the bad guys. The new New Republic is such dogshit at literally everything.
I really liked Andor because of the way it humanized the Empire. Demystifying the bad guys and rendering them as an enormous social network fallible human agents didn’t leave me rooting for them. But it did give me an idea of why someone would want to be an imperial agent.
Andor is probably the only truly “balanced” or nuanced piece of media to come from Disney Star Wars. The rest of it (especially Ahsoka) makes it so the New Republic are actual jackasses with their heads buried in the sand.
I’m actually so mad this didn’t happen, this sounds great.
As someone not interested in star wars I can’t wait for in ten 10 years time when suddenly liking the sequel trilogy is cool just like how the prequels were hated then became cool to like.
It’s like poetry, it rhymes
I’d be curious indeed what people in ten years will say about the sequel trilogy. But I have a strong feeling that it will still be disliked, because it did not have a vision and is a jigsaw mess unlike the prequels. The latter has a vision at least (thanks to Lucas still being at the helm), in spite of the cringey parts. The sequels did not have him and Disney just simply wants to milk the Star Wars IP which made sequels such a bore.
Just like the prequels
Universally hated but then kids who grew up with it became adults
George Lucas said he wanted the prequels to be more like a children’s story, which explains a lot. I am one of those kids who enjoyed the prequels, but even at the time I saw some flaws but didn’t mind it. I always viewed the Star Wars as an adventure story and should not be taken as seriously. A competent enough creative team should be able to suspend the audience’s disbelief.
The original trilogy is better of course, but the prequels still has a sense of direction and vision. The sequels never had that with too many “creative” visions hampering each other. The sequels suffered from the case of having too many cooks in the kitchen but none of them have any plans whatsoever.
Did the prequels actively try to undo one another? 8 tries to fix 7 and 9 tries to fix 8 which makes for a sloppy trilogy
1 is pretty standalone
2 has bad writing but Dooku and the clone wars were good
3 just throws Dooku away and the war doesn’t matter
Can’t really look at expanded media but the clone wars cartoon does try to fix a lot even if they do so through assassinating Dooku’s character
The prequels had a mountain of books/comics/shows backing them up and filling out the parts that were lacking. ( i.e. the huge gapping holes in tone and execution ).
The sequels… there’s not much to salvage. They’re more very pretty hole than substance. To the point there haven’t been more than a handful of attempts and they’ve basically been ignored/sidestepped.
The prequels are bad movies. But they tell an interesting story and have a unique setting. The sequels are also bad movies, but they’re a disjointed chaotic mess that just rehashes the original trilogy. There’s nothing to redeem.
So much clumsy and lazy storytelling, taking shortcuts on one side, astronomically improbable coincidences to abruptly thrust the plot forward, baffling detours into shenanigans filler material that leads nowhere special, just to justify a visual sequence or to sell toys.
There’s some great ideas in there, as well as the unpopped kernels of other great ideas. So much unfulfilled potential, with tantalizing, infuriating glimpses of what could have been.
It’s like Lucas cracked the code with Empire Strikes Back, with a team of equals all working together and ready to push back on questionable ideas and impulses… then Lucas never tried that workflow again.
Then Disney fumbled the ball by allowing the goddamned “mystery box” approach, by requesting a misguided thing, summed up in the following sentence - “That thing you did with Star Trek… do it with Star Wars!”
The prequels are pretty solid outside of maybe the middle of Attack of the clones. The lightsaver battles and special effects are way better
It’s so frustrating too because the atmosphere, casting, acting, even the characters are really compelling. But they just absolutely refused to take any risks. It’s like they just didn’t get the whole point. Rey needed to become a gray character, and kylo needed to be redeemed. And they both had to live with it and shoulders the burdens of their past. Luke needed to accept that ultimately people are people and you can’t expect to entirely subvert either your baser or more noble emotions and instincts.
Also, the prequels had fun and interesting world building. Look at games like battlefront and fallen order or all the new aliens we were introduced to.
The prequels made star wars feel larger than the original trilogy, the Sequels made the world feel smaller. No new alien race that plays a big role, no new worlds of interest (maybe the red salt planet, but it’s a barren wasteland), no new ships or technology.
Unlike the prequels (spanning decades, wars, and planets) the Sequels don’t have anything to build off of to save them.
