# Disney Star Wars Is It Actually That Bad?



## Zardnaar (Jul 22, 2022)

How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies? 

 It's probably safe to say there's been some misfires. BUT Lucas himself made multiple erm crap Star Wars content. I would argue the worst of Disney Star Wars is no worse than the worst of what Lucas came up with. 

 There's only one thing to do. Tier list!!! Not covering things like video games, comics, books etc or the Stat Wars Holiday special only the movies and TV shows. 

 The tier levels 

S: Best of the Best

A: Very good but there's better. 

B: Still generally good 

C: Has some major problems the negatives outweigh the good. 

D: Generally a hard movie to watch. Might have a great scene or two but overall a bad movie possibly even painful to watch.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 22, 2022)

The List.

S Tier: Star Wars: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Rebels, The Mandalorian 

A Tier: Return of the Jedi. The Clone Wars, Obi Wan

B Tier: Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, Solo

C Tier: The Phantom Menace, The Last Jedi, Book of Boba Fett. 

D Tier: Attack of the Clones, Ewoks Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor, Clone Wars (animated film). Rise of Skywalker


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## Zardnaar (Jul 22, 2022)

Star Wars Episode IV a New Hope

 Gotta start somewhere.  A reasonably basic and traditional tale set against the back drop of well Star Wars.  For it's time it had amazing special effects (cf Logan's Run the year before). 

 Minor negatives somewhat predictable the heroes win, rescue the princess, cue credits but it was released in 1977. 

 S tier.


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## Dioltach (Jul 22, 2022)

My ranking:
S Tier: Ep IV, Ep V, Rogue One and The Mandalorian
A Tier: Ep VI, Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi
B Tier: Ep III
C Tier: Ep II, Ep VII and Book of Boba Fett (dragged up from D Tier by the chapters dealing exclusively with Mando)
D Tier: Ep VIII and Ep IX


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## Zardnaar (Jul 22, 2022)

Dioltach said:


> My ranking:
> S Tier: Ep IV, Ep V, Rogue One and The Mandalorian
> A Tier: Ep VI, Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi
> B Tier: Ep III
> ...




 Mines probably similar +/- one place and I'll be including Ewok Movies and the animated clone wars movie. 

 So a few of those movies gain a place not because they're great there's just worse in a whole new level of bad.

 Quite a bit of Disney will likely make it into B+ tiers.


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## Retreater (Jul 22, 2022)

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back
A: Mandalorian, Obi-Wan
B: Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, Rogue One
C: The Last Jedi, Revenge of the Sith
D: Solo, Rise of Skywalker, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones

Edit: Forgot the prequels - which is a regular occurrence.


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## RuinousPowers (Jul 22, 2022)

S: Episode V
A Episode IV
B: Episode VII, Mandalorian
C: Episode VI, Episode VIII, Kenobi, Solo
D: Episode IX, Book of Boba Fett, Rogue One


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## delericho (Jul 22, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies?



After a strong start it has been generally disappointing - Ep7 was very much "Star Wars Greatest Hits", but that was probably what was needed at the time, "Rogue One" was great. But Ep8 was fairly disastrous and Ep9 tied itself in knots trying desperately to 'fix' it. "Solo" was okay, but completely pointless.

In terms of series, the record is a bit better: Rebels, the final series of Clone Wars, and Bad Batch were all good, Visions was mixed but interesting, and most of "The Mandalorian" was decent. "Book of Boba Fett" had potential but largely failed, while "Kenobi" was mostly good but seriously flawed.

In terms of tiers:

S: Ep4&5
A: Ep 6, Rebels, Clone Wars (both pre- and post-Disney), Bad Batch, Mandalorian, Rogue One
B: Kenobi, Ep 7&1, Visions
C: Ep 2&3&8&9, BoBF
D: Nothing

Solo doesn't fit in a tier - it's just too pointless even to consider. And I haven't rated things like the old Droids or Ewoks cartoons - those are too old for me to really remember.


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## Jer (Jul 22, 2022)

The thing about Star Wars is that the further you get from the original movies, the better Disney has been able to do with it.

The Mandalorian plays in the universe of the films but is not trying to tie directly into the films.  It's the best live action Star Wars thing Disney has produced.  The Book of Boba Fett is not nearly as good for a few reasons but a chunk of it is that it's picking up something directly from the movies instead of playing with something new in the universe.

Rogue One ties into the movies, and does it better than Boba Fett, but where it's good is where it's not really playing in the original movie space. Where it fails IMO is where it has to tie things back into the original movies and where it makes winks and nods.

The new trilogy is a mess mostly because they decided to "Exquisite Corpse" a "Mystery Box" idea from JJ Abrams instead of actually having, you know, a story to tell (how can you plan to spend nearly 1 billion dollars and not even have an outline of what you're planning to spend it on?  How?). But it's also not good because it tries to tie too much into a story that is finished.  It's over - we're done with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and the rest.  Their story is done, let them retire.  There should be new challenges and new heroes and new villains.  And they don't all have to be from the same family.

And then there's Solo.  What can we say about Solo?  It's the one that is most tied to the original movies and frankly it's the one that I find to be the most disappointing.  At least the first two films of the sequel trilogy tried to do some new things.  Solo is a movie where they felt like they had to give an origin to his name.  "Why is he called Solo?" is a question that I never even thought to ask because _I just figured it was his last name and the author was engaging in some cute wordplay_.  When you're making a movie at that level of explaining things about the previous movies rather than doing something creative and interesting, you really have to ask yourself why you're bothering.  (I contend that the only way Solo would have worked is if they'd ramped up the humor in it and then, in a mid-credits scene, had Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Billy Dee Williams as Lando walking out of a holo theater playing "Solo" with Han complaining that they got everything wrong and it was nothing like that. Even then it wouldn't have been necessarily good but at least they could have had some fun with it instead of what it was)

(I haven't watched Kenobi yet.  I just haven't had the energy to be disappointed by yet another Star Wars thing and I've been spending more of my sci-fi time on Star Trek instead.)

So my advice for Disney would be a) ask John Favreau if he has any other ideas for Star Wars Universe things and if he does maybe put him into the Kevin Feige role over Star Wars if he wants it because he of all of them seems to know what he's doing and b) do more things set in the Star Wars universe but that aren't just strip mining the movies for stuff. Just do some adventure stories set in the Star Wars universe! That's literally all I'm asking for.


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## schneeland (Jul 22, 2022)

The only thing that really stands out for me is Mandalorian, so I'll go with:

S: EP IV, V
A: EP VI, Mandalorian (individual episodes would also be S or B)
B: First Ewok Movie, Rogue One
C: EP I, Second Ewok Movie, Book of Boba Fett
D: EP II, EP VIII

Based on my current knowledge, Obi Wan would get a D, but it's so boring I cannot find the motivation to watch the second half of the first episode, so it's perfectly possible it will get better later.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Jul 22, 2022)

(The following list of all Star Wars stuff was determined by Colosson the Numberwang Robot and as the product of Maths cannot be argued with.)


1. Empire Strikes Back.
2. A New Hope
3. The Last Jedi.
4. 3 3/4" Star Wars Action Figures
4. Rogue One.
5. The Mandalorian.
6. Star Wars Bed Sheets. Search your feelings. You know this to be true.
7. Various animated Star Wars shows, such as Clone Wars.
8. The Force Awakens. Needz moar lenz flarez. 
9. Going to any Star Wars movie with a friend who keeps asking you if Yoda is related to Hulk. Because Green? 
10. Return of the Jedi. Ain't no party like an Ewok party 'cuz an Ewok party can't stop. Yub nub, eee chop yub nub.
11. That recurring nightmare that George Lucas has invented time travel and is going to use it to improve Cinema by re-writing the dialogue of Casablanca and Glengarry Glen Ross and adding wipes for transitions in all Kubrick movies.
12. Revenge of the Sith.
13. Obi Wan. Perfectly cromulent.
14. Reading Simon Pegg's statement that Star Wars has the most toxic fanbase and thinking ... _eh, he's not wrong_, but still feeling the need to write a 10,000 word rebuttal. 
15. The Phantom Menace.
16. Solo (except Lando ... Lando is cool).
17. Going into your attic and finding that all of your Star Wars collectibles that you never played with because of their value have melted in the latest heatwave into a large Jabba-like mass on top of your vintage Kenner Millenium Falcon, and recognizing that this a metaphor for your childhood. 
17. Caravan of Courage.
18. Realizing that not only is Disney recycling all the Star Wars characters you grew up with, but that the actors that played those characters are dying too, and that the abyss you are staring into is staring back at you.
19. Book of Boba Fett.
20. Battle of Endor.
21. Holiday Special.
22. George Lucas’s proposed sequels about the midi-chlorians. Because that's the one part of Star Wars I really wanted to know more about. For whatever wrongs Disney has done, they didn't do this. 
23. Finally recognizing that a space opera that you enjoyed for a few years in your youth and still appreciate to this day is not only nothing more than more corporate IP that Disney is using to take over the world and everyone’s brains, but is also the breeding ground for a peculiar and nasty strain of nerd-rage with a side-dose of toxic masculinity that frightens the hell out of you- and trying to come to an understanding that Star Wars has always been primarily about and for young people. 
24. Attack of the Clones.


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## Retreater (Jul 22, 2022)

I could not rank Book of Boba Fett or the animated Clone Wars series - they were too boring to watch more than about 2 episodes. Rebels - I didn't finish that series either - but I preferred it to the others.


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## Gradine (Jul 22, 2022)

S: V, VIII
A: IV, VI, VII, Mandalorian, Rebels
B: Rogue One*, Kenobi
C: Solo, IX, I
D: III
Trash Tier: II

*Rogue One is hard to evaluate; the first 60% or so of the movie is somewhere in C or D, but the last act is solid S-tier.

IX earns its placement on the astral-projection lightsaber duel alone, which is some of the coolest sh*t I've seen in Star Wars. It is otherwise a better acted prequel film in terms of quality.


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## MoonSong (Jul 22, 2022)

Looks fun!

S. Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, The Mandalorian
A. Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, Rebels, some Anime shorts.
B. New Hope, Attack of the Clones, Solo, Caravan of Courage, Tartakovskis's Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, Obi Wan, the rest of the anime shorts.
C. The Force Awakens, Book of Bobba Fett.
D. The Last Jedi (but with some editing could improve to C), Rise of Skywalker (it's a mess), Battle for Endor (too bleak, way to ruin the previous movie)


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## South by Southwest (Jul 22, 2022)

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back
A: Mandalorian, Rogue One
B: Return of the Jedi, Obi-Wan, Revenge of the Sith
C: Attack of the Clones, Book of Boba Fett
D: Phantom Menace, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker, Solo

_Note, though, that between A and B my judgments would fit a continuum better than discrete categories._


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## Hex08 (Jul 22, 2022)

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One
A: Mandalorian, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, Clone Wars, Rebels
B: Obi-Wan, The Last Jedi
C: Revenge of the Sith, The Book of Boba Fett, Solo
D: Rise of Skywalker, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones

I haven't watched the Bad Batch yet so can't rate it


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## Davies (Jul 22, 2022)

B: Everything that's not Phantom Menace.
C: Phantom Menace.


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## Eltab (Jul 22, 2022)

Besides "no plan for $1B trilogy", the other critical Disney error out of the gate was "destroy everything the heros spent three movies trying to accomplish and leave them wandering amidst the wreckage".

If the backstory had been "the heros succeeded but the upcoming generation lost their vision; we begin with the generation after that" it could have worked.  See IRL Charlemagne and his heirs for ideas.


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## Mezuka (Jul 22, 2022)

S: New Hope, Empire Strikes Back
A: Return of the Jedi, Rogue One, Solo
B: Prequels, Mandalorian, Obi-Wan
C: Boba Fett
D: Sequels, they are equally bad.

I can't watch the animation shows. I fall asleep everytime. SW is live action.


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## Retreater (Jul 22, 2022)

Mezuka said:


> I can't watch the animation shows. I fall asleep everytime. SW is live action.



I'm the same way. No kidding - when I was suffering from insomnia, I'd put on the Clone Wars and pass out before the opening WW2 announcer guy started giving the voice over.


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## Yora (Jul 22, 2022)

S: The Empire Strikes Back
A: Star Wars, Return of the Jedi
B: Revenge of the Sith; The Mandalorian
C: The Phantom Menace
D: Rogue One, Attack of the Clones; (Solo*, Boba Fett*)
E: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, (Rise of Skywalker*, Obi-Wan*)

(*Based on reviews, so doesn't really count)

Yes, real Star Wars has always produced a lot of crap, but that crap was weird comics and obscure videogames that nobody outside dedicated fans knew about and that was mostly ignored. And it didn't interfere with the movie. That's the big difference with Disney Wars.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2022)

I don't tend to rank things with much granularity.  I don't find much value in the exercise.

I haven't seen Kenobi yet.  I had less than no interest in Book of Boba Fett.
The Mandalorian's okay, though I think that overall the work is too long to have the Old West style pacing pay off.  It becomes a bit tedious.

I am, of course, a fan of the original movies.  
I also liked Episodes 7-9, and if you have a problem with that, you can fold it five ways and stick it where the points'll hurt.  
I liked Rogue One.  
I don't think Solo is bad, but I have no real interest in seeing it again, either.
I find the prequels to be flawed, but there's some stuff in there I still like, and if a friend wanted, I'd watch 'em without complaint.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 22, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> (The following list of all Star Wars stuff was determined by Colosson the Numberwang Robot and as the product of Maths cannot be argued with.)
> 
> 
> 1. Empire Strikes Back.
> ...



I agree with Snarf except swap The Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi.  And swap Rogue One and The Mandalorian.


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## MGibster (Jul 22, 2022)

Umbran said:


> I also liked Episodes 7-9, and if you have a problem with that, you can fold it five ways and stick it where the points'll hurt.



I came to the conclusion more than two decades past that I like too many stupid things to get bent out of shape about what other people like.  Despite disliking episodes 8-9 (7 was okay), I liked all the actors and even their characters, and it was especially nice to see Ian McDiarmid chewing the scenery as Palpatine again.


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## Umbran (Jul 22, 2022)

MGibster said:


> I came to the conclusion more than two decades past that I like too many stupid things to get bent out of shape about what other people like.




Oh, that I understand.  It is when I like something reasonably intelligent, and still have people get on my case about it that it gets aggravating.


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## Hex08 (Jul 22, 2022)

MGibster said:


> I came to the conclusion more than two decades past that I like too many stupid things to get bent out of shape about what other people like.  Despite disliking episodes 8-9 (7 was okay), I liked all the actors and even their characters, and it was especially nice to see Ian McDiarmid chewing the scenery as Palpatine again.



See, now I feel like you need to start a thread where people can list the stupid things they like.


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## SakanaSensei (Jul 22, 2022)

Sticking to just the mainline:

S: 8, 4
A: 5, 3
B: 6, 7
C: 1, 2
Killed my love for a franchise that was a huge part of my childhood and connection with family: 9


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## MGibster (Jul 22, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Oh, that I understand. It is when I like something reasonably intelligent, and still have people get on my case about it that it gets aggravating.



I agree, it's annoying.  It was while watching Babylon 5 that I realized it was essentially a soap opera in space.  Made me reflect on the silliness of things I like, and I pretty much stopped making fun of what other people liked.  Glass houses and all that.



Hex08 said:


> See, now I feel like you need to start a thread where people can list the stupid things they like.



I spend a small fortune each year on role playing games and little plastic figures I paint.  That's got to be at the top of the list for me.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 23, 2022)

Continuing things. 

 Empire Strikes Back
 Short and sweet S tier. 

