“Somehow, Palpatine returned”
No shit no one wants to watch this.
MarvelDisney just milks IPs for a super long time and anyone thinking otherwise are blind and gullible.Edit: whoopsie :l
Largely everything Disney makes now is trash. Everything is written by an executive and it’s always bad.
Well, don’t worry because now everything will be written by AI!
Onward is a good movie though
Literally put that on yesterday just as a background noise while cooking. Forgot about cooking for the most part to enjoy the movie.
Any original projects seem to be left mostly alone, so the creators can actually do their jobs…
All their sequels and IP though… they reek of focus groups and decisions made by Excel spreadsheets ….!
(Now I just remembered how Wish became a husk of its original plan… so disregard all that 🤣)
I can agree with that
Same reason I dont read the Mr Men books anymore.
Actually no, the Mr Men books arent completely shit.
Do you know who Poirot or Ms. Marple are? Ever heard of Agatha Christie? If so you might want to check out the two newest Mr. Men / Little Miss books.
Solid Freudian slip.
I mean, aint Marvel under Disney wing for a while? Same feathers, same bird.
The writing was just… so atrocious in the last trilogy. Like, no coherent themes or through lines, characters were bland and poorly executed, dialog was clunky and stilted, pacing was none existent and the story was disjointed with completely un-engaging stakes.
Like, some say “oh well that’s true of all the previous star wars films” and no, it wasn’t. Some of that was true of some elements of the first and second trilogy. But none were all of that at once.
I just have… no faith they’ll do anything interesting. Once is a fluke, twice is bad luck, three times is a pattern. Disney’s modern methodology for producing films is clearly flawed at some fundamental level. The chance that the corporate machinery has realized there is a problem, correctly identified it, and then actually fixed it is close to zero.
Plus Kylo-Ren is not scary or intimidating
He just seems like a force wielding spaz
So there is no threat, or sense of danger…zzzz
Having Kylo Ren and the First Order be a bunch of larping dweebs was almost fun back when the ‘alt-right’ was just a bunch of larping dweebs. I wish they’d kept the spirit of that interpretation.
Plus Kylo-Ren is not scary or intimidating
Adam Driver is terrible. He should stick to bad italian accents.
I feel like it was more direction?
He def conveyed petulant, angry force wielding spaz…and clearly no one told him not to
His acting in Marriage Story was pretty good, I agree that the directors/writers are mostly to blame for Kylo-Ren
The Force Awakens was cool, I would always defend that movie.
But 8 and 9 were incredibly bad movies and bad star wars media.
I remember sitting in the theater for Force Awakens. I remember the last preview finished, and I had a sense of excitement, because I didn’t know what would happen. It wasn’t based on a book or comic, it could be anything.
Then I watched A New Hope, but worse.
I understand it’s scifi, but the stupid planet laser is one of the dumbest things Ive ever seen. Was the beam faster than light? Did it go through hyperspace? How’d they focus the laser at stellar distances? Is it a super weapon because it can destroy a couple planets or because it can shoot a mega laser beam through hyperspace or snuff out a star? Idiots.
It’s fantasy, no star war film ever stood up to scientific scrutiny
That, and the bombers in space in The Last Jedi.
I have no problem with the bombers.
From a functional design it works. There’s artificial gravity inside the bomb bay and once they fall out of the floor they will continue in space on their inertia.
From a style point of view it works. Space battles in Star Wars was always a love letter to world war 2 dog fights. They are planes in space, not space ships. Always have been.
The love letter to dogfights thing doesn’t excuse complete stupidity. I’m not expecting Babylon 5 level of good space battles, but at the very least they could have treated it as a “escort the torpedo boats” fight and not a “bombing ground targets but in spaaaaaace”. Some one should have taken one look at the script/plan for that scene and said, “No, that’s stupid.”
What about the lasers with bullet drop in the same movie?
I’m not familiar with that.
Important to recognise they don’t shoot lasers in Star Wars. Their energy bolts have mass.
Honest question then - would the relatively small rebel (resistance?) ships have enough mass to generate a gravitational field that would have affected those energy bolts? Because they’re in the vacuum of space IIRC.
Erm actually it’s super heated plasma bolts which still have mass and are affected by gravity. At long range a noticable drop is still possible.
No cause those were cool
When the prequels came out, I didn’t love them, but I absolutely had to wear it the fact that we got more Star Wars. At the time we really didn’t expect to get any more out of the franchise. IMO Jar Jar notwithstanding, they were acceptable, but not up to the greatness of the originals. While far from perfect, they did tell a story, They added decent choreography and some reasonably pretty visuals.
The new trilogy tried to go all Kubrick on us.They try to tell a story through visual cues and really, it’s not doing a great job at it. The characters have Backstories, but they’re held from you until you’re getting three-quarters of the way through the movie trying to figure out what the hell is going on while they get around to tying in the original characters. Star Wars requires that exposition.And honestly, another Death Star, another critical flaw, its bigger, its scarier, its all really low effort bullshit.
It was great seeing Luke and Han again, I really wanted to like Rey, They just utterly failed to develop her character, and then the crak with Snoke. You just end up coming out of the movie, feeling like you didn’t understand half of what the new story is, and being utterly bored with the other half and all the horrible things happening to the protagonist that you don’t really care that much about.
They could’ve developed the different jedi codexes, but they just let them burn!
There’s so much canon and a million threads they could have picked up and pulled.
They could have taken a list of Star Wars media (books, video games, etc), sorted by highest rated of all time, and compiled a list of ideas that would have printed a legendary amount of money.
How they approached it was so foolish.
Being bland is worse than being bad.
I can watch comically bad sci fi. But… I can’t remember a thing about the last two movies of the trilogy. And I remember a whole lot of “meh” sci fi.