Naw, prequels had big fans back in the day. No one likes the sequels
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Aye, I’d compare it to pineapple pizza, in the sense that many very vocal people love to hate on it, but its inclusion in every god damn restaurant speaks volumes of its actual popularity.
Once on a trip with my classmates I ordered it and they all gave me shit of it. Well too bad I knew that everyone who happened to be present actually liked it, so I threw that right back at em! Nobody was saying shit after. People just learn that shitting on something is the social norm.
I like the sequels despite their issues (which the prequels also had a lot), save for Ep. 9, which seems to be a reaction to all the bad faith critiques made towards the sequels.
There’s actually pretty split reception regarding prequel, and at the current year it’s liked because the amount of meme it generate.
I like the meme, i fell asleep watching the first ep, while i cringe hard when i watch 7 and 8.
I think there’s a difference between how they were hated and what parts people liked.
The prequels people hate because Jar-Jar, and some other comic relief characters, were annoying, and also (especially episode 1) how slow they can be. Overall, the stories were liked I think.
The sequels people like for the action and entertainment, but you totally have to ignore the story for them to not fall apart. It constantly contradicts itself (and the existing lessons, like the OP) and only works to weaken the universe.
Basically, their opposites to each other. I think the difference is people can come to enjoy the world of the prequels and get past the bad bits (or skip them), but the analysis and growing recognition of the failures of the sequels will only get larger with time as we spend more time with them.
The sequels people like for the action and entertainment
I have the same feeling but for prequels.
I never took Star Wars very seriously and I always see the story and lore as being a fun adventure. But the problem with the sequels is that it doesn’t have the direction and vision. I don’t know about the others, but for me that made the sequels not click.
Episode 1 is slow?! It starts with jedis being betrayed by the trade federation, escaping the ship and going to naboo, rescuing jarjar and meeting the gungans, crossing the planet’s core to get to Theed, rescuing Padmé and escaping to tatooine, winning the podrace and going to coruscant, then finally returning to naboo to end the invasion of the trade federation, all in one film. How can it be more packed with action and events? Certainly more action and event packed than Luke spending 1h of the film in a swamp
It’s not just Jar-Jar. The amount of CG and green screen was off-putting given how good Lucas was at practical effects, and those more modern techniques have aged much worse in a much shorter time frame. The movies may be slow, but the action sequences are actually quite long, drawn out, and pointless (the third act of Attack of the Clones is especially bad). The fight choreography was also extremely different, with the simple, grounded light saber fights being replaced with silly back-flips and summersaults.
There are also odd story elements that seem to contradict the OT; why did Obi-Wan say Yoda trained him? How did the Jedi go from being a powerful peace-keeping known throughout the galaxy go a myth in 20 years? Why did Leah claim she could remember her mother? (I’m sure Lucas came up with explanations for these things, but they still stand out.) All in all, they are a huge tone-shift from their predecessors, in both storytelling and filmmaking.
In contrast, the sequel films are able to emulate the original trilogy much more faithfully in terms of practical effects and set design. The real problem was, where Lucas over-developed his prequel trilogy for 30 years, Disney under-developed their sequels, with no plan for where the story should go. Abrahams created a basic retread of the first film, Johnson threw everything out in the second, and the third film was just desperately trying to write itself out of a corner. Those movies had no idea where they wanted to go, so they went nowhere.
The one on the right is Jake Skywalker.
Idk, I’m nostalgic for the prequels because I grew up with them, but if they were released now and I had only seen the original trilogy I would’ve made the these comments about them too. Wat frustrates me the most about the sequels is that there’s just no coherent plot. It’s so obvious that everyone was just writing whatever without looking at the bigger picture. They could’ve went with this and actually gone somewhere. But 8 was just an exercise in doing everything the viewer didn’t expect or want until it got way too frustrating without actually going anywhere and 9 was just a clusterfuck because it tried desperately to get an epic conclusion on a completely incoherent trilogy.
7 was already flawed, but if 8 and 9 had further established how the First Order got so large, who Snoke was, etc it could’ve been acceptable. I totally see the “Luke gets disillusioned and isolates himself” spin even if I’d prefer a “Luke slaps the shit out of everyone” story. It gave the new characters some space. But that space wasn’t used.
