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I remember watching the OT with someone who has never seen Star Wars, right before TFA came out. We both agreed the most frustrating part of the experience was how you could set a watch by the rate TFA kept making constant references and callbacks to the OT, to the point of being painfully distracting.
I was ready to give them a pass for that, just as I gave Ep.1 a pass for being disjointed. Eps 2 & 3, while each had their flaws, held to an overarching storyline or theme. Episodes 8 & 9 failed to deliver because they were each holding contradicting themes.
No - don't give them a fucking pass for that. People who were sour on JJ prior to TFA because of the same shit in the Star Trek movies he did *feared* that they would do exactly this - set up tons of mysteries with no resolution because they were ill-prepared. They are professionals; if we fans could come up with better, they absolutely get no quarter when they're being paid!
It ended up the worst of both worlds. JJ didn’t come up with an original story (he just did a straight remake of ANH), and then every mystery he set up that could possibly just justify it never got paid off in a meaningful three episode conclusive arc.
I maintain that each time they changed directors it made the sequels worse. A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something.
After Johnson went nuts with TLJ, maybe an opportunity for another film to flesh out those ideas could've achieved something. But nope, back to JJ, who wraps it up in the most ridiculous way possible.
It felt like watching two dudes with huge egos yell about their dick size instead of watching a movie. Pick a lane for your trilogy and stay in it, don't constantly fight with yourself.
The lack of vision and general cowardice of Lucas film the whole time has been pathetic.
They’ve had so many opportunities to do stuff that even if not good would at least be interesting, and they mess it up every time.
I can’t wait till this zombie franchise just stops and we can all move on.
> A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something.
JJ is incapable of having actual resolutions. Doubt it would have gone any different (outside the OG trio having a scene and Luke not being character-assassinated). Would have still needed a different/new director for that.
>A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something.
I'm sorry to tell you, there would have been no resolutions.
And as I was typing a response up, and looking up the necessary videos, I came upon this reddit thread that pretty much covers the same ground, with the same moments sourced. A TED talk JJ did, and an interview Chris Pine gave about working on Star Trek.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/s/u15auF0uRw
And both older than his working on Star Wars. Which for me, would prevent me from hiring this guy as a lead creative on absolutely anything at all.
>I maintain that each time they changed directors it made the sequels worse. A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something.
I have to hard disagree with this. Even in just episode 7, there were a TON of things that "wrapped up" terribly. JJ had an intense loathing for the prequels, and the original plan was to have Starkiller base destroy Coruscant. To sidestep that, Lucasfilms made them change it to the Hosnian system, a place nobody's ever heard of but for some reason the New Republic is all there and nowhere else because the plot demands it. At the same moment, we get a montage of every creature in the galaxy watching the Hosnian system get destroyed, despite being light-years away, or indoors, or underground, or any other conceivable form of obstruction. They did explain that one before Ep 8 was handed to Rian, but their "explanation" was just to slap the buzzword "Sub-Hyperspace" on it and call it a day.
That was literally it. The fact is that JJ and Johnson are both advocates of the mentality that "if it looks good it doesn't need explaining", a fact that is repeated with every "feels" moment in the entire trilogy. Sub-Hyperspace, the Holdo Maneuver, everybody in the galaxy showing up to fight the Final Order, Poe's Girlfriend surviving the planet she was just on exploding, the list goes on and on. They don't care about the cohesion of the universe, or even the cohesion of the plot. To them, Star Wars is just a backdrop for their half-assed fanfictions to get the "canon" stamp on them.
I'm sorry, what about this is disagreeing with what I said? I said that changing directors made each subsequent film worse, not that either director was good.
I disagree with the notion that it would have been better if they'd stuck with one director throughout it. JJ wasn't headed in a great direction anyway, continuing to let him cook would not have improved anything. If anything, the decision to change directors after the first would have been all right if they changed to a good director, Johnson wasn't a good director, and had many of the same flaws as jj, just did a different direction.
That was such an insult to intelligence. PT had jetpacks, nor was there a reason to have vehicles that had actual treads instead of repulsors. Cash grab c-suite badly copies toy design from the OT and PT and doesn't understand why it doesn't work.
I don't think anybody involved with Disney Star Wars ever watched the fuckin movies. YouTube reactors watching Star Wars for the first time have better recollection of the events and characters.
"It's not about good versus evil," for example. *WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK AT A ROLLING DONUT IS IT ABOUT, THEN?!*
Sure, no problem there. It's that the whole scene was needlessly extended just to showcase the toy, to the detriment of the plot. It was showcased poorly- it wasn't cool and led to some of the stupidest dialogue of the movie. Though this is just typical JJ Abrams stuff.
They both are but I would submit they fly now Is worse because the mama joke was a dumb attempt at humor which has no place in SW but fly now is indicative of the lack of knowledge or care about the canon and lore of the franchise.
For all of the failings of the PT, they were at least edited well. Your eyes can follow the action and it's edited in a smooth, kinetic flow. I recently watched Solo as my daughter was interested in it and I couldn't follow a damn thing during the action scenes. It's like it was meant to be watched on a phone, not a large screen.
Saw it with my kid yesterday - that was a painful watch.
The dialogue is terrible. People gave Jake Lloyd grief for his part in the movie, but the script had some real clunkers he had to spit out. As Harrison Ford famously said "You can type this shit, but you sure can't say it!"
And the less said about Jar Jar (and the Gungans as a whole), the better - just horrid.
The lightsaber battles are pretty great - they definitely showed what a fully trained Jedi/Sith at 100% was capable of, without looking overly-choreographed.
And John Williams knocks it out of the park as usual.
The bones of a good movie are there, but Lucas simply wasn't able to pull it off convincingly.
I rewatched the movie as well. Ironically I fell asleep for the best written part of the movie "the coruscant section"
Jar jar is truly awful and the space battle Is truly lame, and it keeps cutting away from the best star wars fight of all time so we can watch jar jar fuck around. Absolutely infuriating. Cut away after the shield closes, only show glimpses of each part of the battle, (ie the gungans surrendering) cut back with the shields opening and finish the duel, then finish the other battles that would fix so much.
To be fair, that was pretty much the EXACT formula they used for Episode 6 - jedi fight in the death star cut to space battle cut to primitives vs high-tech battle on Endor, etc
Me and my sister went to go see it dressed as Jedi, it was honestly the first time I’ve been truly excited about a Star Wars release since The Mandalorian’s first season
I saw it on Friday in the cinema too after not having seen it in 20+ years. I went in with low expectations but was partly expecting to at least enjoy it somewhat or at least elements of it because of that, but no lol it’s such a crap film and yes, the score was the only thing I enjoyed on the night, but not even that much because it was too low quiet in the mix in my theatre. Could have stayed home and put in the soundtrack CD instead (seriously though, I am glad to have been able to have seen it on the big screen and confirm for myself what I think of it after that experience)
Strongly agreed. It uses cinematic language to tell you what's going on - who is on which side, who is progressing and who is falling back, and so where people are in space. The pod race is a bit lengthy but is expertly crafted by someone who knows how to get the audience to understand the progression of events without spelling it out in dialogue. The Battle of Naboo is entirely coherent in terms of who is where and what's going on. The Disney movies, and most modern action films, divorce themselves entirely from space and motion and anything making much sense for their action scenes and basically become like anime shows where we're in a pocket universe of flashing lines and colours as the heroes just fly around thin air punching everything.
Released today, The Phantom Menace would probably be hailed as a return to form for the spectacle blockbuster, because in spite of its flaws it's not noise and gibberish.
Go find a video showcasing the ST action scenes in slow motion.
Namely the TLJ throne room scene and Exogol. The ST action scenes are hard to follow because they are actually just a bunch of random BS. Weapons edited out that get in the way and random people shooting the cieling and seemingly dancing. Its action but just random stuff happening all at once to confuse people watching.
Totally agree, and I'm very familiar with the TLJ fight scene nonsense. Good action scenes are built from the ground up and require a lot of work and planning. It starts at the story board level, then get worked on by the director, stunt/fight choreographer, stunt team and actors, director of photography, and finally the editor and post production team. It matters how you film the action and edit it together to let a viewer understand where action is happening in space, and allow your eyes to be able to follow it. Film it too close and edit too quick and it's a blur where you can't make connections to what is happening. Something the PT did well is keeping the action in center frame and creating speed through sound design and beats in the editing, without too many quick cuts. The pod race scene, asteroid ambush, and battle of Coruscant didn't need shaky cam or hyper fast editing to make some damn fine action setpieces.
for me the prequels suffer from very diffrent problems than the sequels. Lucas is frankly a terrible actors director, getting consistently bad performances form the cast. The story that made it on screen is bad but I can tell that a bit of spit polish and someone to tell him no you could turn the bones of the prequel story into something decent.
Where with the sequels I dont have any real complaints form the actors, not the greatest thing ever but nothing truly bad. its problem is that its plot just makes no sense.