 Return of the Jedi

 To this day on of the better space battles ever committed to film. Not quite as good as the previous two films. One of the more meaningful lightsaber combat as well. A Tier.

 Ewoks: Caravan of Courage, Battle for Endor. 

 While aimed at children even in the 80's as a child you knew they weren't as good. Watched now they're kinda awful. Other Star Wars films may not have the best reputation but they're better than these two. D Tier. They're on Disney+ these days.


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## Horwath (Jul 25, 2022)

S: 4,5
A: 6, Rogue1, 
B:Mando
C:3,7
D:1,8
E: 2,9


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## wicked cool (Jul 25, 2022)

Empire strikes back
last few minutes of rogue 1
New Hope
mandalorian
return of the jedi
some of the cartoon stories from all series  (the introduction of grievous before the chokehold was action sequence )

Boba fett-story wasnt good and the character was that likeable for a bad guy. 

solo has few good moments 

the rest i avoid or would only watch i had 2 as the other streaming services have better content on a smaller budget


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## Zardnaar (Jul 25, 2022)

Prequel trilogy time. 

 The Phantom Menace. 

 This movie has a lot of problems. The disappointment was very real in 1999. It's not a good movie and one can think it's D/F tier terrible. Well there's worse movies and that fact keeps it out of the bottom tier earning a ranking of C. 

Attack of The Clones. 
 Wasn't good at the time and the special effects have aged terribly. And the dialogue. Generally regarded as one the worst of the main  movies. AotC gets a D tier ranking. Video game was kinda fun though. 

 Revenge of the Sith

 Generally viewed as the best of the prequel trilogy I quite like this movie. It's not great but has a satisfying conclusion, some great scenes and is a dark film as far as Star Wars films go. B Tier.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 31, 2022)

More or less going in order of release. 

 Clone Wars (animated film)
 Well if you thought Attack of the Clones was bad this is worse. On the plus side it was the debut of Ahsoka. D Tier. 

 The Clone Wars (series). 

 This was a great TV show generally well regarded by the fans. The best if it is S tier up there with the Empire Strikes back. BUT not all of it is that good eg season 1 and whole chunks of the following bseasons. Overall still great but I'm giving it an A.

 Rebels. 

 Probably bovetlooked at time of release but seems to be reasonably popular now. It was kind of a sequel to the clone wars and set up the Mandalorian as well. Unlike the clone wars  it has a way better season one and all of the main cast get a story arc and it also has a great conclusion. Overall I think this is some of the best Star Wars on screen and I'm giving it an S due to consistency over the Clone Wars.

 These three shows feature Ahsoka Tano heavily and her story continues in the Mandalorian. I'd you like her story arc it's been going for 14 years now. And she's getting her own show. If you like it it's for a similar reason legends fans like the OT adventures for 20 odd years post Heir to the Empire.


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## Henadic Theologian (Jul 31, 2022)

As someone whose not a star wars fan, I find internet gossip about the behind the scenes drama at Disney far, far more entertaining then any of the series. I don't even care if it's true or not. I will say Baby Yoda is cute


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## Zardnaar (Jul 31, 2022)

Henadic Theologian said:


> As someone whose not a star wars fan, I find internet gossip about the behind the scenes drama at Disney far, far more entertaining then any of the series. I don't even care if it's true or not. I will say Baby Yoda is cute




 Baby Yoda's a green money printing machine. 

 Or at least his relationship with Mando is.


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## TheAlkaizer (Jul 31, 2022)

My opinion is that most of the Star Wars stuff that came out was adequate as movies or shows, but pretty terrible as Star Wars media. Disney released some mind-numbing bad content. There's often some cool moments sprinkled in there, but it's pretty bad. It's the Hollywood tasteless and bland treatment applied to Star Wars.

The sequel trilogy are atrociously bad. They have cool moments, but they absolutely naughty word on some of the legacy of the original six movies and they're just unquestionably bad movies. Some people enjoyed them, which I'm fine with, but they're stuck out of my head canon.

Rogue One is definitely tolerable, but I tend to not like it as much as many do. It's definitely one of the most palatable things Disney has released. But I have no intention of watching it again.

Solo, surprisingly I enjoyed. It did things differently and it explored some parts of the universe I was curious about. Not great, but definitely decent.

The Mandalorian is probably the best thing Disney has released? It's very uneven but there's really good and really bad episodes out there. It's probably the only thing I tolerate.

The Boba Fett and Kenobi shows were overall pretty bad too. I thought the first few episodes of Boba Fett were really good with how they explored the culture of the sand people, but it devolved into a terrible mess. Kenobi was such a let down, the big scene at the end of the last episode was really good, but it can't save a poorly written show.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 31, 2022)

TheAlkaizer said:


> My opinion is that most of the Star Wars stuff that came out was adequate as movies or shows, but pretty terrible as Star Wars media. Disney released some mind-numbing bad content. There's often some cool moments sprinkled in there, but it's pretty bad. It's the Hollywood tasteless and bland treatment applied to Star Wars.
> 
> The sequel trilogy are atrociously bad. They have cool moments, but they absolutely naughty word on some of the legacy of the original six movies and they're just unquestionably bad movies. Some people enjoyed them, which I'm fine with, but they're stuck out of my head canon.
> 
> ...




 Not up to them yet but yeah BoBF was disappointing. 

 Some things on this list are there because there's worse things so they're comparatively better. 

 Eg something rated B is there because it's better than C. The C thing has that rating because it's better than D. 

 Basically it's relative to other Star Wars and I agree Solo is better than a lot of other SW stuff but I'll get there eventually. 

  Some stuff will also get a Bbrating because it's not as good as A tier and the A tier stuff isn't as good as the S tier stuff. 

 And it's all subjective as well. But there's some shockingly bad SW stuff worse than the internet hyperbole indicates.


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## Maxperson (Jul 31, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies?
> 
> It's probably safe to say there's been some misfires. BUT Lucas himself made multiple erm crap Star Wars content. I would argue the worst of Disney Star Wars is no worse than the worst of what Lucas came up with.
> 
> ...



Episodes I, II and III, and VII, VIII and IX are rated at C by me.  So as far as movies in the original storyline go, Disney as tied with Lucas with regard to additional content.  However, Rogue One was great, and I know this will get me in some trouble, but I really liked Solo, so Disney edges it out with total movie content.  

As far as series go, Disney is doing really well.  I liked The Mandalorian seasons a lot, and the episodes of Book of Boba Fett that dealt with the Mandalorian.  The rest of Boba Fett was junk.  Obi-Wan knocked it out of the park, though.  Best of the Disney shows so far.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 31, 2022)

Maxperson said:


> Episodes I, II and III, and VII, VIII and IX are rated at C by me.  So as far as movies in the original storyline go, Disney as tied with Lucas with regard to additional content.  However, Rogue One was great, and I know this will get me in some trouble, but I really liked Solo, so Disney edges it out with total movie content.
> 
> As far as series go, Disney is doing really well.  I liked The Mandalorian seasons a lot, and the episodes of Book of Boba Fett that dealt with the Mandalorian.  The rest of Boba Fett was junk.  Obi-Wan knocked it out of the park, though.  Best of the Disney shows so far.




 People don't seem to hate Solo and it seems a few kinda like it. It's not great but compared to the bad SW movies it's great lol.

 Obi Wan on the fence between a B+ and A-. I liked it. It's either the best of the B tier or worst of the A tier ymmv I'll have to think about it.


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## Zardnaar (Jul 31, 2022)

The Force Awakens. 
 The more I watch this movie the worse it gets while others get better eg Solo. Not bad as such but it's not that original and it's a bit to familiar recycling ANH. Scrapes in with a B rating just because there's a lot worse and it's kinda fun at the end of the day. Generally regarded as the best of the Sequel Trilogy. 

 Rogue One. 

 Generally regarded as the best if the Disney movies I think it's a legit great Star Wars movie. I liked it on release and have enjoyed subsequent rewatched. Scrapes into S tier for me as I like it better than the other A tier options. 

 The Last Jedi. 

 One of those divisive love it or hate it additions to the franchise. The main problem imho us it's a poor follow up to TFA that deconstructs star Wars. Which is fine in theory but not so much in a trilogy or part 8 of a series marketed as the Skywalker saga. A few concepts here are also fine just poorly executed or in the wrong movie. C rating hyperbole aside its not the worse movie in the franchise. 

 Solo. 
 Broadly speaking this is a fun movie. Almost scrapes into A tier but I'm rating it a B but it's at the top of the B tier imho.


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## Mercurius (Jul 31, 2022)

S: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back
A: Return of the Jedi
B: Force Awakens, Rogue One
C: Revenge of the Sith, Solo
D:  Last Jedi, Last Skywalker, Attack of the Clones, Phantom Menace

Haven't seen Clone Wars, Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Kenobi, etc.

Or something like that. I also listed them in order of preference. There's a big gap between A and B, and then B and C are close, and I would group them both as "a mixed bag" - neither more good or more bad, but some of both.

Solo was the least offensive of C/D, but also the most forgettable.


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## Mercurius (Jul 31, 2022)

To address the thread title, I'd say if Lucas' prequels squashed the magic out of Star Wars, the Disney films tried to put it back, but it was the Disney version - cheap, plastic, and derivative. At least some of Lucas' prodigious imagination was still present in the prequels, it is just that the burden of terrible casting choices, dialogue and acting, became so unwieldy that they're hard to watch.

Perhaps the quintessential moment of this was when they go to the Gungan city in the first film. It is beautifully conceived and gorgeous to look at. But then people talk. Or rather, Gungans talk. Not only is Jar-Jar insufferable, but the king just brings doofus-y to a whole new level. The real low point for me was the pod race. Oh wait, the most sparkless romance in cinematic history in Attack of the Clones. And then, to top it off, at the culmination of an epic light saber duel, we have Hayden Christiansen's amateurish acting in its full glory: "I hate you!" Sigh.


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## Argyle King (Aug 1, 2022)

S: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Mandalorian
A: Force Awakens*
B: Return of the Jedi*
C: Obi-Wan, Revenge of the Sith, Solo, Rogue One
D: Rise of Skywalker, Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Last Jedi

Book of Boba Fett is all over the place. Good episodes are B; bad episodes are C-D; the best episodes are A+ but arguably are more Mando than Boba.

*pretty close... arbitrarily decided which was A and which was B


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## Tonguez (Aug 1, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> The List.
> 
> S Tier: Star Wars: A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Rebels
> 
> ...



I’m gonna fight you on the Ewoks movies

but the rest of your list is good enough


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## Zardnaar (Aug 1, 2022)

Rise of Skywalker

 This movie has no real plot just a series if amazing coincidences. It rips off a 30 year old comic that wasn't that good but at least explained things. A profoundly stupid meandering and pointless movie. D Tier.

Alright the TV shows. 

 The Mandalorian. 

 Baby Yoda. Everyone seems to live that little green money printer. Well the shoe hasn't really had a dud episode as such. Season two raised the bar after a pretty darn good season one. It's a different medium but it's some of the best Star Wars ever made. The emotional investment is really the relationship between Mando and Bay Yoda. It's simple and it works. S tier. 

 Book of Boba Fett.

 Oh dear. This show is a hot mess. As another poster commented 3 of the episodes were great essentially Mandalorian Season 2.5. Fett essentially got sidelined in his own show. The rest mostly ranged from B to C with bad special effects. Overall a C and probably the biggest disappointment since The Phantom Menace. How do you screw up Fett? It's near the top of the C tier though but lacks vs the B's.

 Obi Wan. 

 Was this show perfect? No. One could nitpick it but overall I liked it and enjoyed the show. Perhaps one of the best lightsaber fights and we sae Vader get owned which is very rare in Legends and Canon. I'm gonna give it an A.


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## Zardnaar (Aug 1, 2022)

Conclusion

  Well being blunt they screwed up the sequel movies. Apart from that I think they've done reasonably well with things like Rebels, Rogue One and Obi Wan being very good. Book of Boba Fett is more disappointing than outright bad. 

 Looking forward to the Ahsoka show and The Acolyte. I never though I would see something as good as Empire Strikes Back but Rebels and The Mandalorian are coming close.

 George Lucas made more duds than Disney. What's worse Rise of Skywalker or Attack of the Clones.......?


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## HaroldTheHobbit (Aug 1, 2022)

I'm no mega-SW-nerd so no tiers from me. I just find it interesting that the Mandalorian/Boba/Obi-Wan series to me conveys a much more strong, genuine and authentic SW feeling that all the films. The gritty and lived in feeling that is only hinted at in the films comes to bloom.

Oh well, carry on tiering folks.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> How good or bad is Star Wars post Disney in term of TV shows and movies?
> 
> It's probably safe to say there's been some misfires. BUT Lucas himself made multiple erm crap Star Wars content. I would argue the worst of Disney Star Wars is no worse than the worst of what Lucas came up with.
> 
> ...




The new movies didn't really land for me. I thought the first one was entertaining. I liked parts of the second, but it felt very disjointed from the first, and by the end, it didn't seem like it was leading anywhere in terms of a third movie in a trilogy. The third one seemed more like a reaction to the second, and while there were parts of it I enjoyed, there was so much I didn't. The third one also did things that I disliked like having a powerful emotional beat like seeming to kill an important character (one in particularly seemed rather well done and helped develop another character in interesting ways) then it just got taken back.  The ending of the third movie just had me dizzy (as much as I dislike elements of the second at least its ending was gorgeous to look at). Also didn't get why they completely abandoned the Rose Tico and Finn love story (and felt she got a bit relegated to a nothing part in the third movie: personally I thought those two actors had good chemistry). Luke in the second to me, felt quite out of character. I really didn't get that at all. I also think the second bungled Hux a bit because he was shaping up to be an interesting threat but they just turned him into a punchline in the second and third film.  And there were parts of the second film that just felt too meta (the whole kill the past soliloquy felt too on the nose and kind of took me out of the moment). I really hated the look and the overabundance of CGI in the final part of the third film. And I couldn't stand how all the effects looked like they were farmed out to people who had no understanding of the whole they were contributing to in the third one (no idea if this was the case, but it felt like it).

I think the Disney movies hit some nostalgia buttons for me. It was great seeing Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamil in those roles again. But it was missing an emotional element that I felt from the originals (nothing in the new trilogy can match how I felt by the end of Empire Strikes back for example). I'm not sure that the two directors were the best choices though. I don't really like anything JJ Abrahms has done, and while I think Rian Johnson's non-star wars stuff is great, I think he is a strange fit for Star Wars. If they had given Johnson all three movies, it might have worked because there would have been more of a thematic through line, and a consistent look and feel. It just didn't feel like a well planned out trilogy to me, and it seems like there was a lot of interference from Disney. My overall feeling was I was pleasantly surprised by the first movie, because it did feel a bit like  return to form after the prequels. But the second movie felt jarringly out of place (good in many ways on its own, but a very odd fit for Star Wars and just weird as a second installment in a trilogy) and the third felt rushed and poorly thought out. They should have either given the whole thing to Abrahms or Johnson, or found a different director for all three. Also all three movies feel very dated even though they are only a few years old, much more so to me than the originals or the prequels. I think because they are very tied to whatever was going on on the internet at the time

I am older though. I grew with the original trilogy and for us a company like Disney was the antithesis of Star Wars (in the 90s people my age called Disney the evil empire all the time because  it was viewed as a powerful media conglomerate that produced pablum entertainment and abused its hegemony). I get that isn't the way Disney is seen these days but in the 90s I remember getting entire lectures on the sins of Disney in college courses (and not just media courses but history courses).  I'm certainly not the target audience any longer.

Also I have no desire to see more star wars than is in the movies. So I haven't watched any of the shows, and I haven't watched any of the additional films outside the core trilogies. Zero interest in those things.