Its almost like the movies didn’t have a sole. That happens when you are a Disney executive
What if I told you that there were only 6 movies ever made
Funny thing is that with Vader it’s not even in an indirect sense.
Mans absolutely could have canonically killed millions with his own two hands,
He got surrounded after crash landing on a dessert planet and the dude looks around and tells the commander calling for his surrender is “All I am surrounded by is fear, and dead men.”
IDK how they’d fare against each other in a fight, but Vader is definitely putting in the work to compete on Kharne the Betrayer’s million+ kill count, which we can only guess from that being how many people he’s killed that he was in control of himself enough to retrieve their skulls to offer to Khorne.
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dessert planet
Mmmm… dessert planet… 🤤
Mister Simpson . . .
Mister Simpson!
Sweet, sweet, dessert planet…
“I hate powdered sugar… it’s poofy and hard to clean and it gets everywhere!”
1-6 exist
Nothing else
Andor belongs on this list.
Some of the Disney TV shows have been at least not too bad? Ashoka had some really neat ideas, Mandalorian has fun action scenes, Clone Wars fixed the prequels, Rebels has Thrawn, Acolyte is a new take on the Jedi, and Boba Fett does some neat world building.
The only one that really missed IMHO was Obi Wan, which is a god damned tragedy. They should have just left it as a movie.
4-6 exist
Others exist too, but they are for the most part inferior.
The weird thing about the sequels is the weird amount of people coping and saying they’re not that bad. It’s literally bad fanfiction written by people who couldn’t care less about the franchise.
I just wanted a fun star wars movie and every single one felt like it was star wars. Sure the plot sucked but I still enjoyed watching them.
You might enjoy anything then
I’m going to be honest, I truly think there’s more value to be able to enjoy things freely in life. People who find delight easily aren’t as foolish as you’d think. When I’m salty, those are the people I find myself envying. I’m the one who feels like an idiot when I notice.
I would rather hang out with someone that allows themselves to feel joy in silly things rather than one who has no patience for mediocrity.
I criticize stuff just as often I assure you. Maybe my expectations were just lower than most people’s so it had a lower bar to clear
Did they though?
I was a kid when the prequels came out and loved them despite how they were poorly recieved by old fans.
Maybe these people who like the sequels are kids/teens.
I actually really liked Last Jedi on its own and consider it in the top half of my ranking of the franchise. I think Luke’s characterization could’ve been handled better (and the whole Canto Bight subplot could’ve been cut wholesale) but looking at myself at 23 (how old Luke was in RotJ) and my experiences since, I found the lapse of judgement and faded optimism quite relatable. Adam Driver is one of my favorite actors and his portrayal of an abusive yet charismatic antagonist turned love interest was spot-on. There’s also the comparisons you could make between the First Order and the rise of fascism in America today. That one’s a bit of a stretch but it’s important to recognize World War II’s influence on the original trilogy and the Iraq War’s on the prequels.
That said, Rise of Skywalker is not only the worst Star Wars film- I consider it the worst film I’ve ever watched. It’s not a poorly-made film, the cinematography is great, but the plot is nonsensical. It redacts everything they set up in the Last Jedi, retroactively making that one worse than it is standalone. What seals it though is this will always be the ending of the saga- they can’t go back and fix it. I’ve probably seen worse movies, but the disappointment will never reach the level that this one gives me.
Last Jedi was a good movie but it wasn’t a good Star Wars.
Technically it is very good, the director is one of the top.7th was a mediocre ok movie and ok Star Wars.
Love Rian Johnson, especially as a Breaking Bad fan.
100% agreed with all of this. Well said.
They could make a 4th movie 😂 How would that plot go?
I was 20 when TPM released and not a single person I knew liked it. It is still the most disappointing part of the franchise for me with ep2 being a close second. Ep3 was an improvement but still just ok.
Now I see people in their 20s and early 30s that live the prequels and it’s just strange to me. They’re no better than the sequels (and worse in some ways) so I really don’t understand people that enjoy them while crapping all over the newer films.
The prequels had a good story told incredibly poorly while the sequels have a bad story but at least it is told well (or at least better) and neither of those are recipes for a good film.
I liked TPM, except for the scenes with Anakin. I just hated how he was written, and the acting didn’t help. Huuuuuuge crush on Natalie Portman though
That kid did the absolute best he could with what he was given, and I feel very bad for him and the guy who played jarjar. They have both had some very serious issues because of the shitty starwars fans.