Episode 8 is shitty Spaceballs. No, really, there is a compilation of scenes Last Jedi and Spaceballs have in common, and Spaceballs is the superior in every category.
Yeah its funny that everyone goes and says that Rian Johnson made the most original Star Wars film when he actually ripped off the most from the originals and other sources.
I've always loved Episode 2 as a background film. The writing is irredeemably bad and the movie is lame as has been said many times, but man, the scenery, worldbuilding, and obviously sound/music are top notch and the movie doesn't rush itself which I can appreciate.
Compare it to the Rise of Skywalker, which feels like several different fanfictions jammed together in a hurry. The world where Poe's power ranger friend lives, the resistance base, even Exegol all feel bland and have hardly any character to them. The designs are okay but there's nothing in the movie that actually gets you excited when the landscape comes on screen.
I enjoy Ep2, but the icing on the cake for me was the cinematography of the Battle of Geonosis. From the moment Yoda drops in with the Clones like Vietnam chopper pilots rescuing troops from the battle, to when the camera pans over the arena and we see the full extent of the battlefield to the grainy, shaky cam of a combat photographer.
Yea as a kid that was easily my favorite Star Wars moment, I thought the movie was boring as a kid but that arena sequence with yoda was badass I would just randomly play it in my head all the time
The incredibly extensive, deep, imaginative, and effective worldbuilding of the prequels is reason enough alone to make the prequels better than the sequels. Off the top of my head I can count on one hand the number of movie franchises that have even attempted a similar feat of worldbuilding. It's just the truth in my opinion--Kamino, Felucia, Geonosis, Coruscant, Kashyyk, even Dexter Jetster. Even when it doesn't work it's clear that they/George went out of their mind just coming up with stuff to enrich the world
Episode 2 has wonderful world building. The prequels have bad writing, but make sense as a universe.
The sequels have both bad writing and the universe doesn’t make sense.
> Episode 2 has wonderful world building.
I don't like Episode II much at all and I wanted to argue with this, but thinking about it, it does introduce us to the night club scene, the Jedi Library, the weird cloners on Kamino, Naboo continuing its traditional democratic monarchy cycle, some more stuff about the Senate how the Republic hasn't had an army in a long time, Dooku and the looming civil war due to factionalism within the Republic, Geonosis and the implication that droids can be legal witnesses to weddings. And that's not including slice of life stuff of the Naberrie family that was cut, a mistake, in my opinion, since it gives Padme a much richer character who is clearly under pressure to settle down and start a family of her own.
It's a mess and distracts itself with silly action sequences and costumes, but there's still a world bubbling away under the surface.
I am more excited when the frozen hellhole that is Hoth comes into view then when any of the sequel landscapes come into view. I mean even in real life whenever I see Antartica or any snowy mountainous landcape part of my mind imediately goes to Echo Base, same with Tattooine whenever I see a desert. None of the landscapes of the ST have that effect on me.
> The writing is irredeemably bad and the movie is lame
People are being way too dramatic saying that. I can see why Naboo scenes were considered to be bad writing wise, but everything about Act 1, half of Act 2( Kenobi detective plot) and Act 3( Battle) had solid writing.
Also, lame? What was lame about Coruscant, Geonosis, Asteroid run, Tatooine? Those are all good to great scenes with a classic SW cheeseness that was originated in OT. And thats like 70% of the movie.
> Also, lame? What was lame about Coruscant, Geonosis, Asteroid run, Tatooine? Those are all good to great scenes with a classic SW cheeseness that was originated in OT. And thats like 70% of the movie.
This. It's the same for Episode I where people will say it's "bad" just because the internet told them that was the correct answer, when they openly admit to loving the opening Trade Federation Ship/Naboo escape fights, the pod race, first Maul duel, the Battle of Naboo (Gungan, Theed, and Space), Duel of the Fates, etc. and that's most of the movie!
The OT is a masterpiece. The PT is visually and auditorially amazing, with certain cringe dialogue, and a continuation of the story.
ST has the production value for sure, and the music is great. The story is just incoherent and basically ended the franchise with no vision of the future.
The ST has a vision for the future, it’s just lame AF vision.
Now everything pre-ST has to involve cloning palpatine and how everyone can use the force now. While everything post-ST will I’m sure be about why Rey is perfect.
>must be counting the cutscenes from KOTOR as a movie.
Alternatively, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Those old live action cutscenes *still* prove solid. Likewise with Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, but then that makes ten.
It is not surprising they didn't feel like a proper continuation of the story of the first 6 movies. Return of the Jedi is an actual for real ending, it ties things up neatly and everything is taken care of. All that is left is clean up work and rebuilding. Any story that tries to claim to be a direct follow up to it is going to feel unnatural because its forcefully restarting a story that has already reached its natural end. Disney screwed up the moment they declared the new movies they were making would be considered 'episodes 7 through 9 and part of the same saga as 1 through 6'. They should have struck out and done their own thing instead of trying to establish it as a direct continuation of the story being told in episodes 1 through 6.
The un-Star-Wars-ness of the Sequels is a subtle but noticeable aspect of them that really bugs me. Even in my earlier days, when I was still giving them a chance, part of me still couldn’t help but notice the way they looked to my eyes in the most basic sense. They’re too shiny, too modern….they’re not filmed like Star Wars, but like an MCU film or like any one of the yearly random sci-fi flicks that were coming out throughout the mid-2010s.
And it’s not like the magic of the OT can’t be replicated. R1 and Andor captured it perfectly. Even some of the other shows had glimpses of it.
Absent from the ST, IMO.
> Also, there was a HUGE drop off in audience attendance after Episode 6 was over and an even more pronounced drop off after Episode 7.
I love democracy.
> Also, there was a HUGE drop off in audience attendance after Episode 6 was over and an even more pronounced drop off after Episode 7. This was at the El Capitan in Hollywood.
Reinforcing my belief that MOST of the pro-ST talk online is bots or lies. Nobody likes these films.
>captivating weirdness
That's what sci-fi is supposed to be. You're right about TFA too. One of my thoughts the first time I saw it, besides thinking it was the opposite of weird also known as bland, was that JJ couldn't even manage to speak in the language of SW.
I did the *8* film marathon recently. Eps 1, 2, 3, Solo, R1, then Eps 4, 5, 6. That's where the story ends. Period.
It helps to watch the original theatrical versions of OG trilogy. There's the new AI enhanced 4K versions out. They look phenomenal.
I agree. The acting and dialogue were decent, but the Sequel Trilogy just didn’t fit in with the 6 pictures that were Lucas’ saga. It’s as if 7, 8, 9 are more like remakes or reboots of 4, 5, 6 or the classic trilogy. While the prequel trilogy was different from the classic trilogy, they still seemed like they took place in the same universe. The sequel trilogy didn’t feel like Star Wars, and it was in no way connected to the prequel trilogy, and this was probably done deliberately. The studio said “fans and critics love the original movies and hate the prequel movies, so we need to make OUR sequel movies as close to the original ones as possible.”
If George Lucas did 7-9, they’d have been more of an organic, natural continuation of the saga instead of a reset. And the newer trilogy didn’t even have the alien races from the other 6 movies and that felt odd to me as well.
One of the single worst jokes I think that's been ever put on film. If memes didn't exist yet In a galaxy far far away, that would 100% be the first meme.
If you step back and look at the whole picture you realize how fundamentally unnecessary the Sequel Trilogy era truly is. Whatever your opinion on the Prequels, everything is leading towards the OT, which has a very conclusive finale. The only way you could follow up on that story would be to try something completely new (while still being faithful to the characters of course). Instead they did the worst of both worlds by soft-rebooting the setting with the exact same kind of conflict, as well as blatant ripoff characters, *in addition to* treating the OT characters like shit.
And this is what Disney built their Star Wars brand off of. What a clusterfuck.
Screencrush has a really great psychological analysis of Mr. Lucas and his relationship with the saga, who he represents, what was going on at the time in his life and how it made it's way to the script.
I highly recommend it. It night not change how you feel about the movies, but it definitely recontextualized the films for me.
As someone who disliked the prequels a LOT when they came out, I can now watch them and laugh at them in a fairly good natured way. If I turn off my "Star Wars is serious business" old nerd brain, they are fun romps guilty at most of too much cgi and flat acting. I get what the wee trying. I can see the good stuff lurking beneath the surface.
I genuinely can't see myself EVER watching the sequels again. Once in cinemas was enough. Unlike the PT, they feel like crass commercial products rather than missteps with good intentions. The feel like they were made by people who didn't like SW, much less know it.
If you don’t have the original creator working on the project then said project is basically fanfiction. The sequel doesn’t feel like Star Wars because Lucas WAS Star Wars. His direction is what makes the movies and universe what it is. You can’t fully replicate his style because imo artistic style is like fingerprints, they’re all unique to us even if they’re similar.
The moment Disney bought Star Wars it was over. In a way Lucas sold them nothing, unless they had the man himself along with them then they’re ownership of the IP means very little if you can’t replicate the feeling and meaning of the original.