If anything, the new trilogy has actually increased my fondness for the prequels (which I didn't think was possible because those were pretty disappointing to me). But for all their flaws, at least the prequels had a clear vision of what they were trying to do, told a complete story that made sense. I certainly have my complaints about how it handled things like the moment Anakin turns to the dark side, but it did tell the story it wanted to and that story was connected to the overall series in a meaningful way. It felt like it had a degree of permanence. Everything in the new movies feel ephemeral to me, almost like they might not have really happened.

EDIT: In terms of a tier list, I can't tier these things. Each movie needs a full paragraph explanation and would defy a ratings system for me (for example I wouldn't really be able to place Last Jedi on a list like that because it does a lot of things I don't like, but it also isn't a bad movie on its own, but it belongs somewhere on an alternate rating sytstem that isn't about good or bad). I would definitely put the Original Trilogy on top, with Empire being number one. From the Prequels I think I enjoyed Revenge of the Sith the most, followed by Attack of the Clones. However I hated how it handled Anakin turning to the dark side (it felt so abrupt and not at all connected to the flaw they had been building on: his anger and his growing resentment towards the Jedi). The Phantom Menace bores me to death when I get to the pod racing scene. From the new trilogy the discussion is too involved because it's like a trilogy that is at war with itself and that lowers the ranking of every one of its entries). I actually enjoyed the Last Jedi even though it did stuff that really puzzled me. But it was also like a landmine put intentionally in the middle of a three part story (if you are going to do something like that, save it for the third film because it literally left no place to go, it didn't build off 1 then lead into 3, it just did its thing in defiance of the first movie----which could have worked if it led to an interesting third act but it seemed like no place was in place). The third movie, was just a technical nightmare. It didn't even look like a movie to me. I was at first hopeful because some of the ideas sounded interesting when I heard about them. But the execution was awful, the finale was confusing and actually impacted the quality of the rest of the trilogies (re-introducing that character at the end in that way, impacts the meaning of the original trilogy). The Force Awakens was entertaining, it had a lot of energy, and while I have my quibbles I think suggested an interesting trilogy was coming. However I've only seen it twice, and have no real desire to see it a third time.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Zardnaar said:


> George Lucas made more duds than Disney. What's worse Rise of Skywalker or Attack of the Clones.......?




Definitely a dud but attack of the clones I can at least watch again. I have no desire to rewatch the Rise of Skywalker. And attack of the clones felt like a real movie, in a real world (not a great movie, but a movie), whereas Rise of Skywalker felt more like a video game or like a GM making up crazy stuff as he or she goes. It just had a glitchy feel and it never felt like the protagonists feet made contact with the ground.


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## Zardnaar (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> Definitely a dud but attack of the clones I can at least watch again. I have no desire to rewatch the Rise of Skywalker. And attack of the clones felt like a real movie, in a real world (not a great movie, but a movie), whereas Rise of Skywalker felt more like a video game or like a GM making up crazy stuff as he or she goes. It just had a glitchy feel and it never felt like the protagonists feet made contact with the ground.




 Yeah there's about an hour of AotC that's fun.


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## amethal (Aug 1, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I agree with Snarf except swap The Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi.  And swap Rogue One and The Mandalorian.



Star Wars bed sheets needed to be higher up the list.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> Definitely a dud but attack of the clones I can at least watch again. I have no desire to rewatch the Rise of Skywalker. And attack of the clones felt like a real movie, in a real world (not a great movie, but a movie), whereas Rise of Skywalker felt more like a video game or like a GM making up crazy stuff as he or she goes. It just had a glitchy feel and it never felt like the protagonists feet made contact with the ground.




Joking aside, I would say that the fascinating thing about the sequels as opposed to the prequels is that you _could_ make the argument that, individually, the sequels have two far superior movies and even the worst movie (Rise of Skywalker) is only a little worse than the prequels' worse movie (AoC).

But viewed holistically, I don't think many (if any) people would or should argue that the sequels are better than the prequels. 

The prequels, for all their problems (no chemistry in the love story, bad dialogue, etc.) told a coherent story. The sequels were just ... a mess in total. The way I look at is that they suffered the Kennedy/Abrams problem.

First, Kathleen Kennedy. If you aren't familiar with her, she is the "Feige" of Star Wars. And while it still boggles my mind ... they didn't settle on a developed plot for the sequels. Nope. It was every movie for itself. That was the first major problem.

The second was Abrams. Look, I don't want to bury the guy. I might mock his lens flares, but he's a highly competent director. He will always get credit from me for his roles in such seminal shows like Lost, Fringe, and Alias. 

But he's got issues when it comes to directing franchises. He's great at remixing old properties for fan service and reboots- just look at the Kelvin Universe Star Trek movie. The problem is ... that's it. He was _fine_ for The Force Awakens- he gave everyone a good popcorn movie that brought in a LOT of fan service from the past. If you didn't look too hard at it (wait, another planet killer? it's hitting all the same beats?) it felt good. Nostalgia remixed can be fine, in small doses.

Trouble is, you can't just keep coasting on that. It's why (for example) ST: Into Darkness was so unsatisfying. Eventually, you have to do something new. 

Last Jedi was divisive, but it was also a good movie. I mean ... ESB was also DIVISIVE when it came out (and the least monetarily successful of the original trilogy). But LJ was charting some different directions. 

Of course, all of that was cancelled by bringing back Abrams to do the last one. Which combined all the worst aspects of Abrams (mindlessly remixing fan service), cancelled everything that was interesting about LJ, and tried to continue a story line that no one wanted. Not only was it a terrible movie on its own, it also managed to retcon the entire sequel trilogy into being worse. Which is impressive!


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## Willie the Duck (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> To address the thread title, I'd say if Lucas' prequels squashed the magic out of Star Wars, the Disney films tried to put it back



_Quoted for the reference to 'the magic.'_
So, I have a premise, and starts with a shots-fired, but bear with me at least a few paragraphs before writing it off. Anyways, here it is: _there was never any magic in Star Wars to begin with_. Not Star Wars the IP, nor the setting, the iconic characters, the tropes or concepts explored, etc. Instead, there were magic moments, plus the magic that the fandom imputed into the series with their adoration, and then individual bits and pieces that worked in the IP not because it was in the IP, but because it was good in and of itself.

_Star Wars_ (the original film, now _A New Hope_) came out and was magic. It was a combination of westerns, samurai movies, WWII mission films, and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers-style space fantasy films which previously were usually treated like fluff films/Saturday matinee/'kids stuff' and it somehow _worked_. _Well_. Amazingly well. It is hard to exaggerate how much it changed things. It (and _Jaws_) instigated the concept of the blockbuster movie. It normalized adults openingly being fans of 'kid stuff' media, in a way that boosted/allowed things like high-budget comic book movies and star trek revivals and D&D to flourish. If _Star Wars_ had been one and done, this would still have been magic. 

Then _Empire Strikes Back_ came out and it was a sequel (and, based on the ending, clearly an establishment of a franchise), and yet it was _good_. I mean, I'm a fan of _the Thin Man_ and  _James Bond*_ and the _Planet of the Apes_ series and some other movies which had already been franchises, but in general, having more than one movie in a setting was not a recipe additive growth. This too, was game changing. I can see why people took these two movies, plotted a trajectory, and started measuring which parts of the IP lived up to/failed to meet this plotline**.
*And the best of those had happened by 1977
**Honestly none, because that was the second best thing in the series and then the best, so by nature the next thing should have been even better, and nothing thus far has surpassed ESB, IMO. 

However, even by then, there was a huge amount in the properties that was not good. The holiday special holds a special place in peoples' minds as notoriously bad, but then there were the novelizations which were not bad, but pretty much just 'fine.' Comic books set in the universe (including a rabbit-species buddy of Han's, since exactly what kind of aliens existed in this universe outside the cantina hadn't yet been finalized). 

And I think, with just this*, we can see the issue. The IP is good when someone does something good _with it --_ good script, good premise, good hook. The universe (with indistinct ominous bad guy empire and plucky rebels) isn't inherently magical worldbuilding**. The main characters we all have come to know and love -- when divorced from the actors who portrayed them (and the cast clearly had some amazing chemistry together ) -- are relatively standard/unremarkable (or standard-subversive, in cases like 'not so in-distress princess') tropish figures. The force/Jedi are an interesting idea, but one that works best when vague and seems to have diminished each time the exact boundaries have been explored. Nothing about the IP makes it inherently a good thing that a new story is set in it. It is only when someone already has a good story to tell that putting it into the setting has ended up being a success. 
_*I could go on and map out the stuff in the Lucas era and the good and bad EU writing, and then proceed into Disney, but I think the point can be made just here.
**given how many divergent opinions there are on how much shades of grey the rebels have or how bad the empire really would be without the Emperor, it's safe to say even the audience doesn't all agree on exactly how this world should be built_

And that's why the series has been so hit-and-miss (both in the Lucas era, and with Disney). The good stuff (_Rogue One, Mandalorian_) were good ideas, well written, outside of them being in the SW universe. _The Mandalorian_ and _Book of Boba Fett_ are a great example of this principle in action. Boba Fett the character is coded as awesome, and they took the character, figured out what story to tell with the character to make the character actually be awesome, and proceeded to tell that tale --- with a character named the Mandalorian (who is everything people wanted out of Boba Fett when he was introduced -- mysterious, bad ass, a pragmatist combatant -- just without the canonical history of the character) instead of Boba Fett. They then took the character of Boba Fett and tried to pull something awesome out of the existing canon (explaining what happened after the sarlacc, dealing with existing known relationships, figuring out what BF would do after RotJ) and it just doesn't work wonderfully. Probably mostly because the existing canon wasn't set up to facilitate something particularly great for BF _after _he captures Han (which is where he was last cool), so starting fresh with 'a Boba Fett-like character, minus specific backstory' works better.



Snarf Zagyg said:


> First, Kathleen Kennedy. If you aren't familiar with her, she is the "Feige" of Star Wars. And while it still boggles my mind ... they didn't settle on a developed plot for the sequels. Nope. It was every movie for itself. That was the first major problem.



This is definitely the caveat/exception to my point about there being good and bad in both eras. This was just mind-blowing in the WTF-ism. Why would you do this to the main trunk of the story tree you were building a bunch of branches and developing a whole halo of side projects around?


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Willie the Duck said:


> _Quoted for the reference to 'the magic.'_
> So, I have a premise, and starts with a shots-fired, but bear with me at least a few paragraphs before writing it off. Anyways, here it is: _there was never any magic in Star Wars to begin with_. Not Star Wars the IP, nor the setting, the iconic characters, the tropes or concepts explored, etc. Instead, there were magic moments, plus the magic that the fandom imputed into the series with their adoration, and then individual bits and pieces that worked in the IP not because it was in the IP, but because it was good in and of itself.
> 
> _Star Wars_ (the original film, now _A New Hope_) came out and was magic. It was a combination of westerns, samurai movies, WWII mission films, and Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers-style space fantasy films which previously were usually treated like fluff films/Saturday matinee/'kids stuff' and it somehow _worked_. _Well_. Amazingly well. It is hard to exaggerate how much it changed things. It (and _Jaws_) instigated the concept of the blockbuster movie. It normalized adults openingly being fans of 'kid stuff' media, in a way that boosted/allowed things like high-budget comic book movies and star trek revivals and D&D to flourish. If _Star Wars_ had been one and done, this would still have been magic.
> ...



Nice post, though I think you kind of disprove your premise almost immediately in basically admitting that the first two films were pretty magical (and half of the third, thus the original trilogy as a whole).

As a slight caveat, I don't think the original trilogy as much gathered adult fans, if that's what you're saying, as the kids who grew up on it remained fans into adulthood. I think Generation X was the first generation to be a kind of _puer aeternus..._part of that is extending fandom into adulthood. But I don't think the films, when they came out, immediately spawned an adult fan base. Most of the adult fans of Star Wars grew up on it.

Anyhow, I still think the original trilogy holds up as rather magical film-making - and that is partially because of the distinct signature of the world-building, as expressed through--at the time--unparalleled visual film making. Star Wars is Star Wars - it is its own thing. A major element of scifi and fantasy greatness is the distinctness of the world - not necessarily the novelty of the ideas taken individually, but whether it holistically feels distinct and real unto itself. Whether we're talking Star Wars or Star Trek, Middle-earth or Dune, the greats all "feel" that way.

And you can generally only accomplish this feeling with a singular visionary - it is the feeling of a person's mind tapping deep into the well of imagination, and creating a new mythology. It isn't impossible to do it as a collective of creators, but rather difficult.

This is why the Disney films don't feel like "real" Star Wars to me. Star Wars is ultimately George Lucas' baby, and once he was gone it veered into an homage, a re-creation. The prequels were bad, but they still felt like Star Wars in a way that everything after hasn't. IMO. 

I think what went wrong with the prequels is two things: One, Lucas became enamored with CGI special effects, so that they visually felt a bit "soul-less;" and two, he forgot that the world building and visual spectacle of the original trilogy was only half what made them so great; the other half were the characters, and the actors: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, even Mark Hammill. Probably the best character in the prequels is killed in the first film (however you spell Liam Neeson's character); I also think Ewan McGregor did a pretty good job as Kenobi, but was hampered by trying to be Kenobi, so it felt like a good impression more than the "real" Obi-wan.

I don't think it would be impossible to make new, great Star Wars films. And some of the more recent offerings have been, at least, pretty good. Rogue One was a good film, if not as inspired as the OT. From what I've read, Mandalorian is pretty good (I'll watch it eventually). But new, great Star Wars films would have to take a different route from the Disney films, which felt very creatively derivative in that they seemed to try to assemble bits and pieces of the Star Wars universe, throw in a few new twists, and create a kind of simulacrum of Star Wars. They don't feel like they did what Lucas did, which was dive deep into his own mind and draw from the endless well of mythic imagination.

If I were in charge of Star Wars, I'd fast forward a few decades and start afresh. I'd probably imagine a lawless galaxy ruled by Jabba-esque warlords vying for control. Something emerges from the depths of space - a new dark evil, which embodies the Dark Side in a more profound way - perhaps even the origin of the Dark Side. Maybe an entity cast out into the void between galaxies thousands of years ago. The premise would be the Force emerging strongly through a variety of people on disparate planets who gradually are pulled together to form a new Jedi order. And, of course, one of them falls to the Dark Side.

Or something like that. You can still have archetypal Star Wars characters, but you've got to make sure to cast them well (and at least the Disney castings were better than the prequels). The point being, still classic Star Wars feel, but not simply a recapitulation of what came before.


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## Willie the Duck (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> Nice post, though I think you kind of disprove your premise almost immediately in basically admitting that the first two films were pretty magical (and half of the third, thus the original trilogy as a whole).



I mean, no? Maybe not communicated well? The point was that the consistent through-line of the franchise itself -- the universe, setting, characters -- aren't specifically these amazing things that engender greatness by nature of being associated with them (and were instead good because the actual films/stories/acting was good). I don't see how the first two being great/magical disproves this in any specific way.



Mercurius said:


> As a slight caveat, I don't think the original trilogy as much gathered adult fans, if that's what you're saying, as the kids who grew up on it remained fans into adulthood. I think Generation X was the first generation to be a kind of _puer aeternus..._part of that is extending fandom into adulthood. But I don't think the films, when they came out, immediately spawned an adult fan base. Most of the adult fans of Star Wars grew up on it.