Man, I get so fucking bummed out every time I think of them. Can you imagine how excited and proud they were to be a part of goddamb STAR WARS?
Then all the shit gets dumped all over them and they’re endlessly ridiculed for something they likely loved and were happy to be a part of.
The total lack of empathy and compassion burns a hole in my stomach.
I was also 20 when TPM was released. I hated everything about it at first. Then a couple years later when RLM made their review of the trilogy, it gave my thoughts new form, and I had to realize that what the prequels did well was establish a lot of lore and world building, which made TCW possible. Unlike most of the badly written EU books, it dared to deviate from X-Wings & TIEs, Han Solo and even the mysteries of the force. Even if we have forgotten gems like force speed, never to be used again.
And TCW is the bomb.
The prequels had a good story told incredibly poorly
This is redeemable, fun to read about extra info on wookiepedia, and fun to rewatch in whole context of that good story.
while the sequels have a bad story but at least it is told well (or at least better)
This is not redeemable, adds nonsense and contradictions to wookiepedia, and why bother rewatching a bad story at all? But hey, at least the acting is good and special effects are pretty!..?
The prequels had a good story told incredibly poorly while the sequels have a bad story but at least it is told well (or at least better)
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
To be fair, if you look at the original movies, most of the universe info is not contained therein.
There are books. You can, for example, pluck a trilogy on Han Solo’s backstory off the shelf at Barnes & Noble. You could do that 15-20 years ago. The books are all written by an array of different authors though they all take place within the Star Wars universe. What is that if not professionally written fan fiction?
FF isn’t my thing, I’m not endorsing it, just stating what I encountered when I tried to read a book or two engaging the Star Wars universe in the past.
They all had a stamp of approval from George Lucas though. Once Disney bought the franchise they said fuck all that and made it “not cannon”.
good some of those books were worse than fanfiction
Thrawn came entirely from the books. The hype would not have existed for his appearance in the show had the books he was in been on the quality level of the sequels.
Hell, the sequels should have been based on the Thrawn trilogy
thrawn was already in star wars rebels and pretty sure hes getting a movie or show
I still think Disney would make bank if they’d just declare Legends a separate canon, re-cast Han, Luke, and Leia with up and comers, and start adapting old EU novels.
They need to do the Republic Commando novels and they need to finally make the Starwars 1313 game. I will never not be salty about that.
More importantly, they had someone dedicated to maintaining the canon and keeping the various authors from contradicting each other too much
I am doubtful as to the number of those books George actually read.
I feel this about Futurama, and nobody else around me seems to care
I care. New Futurama seems different. I’ve seen all episodes and movies prior to 2023 at least 20 times a piece. At very least. The pre-2023 episodes are definitely all over the place in terms of quality too, don’t get me wrong. I really tried to keep an open mind but the new Hulu stuff seems different.
Every time it gets rebooted it’s worse
The original run of the show was the best, and it should have just stopped there. It’s all been very downhill from there. I watched the show so many times that I even had the DVD commentary memorized. This is one of the only hills I am willing to die on.
They’re just attached to the franchise and thus have a bias towards it. Some people go far beyond just the movies: books, comics, spinoffs. They’re far in too deep to objectively see the content they consume purely for its own value.
That wasn’t a dream, it was a vision of the future. Luke’s a Jedi, the Jedi have faith in the Force. The Force showed him a vision, and he believed it. That’s what Jedi are supposed to do. And you know what else? The Force wasn’t wrong. Given what Ben would go on to do, Luke shouldn’t have hesitated.
“always in motion, the future is”
Oh please, don’t quote that ketamine-addled frog at me. The whole thing is his fault anyway, he fucked up literally everything he touched:
- First he opposed training Anakin at all. Because letting a kid whose Force sensitivity is off the charts run around unsupervised just after you’ve found out that the Sith are back is apparently a good idea…?
- Then he assigned him to wet-behind-the-ears Obi-Wan instead of a more experienced master who might be able to guide him better, despite knowing full well that Anakin was going to be difficult to train due to being too old.
- Didn’t recognize Palpatine as a Sith lord despite frequently meeting him face to face.
- Failed to defeat Dooku.