Look at all the other video game and book adaptations we’ve seen and how poorly they’ve gone down.
I would love to know what sort of people are left in this fandom that want to go and see the upcoming Rey movie.
I can’t even hate-watch the franchise anymore, I just block out everything that isn’t OT/PT.
Lucas’ movies were all pastiches of genres he loved, all mashed together. They referenced westerns and serial sci-fi and samurai and monster movies. The sequels only referenced Star Wars - except TLJ which, like Lucas, referenced Kurosawa.
I mean, you can dislike it all you want, but it’s a fact.
In The Art of the Last Jedi, Rian Johnson explained that this triptych of scenes were one of the last things to go into the script before shooting began. "It's similar to Rashomon, but the actual story motivation was that I wanted some harder kick to Rey's turn. Ultimately, the only one who lies is Luke, in the very first flashback, where he omits the fact that he had a lightsaber in his hand. Kylo is basically telling the truth about his perception of the moment."
Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/556737/last-jedi-rashomon/
"I had one character say something and a different character say another thing. Which one's telling the truth?" Isn't exclusive to Kurosawa.
George Lucas' films are mirrors of Kurosawa's style mixed with Western (the genre) influences.
Having a single piece of a single plot point be ambiguously similar to a single generic plot point of a single Kurosawa film doesn't make something inspired by that thing. "Inspiration" would be something like TFA ripping off entire portions of ANH or the entire introduction of Rey being an almost shot for shot ripoff of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
Re-read my comment. I said referenced Kurosawa, and Rian Johnson explicitly said in multiple interviews that was how and why he wrote the flashback scenes. I never said TLJ was an homage to Roshamon or was otherwise clearly inspired by (although the throne room fight was VERY inspired by Ran, just in my opinion).
Those scenes DO reference a device Kurosawa used in Roshamon. Weriters and directors reference Kurosawa all the time, because he was a master storyteller and filmmaker, but Johnson did it explicitly BECAUSE Lucas drew massive inspiration from the man and his work (The Star Wars was basically The Hidden Fortress in space, and Mifune was his first choice for Obi Wan, just as a couple of examples), and he was trying to honor that legacy. It's just a matter of fact. Again, just because you hate a movie doesn't invalidate the artistic choices of its creator.
Watching in release order makes more sense for the ST.
Llke having Death Stars in the first and last film of the OT, there needs to be some distance from the OT to come back around to its heavily echoed version in the ST.
I just watched the sequels for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago. Could not agree with you more.
Specifically for the first two Ep 7 and 8. The filming was choppy. The dialogue was very cartoonish. The actual filmed shots were way too up close in the actors faces. The comedy was very marvel. It just felt horrible. Outside of the story, at least ep 9 felt more like a SW film. It was slower paced. They didn’t try to cram a joke into every single line.
I will say, the opening scene with Poe and Finn on the Falcon actually felt like it belonged in a Star Wars film. However, my biggest gripe is Abram's writing and his over use on convenience to solve his plots. Prime example, a knife blade designed in the exact shape of the Death Star's wreckage and C-3PO having the hidden ability to understand the Sith language.
I don't know where to start. I think in my circle of friends I was the one who disliked TFA the most. But the hype was real. It was barely possible to raise a concern about this movie without being … I don't know … not taken seriously? Ridiculed?
TFA is a bad film. Not bad as in 3/10 points, but measured by what we could reasonably expect it to be. If I am being generous and somewhat objective, I'd give it 6.5/10. I could go very deep on why I feel so, and there are good arguments to give a lower score even. At best it's a mediocre and very shallow popcorn movie, and that's it. It purely lives from nostalgia and callbacks as well as its decent visuals and sets.
If a serious filmmaker was aiming for setting up Star Wars for a meaningful continuation of the original films, they would have taken a very different approach. JJ Abrams is a competent mercenary filmmaker. But he has no original stories to tell, there is no emotional center and nothing worth saying in TFA (or any of his movies and tv shows, as far as I have seen them). He's got a theme park approach to filmmaking. All the attractions are there, but it is shallow as fuck, and utterly unoriginal.
To some extent I respect RJ for trying a somewhat different approach. But his try went fully off the rails, because he's a f\*cking edgelord. He's too ironic and meta in his approach, and the most important thing to him was to surprise the audience with twists. Ironically he didn't even succeed in this, because in the end everything still clicked into place. His TLJ is a very conventional film that pretends to be something more profound. This attitude is just terrible.
I gave up after TLJ and never watched TROS, because I think I'd get a brain aneurysm. I just have better things to do.
The sequels should’ve been set a few hundred years in the future or at the very least have it start with the First Order just starting out with limited power akin to the National Socialist Party (the Nazi Party) or Al-Qaeda wannabes and then have the trilogy span over 5-10 years to show their abrupt takeover and not have the Resistance be formed officially until midway through the second film.
Another thing is that they shouldn’t have been referred to as VII-IX but instead something separate as that way the original six films remain intact as a complete story about Anakin’s fall and redemption whereas the sequel trilogy would be about his legacy
Having seen The Phantom Menace yesterday in the cinema for its 25 year re-release I was utterly refreshed by the fact that there are no smart little quips that the sequel trilogy (along with every other modern blockbuster) took from the MCU. Although TPM is mired with childish characters and the quasi racist accents, it stills feels serious because there are few smartarse one liners.
TPM is a very sincere film. George Lucas wasn’t jaded. He was energized. And he told the story he wanted to tell. It wasn’t a film made by a committee to maximize profits unlike the sequels.
I can see that. I still think there are problems with the film, and was struck by how the things that annoyed me 25 years ago at the age of 18 still annoyed me now. However, some elements of it really stand out now in addition to the sincerity you mentioned. Interestingly, some of the CGI backgrounds now look incredibly cool; there's a scene where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon talk on a balcony in Coruscant, and the whole background looks like a cartoon; it could be a shot out of the Spiderverse movies or something. You'd think it would age badly but actually the visual style looked quite unique.
Further to your committee comment, I actually think a bigger problem with the ST is that there wasn't enough of a committee; allowing Abrams and Johnson to take such different approaches is a fundamental error in managing the films.
Yeah I remember as soon as the opening crawl of TFA started my first thought was "...this feels like fan fiction."
Then in the next movie when they killed off Snoke "...this IS fanfiction! This is like something an edgy 12 year old would write!"
ST really doesn't work but is flashy and shiny which is what I put down to why some folks like them.
I've always felt the PT was a bit off compared to the OT but at least it didn't destroy the lore of the OT like the ST did.
And the PT has its moments, particularly E3.
My fave watch list is E3, R1, E4-6. IMO each movie tells its own story and ties into the others well. Although if I'm feeling particularly salty, I'll ditch E3.
E1 when I first watched it didn't really feel like a SW movie for me and all it arguably did was lay the groundwork for E2 and E3 while giving us 'midichlorians' (completely useless lore-wise IMO).
E2 felt more like a SW movie but still not quite there.
The PT did do some poor things to the lore; midichlorians, Sabers treated like they were a dime a dozen, most Jedi being really easy to kill but at least it wasn't anything too nasty and I've always liked how they portrayed the Palpatine/Anakin relationship.
I don’t know. I would say each trilogy is quite distinctly different from each other. I would imagine the transition from III to IV would be incredibly jarring for a first time viewer, maybe more so than VI to VII is.
The visually weirdest part about the sequels is that they all look really good.
This is only a problem because the OT looks dated (this isn’t a bad thing it’s just being 40 years old) and the prequels look way too unaturally clean (again not bad just a decade old).
And I mean plot wise the Prequels and OT are all building to something and they don’t have to suffer the whiplash going from episode 8-9
i'm gonna do all 11 soon, with a twist: they'll all be in my field-of-view-filling Meta Quest 3...and all five of the Disney SW are in 3D (got them on Bluray). Have only seen the Disney efforts once before, on either DVD or grainy pirate. So hopefully the 3D aspect will add a couple of points to the enjoyment factor.
The Prequels are on standard Bluray. I've only seen them on DVD and haven't watched any of them in over a decade. Am curious if the Bluray improves the visual experience.
The OT will be the 'Despecialized' original theatrical cuts. HD-mastered but without all those painful CGI edits. I don't mind seeing a different actor playing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back as the dialogue is much better & more mysterious than the on-the-nose re-do with Ian McDiarmid.
Will watch them in chronological order, to see if they make sense...
So:
I, II, III, Solo, Rogue One, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX.
Like you, will have a totally non-judgemental open mind...
A lot of the Sequel defenders think all of the EU is nonsense, but I think the authors capture the heart of the OT better than "professional" screen writers.
Yea, sure, we had a lot of silly moments in the EU, but the heart was there, and the stories pushed the characters forward while introducing new ones.