What it did, IMO, is be a big enough success that it normalized 'childish things' as a entertainment-revenue force of nature which could not be ignored. Big(ger) budget superhero movies like Reeve Superman and the Indiana Jones franchise and Star Trek motion pictures all looked like safer investments because Star Wars suggested there would be a market for these things. In a (American viewpoint here) market that still looked at the Baby Boom as the unbelievable hegemon in buying forces, focusing marketing dollars on anyone else was significant.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> Of course, all of that was cancelled by bringing back Abrams to do the last one. Which combined all the worst aspects of Abrams (mindlessly remixing fan service), cancelled everything that was interesting about LJ, and tried to continue a story line that no one wanted. Not only was it a terrible movie on its own, it also managed to retcon the entire sequel trilogy into being worse. Which is impressive!




Another part of what I didn't like is it felt as if they were intentionally pitting fans against one another to generate buzz online. I made a point of not following any of the conversations when Last Jedi came out because I couldn't imagine watching a movie amid that and not having it impact my impression of the film (so I waited a year to see it so I could view it without that heated conversation going on around me). I'm glad I did because I didn't feel that immediate need to fit it into a box that I might have felt otherwise. And as much as I think there are valid criticisms of Last Jedi in terms of being the second movie in a trilogy, I didn't understand completely reversing course with the third one because that just makes it even more messy. They could have at least built on what was set up in last jedi (it wasnt as much of a set of for a third movie as empire but you could have followed those threads more organically into the next film). But reversing course, completely changing characters between the second and third film, it just seemed like a jumble (like JJ Abrahms and Rian Johnson were having a debate about star wars by making movies in a new trilogy, rather than working together to make something cohesive)


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

One thing I haven't done with the Disney trilogy yet is watch them all, back to back, to see how it all fits together. 

I saw TFA when it came out, and then again before TLJ came out, and then the TLJ again before ROS. So I've viewed them twice, twice, and once - but never all together, or all three within a short span of time.

I imagine it will still feel disjointed, but you never know.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> One thing I haven't done with the Disney trilogy yet is watch them all, back to back, to see how it all fits together.
> 
> I saw TFA when it came out, and then again before TLJ came out, and then the TLJ again before ROS. So I've viewed them twice, twice, and once - but never all together, or all three within a short span of time.
> 
> I imagine it will still feel disjointed, but you never know.




While I appreciate your self-sacrifice (or masochism), I feel like this is akin to someone saying ...

_You know, I watched the entire original run of Dexter when it aired, and boy ... those last seasons were bad. But you know what? Maybe if I binged the whole thing together, that Lumberjack finale would be awesome?!!??!!_


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> While I appreciate your self-sacrifice (or masochism), I feel like this is akin to someone saying ...
> 
> _You know, I watched the entire original run of Dexter when it aired, and boy ... those last seasons were bad. But you know what? Maybe if I binged the whole thing together, that Lumberjack finale would be awesome?!!??!!_



Ha. Never watched Dexter, but I take your meaning.

I guess I'm just curious if they're as disjointed if watched all together as they seem having only seen them spread out over a few years.

But I'm not sure I can put myself through Rise of Skywalker again, in particular. I don't even really remember much of the film, except for a few parts.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

I think the biggest problem that I have when the complaints re: The Last Jedi is that a good chunk of them... completely miss the point.

Like, one of the biggest complaints is about Luke, and how Luke's arc is trashing Star Wars and Star Wars fans, which is, like... the opposite conclusion the film actually comes to. Luke sneering about "standing alone in front of an entire army with a laser sword" gets a lot of flak that I've seen, which completely ignores the part of the movie where _he does exactly that _(though with a neat twist to it), and it saves the day, and his story and legacy as a hero live on _in the universe_. Rey is 100% absolutely a OG Trilogy and Luke Skywalker fangirl, and the movie ultimately 100% vindicates her.

The point, ultimately, is that _Star Wars _is for everyone, and more importantly that anybody can be a hero. That's an awesome point, and to watch a bunch of babies whine about Luke throwing a lightsaber away so much they miss that point has always chapped my hide.

Luke's arc is, quite frankly, the best part of the movie. I think the people who insisted he should've been some big shining hero to swoop in and save everyone have forgotten the part about how this is _Star Wars, _a film franchise about father figures screwing things up and leaving the mess for their next generation to clean up. That's _Star Wars_. There's a reason that the big scary thing in the cave that frightens the hell out of Luke is _a mirror_. That's not exactly subtle storytelling. *AND THEN HE STILL SWOOPS IN TO SAVE EVERYONE BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES HE'S LUKE MF-ING SKYWALKER HOW IS THIS NOT ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS?*

Sure, there are significant problems with the pacing of the film (but I mean, welcome to _Star Wars _right?), and the part where people act rashly and decide not to trust each other is infuriating (which it's supposed to be because the character's are supposed to learn their frakking lesson after experiencing loss and failure this is storytelling 101 what is wrong with you) -ahem, and the basically every part of Canto Bight is more way more important thematically and in terms of character development than it is to the plot, which isn't _great_ but the theme is super frakking important anyway (also that part where Benicio Del Toro says "selling weapons to the bad guys... oh, and the good guys!" is actual moment of grey in a frakking numbered episodic Skywalker Saga movie and holy crap was it awesome). And while Rian Johnson knew better how to best utilize Finn than Abrams did, that's still not saying much. They did you dirty, Boyega. They did you dirty.

And I guess you could give or take the Reylo stuff. Me, yes please sir may I have another.

What I'm saying is _The Last Jedi_ is the best Star Wars movie and all of you were horrifically wrong and _The Rise of Skywalker _was the punishment you all objectively deserved.


IMHO


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Anyhow, I feel like the Star Wars is like a student whose first report card is A, A+, A-. You think, "Wow, what a student!" You imagine what is to come. But then, of course, the student disappears for over a decade, perhaps backpacking in the Andes, and when they come back are never the same. Occasionally they show little signs of their previous potential, but clearly something was lost in the Andes.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> Anyhow, I feel like the Star Wars is like a student whose first report card is A, A+, A-. You think, "Wow, what a student!" You imagine what is to come. But then, of course, the student disappears for over a decade, perhaps backpacking in the Andes, and when they come back are never the same. Occasionally they show little signs of their previous potential, but clearly something was lost in the Andes.




....we know what happened in the Andes, Mercurius. Oh, we know. 

_How did the "long pork" taste, Young Skywalker?_


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Oh yeah I also forgot to mention that the part at the end where the kid force pulls the broom into his hands is the most powerful moment in any _Star Wars _media ever (I'm literally getting goosebumps just typing about it), and deserves to be universally recognized as such.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

But that was a lot of my issue with Last Jedi (and note I did enjoy it, it was a fun movie): it’s sooooo meta. I got the commentary and the vindication. I guess my point is I didn’t find the subject about the fandom itself anything but intrusive. That’s why the kill the past speech stands out like a sore thumb for me. There was a lot of palpable emotion and drama in that scene: I think building on a foundation more relevant to the characters themselves would have been way better than building on online chatter about the movies

And I agree about Rey; she is great. The actress who played her had the perfect presence, performance and was believable doing all the physical stuff too because she seemed athletic. I liked a lot of the characters. One of my criticisms of the third film is it relegated rose to a side role and clips the romance that she seemed to have with Finn by the end of the movie. I just didn’t need the movie to be a meta discussion of Star Wars itself: I wasn’t looking for validation or criticism as a fan; I was looking for an enthralling Star Wars movie. I got a good movie but the heavy use of subtext is one of the weaknesses. Where they start with the Luke character to achieve that another weakness for me. 

Just my opinion of course. If you like the way it handled the subtext there isn’t anything wrong with that. For me it felt like it became too much of a priority and impacted dialogue and parts of the story


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> But that was a lot of my issue with Last Jedi (and note I did enjoy it, it was a fun movie): it’s sooooo meta. I got the commentary and the vindication. I guess my point is I didn’t find the subject about the fandom itself anything but intrusive. That’s why the kill the past speech stands out like a sore thumb for me. There was a lot of palpable emotion and drama in that scene: I think building on a foundation more relevant to the characters themselves would have been way better than building on online chatter about the movies
> 
> And I agree about Rey; she is great. The actress who played her had the perfect presence, performance and was believable doing all the physical stuff too because she seemed athletic. I liked a lot of the characters. One of my criticisms of the third film is it relegated rose to a side role and clips the romance that she seemed to have with Finn by the end of the movie. I just didn’t need the movie to be a meta discussion of Star Wars itself: I wasn’t looking for validation or criticism as a fan; I was looking for an enthralling Star Wars movie. I got a good movie but the heavy use of subtext is one of the weaknesses. Where they start with the Luke character to achieve that another weakness for me.
> 
> Just my opinion of course. If you like the way it handled the subtext there isn’t anything wrong with that. For me it felt like it became too much of a priority and impacted dialogue and parts of the story



That's totally reasonable. Rian Johnson is definitely a director who leans on metanarrative subtext, and while I eat that crap up, it's not going to be for everyone.


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Oh yeah I also forgot to mention that the part at the end where the kid force pulls the broom into his hands is the most powerful moment in any _Star Wars _media ever (I'm literally getting goosebumps just typing about it), and deserves to be universally recognized as such.



Yet they did nothing with it. Nothing! It is rather baffling.

Anyhow, not to pick on you, Gradine, but your rant above sort of illustrates a problem with today's online discourse. What I think ends up happening is the most extreme, vitriolic voices get magnified, and people react against that, as if it fully representative of anything that disagrees with one's view, or one's side (and everything is about sides, tribes, etc). Just to be clear: I'm not saying that you are vitriolic, but responding to vitriol.

So let's take the rather controversial Nerdrotic. His brand is hyperbole and vitriol. I actually agree with _some_ of his criticisms of Star Wars and LotR, but with about 5% of the vitriol and hyperbole. Frankly, I just don't care as much, nor am I nearly as offended by the "sacred lore" being changed.

But do I agree with the _gist _of _some_ of his criticisms? Yes. The problem, then, is when people who don't like Nerdrotic assume my view (or others who agree with some of what he says, or say somewhat similar things) is the same as his and lump us into the same category - a category that, to begin with, already makes assumptions about Nerdrotic (I am not here to defend him, though I think some of the accusations against him are as hyperbolic as his rantings).

So everyone gets pushed into two camps, two extremes which make caricatures out of each other and thus don't really converse. There's no dialogue.

So when I hear your view on _The Last Jedi, _I find it reasonable and it even makes me want to view it with fresh eyes. I don't feel the same way, though I don't think it was a terrible film and would rank it ahead of _Rise of Skywalker _and the first two prequels, and probably the inoffensive but forgettable _Solo. _I actually liked it better on the second viewing, which is always a good sign. So for me, it is middle of the pack among Star Wars films.

Did I like the portrayal of Luke? Not really. But it is less about the things you say, or him drinking blue milk, and more about his whole story arc and what it did to the feeling at the end of _Return of the Jedi. _So it is a problem with the entire Disney trilogy: It basically said, "You know all that? Well, it didn't last - and things got worse, and all the hope is gone."

Now having a film trilogy requires bad stuff happening. But I think they could have done it in a way that didn't diminish Luke's triumph, or turn Han Solo into a shadow of himself and a sacrificial lamb for Kylo Ren's story arc. I have some ideas, but not only is it a moot point, but I don't want to go on too long. But the point is, I think it is valid to feel like something was taken away from us - that the original trilogy was diminished in the process.

Secondly and related to the above, what happened to a general attitude of "different strokes for different folks?" It is possible for two people to have very different responses to _The Last Jedi _or anything, and not accuse the other of being a cry baby or a fanboy, etc etc. This is not to say that there aren't folks who are over-the-top in their hyperbole or fanboyism, but that the collective jumps too quickly into these hyper partisan modes where everyone is on one side or the other of every issue.

Another complaint I have is epitomized by Oscar Isaac. He's one of my favorite actors to have emerged in the last couple decades, yet his character was basically forgettable. Without watching them again and analyzing, I'm not entirely sure why. I think it is part of the nature of the Disney trilogy in general and how I imagine the protagonists were conceived. They probably told Daisy Ridley: "You're basically the female Luke, but without any faults." And they probably told Oscar Isaac, "You're sort of like Han Solo, but without any character or edginess, so basically Bland Solo."  I don't know what they told John Boyega, maybe "You're basically a cipher, and we're not really sure what we want to do with you, but we'll figure it out as we go along." Instead of saying, "Let's create entirely new characters that grow out of your own personality. In fact, help us figure out who these characters are - this is a co-creative process."

All three were pretty good, but I can't help but feel they could have been so much better.

In a way, it is understandable, because it would have been really hard to make a trilogy that would please the vast majority of people. They oscillated between fan service and trying to do something different, and ended up doing neither all that well, except in moments.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> Another complaint I have is epitomized by Oscar Isaac. He's one of my favorite actors to have emerged in the last couple decades, yet his character was basically forgettable. Without watching them again and analyzing, I'm not entirely sure why. I think it is part of the nature of the Disney trilogy in general and how I imagine the protagonists were conceived. They probably told Daisy Ridley: "You're basically the female Luke, but without any faults." And they probably told Oscar Isaac, "You're sort of like Han Solo, but without any character or edginess, so basically Bland Solo."  I don't know what they told John Boyega, maybe "You're basically a cipher, and we're not really sure what we want to do with you, but we'll figure it out as we go along." Instead of saying, "Let's create entirely new characters that grow out of your own personality. In fact, help us figure out who these characters are - this is a co-creative process."




I tend to agree with this. He is great in everything I've seen him in (I first saw him in Agora and loved that movie). But beyond what natural charm he was able to bring to the screen (which isn't insignificant) the character did not quite fill the shoes of the Han type (whereas I felt Rey filled the Luke shoes pretty well). 

I think John Bodega got told three different things, one for each movie, none of them every coming together. His character was really interesting when they first introduced him. Then they kind of dropped all that stuff about him being a storm trooper (and whatever they had planned for him and Po)and we got a buddy/love section with him and Rose (which I thought worked). Then it is like they just didn't know what to do with him in the third movie. They gave him a girlfriend and it's like he just faded into the background. And there was also apparently something very important he needed to tell Rey, but I don't think they ever even figured out what that was (unless I missed the reveal when I stepped out for a moment). I could have enjoyed a thorough treatment of what they started with in the first film, or where they went int he second. But by the third, if you liked Finn and was interested in seeing where his story went, the third film gave you nothing satisfying at all


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> They probably told Daisy Ridley: "You're basically the female Luke, but without any faults."



Now see, I want to take all that you have to say to heart, and I generally do, but then I get to stuff like this, the baseless claims of "mary sue", and it becomes hard to take seriously. Rey has plenty of faults. She in fact spends the entirety of _The Last Jedi_ failing until like... the last thing she does. Which is move a bunch of rocks. Rey spends the entirety of _The Rise of Skywalker _rushing headlong into every moment without taking stock or even considering the people who are trying to help her. 

Rey, objectively, has _more _faults than Luke had. Hell, she may even top _Anakin_ here. If only there were some specific key trait Rey brings to the table that Luke doesn't that would explain the willful refusal to acknowledge her actual, very evident flaws.

Anyway, I'm also not inclined to blame _The Last Jedi's _excellent setup on Disney backing down and reversing course in _The Rise of Skywalker_, though I guess I can again see why it could hard not to criticize the trilogy _as a whole _for lacking any sort of cohesiveness.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Oh yeah I also forgot to mention that the part at the end where the kid force pulls the broom into his hands is the most powerful moment in any _Star Wars _media ever (I'm literally getting goosebumps just typing about it), and deserves to be universally recognized as such.