- Dismissed Dooku’s warning about a Sith being in control of the Republic as disinformation despite every word of it being true.
- Provided incredibly stupid, worthless, ineffective, and likely even outright damaging ‘guidance’ to Anakin in the throes of emotional turmoil.
- Decided that he and Obi-Wan should split up to fight the Sith individually instead of ganging up on one while the other was occupied, and then sent Obi-Wan after Anakin despite being explicitly warned that it wouldn’t work.
- Failed to defeat Palpatine.
- Tried to stop Luke from going to rescue his friends, who would later prove instrumental in the defeat of the Empire.
- Tried to teach Luke the same “attachments bad” bullshit that he fed Anakin in order to get him to assassinate his own father; in the end, of course, it’s precisely that attachment that proves the key to victory. If anything, the Empire was defeated because Luke, unlike everyone else before him, didn’t listen to Yoda.
So yeah. Every single thing this little green asshole ever said and did was wrong. If Yoda says that the future is always in motion, the one thing we can be sure of is that the future is as solid as a rock.
You’re totally right, Luke should have killed the boy who was force-molested as an infant because of a possible future. Ignoring that if he had killed Ben then we would have only seen like kill an as yet innocent child. And also ignoring if Luke hasn’t reacted out of fear, then Ben’s fate could have played out differently. And ignoring that by acting in fear, Luke drove Ben away and pushed him towards the dark side, making Luke directly responsible for billions of murders that Kylo caused.
What brilliant character development for Luke and genius writing from Rian Johnson lol
It’s almost as if Luke’s unwillingness to make necessary sacrifices and his half-hearted actions bringing about the exact outcome he was hoping to prevent were a deliberate commentary on real life and on the situations we find ourselves in as both individuals and as a civilization or something. But that can’t be true, because the sequels are shit in every way with no redeeming features whatsoever, and Rian Johnson is a complete idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
make necessary sacrifices and his half-hearted actions bringing about the exact outcome he was hoping to prevent were a deliberate commentary on real life
You’re right, we should be executing children who statistically will grow up to be criminals/murderers. I guess I just got confused about who the bad guys were in Minority Report as well. What a great commentary on real life lol
I don’t think Luke used statistics to determine what Ben would do in the future.
As for Minority Report, it’s unfortunately one of those movies where the filmmakers try to hammer the audience over the head with a moral that the story doesn’t actually support. Jurassic Park is another such movie. It’s all about “man shouldn’t play god” and “life will find a way”, right? Wrong! The dinosaurs only escaped their enclosures because Nedry sabotaged the system and turned the electric fences off. The park would’ve been fine if he hadn’t done that. The real moral of that story is that humans can triumph even over mother nature as long as we don’t stab each other in the back.
Minority Report is a very similar case. The precrime program was a roaring success, eliminating nearly all premeditated murders. Yeah, sure, one guy managed to figure out a way to fool the system and get away with it, but luckily he got caught regardless. That’s a reason to implement safeguards and improve the system, not to shut the entire program down. No system is perfect. Sure, precrime would probably produce a few wrongful convictions and fail to catch a few criminals, but guess what, those issues were far worse under the old system. Going back to a crappy old system because the new and improved system is not absolutely flawless is just stupid. Even in its prototype stage, precrime had far fewer issues than conventional law enforcement, and those issues would’ve been reduced even more with further development and refinement of the system. Shutting the entire thing down the moment a single teething issue cropped up was one of the most egregious cases of throwing the baby out with the bathwater ever put on screen. So yes, you unironically did get confused about who the bad guys were in Minority Report, but it’s not your fault, because the filmmakers were confused about it too.
So you think Luke should have killed his innocent nephew who had been groomed and abused since childhood before he did anything bad at all lol
Literal psychopath position to justify TLJ’s crappy writing smh
It was written by a white man so I’m not going to build my entire personality around hating it.
So if it was written by a PoC you would build your whole personality around hating it?
I would, and that’s why I hate the movie Keanu. I laugh every time I watch it, I’m impressed by how original and fun it is, but I’m all about hating it cuz I’m super racist
Huh?
Wasn’t it Luke who had the bad dream? 🤔
He had a bad dream about Kylo’s bad dream
Removed by mod
No star wars
Luke has gone full Jedi.
(credit: pixelatedboat from old Twitter)