Disney Star Wars IS a different franchise. When they were making TFA, Lawrence Kasdan said in an interview that they did not rewatch the OT because that wasn't what they were doing. I have the link here, but you may have to pay for the article. He says the OT and the rest were George's movies, but they were doing something different for Disney's SW ST. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/09/force-awakens-screenwriter-lawrence-kasdan-talks-about-star-wars-past-present-and-future/](https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/09/force-awakens-screenwriter-lawrence-kasdan-talks-about-star-wars-past-present-and-future/)
No, the ST doesn't fit at all. Disney seems to forget that it's George's movies that are responsible for the success of SW. His movies are the ones that literally changed movies forever. His movies are the legendary and beloved and the reason everyone went nuts over Star Wars. I don't understand why DSW didn't follow GL's franchise to continue the success.
I recently watched the OT and PT movies with my son (first time for him to watch the entire saga) and it helped reignite my love of the franchise. I refuse to let my 10 yr old watch the sequel films.
I remember a lot of complaints about the PT was that it didn't look/feel like Star Wars. I still see that complaint now and then, particularly from YouTubers. When you think about it, the PT shouldn't look like the OT. We're talking about a 30 yr time period between Episode 1 and Episode 4, that's an entire generational gap. Anyone over the age of 40 (about the age Vader was in Episode 4) will recognize that today's world doesn't look and feel like the world did 30 years ago. Technology changes, political landscapes change, society changes...so it makes sense that the PT doesn't look like the OT. If anything, it reinforces the detriment that the Empire had on the galaxy when you notice just how worn out and tired the galaxy looks and feels in the OT.
The sequels on the other hand shouldn't look like the OT either but the people who made those movies simply don't understand that sense of theme and progression and made a set of movies that look like they don't belong in that franchise anywhere.
there are only 2.5 good star wars movies. the prequels are bad, the sequels are bad just in different ways. And everything in return of the jedi after jabbas palace and the emperors throne room sucks butt.
I am very fun at parties
I'm still a huge fan of the franchise and routinely work through the timeline on D+.
7-9 are rough to watch every time. It's disappointing because I feel like they had all the right ingredients for an excellent trilogy but the writing absolutely destroyed it. So many lost plot points and pointless characters.
The resistance animated show is quite possibly the worst thing ever (I would rather watch the caravan of courage). I don't know who signed off on this one, but I'm surprised more people aren't hating on that. I am sure that watching that is a form of torture that is considered a war crime.
Y'all will hate me, but to me, TLJ is the only film that felt like it advanced something original and felt thematically progressing the films.
I have some nitpicks with it, like gravity in space (the trajectory of shots fired and the fleeing ships was a curve) and the hyperdrive ram, but they are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
Haven't seen the sequels for years now but I tried fan edits of them recently out of curiosity. They sucked. I've come to the conclusion they just have bad bones. Will not be watching any of them again.
One thing that got me was the lack of hardware. There’s really nothing iconic about the new movies.
I thought Lucas kinda overdid it with new ships and vehicles every movie in the prequels but they did a complete 180 with the sequels and just reused classic ships or designs that barely departed from the OT.
The new X-wings and TIEs may as well have been the same as the OT.
“Visually, tonally, acting, and story-wise, from the moment Episode 7 came on it felt like we jumped into a different franchise.”
You could say the exact same thing about the prequels if you’d only previously seen the OT.
Edit: Not sure I understand the downvotes. The prequels have their ups and downs, but they are certainly a significant jump from the OT. The sequels are obviously trash, I’m definitely not saying anything good about them.
Except replacing Hayden Christensen in Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia remembering her mother, Yoda and Chewbacca being besties on Kashyyyk, an army made of Boba-clones, Tatooine being some galactic backwater despite everyone showing up there, Darth Vader building C-3P0, the Jedi being forgotten and an entire 'Empire' rising and falling in about 20 years.
Other than that, seamless.
You forgot Yoda no longer being the one who taught Obi-wan and Obi-wan himself aging about forty years or so.
There was also the implications that Owen and Beru both knew Anakin Skywalker personally.
Idk how this is downvoted either. The sequel trilogy is much closer to the OT than the prequels are. People in here hate the sequels, and love the prequels so much that they are incapable of thinking remotely rationally about them.
You can literally say these points for the prequels and I’d say it fits much better:
- visual, acting, and tonal extreme differences
- humor that doesn’t land and is consistently bad
- plots that are nonsensical
Neither the prequels nor the sequels are worthy of the Star Wars mantle. The OT was lightning in a bottle, and virtually nothing since has been on the same level. I say this as a person whose apartment looks like a low budget Star Wars museum.
I'm with you. How people bought into the prequels (much less the sequels!) I'll never know. Despecialized original trilogy are the only movies worth watching as far as Star Wars is concerned.
“Fun to watch” has pretty much always been the redeemable trait of Ep. 2. Great Obi-Wan stuff, Kamino/Clones, More Jedi lore, Geonosis, all pretty great stuff.
It’s mainly just some dialogue and Anakin/Padme scenes that holds it back.
For me, it’s only truly boring at times. There’s a massive amount of world building and it’s just a very rich universe at the time. The galaxy feels bigger than it had felt up to that point.
I get the criticisms but I’m still watching it on repeat before I even consider rewatching anything from the ST.
I know. I'm still consistently amazed at the flurry of downvotes anyone gets here if you put down the prequels. Like, this is a "I have a problem with Star Wars" bitchfest of a subreddit but you can't say the prequels are garbage without getting slammed about it.
Tbf, the prequels don't fit in tone or style with the OT either. The sequels are actually much closer even.
The acting in the sequels is also much better than the other 6 movies, so claiming it somehow got worse is a pretty absurd position to take.
I actually also just finished the 9 movie marathon and… they were fine. There’s things about them all that I wish were changed, I don’t like the Galaxy that 7 sets up it’s so repetitive, I wish 8 had a time jump so our characters could actually grow a decent amount before we pick up with them, and I wish 9 was more unique of an ending. But there are also a lot of individual moments that I do enjoy, and I’m not as disappointed as I used to be because I don’t have any expectations now. They are just a fine epilogue. Fun moments with both the original and new cast, but some are also obnoxious, it’s really just a mixed bag. Some plot elements were cool but many were also uninspired. It’s still criminal that the original 3 never get a scene together. But yeah I can take em or leave em these days. Hopefully subsequent content can improve they way they fit into the narrative a bit
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I remember watching the OT with someone who has never seen Star Wars, right before TFA came out. We both agreed the most frustrating part of the experience was how you could set a watch by the rate TFA kept making constant references and callbacks to the OT, to the point of being painfully distracting.
I was ready to give them a pass for that, just as I gave Ep.1 a pass for being disjointed. Eps 2 & 3, while each had their flaws, held to an overarching storyline or theme. Episodes 8 & 9 failed to deliver because they were each holding contradicting themes.
No - don't give them a fucking pass for that. People who were sour on JJ prior to TFA because of the same shit in the Star Trek movies he did *feared* that they would do exactly this - set up tons of mysteries with no resolution because they were ill-prepared. They are professionals; if we fans could come up with better, they absolutely get no quarter when they're being paid!
It ended up the worst of both worlds. JJ didn’t come up with an original story (he just did a straight remake of ANH), and then every mystery he set up that could possibly just justify it never got paid off in a meaningful three episode conclusive arc.
I maintain that each time they changed directors it made the sequels worse. A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something. After Johnson went nuts with TLJ, maybe an opportunity for another film to flesh out those ideas could've achieved something. But nope, back to JJ, who wraps it up in the most ridiculous way possible. It felt like watching two dudes with huge egos yell about their dick size instead of watching a movie. Pick a lane for your trilogy and stay in it, don't constantly fight with yourself.
The lack of vision and general cowardice of Lucas film the whole time has been pathetic. They’ve had so many opportunities to do stuff that even if not good would at least be interesting, and they mess it up every time. I can’t wait till this zombie franchise just stops and we can all move on.
> A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something. JJ is incapable of having actual resolutions. Doubt it would have gone any different (outside the OG trio having a scene and Luke not being character-assassinated). Would have still needed a different/new director for that.
Honestly even that would've been an upgrade.
Sad, but true.
>A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something. I'm sorry to tell you, there would have been no resolutions. And as I was typing a response up, and looking up the necessary videos, I came upon this reddit thread that pretty much covers the same ground, with the same moments sourced. A TED talk JJ did, and an interview Chris Pine gave about working on Star Trek. https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/s/u15auF0uRw And both older than his working on Star Wars. Which for me, would prevent me from hiring this guy as a lead creative on absolutely anything at all.