This I didn't really get. Maybe I misunderstood what they were going for here. I always assumed people other than those with family members with the force also would be force sensitive (that is was either something that kind of bounced around, sometimes could be passed down, and maybe could even be cultivated through effort). This struck me as them saying "Everyone now has the force". I tended to see Luke being strong in the force as not much different from someone who has a natural aptitude for playing music whose father was also a good musician. Or the son of a boxer who is naturally talented as well. That doesn't mean there aren't other people out there, naturally talented whose parents weren't boxing champions or concert pianists. And it doesn't mean something with less natural aptitude can't get good through hard work and training. Something I would much rather see than "Everyone is strong int he force now: which is how I kind of read that scene, and a world populated by Jedi seems like it would be a little too gonzo), is someone who is only slightly force sensitive developing into a powerful Jedi through training and cultivation of knowledge about the force. To me the needing to train to be exceptional is an important part of this kind of movie. This scene makes me feel like I was missing some kind of conversation or debate in the fandom that was circulating at the time (which I think I got vague traces of, but really I don't get too deep into Star Wars conversations usually).


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Now see, I want to take all that you have to say to heart, and I generally do, but then I get to stuff like this, the baseless claims of "mary sue", and it becomes hard to take seriously. Rey has plenty of faults. She in fact spends the entirety of _The Last Jedi_ failing until like... the last thing she does. Which is move a bunch of rocks. Rey spends the entirety of _The Rise of Skywalker _rushing headlong into every moment without taking stock or even considering the people who are trying to help her.
> 
> Rey, objectively, has _more _faults than Luke had. Hell, she may even top _Anakin_ here. If only there were some specific key trait Rey brings to the table that Luke doesn't that would explain the willful refusal to acknowledge her actual, very evident flaws.
> 
> Anyway, I'm also not inclined to blame _The Last Jedi's _excellent setup on Disney backing down and reversing course in _The Rise of Skywalker_, though I guess I can again see why it could hard not to criticize the trilogy _as a whole _for lacking any sort of cohesiveness.




I don't even think the criticism of a mary sue, the way people use it today, even when its accurate, is valid. The force did seem to come a little too easy to Rey, but I think there was an in movie explanation for that. I wouldn't personally considerer a mary sue. And she did have to train to develop her abilities further (I really would have liked to see them lean into things like the accidental killing of another character to emphasize this----which doesn't happen when you take the death away a moment later). There are tons of genres where characters are just great from the beginning or early on in the story (I've seen a ton of wonderful wuxia movies where this is the case for example). You could argue a character like Neo is a Mary Sue as well. I found him perfectly entertaining. People invoking mary sue doesn't really change my opinion of a character if I like that character and the actor works well in the role. To me 'thats a mary sue' is the same as someone complaining about lens flare. It seems like a criticism people learn largely online but never notice unless others point it out to them (it doesn't strike me as an authentic critique) 

But I do think the Last Jedi handled this aspect of her character better. She actually had to go to the temple and train. That is a time tested trope, and gave me 36 Chamber of Shaolin vibes. Entirely appropriate in my view. 

My only critique here is I do think JJ sped things up with her in the first film to save time so he could have a fast paced movie. I would have liked to see more slow down in The Force Awakens (which we got but with Han, which doesn't really afford the kind of tutelage we got from Ben with Luke in the original).


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> This I didn't really get. Maybe I misunderstood what they were going for here. I always assumed people other than those with family members with the force also would be force sensitive (that is was either something that kind of bounced around, sometimes could be passed down, and maybe could even be cultivated through effort). This struck me as them saying "Everyone now has the force". I tended to see Luke being strong in the force as not much different from someone who has a natural aptitude for playing music whose father was also a good musician. Or the son of a boxer who is naturally talented as well. That doesn't mean there aren't other people out there, naturally talented whose parents weren't boxing champions or concert pianists. And it doesn't mean something with less natural aptitude can't get good through hard work and training. Something I would much rather see than "Everyone is strong int he force now: which is how I kind of read that scene, and a world populated by Jedi seems like it would be a little too gonzo), is someone who is only slightly force sensitive developing into a powerful Jedi through training and cultivation of knowledge about the force. To me the needing to train to be exceptional is an important part of this kind of movie. This scene makes me feel like I was missing some kind of conversation or debate in the fandom that was circulating at the time (which I think I got vague traces of, but really I don't get too deep into Star Wars conversations usually).



The mistake here isn't that this scene is in conversation with the fandom. What it is in conversation with is all of the preceding movies and Rey's own misplaced needs. It ties to the reveal about Rey's parentage, her need to _be someone important. _But she's not. She's nobody. Because all of that stuff she thought was so important _wasn't_ (her need for her parents to be somebody being another flaw she has to deal with in the movie). It says that the force, or even just being a hero that the galaxy needs, doesn't have to mean being born into it. She's not some prophesied hero with a monstrous midichlorian count like Anakin, or even his son. And when this kid, this _nobody, uses the force_, that tells us that maybe this kid, this nobody, will be a new hero. That it could be anyone. From anywhere.

Of course, _Rise of Skywalker _proceeds to reverse basically every last one of those revelations and themes, which is why it's a terrible movie, but I've already established who I believe to be to blame for _that.  _


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Now see, I want to take all that you have to say to heart, and I generally do, but then I get to stuff like this, the baseless claims of "mary sue", and it becomes hard to take seriously.



But this is the problem, Gradine. It is almost like you need to write off what I'm saying as either stupidity or some malicious ploy or bigotry, and thus not to "take seriously." Or you use phrases like "willful refusal." I mean, come on. It is very uncharitable.

People see things differently, have different impressions and feelings and interpretations.

I'm not saying Rey is a complete Mary Sue, btw, just that she has elements of it. And yes, I feel more so than Luke. Her "faults" are less intrinsic to her character, and more like "I just haven't figure this out yet." Luke actually came across as a bit of a nincompoop, and veered perilessly close to the Dark Side.

EDIT: See my response to Bedrock a bit below re: Mary Sueism, especially about it being a red herring.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Now see, I want to take all that you have to say to heart, and I generally do, but then I get to stuff like this, the baseless claims of "mary sue", and it becomes hard to take seriously. Rey has plenty of faults. She in fact spends the entirety of _The Last Jedi_ failing until like... the last thing she does. Which is move a bunch of rocks. Rey spends the entirety of _The Rise of Skywalker _rushing headlong into every moment without taking stock or even considering the people who are trying to help her.




While I am not persuaded by the criticism, I also don't think it means a person is arguing in bad faith. If someone thinks a character is mary sue, and you think it isn't, then make an argument why it isn't (which you have done). I think one of the most frustrating things through this whole thing, has been watching fans of a franchise go at each others throats and read things into their opinions  to extract moral evaluations of the person themselves. These are movies. People have strong opinions about them. Sometimes they have opinions I find very stupid or pointless. It just means they had a different experience and different expectations. 

I just think Mary Sue is one of those overused critiques and I am not even sure it leads to bad art to have the occasional Mary Sue. I've seen posts where someone was making the case that Dante was a Mary Sue in the Divine Comedy. Whether or not that is the case, I don't care. The Divine Comedy is perfect in my opinion as written. 

For me the bottom line is more: Do I like this character, do I want to follow this character, am I interested in and worried on behalf on this character, is this movie experience moving me and compelling me. Someone can point out after the fact that the character in question wasn't three dimensional, that it committed one of the many cinema sins, but all that matters to me is that honest reaction I had to the movie. I don't care if people think I am unintelligent for having that honest opinion, or if they think it makes me a snob to have it. I just want to be comfortable enough to give my honest reaction.


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I tend to agree with this. He is great in everything I've seen him in (I first saw him in Agora and loved that movie). But beyond what natural charm he was able to bring to the screen (which isn't insignificant) the character did not quite fill the shoes of the Han type (whereas I felt Rey filled the Luke shoes pretty well).
> 
> I think John Bodega got told three different things, one for each movie, none of them every coming together. His character was really interesting when they first introduced him. Then they kind of dropped all that stuff about him being a storm trooper (and whatever they had planned for him and Po)and we got a buddy/love section with him and Rose (which I thought worked). Then it is like they just didn't know what to do with him in the third movie. They gave him a girlfriend and it's like he just faded into the background. And there was also apparently something very important he needed to tell Rey, but I don't think they ever even figured out what that was (unless I missed the reveal when I stepped out for a moment). I could have enjoyed a thorough treatment of what they started with in the first film, or where they went int he second. But by the third, if you liked Finn and was interested in seeing where his story went, the third film gave you nothing satisfying at all



At the very least, it was a problem of too many cooks in the kitchen.

But yeah, I agree. Overall Rey was the best of the three, as far as "filling shoes."


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't even think the criticism of a mary sue, the way people use it today, even when its accurate, is valid. The force did seem to come a little too easy to Rey, but I think there was an in movie explanation for that. I wouldn't personally considerer a mary sue. And she did have to train to develop her abilities further (I really would have liked to see them lean into things like the accidental killing of another character to emphasize this----which doesn't happen when you take the death away a moment later). There are tons of genres where characters are just great from the beginning or early on in the story (I've seen a ton of wonderful wuxia movies where this is the case for example). You could argue a character like Neo is a Mary Sue as well. I found him perfectly entertaining. People invoking mary sue doesn't really change my opinion of a character if I like that character and the actor works well in the role. To me 'thats a mary sue' is the same as someone complaining about lens flare. It seems like a criticism people learn largely online but never notice unless others point it out to them (it doesn't strike me as an authentic critique)
> 
> But I do think the Last Jedi handled this aspect of her character better. She actually had to go to the temple and train. That is a time tested trope, and gave me 36 Chamber of Shaolin vibes. Entirely appropriate in my view.
> 
> My only critique here is I do think JJ sped things up with her in the first film to save time so he could have a fast paced movie. I would have liked to see more slow down in The Force Awakens (which we got but with Han, which doesn't really afford the kind of tutelage we got from Ben with Luke in the original).



I don't even have an issue with "Mary Sueism," at least in some contexts. To some degree, the whole trope of the "Promised One" is fraught with Mary Suesm. And to be clear, I've probably used the term "Mary Sue" only a few times in my life.

My point was more to illustrate the way (I think) the characters were conceived: not as distinct unto themselves and build out of the personality's of the actors involved, but more as variations on characters from the original trilogy and/or ciphers for this or that story element. Focusing on my usage of Mary Sue is a bit of a red herring (to say the least).


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> The mistake here isn't that this scene is in conversation with the fandom. What it is in conversation with is all of the preceding movies and Rey's own misplaced needs. It ties to the reveal about Rey's parentage, her need to _be someone important. _But she's not. She's nobody.




I mean, she _was _nobody.

But as they say ... Somehow, Palpatine returned.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> But this is the problem, Gradine. It is almost like you need to write off what I'm saying as either stupidity or some malicious ploy or bigotry, and thus not to "take seriously." Or you use phrases like "willful refusal." I mean, come on. It is very uncharitable.



I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too. I get that there's a line between a fictional character and living human person, but when 95% of this "debate" boils down to vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry, I'm more inclined to see that line as blurrier than it might otherwise be.


Mercurius said:


> People see things differently, have different impressions and feelings and interpretations.
> 
> I'm not saying Rey is a complete Mary Sue, btw, just that she has elements of it. And yes, I feel more so than Luke. Her "faults" are less intrinsic to her character, and more like "I just haven't figure this out yet." Luke actually came across as a bit of a nincompoop, and veered perilessly close to the Dark Side.



There is no such things as "having elements" of a Mary Sue. There's not a half-Sue. It's kind of an all-or-nothing designation. If she is perfect and flawless and always succeeds, she is a Mary Sue. If she has flaws, and faults, and experiences failure, she is not. And she does, objectively, have flaws, and faults, and experiences failure. She's not a Mary Sue. Not at all.

Now see, Luke's major fault, as you describe is intrinsic to the setting. He almost falls to dark side. That's interesting, but not exactly relatable. Sure, there's very human passions underneath that near-fall, but hey, turns out Luke is a pretty good character. 

On the other hand, Rey is extremely insecure about her heritage. She's myopic, and so self-absorbed that she consistently ignores her friends and leaves them behind. These are super relatable, human flaws, and they drive a lot of her actions. I don't know how much more "inherent to her character" you need a flaw to get. She tries to get Luke to help out The Resistance, or at the very least train her. She fails. She tries to find some great truth in the cave. She fails. (This failure is pretty interesting because it _should _have been a great revelation for her, but she completely missed the point, because she wasn't prepared to be open-minded enough to see _herself _as the answer to all her insecurities). She tries to turn Kylo back towards the light. She fails. To say nothing of the clown show that is Episode IX's plot progression.

So when you blithely drop that Rey is "Luke without any faults", you're communicating, at best, that you've either completely missed or chosen to not count the variety of faults she demonstrates throughout the film. At worst, you're echoing the worst of the misogyny that has been levied against the films and her character in general. Now, I have zero doubts that that is how you really feel, but you need to be prepared to back up a statement that is otherwise inherently linked with online bigotry and hatred, and given the text we have available I have no idea how you possible could do that.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean, she _was _nobody.
> 
> But as they say ... Somehow, Palpatine returned.



Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> The mistake here isn't that this scene is in conversation with the fandom. What it is in conversation with is all of the preceding movies and Rey's own misplaced needs. It ties to the reveal about Rey's parentage, her need to _be someone important. _But she's not. She's nobody. Because all of that stuff she thought was so important _wasn't_ (her need for her parents to be somebody being another flaw she has to deal with in the movie). It says that the force, or even just being a hero that the galaxy needs, doesn't have to mean being born into it. She's not some prophesied hero with a monstrous midichlorian count like Anakin, or even his son. And when this kid, this _nobody, uses the force_, that tells us that maybe this kid, this nobody, will be a new hero. That it could be anyone. From anywhere.
> 
> Of course, _Rise of Skywalker _proceeds to reverse basically every last one of those revelations and themes, which is why it's a terrible movie, but I've already established who I believe to be to blame for _that. _




But that is also clearly part of a conversation that was going on among fans. And she was a  hero with a monsterous midochlorian count, just one that wasn't a skywalker. She is definitely depicted as being strong in the force. 

I have no problem with Rey being a nobody. There are lots of movies where a nobody rises up to be a somebody and those can be cool. I just felt like the movie seemed overly proud of itself for making this kind of step and like there was a conversation I was missing (which fair enough was with the franchise itself: and again there that is something that I don't really get). I just don't need a star wars movie that is a conversation with the franchise itself, or with the previous movie. WIth Last Jedi, I got a conversation with the whole franchise, with Rise of Skywalker I got a conversation with Last Jedi. I also think the whole thing of setting her up to be a Skywalker or something surprising (where its clear everyone wants to know who she is related to), and then knocking that down and saying she is a nobody, doesn't feel wholly satisfying. Again stuff ike that felt like the movie having a conversation with itself. The self awareness of the dialogue in the scene bothered me as well. but the idea of that scene with her being told she was a nobody though didn't bother me that much because I think it served a similar function to the scene where Vader says he is lukes father and we are supposed to not really know for sure until the next movie. Again the scene was entertaining. I liked both actors. I liked the action. There was emotion underneath everything. I just felt it would have been better for that emotion to be less about the meta of star wars and more about Rey and Kylo Ren 

I think the reason the scene with the kid bugs me is it is overly sentimental or again too meta. I don't mind the sentiment you are describing itself (I think this idea that anyone anywhere is important, or can be important is a good one). I don't like elitism in real life. But I don't feel validated because Rian Johnson has declared everyone can be special in a Star Wars movie. I can handle there being a star wars universe that is a little unfair in force distribution. I think that is really what bugs me about it. I feel like I am being patronized a little by the movies (again, I don't go to a star wars film for personal validation, I want to be moved, thrilled, and have a spectacular experience). 