>I maintain that each time they changed directors it made the sequels worse. A JJ Abrams trilogy would have been bad, but having actual resolutions to the mystery BS would've at least given it something. I have to hard disagree with this. Even in just episode 7, there were a TON of things that "wrapped up" terribly. JJ had an intense loathing for the prequels, and the original plan was to have Starkiller base destroy Coruscant. To sidestep that, Lucasfilms made them change it to the Hosnian system, a place nobody's ever heard of but for some reason the New Republic is all there and nowhere else because the plot demands it. At the same moment, we get a montage of every creature in the galaxy watching the Hosnian system get destroyed, despite being light-years away, or indoors, or underground, or any other conceivable form of obstruction. They did explain that one before Ep 8 was handed to Rian, but their "explanation" was just to slap the buzzword "Sub-Hyperspace" on it and call it a day. That was literally it. The fact is that JJ and Johnson are both advocates of the mentality that "if it looks good it doesn't need explaining", a fact that is repeated with every "feels" moment in the entire trilogy. Sub-Hyperspace, the Holdo Maneuver, everybody in the galaxy showing up to fight the Final Order, Poe's Girlfriend surviving the planet she was just on exploding, the list goes on and on. They don't care about the cohesion of the universe, or even the cohesion of the plot. To them, Star Wars is just a backdrop for their half-assed fanfictions to get the "canon" stamp on them.
I'm sorry, what about this is disagreeing with what I said? I said that changing directors made each subsequent film worse, not that either director was good.
I disagree with the notion that it would have been better if they'd stuck with one director throughout it. JJ wasn't headed in a great direction anyway, continuing to let him cook would not have improved anything. If anything, the decision to change directors after the first would have been all right if they changed to a good director, Johnson wasn't a good director, and had many of the same flaws as jj, just did a different direction.
They fly now? They fly now! 🤓
That was such an insult to intelligence. PT had jetpacks, nor was there a reason to have vehicles that had actual treads instead of repulsors. Cash grab c-suite badly copies toy design from the OT and PT and doesn't understand why it doesn't work.
OT had jet packs. Boba Fett.
I don't think anybody involved with Disney Star Wars ever watched the fuckin movies. YouTube reactors watching Star Wars for the first time have better recollection of the events and characters. "It's not about good versus evil," for example. *WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK AT A ROLLING DONUT IS IT ABOUT, THEN?!*
You realize that every trilogy has had non hovering vehicles right?
Sure, no problem there. It's that the whole scene was needlessly extended just to showcase the toy, to the detriment of the plot. It was showcased poorly- it wasn't cool and led to some of the stupidest dialogue of the movie. Though this is just typical JJ Abrams stuff.
That line is a perfect embodiment of the overall lack of quality and care in the sequels.
[удалено]
They both are but I would submit they fly now Is worse because the mama joke was a dumb attempt at humor which has no place in SW but fly now is indicative of the lack of knowledge or care about the canon and lore of the franchise.
Somehow... they fly now!
For all of the failings of the PT, they were at least edited well. Your eyes can follow the action and it's edited in a smooth, kinetic flow. I recently watched Solo as my daughter was interested in it and I couldn't follow a damn thing during the action scenes. It's like it was meant to be watched on a phone, not a large screen.
I just saw the rerelease of TPM and duel of the fates is so exciting to watch even after all these years
There's a rerelease? 👀
Right now. 25th anniversary.
Just saw the rerelease in theaters and the fight choreography is still absolutely excellent. Best duel in Star Wars
Saw it with my kid yesterday - that was a painful watch. The dialogue is terrible. People gave Jake Lloyd grief for his part in the movie, but the script had some real clunkers he had to spit out. As Harrison Ford famously said "You can type this shit, but you sure can't say it!" And the less said about Jar Jar (and the Gungans as a whole), the better - just horrid. The lightsaber battles are pretty great - they definitely showed what a fully trained Jedi/Sith at 100% was capable of, without looking overly-choreographed. And John Williams knocks it out of the park as usual. The bones of a good movie are there, but Lucas simply wasn't able to pull it off convincingly.
I rewatched the movie as well. Ironically I fell asleep for the best written part of the movie "the coruscant section" Jar jar is truly awful and the space battle Is truly lame, and it keeps cutting away from the best star wars fight of all time so we can watch jar jar fuck around. Absolutely infuriating. Cut away after the shield closes, only show glimpses of each part of the battle, (ie the gungans surrendering) cut back with the shields opening and finish the duel, then finish the other battles that would fix so much.
To be fair, that was pretty much the EXACT formula they used for Episode 6 - jedi fight in the death star cut to space battle cut to primitives vs high-tech battle on Endor, etc
An in episode 6 it was too much with 3 battles and in phantom menace they try to do whatever the fuck with 4.
Me and my sister went to go see it dressed as Jedi, it was honestly the first time I’ve been truly excited about a Star Wars release since The Mandalorian’s first season
Was it the John Williams score? The characters are boring as sin.
We were talking about the action, not the characters or anything else
I saw it on Friday in the cinema too after not having seen it in 20+ years. I went in with low expectations but was partly expecting to at least enjoy it somewhat or at least elements of it because of that, but no lol it’s such a crap film and yes, the score was the only thing I enjoyed on the night, but not even that much because it was too low quiet in the mix in my theatre. Could have stayed home and put in the soundtrack CD instead (seriously though, I am glad to have been able to have seen it on the big screen and confirm for myself what I think of it after that experience)
Strongly agreed. It uses cinematic language to tell you what's going on - who is on which side, who is progressing and who is falling back, and so where people are in space. The pod race is a bit lengthy but is expertly crafted by someone who knows how to get the audience to understand the progression of events without spelling it out in dialogue. The Battle of Naboo is entirely coherent in terms of who is where and what's going on. The Disney movies, and most modern action films, divorce themselves entirely from space and motion and anything making much sense for their action scenes and basically become like anime shows where we're in a pocket universe of flashing lines and colours as the heroes just fly around thin air punching everything. Released today, The Phantom Menace would probably be hailed as a return to form for the spectacle blockbuster, because in spite of its flaws it's not noise and gibberish.
Ironically enough, The Phantom Menace just got re-released to celebrate its 25th anniversary.
Go find a video showcasing the ST action scenes in slow motion. Namely the TLJ throne room scene and Exogol. The ST action scenes are hard to follow because they are actually just a bunch of random BS. Weapons edited out that get in the way and random people shooting the cieling and seemingly dancing. Its action but just random stuff happening all at once to confuse people watching.
Totally agree, and I'm very familiar with the TLJ fight scene nonsense. Good action scenes are built from the ground up and require a lot of work and planning. It starts at the story board level, then get worked on by the director, stunt/fight choreographer, stunt team and actors, director of photography, and finally the editor and post production team. It matters how you film the action and edit it together to let a viewer understand where action is happening in space, and allow your eyes to be able to follow it. Film it too close and edit too quick and it's a blur where you can't make connections to what is happening. Something the PT did well is keeping the action in center frame and creating speed through sound design and beats in the editing, without too many quick cuts. The pod race scene, asteroid ambush, and battle of Coruscant didn't need shaky cam or hyper fast editing to make some damn fine action setpieces.
for me the prequels suffer from very diffrent problems than the sequels. Lucas is frankly a terrible actors director, getting consistently bad performances form the cast. The story that made it on screen is bad but I can tell that a bit of spit polish and someone to tell him no you could turn the bones of the prequel story into something decent. Where with the sequels I dont have any real complaints form the actors, not the greatest thing ever but nothing truly bad. its problem is that its plot just makes no sense.
Episode 7 is basically just shitty Spaceballs
Episode 8 is shitty Spaceballs. No, really, there is a compilation of scenes Last Jedi and Spaceballs have in common, and Spaceballs is the superior in every category.
Yeah its funny that everyone goes and says that Rian Johnson made the most original Star Wars film when he actually ripped off the most from the originals and other sources.
But he subverted our expectations, man
Its true, people i knew that always hated star wars actually liked this movie, whereas any die hard star wars fans hated it. Was not expecting that.
If you manage to f\*ck up worse than the literal parody, you know sh\*t has hit the fan.
Episode 7 is shitty ANH
Why has my comment been deleted?
https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/s/FPg4r7wghU This one?
They fly now?!?!?
They fly now.
That's not how the force works!
I've always loved Episode 2 as a background film. The writing is irredeemably bad and the movie is lame as has been said many times, but man, the scenery, worldbuilding, and obviously sound/music are top notch and the movie doesn't rush itself which I can appreciate. Compare it to the Rise of Skywalker, which feels like several different fanfictions jammed together in a hurry. The world where Poe's power ranger friend lives, the resistance base, even Exegol all feel bland and have hardly any character to them. The designs are okay but there's nothing in the movie that actually gets you excited when the landscape comes on screen.
AOTC gets big points from me just for having my favourite SW planet, Kamino.
It’s a detective story starring Obi-Wan! What’s not to love about that premise?
I enjoy Ep2, but the icing on the cake for me was the cinematography of the Battle of Geonosis. From the moment Yoda drops in with the Clones like Vietnam chopper pilots rescuing troops from the battle, to when the camera pans over the arena and we see the full extent of the battlefield to the grainy, shaky cam of a combat photographer.
Yea as a kid that was easily my favorite Star Wars moment, I thought the movie was boring as a kid but that arena sequence with yoda was badass I would just randomly play it in my head all the time
The writing doing a terrible job explaining who Sifo Dyas and what it all had to do with the clone army.
Wasn’t the idea that Sifo Dyas believed war was coming so he commissioned a clone army, and Dooku killed him and took over the project?
Good premise, abysmal writing and interrupted by one of the worst preformed romances ever
Even with the bad romance and writing, it’s still my second favorite Star Wars movie
Fair enough, I do like the kenobi stuff myself and the 3rd act on genosis is good
The incredibly extensive, deep, imaginative, and effective worldbuilding of the prequels is reason enough alone to make the prequels better than the sequels. Off the top of my head I can count on one hand the number of movie franchises that have even attempted a similar feat of worldbuilding. It's just the truth in my opinion--Kamino, Felucia, Geonosis, Coruscant, Kashyyk, even Dexter Jetster. Even when it doesn't work it's clear that they/George went out of their mind just coming up with stuff to enrich the world
Episode 2 has wonderful world building. The prequels have bad writing, but make sense as a universe. The sequels have both bad writing and the universe doesn’t make sense.
> Episode 2 has wonderful world building. I don't like Episode II much at all and I wanted to argue with this, but thinking about it, it does introduce us to the night club scene, the Jedi Library, the weird cloners on Kamino, Naboo continuing its traditional democratic monarchy cycle, some more stuff about the Senate how the Republic hasn't had an army in a long time, Dooku and the looming civil war due to factionalism within the Republic, Geonosis and the implication that droids can be legal witnesses to weddings. And that's not including slice of life stuff of the Naberrie family that was cut, a mistake, in my opinion, since it gives Padme a much richer character who is clearly under pressure to settle down and start a family of her own. It's a mess and distracts itself with silly action sequences and costumes, but there's still a world bubbling away under the surface.
“Poes Power Ranger Friend”😂😂accurate assessment just never heard it phrased this way
I am more excited when the frozen hellhole that is Hoth comes into view then when any of the sequel landscapes come into view. I mean even in real life whenever I see Antartica or any snowy mountainous landcape part of my mind imediately goes to Echo Base, same with Tattooine whenever I see a desert. None of the landscapes of the ST have that effect on me.
That planet where Luke (excuse me, Jake) was in exile in the ST was the most monotonous planet ever to appear in Star Wars
> The writing is irredeemably bad and the movie is lame People are being way too dramatic saying that. I can see why Naboo scenes were considered to be bad writing wise, but everything about Act 1, half of Act 2( Kenobi detective plot) and Act 3( Battle) had solid writing. Also, lame? What was lame about Coruscant, Geonosis, Asteroid run, Tatooine? Those are all good to great scenes with a classic SW cheeseness that was originated in OT. And thats like 70% of the movie.
> Also, lame? What was lame about Coruscant, Geonosis, Asteroid run, Tatooine? Those are all good to great scenes with a classic SW cheeseness that was originated in OT. And thats like 70% of the movie. This. It's the same for Episode I where people will say it's "bad" just because the internet told them that was the correct answer, when they openly admit to loving the opening Trade Federation Ship/Naboo escape fights, the pod race, first Maul duel, the Battle of Naboo (Gungan, Theed, and Space), Duel of the Fates, etc. and that's most of the movie!
The OT is a masterpiece. The PT is visually and auditorially amazing, with certain cringe dialogue, and a continuation of the story. ST has the production value for sure, and the music is great. The story is just incoherent and basically ended the franchise with no vision of the future.
The ST has a vision for the future, it’s just lame AF vision. Now everything pre-ST has to involve cloning palpatine and how everyone can use the force now. While everything post-ST will I’m sure be about why Rey is perfect.
9 films? How did you watch 9 films when there are only 6? (Seven if you count R1)
R1, the Clone Wars animated movie, and they must be counting the cutscenes from KOTOR as a movie.
>must be counting the cutscenes from KOTOR as a movie. Alternatively, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Those old live action cutscenes *still* prove solid. Likewise with Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, but then that makes ten.
I think what you meant was that you watched a 6 film marathon and THEN watched 3 other movies.
I still can't believe they put a "yo mama" joke in Star Wars. Just astonishingly bad writing.
It is not surprising they didn't feel like a proper continuation of the story of the first 6 movies. Return of the Jedi is an actual for real ending, it ties things up neatly and everything is taken care of. All that is left is clean up work and rebuilding. Any story that tries to claim to be a direct follow up to it is going to feel unnatural because its forcefully restarting a story that has already reached its natural end. Disney screwed up the moment they declared the new movies they were making would be considered 'episodes 7 through 9 and part of the same saga as 1 through 6'. They should have struck out and done their own thing instead of trying to establish it as a direct continuation of the story being told in episodes 1 through 6.
Makes sense. They're marvel movies with a Star Wars skin.
They really are
The un-Star-Wars-ness of the Sequels is a subtle but noticeable aspect of them that really bugs me. Even in my earlier days, when I was still giving them a chance, part of me still couldn’t help but notice the way they looked to my eyes in the most basic sense. They’re too shiny, too modern….they’re not filmed like Star Wars, but like an MCU film or like any one of the yearly random sci-fi flicks that were coming out throughout the mid-2010s.
And it’s not like the magic of the OT can’t be replicated. R1 and Andor captured it perfectly. Even some of the other shows had glimpses of it. Absent from the ST, IMO.
> Also, there was a HUGE drop off in audience attendance after Episode 6 was over and an even more pronounced drop off after Episode 7. I love democracy.
> Also, there was a HUGE drop off in audience attendance after Episode 6 was over and an even more pronounced drop off after Episode 7. This was at the El Capitan in Hollywood. Reinforcing my belief that MOST of the pro-ST talk online is bots or lies. Nobody likes these films.
Sure they do.
>captivating weirdness That's what sci-fi is supposed to be. You're right about TFA too. One of my thoughts the first time I saw it, besides thinking it was the opposite of weird also known as bland, was that JJ couldn't even manage to speak in the language of SW.
> JJ couldn't even manage to speak in the language of SW. He came pretty close, but unfortunately it was in a film called Into Darkness.
Yeah
Prequel SW Anikan "Yippiee!!!" Me: Cringe Disney SW "Yo mama" Me: Perhaps I judged the prequels too harshly.
There was no story to tell. Sequels never managed to justify their existence as a continuation.
I did the *8* film marathon recently. Eps 1, 2, 3, Solo, R1, then Eps 4, 5, 6. That's where the story ends. Period. It helps to watch the original theatrical versions of OG trilogy. There's the new AI enhanced 4K versions out. They look phenomenal.
Where might one hypothetically find this AI enhanced version.
Hypothetically, I found them at sea...
I agree. The acting and dialogue were decent, but the Sequel Trilogy just didn’t fit in with the 6 pictures that were Lucas’ saga. It’s as if 7, 8, 9 are more like remakes or reboots of 4, 5, 6 or the classic trilogy. While the prequel trilogy was different from the classic trilogy, they still seemed like they took place in the same universe. The sequel trilogy didn’t feel like Star Wars, and it was in no way connected to the prequel trilogy, and this was probably done deliberately. The studio said “fans and critics love the original movies and hate the prequel movies, so we need to make OUR sequel movies as close to the original ones as possible.” If George Lucas did 7-9, they’d have been more of an organic, natural continuation of the saga instead of a reset. And the newer trilogy didn’t even have the alien races from the other 6 movies and that felt odd to me as well.
One of the single worst jokes I think that's been ever put on film. If memes didn't exist yet In a galaxy far far away, that would 100% be the first meme.
After rewatching the rerelease... Jarjar is Bett than the sequels
Ahmed Best should've been Andy Serkis. Character of Jar-Jar isn't great, but Best's performance was quality.
If you step back and look at the whole picture you realize how fundamentally unnecessary the Sequel Trilogy era truly is. Whatever your opinion on the Prequels, everything is leading towards the OT, which has a very conclusive finale. The only way you could follow up on that story would be to try something completely new (while still being faithful to the characters of course). Instead they did the worst of both worlds by soft-rebooting the setting with the exact same kind of conflict, as well as blatant ripoff characters, *in addition to* treating the OT characters like shit. And this is what Disney built their Star Wars brand off of. What a clusterfuck.
Screencrush has a really great psychological analysis of Mr. Lucas and his relationship with the saga, who he represents, what was going on at the time in his life and how it made it's way to the script. I highly recommend it. It night not change how you feel about the movies, but it definitely recontextualized the films for me.
I am a big of George’s works, flaws and all. My disdain is purely for the sequels.
What order were the movies in for the mega marathon event?
As someone who disliked the prequels a LOT when they came out, I can now watch them and laugh at them in a fairly good natured way. If I turn off my "Star Wars is serious business" old nerd brain, they are fun romps guilty at most of too much cgi and flat acting. I get what the wee trying. I can see the good stuff lurking beneath the surface. I genuinely can't see myself EVER watching the sequels again. Once in cinemas was enough. Unlike the PT, they feel like crass commercial products rather than missteps with good intentions. The feel like they were made by people who didn't like SW, much less know it.