Same thing with Luke and Kylo. There was so much ground there for real drama between those characters. I just never bought that luke would almost kill his own nephew, and I never really bought he would go into seclusion like that over the issue (this is the guy who believed Vader could be redeemed, so surely he would feel similarly with his sister's son). I was really hoping for more of an emotional meeting of those two characters. Whatever Luke thinks of what Kylo has become that is still his Nephew, there is still going to be love there. I just didn't feel like in the movie. 

Again a good movie. But there are a lot of things that I could quibble about. I think the other big thing for me was the joke it makes of Hux. Not only was that scene way too zany for the film (not just the franchise but also the film we are in), and kind of popped me out, but it took a really menacing character and deflated them. The films needed a menacing character like that beyond just Kylo. Hux's treatment in the third movie wasn't any better.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> I mean, she _was _nobody.
> 
> But as they say ... Somehow, Palpatine returned.




The palatine return looked like a cocaine fueled ending if I've ever seen one. That needed so much more justification and explanation. But it just kept getting more confusing. And it looked absolutely awful. I can forgive the questionable return of the emperor because I like the actor who played him, but they needed to ground that in some real interactions and some slow dialogue scenes. To me that ending looked like a video game not a movie.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.




The fans knew what they wanted, and they deserved to get it good and hard.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.




I think either having her as the emperor's or as obi wan's descendent could have worked if it was handled properly. They also could have just kept it as her family being junkers like Kylo said and maybe her finding out more about them. The issue with the emperor's return is it looked like zero thought went into it, no real attempt was made to make it connect cleanly with previous movies, etc. This is another part of the movie where I think better dialogue and more thought would have gone a long way. If we really had a chance for her and Kylo to get into why Kylo lied, that would have been interesting. I don't think we really got that. Everything zipped by so quickly it is like you didn' even process it until after it happened. Just way too much going on in this movie.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> The fans knew what they wanted, and they deserved to get it good and hard.




This is the problem with not doing things out in advance. They could have done a cohesive trilogy following either Johnson or Abrahms visions. But starting on one, shifting to another, then veering back towards something like the first one started could never work. Now the trilogy as a whole is only interesting for how much of a disjointed and strange it is (maybe in twenty years that will look very compelling to people I don't know).


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too. *I get that there's a line between a fictional character and living human person,* but when 95% of this "debate" boils down to vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry, I'm more inclined to see that line as blurrier than it might otherwise be.



Bingo. You should have stopped there - rather than basically accusing me of "vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry," or at least adjacent to that.

What have I said that entails biases or bigotry? Absolutely nothing. You're either making assumptions, or you lump everyone together that disagrees with you, and then insult them with nasty accusations of bigotry and bias. That's an ad hominem.

Now you soften it somewhat later on, but only somewhat; you're still connecting what I'm saying with whoever you think is actually biased and bigoted.

So where's the conversation? Can we have one without such nastiness?

As for Mary Sue, ironically I didn't even initially use the term - you did. And in doing so, you followed a red herring, completely missing what I was saying - which really had nothing to do with whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not, and more how I speculated the characters were conceived. So I have no interest in a straw man argument about whether or not Rey is Mary Sue, because that wasn't (at all) my point.

Again, re-read what I wrote: I didn't say Rey _is _Luke without faults, I was making a point in how I imagined the character was conceived: in relation to Luke, yet more competent. You latched onto the erroneous belief that I was saying "Rey is a Mary Sue" and skipped over what I was actually saying.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too. I get that there's a line between a fictional character and living human person, but when 95% of this "debate" boils down to vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry, I'm more inclined to see that line as blurrier than it might otherwise be.




But this is part of where we go off the rails. I don't think the majority of this debate is because of bigotry. I think it is mostly to do with taste and people not liking the way a newer movie handled an older franchise (if you have older fans of a franchise they are going to have complaints when it gets rebooted). Look Disney is a very, very powerful company. I think they used this to deflect criticisms of the movies and to help generate online discussion at the same time. I don't think people who disliked Last Jedi are bigots, and I don't think people who loved it are bad either. Nor is one side more virtuous and the other less so. There are always bad actors in online discussion but most people I know who had criticisms of any of the movies, just were giving honest opinions they had about a film. It is just a movie. It is a distraction from real problems that exist in the world. Disney is still making tons of money off of it. And lets not forget Disney itself nixed both a gay relationship and an interracial one, largely for concerns of how that would play in markets outside the US. Most of us debating the merits of the movie with one another are all in a similar boat in terms of how much power and money we have in the world. No good for us to be turning against one another over characters in a film.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.

It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry. 

I'm still mad about it.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I tend to think describing Rey as "Luke but without any faults" is pretty damn uncharitable too.




I felt Rey had plenty of faults. Some of them not explored deeply enough but by the second and third movie they are pretty clear (as they were with Luke). But these are also not really meant to be super flawed characters like in the walking dead. They are space heroes. What the group needed was one really flawed character like Han. But Rey was fine as she was. One of my big complaints in these kinds of movies is the actors don't look strong or physical enough to do what they are doing but she really seemed physically ready for that role.


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.




I just felt they had this really frightening villain (someone who seemed potentially more dangerous than Kylo Ren because he believed in the empire). Turning him into a joke just didn't add anything to the movie for me. I get the whole tradition of Hogans Heroes and stuff. But this is a movie where you want a frightening empire that puts the heroes in true peril. It just felt so goofy to me. 



Gradine said:


> It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry.
> 
> I'm still mad about it.




I can't tell you what to think. But I think a lot of what was going on is they were trying to paint any criticism of the film as being a product of vitriol and hate and I just don' think that was what was going on. It is clever marketing. Anger, ironically enough, is one of the surest drivers of clicks and views in our current environement. But I think it is actually pretty dangerous to generate buzz around a movie in this way by getting the fanbase to turn on one another and to fear one another. Definitely there are always going to be bad people who say terrible things. But most of this was people just not liking a movie or a character in a movie. And for all of Disney's posturing about this stuff, in the end, it didn't really do anything to support the actors it had expressed concern for. Rose was a great character and they should have stuck with her in the third movie. But they didn't. Which is a shame. I would personally blame the company that made these decisions rather than people who just weren't fans of a film.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> Bingo. You should have stopped there - rather than basically accusing me of "vitriol based in real-world biases and bigotry," or at least adjacent to that.
> 
> What have I said that entails biases or bigotry? Absolutely nothing. You're either making assumptions, or you lump everyone together that disagrees with you, and then insult them with nasty accusations of bigotry and bias. That's an ad hominem.
> 
> ...



If I made a leap of logic or misunderstood what you were saying or putting words in your mouth, I apologize. I read more into I was reading than what was actually there, and went off completely half-cocked. I didn't ever think _you, yourself _were actually some kind of misogynist. 

All that said, I stand by that the driving force behind the criticisms of The Last Jedi and the way fans have treated many of its characters/cast members was rooted in a particularly nasty brand of politics, and that many, including myself, have unfairly lumped those with legitimate complaints with the film. It's just such a good movie in my eyes that it's hard to reconcile the middle ground between where I'm at and the alt-right trolls crying "Mary Sue".

I'll also stand by that anyone who would claim that this is anything close to a Mary Sue doesn't have a leg to stand on, but I'll accept that I don't think anybody's doing that here.

Apologies, again, for treating you unfairly.


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## Snarf Zagyg (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Now see, I also found most of the comedy in the movie quite, but I'll admit that the prank call was a little... distracting. I think the other line that tends to take me out of it a bit was the whole "the Queen is dead, long live the Queen" bit. On the other hand, I love myself some Hux, by which I mean to see I love seeing his whiny, entitled self getting consistently trolled and otherwise put in his place. He actually I thought had the most interesting arc in the 3rd film, but again I love seeing him being (a) petty and (b) paying for it.
> 
> It's far from a perfect movie. It just can be hard differentiate legitimate disagreement with the kinds of bad faith rhetorics that drove the original wave of hatred toward the movie in the first. And it's not fair to folks who legitimately didn't care for the film, and I acknowledge my role in it. But the bad-faith trolls have torn a hole in a fandom I cared about by drawing their line in the sand and filling their side with hatred and bigotry.
> 
> *I'm still mad about it.*




You're not the only one.

TLJ wasn't perfect, but at a minimum it was interesting and provided a fresh way forward. It made me excited again. Rise ... killed all interest I had in Star Wars movies for the foreseeable future. I would rather watch a new trilogy that only had Gungans than watch Disney make another movie with the current brain trust that chose to go forward with Rise.


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## MGibster (Aug 1, 2022)

I'm only going to do the movies. 

S:  Empire, New Hope, Jedi (Yeah, all three and only a sith would disagree)
A:  Revenge of the Sith
B:  The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Rogue One
C:  Solo, Force Awakens
D:  Rise of Skywalker, The Last Jedi 

I'd rather watch Battlefield Earth than the Rise of Skywalker ever again.


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## MGibster (Aug 1, 2022)

Snarf Zagyg said:


> The fans knew what they wanted, and they deserved to get it good and hard.



I sure as hell didn't deserve it!


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

I'm not going to lie, I walked out of _Rise of Skywalker _the first time somewhat pleasantly surprised. I'm an exceptionally easy mark, however. I tried to view it on its own merits, separate from how it tossed everything great about TLJ in the trash. And as that it's... fun, mostly. It almost moves too fast to not be, even though that pacing makes so much else about the film really, really rough.

Actually, Rise of Skywalker actually take one thing from TLJ and did something genuinely great with it: the astral projection lightsaber battle thing was, unironically, one of my favorite lightsaber fights in the franchise. And I'm including the one with the Pratorian Guard from TLJ.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Tag yourself, I'm Martine


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## Bedrockgames (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I'm not going to lie, I walked out of _Rise of Skywalker _the first time somewhat pleasantly surprised. I'm an exceptionally easy mark, however. I tried to view it on its own merits, separate from how it tossed everything great about TLJ in the trash. And as that it's... fun, mostly. It almost moves too fast to not be, even though that pacing makes so much else about the film really, really rough.
> 
> Actually, Rise of Skywalker actually take one thing from TLJ and did something genuinely great with it: the astral projection lightsaber battle thing was, unironically, one of my favorite lightsaber fights in the franchise. And I'm including the one with the Pratorian Guard from TLJ.




The pacing of Rise of Skywalker is deception. I was at first convinced I was enjoying it, and it is a ride, so its entertaining, but it just has so many problems and that ending isn't cinematic at all.


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## Gradine (Aug 1, 2022)

Bedrockgames said:


> The pacing of Rise of Skywalker is deception. I was at first convinced I was enjoying it, and it is a ride, so its entertaining, but it just has so many problems and that ending isn't cinematic at all.



Yeah, that's about where I landed after sitting with it for a while. 

Still not as bad as any of the prequels though. Every time I think to myself "Maybe X-5 years ago me was being too harsh, I should give these another try". And every time I reach the same conclusion: "Nope, X-5 years me was right."


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## Celebrim (Aug 1, 2022)

S Tier: Star Wars (A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
A Tier: Rogue One
B Tier: Mandalorian*, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith
C Tier: The Phantom Menace, Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, Solo
D Tier: Droids Cartoon, The Book of Boba Fett
F Tier: Star Wars Holiday Special, Ewoks Cartoon, Ewoks: Battle for Endor, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi 

(*Individual episodes of Mandalorian vary from S Tier all the way down to D- Tier, I'm giving here an average level of quality for the show thus far.)

I have not seen Rise of Skywalker, The Bad Batch, or Obi Wan at this point.  I may decide to risk Obi Wan, but I've found myself sitting through Star Wars Holiday Special levels of stupidity so much in Disney Star Wars that I feel like it's torture to watch the garbage they spew out most of the time.  And yes, I actually went back and re-watched the Star Wars Holiday Special just to see if I was being unfair with the comparison, and at this point I can't decide which was objectively worse, STHS or the second act of TFA, or the entirety of TLJ.  Let's not blame Rian Johnson too much.  He was told to make a sequel to an absurd movie that introduced a ton of ideas with no real ideas where it was going with them and no overall plan to the story with a creative team that seemed to objectively believe the original Star Wars was a bad movie that was saved in the edit so they could do that to.

Disney Stars wars hasn't been uniformly terrible.  It's just that the showcase movies are so much inferior to the original trilogy in every respect, or inferior to even the sequel trilogy in terms of conception and creativity and ground breaking effects, that a few good episodes of The Mandalorian or Clone Wars and 95% of the movie Rogue One can't really make up the difference.  Disney's handling of the property would be something other than risible if it was only minor properties that were as bad or worse than the Ewok made for TV movies and not the showcase sequel trilogy that was supposed to anchor the franchise and set the stage for future generations of fans.  I can forgive them for The Mandalorian's very uneven writing, but not for the character assassination of Han and Leia in TFA followed by the character assassination of Luke in TLJ.  The unmaking of the original trilogy by the sequels means that IMO, the world would be better off if those movies had never been made.  The constitute a crime against the arts.   And the absolutely hideous treatment of the property stands in stark contrast to the very respectful and overall masterful treatment of the Marvel IP. 

So yes, on the whole, it really is that bad.   This is the dark years of Star Wars fandom.  This is worse than those years where we were waiting for a 4th movie.  At least then we uber nerds had the wonderful job WEG was doing with the RPG, and some decent pulpy takes like the original Han Solo trilogy.


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## Mercurius (Aug 1, 2022)

Gradine said:


> If I made a leap of logic or misunderstood what you were saying or putting words in your mouth, I apologize. I read more into I was reading than what was actually there, and went off completely half-cocked. I didn't ever think _you, yourself _were actually some kind of misogynist.
> 
> All that said, I stand by that the driving force behind the criticisms of The Last Jedi and the way fans have treated many of its characters/cast members was rooted in a particularly nasty brand of politics, and that many, including myself, have unfairly lumped those with legitimate complaints with the film. It's just such a good movie in my eyes that it's hard to reconcile the middle ground between where I'm at and the alt-right trolls crying "Mary Sue".
> 
> ...



Thanks, I appreciate this. And I hear you - there are definitely those who seem to get upset with greater representation and diversity for rather nefarious reasons.

In a lot of—or at least some—cases, though, critiques of the Latest Thing are less malign than they seem. Take, for instance, the hypothetical idea of “Jane Bond.” I dislike the idea mainly because it is creatively lazy. And furthermore, because in a way it subtly exacerbates a problem (say, sexism) that it seemingly wants to address. So rather than simply take an old classic franchise and subvert it, why not start a new one, with a unique female super-spy that isn’t based on a male one? The real reason—most of the time and in my opinion—is not for feminist reasons, but economic ones. I personally don’t want to see female Bond — I want to see a film about that Cuban agent.

That was kind of my point with my comment about Oscar Isaac - but also Daisy Ridley and John Boyega. Rather than say, “Let’s make new, unique characters for the Star Wars universe that draw from your own personalities and abilities” they seemingly tried and more derivative and/or “ciphering” approach, sometimes even tokenism. In the end, it does the actors an injustice.

That’s my impression, at least. As I said, I do think Ridley in particular did a pretty good job, but that all of them could have been so much more. I think Boyega in particular was given the short stick.


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## Zubatcarteira (Aug 1, 2022)

TFA and TLJ I found okay-ish, and didn't watch the last one, although I've seen enough people trashing it to know mostly what happened.

It's mostly a lot of very strange decisions, that only get worse when you get more info from the other movies (e.g. Leia sends muggle Han to talk to Kylo, when she's a trained Jedi, Luke goes to sulk on an island while his friends are being murdered, Finn is hyped as a possible Jedi then becomes a sidekick, Rey and Kylo romance at all, etc).