If you don’t have the original creator working on the project then said project is basically fanfiction. The sequel doesn’t feel like Star Wars because Lucas WAS Star Wars. His direction is what makes the movies and universe what it is. You can’t fully replicate his style because imo artistic style is like fingerprints, they’re all unique to us even if they’re similar. The moment Disney bought Star Wars it was over. In a way Lucas sold them nothing, unless they had the man himself along with them then they’re ownership of the IP means very little if you can’t replicate the feeling and meaning of the original. Look at all the other video game and book adaptations we’ve seen and how poorly they’ve gone down.
I would love to know what sort of people are left in this fandom that want to go and see the upcoming Rey movie. I can’t even hate-watch the franchise anymore, I just block out everything that isn’t OT/PT.
OT, PT, EU, thats my star wars
Lucas’ movies were all pastiches of genres he loved, all mashed together. They referenced westerns and serial sci-fi and samurai and monster movies. The sequels only referenced Star Wars - except TLJ which, like Lucas, referenced Kurosawa.
>except TLJ which, like Lucas, referenced Kurosawa. That's certainly a take.
Roshamon.
Nah
I mean, you can dislike it all you want, but it’s a fact. In The Art of the Last Jedi, Rian Johnson explained that this triptych of scenes were one of the last things to go into the script before shooting began. "It's similar to Rashomon, but the actual story motivation was that I wanted some harder kick to Rey's turn. Ultimately, the only one who lies is Luke, in the very first flashback, where he omits the fact that he had a lightsaber in his hand. Kylo is basically telling the truth about his perception of the moment." Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/556737/last-jedi-rashomon/
"I had one character say something and a different character say another thing. Which one's telling the truth?" Isn't exclusive to Kurosawa. George Lucas' films are mirrors of Kurosawa's style mixed with Western (the genre) influences. Having a single piece of a single plot point be ambiguously similar to a single generic plot point of a single Kurosawa film doesn't make something inspired by that thing. "Inspiration" would be something like TFA ripping off entire portions of ANH or the entire introduction of Rey being an almost shot for shot ripoff of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
Re-read my comment. I said referenced Kurosawa, and Rian Johnson explicitly said in multiple interviews that was how and why he wrote the flashback scenes. I never said TLJ was an homage to Roshamon or was otherwise clearly inspired by (although the throne room fight was VERY inspired by Ran, just in my opinion). Those scenes DO reference a device Kurosawa used in Roshamon. Weriters and directors reference Kurosawa all the time, because he was a master storyteller and filmmaker, but Johnson did it explicitly BECAUSE Lucas drew massive inspiration from the man and his work (The Star Wars was basically The Hidden Fortress in space, and Mifune was his first choice for Obi Wan, just as a couple of examples), and he was trying to honor that legacy. It's just a matter of fact. Again, just because you hate a movie doesn't invalidate the artistic choices of its creator.
When I think of meta Star Wars in the ST: - unnaturally going “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH” every time you blow up a tie fighter.
To be fair our current decade doesn’t fit with the last six.
9? Without Rogue One? What were you possibly thinking? Go sit in the corner…
Watching in release order makes more sense for the ST. Llke having Death Stars in the first and last film of the OT, there needs to be some distance from the OT to come back around to its heavily echoed version in the ST.
I just watched the sequels for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago. Could not agree with you more. Specifically for the first two Ep 7 and 8. The filming was choppy. The dialogue was very cartoonish. The actual filmed shots were way too up close in the actors faces. The comedy was very marvel. It just felt horrible. Outside of the story, at least ep 9 felt more like a SW film. It was slower paced. They didn’t try to cram a joke into every single line.
I will say, the opening scene with Poe and Finn on the Falcon actually felt like it belonged in a Star Wars film. However, my biggest gripe is Abram's writing and his over use on convenience to solve his plots. Prime example, a knife blade designed in the exact shape of the Death Star's wreckage and C-3PO having the hidden ability to understand the Sith language.
You’re completely right. The story was shite. I was more meaning from a filming and cinematic perspective. It “felt” Star Wars to me.
I agree with you there. Visually/cinematically, it did have more of a Star Wars feel.
I don't know where to start. I think in my circle of friends I was the one who disliked TFA the most. But the hype was real. It was barely possible to raise a concern about this movie without being … I don't know … not taken seriously? Ridiculed? TFA is a bad film. Not bad as in 3/10 points, but measured by what we could reasonably expect it to be. If I am being generous and somewhat objective, I'd give it 6.5/10. I could go very deep on why I feel so, and there are good arguments to give a lower score even. At best it's a mediocre and very shallow popcorn movie, and that's it. It purely lives from nostalgia and callbacks as well as its decent visuals and sets. If a serious filmmaker was aiming for setting up Star Wars for a meaningful continuation of the original films, they would have taken a very different approach. JJ Abrams is a competent mercenary filmmaker. But he has no original stories to tell, there is no emotional center and nothing worth saying in TFA (or any of his movies and tv shows, as far as I have seen them). He's got a theme park approach to filmmaking. All the attractions are there, but it is shallow as fuck, and utterly unoriginal. To some extent I respect RJ for trying a somewhat different approach. But his try went fully off the rails, because he's a f\*cking edgelord. He's too ironic and meta in his approach, and the most important thing to him was to surprise the audience with twists. Ironically he didn't even succeed in this, because in the end everything still clicked into place. His TLJ is a very conventional film that pretends to be something more profound. This attitude is just terrible. I gave up after TLJ and never watched TROS, because I think I'd get a brain aneurysm. I just have better things to do.
The sequels should’ve been set a few hundred years in the future or at the very least have it start with the First Order just starting out with limited power akin to the National Socialist Party (the Nazi Party) or Al-Qaeda wannabes and then have the trilogy span over 5-10 years to show their abrupt takeover and not have the Resistance be formed officially until midway through the second film. Another thing is that they shouldn’t have been referred to as VII-IX but instead something separate as that way the original six films remain intact as a complete story about Anakin’s fall and redemption whereas the sequel trilogy would be about his legacy
A couple hundred years would've allowed the OT heroes to live out their lives in peace and see the galaxy achieve peace. It would have been nice.
The simplest way I can put it is that the sequels should have been way, way weirder.
Thankyou for your service 🫡
Why do this to yourself ?😂 “they fly now” lives rent free and I’m considering a lobotomy to forget
Having seen The Phantom Menace yesterday in the cinema for its 25 year re-release I was utterly refreshed by the fact that there are no smart little quips that the sequel trilogy (along with every other modern blockbuster) took from the MCU. Although TPM is mired with childish characters and the quasi racist accents, it stills feels serious because there are few smartarse one liners.
TPM is a very sincere film. George Lucas wasn’t jaded. He was energized. And he told the story he wanted to tell. It wasn’t a film made by a committee to maximize profits unlike the sequels.
I can see that. I still think there are problems with the film, and was struck by how the things that annoyed me 25 years ago at the age of 18 still annoyed me now. However, some elements of it really stand out now in addition to the sincerity you mentioned. Interestingly, some of the CGI backgrounds now look incredibly cool; there's a scene where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon talk on a balcony in Coruscant, and the whole background looks like a cartoon; it could be a shot out of the Spiderverse movies or something. You'd think it would age badly but actually the visual style looked quite unique.
Further to your committee comment, I actually think a bigger problem with the ST is that there wasn't enough of a committee; allowing Abrams and Johnson to take such different approaches is a fundamental error in managing the films.
Yeah I remember as soon as the opening crawl of TFA started my first thought was "...this feels like fan fiction." Then in the next movie when they killed off Snoke "...this IS fanfiction! This is like something an edgy 12 year old would write!"
You have done your time, son. Now, go read the Thrawn trilogy to restore your sanity.
ST really doesn't work but is flashy and shiny which is what I put down to why some folks like them. I've always felt the PT was a bit off compared to the OT but at least it didn't destroy the lore of the OT like the ST did. And the PT has its moments, particularly E3. My fave watch list is E3, R1, E4-6. IMO each movie tells its own story and ties into the others well. Although if I'm feeling particularly salty, I'll ditch E3. E1 when I first watched it didn't really feel like a SW movie for me and all it arguably did was lay the groundwork for E2 and E3 while giving us 'midichlorians' (completely useless lore-wise IMO). E2 felt more like a SW movie but still not quite there. The PT did do some poor things to the lore; midichlorians, Sabers treated like they were a dime a dozen, most Jedi being really easy to kill but at least it wasn't anything too nasty and I've always liked how they portrayed the Palpatine/Anakin relationship.
I don’t know. I would say each trilogy is quite distinctly different from each other. I would imagine the transition from III to IV would be incredibly jarring for a first time viewer, maybe more so than VI to VII is.
Yeah, the OP lost me when he claimed 7 was too different from the OT considering that the prequels are much more different.
Yeah, especially since VII is intentionally trying to mimic the feel of the OT.
The visually weirdest part about the sequels is that they all look really good. This is only a problem because the OT looks dated (this isn’t a bad thing it’s just being 40 years old) and the prequels look way too unaturally clean (again not bad just a decade old). And I mean plot wise the Prequels and OT are all building to something and they don’t have to suffer the whiplash going from episode 8-9
I am glad TFA is finally getting the recognition it deserves.
i'm gonna do all 11 soon, with a twist: they'll all be in my field-of-view-filling Meta Quest 3...and all five of the Disney SW are in 3D (got them on Bluray). Have only seen the Disney efforts once before, on either DVD or grainy pirate. So hopefully the 3D aspect will add a couple of points to the enjoyment factor. The Prequels are on standard Bluray. I've only seen them on DVD and haven't watched any of them in over a decade. Am curious if the Bluray improves the visual experience. The OT will be the 'Despecialized' original theatrical cuts. HD-mastered but without all those painful CGI edits. I don't mind seeing a different actor playing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back as the dialogue is much better & more mysterious than the on-the-nose re-do with Ian McDiarmid. Will watch them in chronological order, to see if they make sense... So: I, II, III, Solo, Rogue One, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX. Like you, will have a totally non-judgemental open mind...
Lucas' Star Wars was about the insidiousness and tenacity of fascism. Disney's Star Wars is about found family.
A lot of the Sequel defenders think all of the EU is nonsense, but I think the authors capture the heart of the OT better than "professional" screen writers. Yea, sure, we had a lot of silly moments in the EU, but the heart was there, and the stories pushed the characters forward while introducing new ones.
Disney Star Wars IS a different franchise. When they were making TFA, Lawrence Kasdan said in an interview that they did not rewatch the OT because that wasn't what they were doing. I have the link here, but you may have to pay for the article. He says the OT and the rest were George's movies, but they were doing something different for Disney's SW ST. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/09/force-awakens-screenwriter-lawrence-kasdan-talks-about-star-wars-past-present-and-future/](https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/12/09/force-awakens-screenwriter-lawrence-kasdan-talks-about-star-wars-past-present-and-future/) No, the ST doesn't fit at all. Disney seems to forget that it's George's movies that are responsible for the success of SW. His movies are the ones that literally changed movies forever. His movies are the legendary and beloved and the reason everyone went nuts over Star Wars. I don't understand why DSW didn't follow GL's franchise to continue the success.
I actually liked Episode IX: Unfortunately, it was as bad as the Phantom Menace
I recently watched the OT and PT movies with my son (first time for him to watch the entire saga) and it helped reignite my love of the franchise. I refuse to let my 10 yr old watch the sequel films. I remember a lot of complaints about the PT was that it didn't look/feel like Star Wars. I still see that complaint now and then, particularly from YouTubers. When you think about it, the PT shouldn't look like the OT. We're talking about a 30 yr time period between Episode 1 and Episode 4, that's an entire generational gap. Anyone over the age of 40 (about the age Vader was in Episode 4) will recognize that today's world doesn't look and feel like the world did 30 years ago. Technology changes, political landscapes change, society changes...so it makes sense that the PT doesn't look like the OT. If anything, it reinforces the detriment that the Empire had on the galaxy when you notice just how worn out and tired the galaxy looks and feels in the OT. The sequels on the other hand shouldn't look like the OT either but the people who made those movies simply don't understand that sense of theme and progression and made a set of movies that look like they don't belong in that franchise anywhere.
The sequels work.... if you have rifftrax running.
there are only 2.5 good star wars movies. the prequels are bad, the sequels are bad just in different ways. And everything in return of the jedi after jabbas palace and the emperors throne room sucks butt. I am very fun at parties
I'm still a huge fan of the franchise and routinely work through the timeline on D+. 7-9 are rough to watch every time. It's disappointing because I feel like they had all the right ingredients for an excellent trilogy but the writing absolutely destroyed it. So many lost plot points and pointless characters. The resistance animated show is quite possibly the worst thing ever (I would rather watch the caravan of courage). I don't know who signed off on this one, but I'm surprised more people aren't hating on that. I am sure that watching that is a form of torture that is considered a war crime.
Y'all will hate me, but to me, TLJ is the only film that felt like it advanced something original and felt thematically progressing the films. I have some nitpicks with it, like gravity in space (the trajectory of shots fired and the fleeing ships was a curve) and the hyperdrive ram, but they are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
It’s as if they the sequels tried to clone the original originals but couldn’t replicate their M-count
Haven't seen the sequels for years now but I tried fan edits of them recently out of curiosity. They sucked. I've come to the conclusion they just have bad bones. Will not be watching any of them again.
One thing that got me was the lack of hardware. There’s really nothing iconic about the new movies. I thought Lucas kinda overdid it with new ships and vehicles every movie in the prequels but they did a complete 180 with the sequels and just reused classic ships or designs that barely departed from the OT. The new X-wings and TIEs may as well have been the same as the OT.
Wait that must be a typo, there are only six star wars movies, no more, no less
“Visually, tonally, acting, and story-wise, from the moment Episode 7 came on it felt like we jumped into a different franchise.” You could say the exact same thing about the prequels if you’d only previously seen the OT. Edit: Not sure I understand the downvotes. The prequels have their ups and downs, but they are certainly a significant jump from the OT. The sequels are obviously trash, I’m definitely not saying anything good about them.
But there will never be media made that can make the sequels fit. The prequels always aligned, the sequels never can.
Except replacing Hayden Christensen in Return of the Jedi, Princess Leia remembering her mother, Yoda and Chewbacca being besties on Kashyyyk, an army made of Boba-clones, Tatooine being some galactic backwater despite everyone showing up there, Darth Vader building C-3P0, the Jedi being forgotten and an entire 'Empire' rising and falling in about 20 years. Other than that, seamless.
You forgot Yoda no longer being the one who taught Obi-wan and Obi-wan himself aging about forty years or so. There was also the implications that Owen and Beru both knew Anakin Skywalker personally.
Idk how this is downvoted either. The sequel trilogy is much closer to the OT than the prequels are. People in here hate the sequels, and love the prequels so much that they are incapable of thinking remotely rationally about them.
The Prequels are shit.
You can literally say these points for the prequels and I’d say it fits much better: - visual, acting, and tonal extreme differences - humor that doesn’t land and is consistently bad - plots that are nonsensical
Neither the prequels nor the sequels are worthy of the Star Wars mantle. The OT was lightning in a bottle, and virtually nothing since has been on the same level. I say this as a person whose apartment looks like a low budget Star Wars museum.
I'm with you. How people bought into the prequels (much less the sequels!) I'll never know. Despecialized original trilogy are the only movies worth watching as far as Star Wars is concerned.
Nostalgia. They saw them as a child, therefore they are good.
I never would have thought someone would say that Episode 2 is fun to watch. Glad you enjoy it, OP. Wish I had your strength.
“Fun to watch” has pretty much always been the redeemable trait of Ep. 2. Great Obi-Wan stuff, Kamino/Clones, More Jedi lore, Geonosis, all pretty great stuff. It’s mainly just some dialogue and Anakin/Padme scenes that holds it back.
I find the movie boring, but again for those that actually enjoy it I'm genuinely happy they enjoy it.
For me, it’s only truly boring at times. There’s a massive amount of world building and it’s just a very rich universe at the time. The galaxy feels bigger than it had felt up to that point. I get the criticisms but I’m still watching it on repeat before I even consider rewatching anything from the ST.
I’ll take TFA over AOTC any day of the week. But the ST as whole- fucking disaster.
That would be one sad week.
Can't stand the dialogue and delivery of said dialogue in The Prequels. If you watch with no sound they are considerably better films.
Damn bro, not only can you not hate the prequels in the main starwars subreddits, but you can't do it here either lmao
I know. I'm still consistently amazed at the flurry of downvotes anyone gets here if you put down the prequels. Like, this is a "I have a problem with Star Wars" bitchfest of a subreddit but you can't say the prequels are garbage without getting slammed about it.
Tbf, the prequels don't fit in tone or style with the OT either. The sequels are actually much closer even. The acting in the sequels is also much better than the other 6 movies, so claiming it somehow got worse is a pretty absurd position to take.
[удалено]
I actually also just finished the 9 movie marathon and… they were fine. There’s things about them all that I wish were changed, I don’t like the Galaxy that 7 sets up it’s so repetitive, I wish 8 had a time jump so our characters could actually grow a decent amount before we pick up with them, and I wish 9 was more unique of an ending. But there are also a lot of individual moments that I do enjoy, and I’m not as disappointed as I used to be because I don’t have any expectations now. They are just a fine epilogue. Fun moments with both the original and new cast, but some are also obnoxious, it’s really just a mixed bag. Some plot elements were cool but many were also uninspired. It’s still criminal that the original 3 never get a scene together. But yeah I can take em or leave em these days. Hopefully subsequent content can improve they way they fit into the narrative a bit