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## Eltab (Aug 2, 2022)

Mercurius said:


> Take, for instance, the hypothetical idea of “Jane Bond.” I dislike the idea mainly because it is creatively lazy. And furthermore, because in a way it subtly exacerbates a problem (say, sexism) that it seemingly wants to address. So rather than simply take an old classic franchise and subvert it, why not start a new one, with a unique female super-spy that isn’t based on a male one? The real reason—most of the time and in my opinion—is not for feminist reasons, but economic ones. I personally don’t want to see female Bond — I want to see a film about that Cuban agent.



Because of the requirements of the next assignment, introduce James Bond to Agent 004, who happens to be female and is able to get into places "a British businessman" would not blend in.

And/or Agent 001 whose family hails from a former British Empire nation (which conveniently is the exotic locale du jour) and also can blend into crowds where Bond will stick out like a sore thumb. 

There are presumably nine Agents 00x, but we don't see the others in the movies.  Introduce one and tell an interesting story.

Expand the worldbuilding, don't over-write what was written before.


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## Mercurius (Aug 2, 2022)

Eltab said:


> Because of the requirements of the next assignment, introduce James Bond to Agent 004, who happens to be female and is able to get into places "a British businessman" would not blend in.
> 
> And/or Agent 001 whose family hails from a former British Empire nation (which conveniently is the exotic locale du jour) and also can blend into crowds where Bond will stick out like a sore thumb.
> 
> ...



Yes, exactly!


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## Zardnaar (Aug 2, 2022)

Eltab said:


> Because of the requirements of the next assignment, introduce James Bond to Agent 004, who happens to be female and is able to get into places "a British businessman" would not blend in.
> 
> And/or Agent 001 whose family hails from a former British Empire nation (which conveniently is the exotic locale du jour) and also can blend into crowds where Bond will stick out like a sore thumb.
> 
> ...




 This is how I would do it. I don't want to see a Jane Bond but a female double 00 sure. 

 An obvious Jane Bond would be his daughter that's about the only way it would work imho. 

 Why Rey gets called a Mary Sue was she was busting out powers in TFA Luke didn't use until his third movie after being trained twice. It's not consistent with established SW lore from the OT, PT and even Rebels. 

 Rian's idea anyway me can be a Jedi has merit. You don't have to be a Skywalker or a Palpatine or whatever. He just chose the wrong time and place to do it in a movie marketed as the Sky Walker Saga which implies Skywalkers. 

  Personally I would have just made Rey a Jedi Knight. She doesn't need a bloodlines me but she did need a relationship with Luke going down that path. 

 Jedi Knight, Luke's star pupil boom dine and it kinda makes Luke a success post RotJ. Kylo can still exist he's just a student if Luke that's gone dark. 

 The other big mistake with Rey was essentially repeating Lukes arc. They didn't need to do that and I think it undermines her character development.

 Each of the ST movies was a potential trilogy by itself imho. To many cooks in kitchen to many ideas no cohesive plot.


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## Argyle King (Aug 2, 2022)

Rey isn't the hero. She's the villain. 

She successfully completed Palpatine's mission of corrupting/destroying the Skywalker bloodline, and she does so while being heralded as a hero and filling a power vacuum which she helped to create.


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## Rabulias (Aug 2, 2022)

Argyle King said:


> Rey isn't the hero. She's the villain.
> 
> She successfully completed Palpatine's mission of corrupting/destroying the Skywalker bloodline, and she does so while being heralded as a hero and filling a power vacuum which she helped to create.



Interesting take. But wouldn't she be more lucky than the villain in that case? Like the low-level gangster who ends up the sole survivor of a gang war (that they did not start)?


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## Stalker0 (Aug 2, 2022)

Zubatcarteira said:


> TFA and TLJ I found okay-ish, and didn't watch the last one, although I've seen enough people trashing it to know mostly what happened.
> 
> It's mostly a lot of very strange decisions, that only get worse when you get more info from the other movies (e.g. Leia sends muggle Han to talk to Kylo, when she's a trained Jedi, Luke goes to sulk on an island while his friends are being murdered, Finn is hyped as a possible Jedi then becomes a sidekick, Rey and Kylo romance at all, etc).



Yeah, its a good start that kind of goes in very weird places due to some very questionable (and don't right idiotic) decisions.

*TFA*
TFA starts off really strong. Some great character energy, some interesting setup, a lot of interesting mystery boxes (which Abrams is famous for....however, he is often terrible at opening them). TFA struggles from three main things:

No connective tissue with the previous movies. We learn literally nothing about what's happened between RTJ and now, where did this first order come from? Why are their "rebels" when the rebels work with teh New Republic, doesn't that make them just "the republic army?" I feel like this is the result of our modern era of prequels, I'm sure disney has plans to plug those gaps in the timeline with various other properties, but it makes your current movies more hallow.
The New Hope Redux. Having watched the movie again, its actually not quite as bad a retread as it initially appears. But especially the last 25% is really just a remake, and it's not necessary. We don't need an even bigger death star.
Rey vs Kylo lightsaber fight: This is really the beginning of the "Mary Sue" criticism, simply put....the idea that a completely untrained force user could actually get in a hit against a master lightsaber fighter is LUDICROUS. What I think they were going for was the idea that Kylo was so hurt that he couldn't put up a good fight....he just wasn't hurt enough to make it believable. If he was barely able to stand and barely able to swing a lightsaber, then ok I'll buy that Rey could get in a swing or two.
*TLJ*
While some fans dislike certain directions that the movie decided to take, for me the fundamental problem with the movie is....its just an incredibly stupid movie.

The main plot is ridiculous. Ok we are just going to travel while being constantly blasting on by the empire force....for the entire movie.
The gambling planet is silly, stupid, and boring.
Rose could have been interesting and does have some moments when she is first introduced, but then quickly becomes unimportant. Her acts at the end to save Finn are incredibly stupid, and their conversation in the middle of a firefight even more so.
I could work with you on Luke becoming a hermit....except you established in the first movie he left a map for people to come find him. You don't do that if you don't want to be found. So that inconsistency is never explained.
People are tired of seeing their heroes trampled on, so doing Luke dirty like that was just sad to see. And again, there are just better ways to handle it. For example, maybe Luke had a few brushes with the dark side, as the galaxy needed him more, he relied more on his power, and he felt the dark side begin to overtake him. So he cut himself off from the force, and came to this planet to heal and to cleanse himself. So when Rey comes, he wants to help....but he knows that a fallen Luke is too dangerous a risk to take. Same stakes, same fundamental plot, but now Luke has an understanding rationale, and there is still that element of hope that he will beat this and rise again.
Luke's hologram thing at the end was super cool, the best part of the movie....if he hadn't just died right afterward. That was just another insult in a string of insults against the character.
Rey enters full Mary Sue at this point. She needs barely any training to go toe to toe with everyone, and she never really loses. That's the key point, Rey has flaws but she never really pays for them, she never really struggles, she never has to pick herself back up again. Hell what I really wanted from the movie, I wanted rey to join Kylo. Now THAT would have subverted my expectations, and made perfect sense for her character. Rey wants to be loved, is desperate for connection, that's her weakness. Kylo exploited that, and it would have made great sense for Rey to join him, to finally find a place she belonged. But....nope...sigh.
Snoke died like an absolute chump. That could have been fine except he has literally been built up as this "new emperor" super powerful dark side user, he's full of mystery, and then he's just dead. Its the Night King from GOT all over again!
Holdo is incredibly, rage inducingly, stupid. She keeps her entire team in the dark, for no good reason! Half of the plot of the movie could have been avoided if she had a lick of sense as a leader. Or hell...all they had to do, was throw in a couple of lines about how their is a suspected spy on board, and so Holdo can't reveal her plans out in the open. boom....done, now you have justification, and she's doesn't look like a total idiot.
The Holdo maneuver....super cool looking....super hard to explain why no one has ever done that before.

*RoS*
For good or ill, TLJ happened, and it set a direction for the franchise. Now while I noted a lot of stupidity in the movie, there are some solid interesting choices. Rey being from crappy parents....cool idea. Rey and Kylo connected by some force connection, ok new force thing, neat idea. There are narrative elements in TLJ that are interesting and worth exploring further. But no.... we had to bring back JJ to "turn the ship". And when the ship turns its REALLY noticeable. There are a lot of things in RoS that directly counter TLJ, and it always feels like two parents fighting in front of their kids.

Beyond that, bringing back the Emperor is such lazy writing. There has to be 10000 pieces of fan fiction out there, I'm sure somebody has a neat idea for a villain that would be better than just bringing back the Emperor. Also, he just happens to have generated a brand new fleet, and every ship has a death star cannon on it.....dude seriously?

RoS has a blistering pace that does create a lot of excitement when you first watch the movie (I felt it as well), but like eating a whole chocolate bar, you don't feel so great later on. There are dozens of narrative holes in the movie. But the bigger sin, is foregoing the characters. Finn and Poe barely have any time in the movie anymore and their characters have flatlined. We keep getting introduced to all of these new toy products....ehem...I mean new characters, instead of giving us more of our core Trio. 

The movie is just hallow, basically the worst kind of Marvel movie, with crazy big plots and tons of effects but no soul. The ending is boring and uninteresting, the epilogue is uninteresting, and there are a dozen dangling little plot threads throughout the trilogy that are never addressed.

Oh and last but not least, THE KNIFE MAP IS THE DUMBEST MCGUFFIN IN THE HISTORY OF MCGUFFINS!!!!!!!!!!!!



and I'm spent.


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## Celebrim (Aug 3, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> [*]Rey vs Kylo lightsaber fight: This is really the beginning of the "Mary Sue" criticism...




While Rey is not in the top 5 problems with either TFA or the trilogy as a whole, her problems are much more serious than this and start earlier.

This really should be obvious to anyone that plays RPGs.  Indeed, I'll go so far as to say I wouldn't enjoy playing an RPG with anyone that thinks Rey is an interesting character.  

The original Star Wars had a viable and interesting party dynamic.  While Luke was the lead, he was initially by no means the best member of the party at really anything but flying an X-Wing.  C-3P0 was a surprisingly effective face man who passed a rather large number of social tests over the course of the 3 films, and was familiar with "six million forms of communication".  R2-D2 was the technical expert - hacker and mechanic.  Leia was a competent leader and able to hold her own in a fight.  Han was obviously older and better than Luke at just about everything initially.  Chewbacca was the muscle without being as one dimensional as that suggests.  But in any event, this was a legitimate party dynamic and it continued through the whole of the movies.

By contrast, Jar Jar Binks was a terrible character because he contributed nothing valuable to the party dynamics.  He was useless.  If he'd at least been competent, I don't think he'd have been hated so much.

Rey was as bad of a character as Jar Jar, but in the other direction.  She was so competent that she didn't need a party.  She was built as a solo protagonist, but they tried to write her into a party dynamic movie "because that's how Star Wars works", and it was disastrous - more disastrous even than Jar Jar Binks because they couldn't write her out of the story.  When we first meet Rey she's actually pretty cool.  She is a well introduced character.  She's a rogue.  She's a scrounger.  And we can accept easily that she's a good rogue and a good scrounger having had to survive on her own.  Character established and all well and good.  The trouble is, that she's made into a Luke analogue (beyond just the force sensitive orphan that comes from a desert planet and wears his clothes) in as much as the writers try to send her on a coming of age story, and the character they present is not suited to that.  Rey then exhibits the talent of immediately mastering every skill she encounters.  When we first meet Luke, he's whiny, he gets outsmarted by a droid, gets brained by Tusken Raiders, nearly gets killed in the Cantina and gets a lesson in astrogation from a put upon Han Solo that puts him back in his place.  When we first meet Rey, she not only is a competent rogue, she immediately outflies professional pilots despite not having the background, tells Han Solo how to fix his own ship, and she's already fluent in Wookie... because why not.  Then she teaches herself the Jedi mind trick and finishes the movie by defeating a master of the Dark Side.   The problem isn't merely that she's heroically good at something - that would have been fine.  The problem is she's heroically good at everything to the extent that she doesn't need anyone.  The party is superfluous.  Mentors are superfluous.   She wants to belong, but she only needs to in an emotional sense.   

Then to finish off her arc, they give her in the next movie that most stereotypical of female hero tropes: she doesn't need to mature or grow.  She doesn't need discipline or training.  She just needs to allow her inner power to flow and to get everything else out of the way that is holding her back.  Luke has to learn things and "grow up".  Rey only has to get rid of things holding her back and unleash herself.  Rey grows up by getting less mature.

But here's the thing, while that's enough to turn a good movie or series into a mediocre one, that's not even remotely the worst story telling sins of TFA.  TFA is a terrible movie that was held afloat by good cinematography and the expectation that the story that was dropping all these foretells had somewhere it was going.  TLJ gets blamed for ruining the series because it went in stupid directions, but the real trouble is that the writer of TFA had no plan to begin with and was expecting someone else to fill in all the gaps.  But given how internally incoherent TFA was, that was never going to happen.


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## MGibster (Aug 3, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Rey vs Kylo lightsaber fight: This is really the beginning of the "Mary Sue" criticism, simply put....the idea that a completely untrained force user could actually get in a hit against a master lightsaber fighter is LUDICROUS. What I think they were going for was the idea that Kylo was so hurt that he couldn't put up a good fight....he just wasn't hurt enough to make it believable. If he was barely able to stand and barely able to swing a lightsaber, then ok I'll buy that Rey could get in a swing or two.



I vehemently defended Rey beating Ren on account of the latter having taken a hit from Chewbacca's bowcaster.  A bowcaster which was established earlier in the movie to be particularly potent.  Not only was Ren wounded, but he had just fought Finn and no doubt was a bit tuckered out.  



Stalker0 said:


> People are tired of seeing their heroes trampled on, so doing Luke dirty like that was just sad to see. And again, there are just better ways to handle it.



I certainly didn't expect nor want Luke to be the hero of this story, I expected the elder statesman in playing the mentor like Yoda and Obi-Wan in the previous trilogy.  Instead, they just crapped all over the the efforts of our heroes from the main triology.  Lol!  The Jedi are gone again and the New Republic has been destroyed!  To see Han, Leia, and Luke beaten down so much was just not fun to watch.  



Stalker0 said:


> Holdo is incredibly, rage inducingly, stupid. She keeps her entire team in the dark, for no good reason! Half of the plot of the movie could have been avoided if she had a lick of sense as a leader.



I really liked Poe in the first movie, Holdo and how it was handled really made me dislike Poe.  Which is too bad, I liked all the actors and their characters in the first movie.


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## BrokenTwin (Aug 3, 2022)

All of the (many, many) flaws of the sequel trilogy accounted for, in my mind the biggest flaw will forever be how dirty they did John Boyega with his character of Finn. Even in the first movie he's barely more than a joke sidekick despite being promised being a core protagonist. Also how the chemistry between Finn and Poe was so noticable that they refused to let them interact on screen together for more than ten seconds at a time the entire trilogy to avoid fueling the "make them a couple" fire that even the actors involved were fanning.


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## GreyLord (Aug 3, 2022)

So, NOT a Star Wars Fan, at least definitely NOT a Disney Star Wars fan.  My opinion may not count because of that?

So...onto this pointless opinion.

Revenge of the Sith wasn't highly regarded when it came out by many, but today it is many people's favorite Prequel movie.

I think Rise of Skywalker will be like that.  Though I feel technically, as a singular movie, The Last Jedi is perhaps the BEST of the sequel movies (that said, I personally hate the illogical story plots...a 2d space chase...really.  I just...that get's me every time.  And then someone get's out and away from the ships...and no one else thinks to do the same thing in the same way???  Because no one followed  Rose and Finn when they left for that extra planet from what we saw...all the Rebels could have simply done that and be good...).  The Last Jedi didn't FEEL like a Star Wars movie though.  

Rise of Skywalker I think captured the Star Wars feel the best in the long run.  In that, I think it will be far more popular in the end than some of the other Disney Star Wars movies.


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## Older Beholder (Aug 3, 2022)

I don't think Disney Star Wars is that bad at all. In fact I've really enjoyed it so far.

The Sequel trilogy: There's too much to mention so I'll just say that my favourite part: Adam Driver as Kylo Ren was sublime. A screen presence unmatched in the franchise. Kylo and Rey as star crossed lovers connected through the force was compelling as the central dynamic.
The cinematography and visuals are jaw dropping from start to finish. An overall fantastic example of the Space Opera genre. A brief note on each episode:

The Force Awakens.
Still the highest grossing movie of all time at the American box office. (I know that this isn't an indication of it being good, just something worth noting) The reboot that was needed after all the abuse the prequels got.

The Last Jedi.
Probably the most interesting and thematic movie in the series. A deconstruction of Star Wars and myths in general.

Rise of Skywalker.
The movie plays like a greatest hits version of Star Wars. My only complaint was too much strobe effects.   

---

Rogue One.
I thought the first half of the film was a bit of a mess but Ben Mendelsohn as Orson Krennic - enough said.
Also, I really respect the downer ending. (Andor looks great too, pretty excited for that)

Solo.
Heaps of fun. Sad it didn't do well, I thought they were setting up some interesting stuff for the future.
Shout out to Donald Glover as Lando. 

---
Mando/Fett.
Proof that for all the talk, people just wanted a baby Yoda. 

Kenobi.
Started slow for me, but improved as it went along. Loved the final battle between Vader and Kenobi. 

Visions.
Some of the best Star Wars content to date. Can't wait for season 2.


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## delericho (Aug 3, 2022)

Celebrim said:


> By contrast, Jar Jar Binks was a terrible character because he contributed nothing valuable to the party dynamics.  He was useless.  If he'd at least been competent, I don't think he'd have been hated so much.



Agreed. IMO, Binks is reasonably easy to redeem: instead of being exiled for being clumsy, establish him as a competent warrior and exceptionally able tactician who was exiled by his warrior people for being a pacifist - when called upon to fight he refused.

And thus later, when the stakes are high enough, he makes the sacrifice of stepping up and leading the Gungan army against the droids... only to get a taste for it, and accidentally kicking off the horror of the Clone Wars.


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## MGibster (Aug 3, 2022)

GreyLord said:


> Revenge of the Sith wasn't highly regarded when it came out by many, but today it is many people's favorite Prequel movie.



I remember RoS being touted as the best of the prequel movies when it was released.  It's certainly my favorite prequel movie but that's damning with faint praise indeed.



The Lizard Wizard said:


> The Sequel trilogy: There's too much to mention so I'll just say that my favourite part: Adam Driver as Kylo Ren was sublime. A screen presence unmatched in the franchise. Kylo and Rey as star crossed lovers connected through the force was compelling as the central dynamic.



I thought Kylo Ren was a fairly compelling villain in TFA.  Usually we see a character struggle against his evil impluses, but Ren was struggling against his good impulses which was different.  The star crossed lovers fell flat for me, but had it not been poorly written I might have been on board.


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## Zardnaar (Aug 3, 2022)

Think RotS is regarded as best prequel since it came out.


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## BrokenTwin (Aug 3, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> I don't think Disney Star Wars is that bad at all. In fact I've really enjoyed it so far.
> 
> The Sequel trilogy: There's too much to mention so I'll just say that my favourite part: Adam Driver as Kylo Ren was sublime. A screen presence unmatched in the franchise. Kylo and Rey as star crossed lovers connected through the force was compelling as the central dynamic.



Adam Driver did a fantastic job as Kylo Ren. I even liked Daisy Ridley as Rey, despite my opinions on the character itself. Similar to the prequel trilogy, I think the actors did the best with what they were given. But what they were given was an unfocused directionless mess. Say what you will about the prequels, at least George Lucas had an overarching plot in mind when he made them.


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## Argyle King (Aug 3, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> Interesting take. But wouldn't she be more lucky than the villain in that case? Like the low-level gangster who ends up the sole survivor of a gang war (that they did not start)?




I feel that her role in it was more active than it seems at first glance. 

Consider that she's drawn to Kylo. Why? I think it's because she's taking advantage of someone who has been emotionally scarred and manipulated. She knows he's struggling to find his place and feel valued, so she feeds into his emotions -much in the same way that Palpatine manipulated Anakin's emotions. This is somewhat foreshadowed by Kylo's obsession with the Vader helmet. 

It also explains how she could seemingly be so strong and proficient with the force so quickly. She was part of a longterm agenda, planted to achieve a particular result.


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## BrokenTwin (Aug 3, 2022)

Argyle King said:


> I feel that her role in it was more active than it seems at first glance.
> 
> Consider that she's drawn to Kylo. Why? I think it's because she's taking advantage of someone who has been emotionally scarred and manipulated. She knows he's struggling to find his place and feel valued, so she feeds into his emotions -much in the same way that Palpatine manipulated Anakin's emotions. This is somewhat foreshadowed by Kylo's obsession with the Vader helmet.
> 
> It also explains how she could seemingly be so strong and proficient with the force so quickly. She was part of a longterm agenda, planted to achieve a particular result.



While I like this take for the same reason as I enjoy the Darth JarJar fanon, it's not supported in the presentation of the movies themselves. She's clearly intended to be a hero-protagonist deliberately designed as a Luke-alike.


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## Celebrim (Aug 3, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> Adam Driver did a fantastic job as Kylo Ren. I even liked Daisy Ridley as Rey, despite my opinions on the character itself. Similar to the prequel trilogy, I think the actors did the best with what they were given. But what they were given was an unfocused directionless mess. Say what you will about the prequels, at least George Lucas had an overarching plot in mind when he made them.




I agree with all of that.

The prequel trilogy was good (ideas for) movies made badly.
The sequel trilogy was bad (ideas for) movies made well.   

The sequels prove that solid ideas with poor execution are still vastly better than bad (or no) ideas for movies executed well.

Fundamentally I think that the prequel movies came close to being classics but were let down by failures of writing, inability to make a convincing romance that is supposed to be at the heart of this epic tragedy, and George's own incoherence about the morality of Star Wars where George's evolving take on morality in between the making of the original trilogy and making the prequels isn't fully held out and studied in a self-reflective manner to create a single coherent story.  As a result, when we get to the big payoff, which is when our flawed hero's tragic flaw is supposed to create the tragedy, the moment is weak and Anakin doesn't feel like he has a strong and relatable motive.  But the elements and ideas are there in the story, it's just when George starts firing his Chekov Guns his aim isn't very good.

Where as the sequels are dreck that is almost devoid of ideas.  There are a few hints of intriguing ideas in TLJ but they feel almost accidental because not only does the story do nothing with them at all, they don't seem to arise out of the setting or the character.  They just get thrown out there and disappear just as fast.  They strike me as self-inserted meta-commentary but they are all telling and not showing.  They aren't deserved and they don't payoff.  And I get how some viewers latched on to them and made them bigger and more elaborate than what they are if they perhaps share similar feelings, but that is also an "out of story experience" and not internal to the film.  Like for example you could say the broomstick thing at the end of TLJ means, "Anyone can be a hero.", but the movie doesn't say or even imply that.  Internally to the story it just means that the kid is force sensitive, which isn't revelatory in anyway.  We already knew that there were force sensitive kids scattered about the galaxy waiting for the Jedi or the Sith or whomever to come and train them in the ways of the force.  If you think it means something bigger than that, that narrative came from you and not the movie.


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## Argyle King (Aug 3, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> While I like this take for the same reason as I enjoy the Darth JarJar fanon, it's not supported in the presentation of the movies themselves. She's clearly intended to be a hero-protagonist deliberately designed as a Luke-alike.




It actually is shown in the movies though. She hits most of the same story beats as Palpatine. 

Even in the fights where she's helping Kylo fight the Praetorian Guards, you can clearly see that the guards wouldn't have hit her with some of the attacks even if she didn't defend.


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## Older Beholder (Aug 4, 2022)

Reading this thread is like:


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## Deset Gled (Aug 4, 2022)

Celebrim said:


> Rey was as bad of a character as Jar Jar, but in the other direction.  She was so competent that she didn't need a party.  She was built as a solo protagonist, but they tried to write her into a party dynamic movie "because that's how Star Wars works", and it was disastrous - more disastrous even than Jar Jar Binks because they couldn't write her out of the story.  When we first meet Rey she's actually pretty cool.  She is a well introduced character.  She's a rogue.  She's a scrounger.  And we can accept easily that she's a good rogue and a good scrounger having had to survive on her own.  Character established and all well and good.  The trouble is, that she's made into a Luke analogue (beyond just the force sensitive orphan that comes from a desert planet and wears his clothes) in as much as the writers try to send her on a coming of age story, and the character they present is not suited to that.  Rey then exhibits the talent of immediately mastering every skill she encounters.




FWIW, you could say the same thing about Kylo Ren.  They made him a Darth Vader avatar, even when it made no sense to do so.

The most obvious example of this are the bizarre scenes of Kylo Ren being a fighter pilot.  Flying a spaceship is an amazingly complex job that takes years to learn.  It's a major part of identity and backstory for Luke and Annakin.  Why does Kylo Ren even know how to fly?  He a fighter pilot only because Luke and Annakin were.  Having that skill makes no sense.  His custom TIE fighter makes no sense.  Tactically, it makes no sense for him to fly it.  None of it makes any sense.  At least they managed to have Poe Dameron take the fighter pilot scenes away from Rey.


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## Celebrim (Aug 4, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> FWIW, you could say the same thing about Kylo Ren.  They made him a Darth Vader avatar, even when it made no sense to do so.




I could put up with the fact that Kylo Ren is a Darth Vader fanboy or that Kylo Ren has unexplained skills in his background. 

What I couldn't put up with is that nothing internal to the movies really ever explains any of Kylo Ren's motivations.   We're left with the impression that he's just insane.  He is literally a villain who seems to be evil for its own sake.  He just snarls and chews up the scenery because that's what villains do.  We're never give enough to go on with his character.  And I want to compare how Kylo Ren is always a mystery to the way Vader's actions are understable like 99% of the time.  With the sole exception of his weakly done 'fall' scene where one moment he's like "we got to get rid of a Sith Lord" and the next moment he's like, "screw the Jedi", the audience is always given enough internally to the movies to understand why he's doing what he's doing.  When we are first introduced to Vader, he's not that complicated.  He's a loyal cog in the Evil Empire, one of its top lieutenants, but clearly a respected soldier and a servant of the mysterious Emperor in the background.  We can understand Vader's apparent motivations by his relationship to other members of the Imperial military, and he fits snugly into the archetype of "The Black Knight".  In fact, just in case you might miss it, he's literally given a black suit of armor and and a fearsome samurai helmet.  And if that wasn't enough, we get little bits of exposition like, "He was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil."  Our understanding of Vader as an audience starts solid and stays solid even as unexpected aspects of his character are revealed - including literally the greatest twist reveal in cinematic history.

But Kylo Ren never is anything but a mystery and the more we learn the more inexplicable he gets.  That's not clever.  That's not deep writing.  If there puzzle here, then a good writer knows what the answer to that puzzle is.  You see, Lucas may or may not have not worked out all his plot points ahead of time, but it didn't matter because his characterization was solid anyway.  Kylo Ren on the other hand has none of his plot points worked out ahead of time, but because his character is acting mysteriously and contrary to logic and reason there better be an answer - and there just isn't.  Vader has motives.  Palpatine has motives.  Kylo Ren seems to have no more motives than a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum and never outgrows that and the audience is never given an explanation.  What does he want other than to be a villain and why does he want to be a villain?  No answers.


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## GreyLord (Aug 4, 2022)

Deset Gled said:


> FWIW, you could say the same thing about Kylo Ren.  They made him a Darth Vader avatar, even when it made no sense to do so.
> 
> The most obvious example of this are the bizarre scenes of Kylo Ren being a fighter pilot.  Flying a spaceship is an amazingly complex job that takes years to learn.  It's a major part of identity and backstory for Luke and Annakin.  Why does Kylo Ren even know how to fly?  He a fighter pilot only because Luke and Annakin were.  Having that skill makes no sense.  His custom TIE fighter makes no sense.  Tactically, it makes no sense for him to fly it.  None of it makes any sense.  At least they managed to have Poe Dameron take the fighter pilot scenes away from Rey.




Well, not only is he related to Luke and Leia, both pretty decent pilots if the Original Trilogy has anything to say about it, he is also Han Solo's son.

Before he went to train with Luke he was probably RAISED in a cockpit flying a ship around.


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## Eric V (Aug 4, 2022)

Gradine said:


> The mistake here isn't that this scene is in conversation with the fandom. What it is in conversation with is all of the preceding movies and Rey's own misplaced needs. It ties to the reveal about Rey's parentage, her need to _be someone important. _But she's not. She's nobody. Because all of that stuff she thought was so important _wasn't_ (her need for her parents to be somebody being another flaw she has to deal with in the movie). It says that the force, or even just being a hero that the galaxy needs, doesn't have to mean being born into it. She's not some prophesied hero with a monstrous midichlorian count like Anakin, or even his son. *And when this kid, this nobody, uses the force, that tells us that maybe this kid, this nobody, will be a new hero. That it could be anyone. From anywhere.*
> 
> Of course, _Rise of Skywalker _proceeds to reverse basically every last one of those revelations and themes, which is why it's a terrible movie, but I've already established who I believe to be to blame for _that. _



I understand the point, but...hadn't it already been made countless times in the _Clone Wars_ series?  Maybe the scene was for people who only saw the movies?


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## Eric V (Aug 4, 2022)

Gradine said:


> Hey, this is what The Last Jedi's critics wanted. I take no pleasure in any buyer's remorse they may have over it.



If I may, there are definitely some people who disliked TLJ and it had nothing to do with MarySue-ism (I hate the term), the so-called "assassination" of Luke's character (as though people don't change after trauma and even just from getting older!), etc.  There are plenty of script/acting/directing reasons to not be a fan of TLJ.  I certainly did not want the somehow-worse RoS.


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## Older Beholder (Aug 5, 2022)

A part of me will always be curious how Solo would have turned out had Lord and Miller not been replaced.


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## dragoner (Aug 5, 2022)

Disney Star Wars is not that bad, actors, special effects are awesome, the writing really doesn't pop though, it is kinda dry. It is just that there are some things that can be done in a one off, or before the characters are totally established, that does not really work in a nth installment. Like the trash compactor scene in a New Hope, it was well done, and one figured they all were not going to die, but who knew? Maybe one would. Anyways, by the later installments, that sort of suspense really wasn't there in most scenes, because you knew the characters had to survive to the next movie.

My rankings are: Empire Strikes Back, Rogue One, and A New Hope. These really have memorable parts: "That's not part of the deal Vader!" The rest not so much.


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## Older Beholder (Aug 5, 2022)

Celebrim said:


> When we are first introduced to Vader, he's not that complicated.




In A New Hope Vader is just a weirdo in a robot suit, that's why he's interesting. I'm not sure the Prequels improved anything by making him Space Jesus.


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## Celebrim (Aug 5, 2022)

Older Beholder said:


> In A New Hope Vader is just a weirdo in a robot suit, that's why he's interesting. I'm not sure the Prequels improved anything by making him Space Jesus.




Actually, the Prequels don't make him Space Jesus.  They only make him someone that people are inclined to believe is Space Jesus.

And the result of that belief is utter destruction.

Although thinking about it, Lucas never suggests that Anakin ever lets the idea that he is Space Jesus go to his head.  It's not that that turns him into a monster.  Indeed, it's Obi Wan who calls out his disappointment with his false Messiah at the end when he says, "You were the Chosen One."


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