I can watch comically bad sci fi
Ordinarily I agree but dear god stay away from Rebel Moon, worst shit ever and not in a remotely fun way
I remember that one of them, I think the second one, is called The Scargiver. I couldn’t tell you who had a scar or who gave it. Those movies wish they were trash.
My favorite-least-favorite part is that in the first one, they give the fascist (who is a Hellsing-tier Nazi [love Hellsing tho], he’s not a fascist with an actual ideology, he’s just eviiiiil because he’s so eviiiiil) a shillelagh. Why? Who the fuck knows. And then in the end of the movie (no spoiler warnings, I am sparing you) he gets stabbed with it. He gets stabbed with a relatively blunt stick and that’s how he dies.
It’s just so bad. I’m in a similar boat as you, I’ll watch scifi even if it’s garbage. I watched all of Dark Matter, which is a scifi series that feels like Star Trek fanfiction written by an edgy 13-year-old goth kid (I am qualified to say that as a former edgy 13 y/o goth kid). It was miles more enjoyable than Rebel Moon. Even Morbius got me to laugh often, Rebel Moon just made me want to self immolate.
TLJ had me leave the theatre saying “that was terrible” haven’t touched it afterwards.
Yeah, because they suck.
As did the prequel trilogy.
And if we’re being honest, so did Return of the Jedi.
No Star Wars media can live up to the one that lives in our heads.
Fuck Disney.
This is the right and complete answer.
Andor shits on the rest of Star Wars, also Solo was good.
The rest? Mediocre at best.
I liked rogue one.
Mandelorean S1 was great
As is season 2.
Boba was Mando season 2.5 and while the Mando moments are good, it comes too soon and the Boba story is messy.
Mando season 3 also has good moments, but it needed at least two seasons to tell the story, but instead it’s rushed it so they can make a film.
People complain about having to wait 2 years for 8 episodes of TV, Mando season 3 to the film is waiting three years for about 2-3 episodes.
I preferred S1 where it’s just a dad on the run with his adopted son, before they started trying to add all these tie-ins to more “mainline” Star Wars lore.
So I agree, but it’s impossible to keep Baby Yoda in a bottle. Any other Jedi or potential Jedi species and you can play that out however you want. But Baby Yoda? You can’t ignore that.
I understand conceptually the idea of not tying it to mainline lore… But Baby Yoda? You can’t ignore that.
Sure you can. Grogu is a rare and powerful species, but nothing about the story necessitates meeting CGI Luke Skywalker.
Ahsoka was fun.
Like that isn’t happening to The Phantom Menace?
Which is by far the worst Star Wars movie of them all.
No, the final film is by far the worst.
Somehow they’re still making these movies.
The last two of the new trilogy are borderline unwatchable. Just abysmal, b-movie level storytelling.
I think people have forgotten how to write good movies since it’s been such a long period of remakes and franchise garbage.
Plus corporate greed and algorithms have resulted in cookie cutter scripts that “should please the largest amount of people” or some shit like that.
Everything is made to me inoffensive to anyone and appeal to the widest variety of people.
There’s no movies that tailor to a specific audience anymore, where 20-30% of people will think it’s amazing, instead 40-60% of people might think “meh, might as well watch it”
I think people have forgotten how to write good movies
No, they still write good movies. The problem is that the money-men will not fund good movies because all they want is a big return on their investment. That means that they only fund sequels and spinoffs of previously successful properties. Only on rare occasions does anything new get funded and even then the decision is based on something other than the quality of the story.
There are lots of good stories out there that will never get turned into movies or shows simple because the people who make the decisions are trying to make money rather than art.
I have absolutely no desire to see any of the three again, sadly
The first one of the new set was ok. Slightly darker overtones.
Backing up a bit - the second trilogy had an all-star cast, yet a wooden log had more writing skill, acting ability, and charisma than the people on the screen. It was like people in a classroom being told to take turns reading out loud from the assigned book. The lack of acting and directorial skill was made up for by the abuse and overuse of CGI. Awful. I have never watched the second set since release. Lump the Boba Fett series in with this set, it was so wooden and poorly written they had to bring in the Mandalorian to rescue it.
Han Solo? Throwaway movie. Really didn’t do the character justice. Turned him into an Errol Flynn “Robin Hood”. I think everyone’s forgotten about it even existing.
The new set? Love the practical effects. Way less CGI. Awesome. But now the acting was ridiculous and over the top as were the characters. I know she gets some hate, but I think Ridley did a decent job of it with what she was given. The rest? Meh. Just written crazy with shameless bad writing, merch placement, and trite lines.
We’ll have to see about the new Mando movie.
Best Star Wars? ANH, ESB, R1, Andor. Some of the Mandalorian series. Probably some of the animated ones, but I haven’t watched them.
Eh, turned into more of a critique than I wanted, but I guess I’ll leave it.
Best Star Wars?
The Clone Wars. Hands down.
Bad Batch
The Bad Batch episodes were great. The Bad Batch show was weak IMO.
I actually prefer Rebels.
What do you think of the original trilogy?
Kinda covered that, but ANH (which wasn’t ANH on release…) gets full marks for being first even if it is kinda silly at times. ESB is great. Darker, more serious, the cast and writers hit their stride. ROTJ is pretty much of the same vein as TLJ or TROS. A rehash or retread of already done themes with fluffy happy critters perfect for toy sales. Not great, but not awful. I liked it as a way to say goodbye to characters I never thought I’d see again. Man, was I wrong.
Ok, sorry, I’m not much of a star wars fan and I didn’t recognize the abbrevations.
No worries.
I know it’s been beaten to death but I just finished re-watching all 9 + rogue one, and can confirm there’s no reason for anyone to go back to the sequel trilogy. TFA gets some credit as a solid popcorn flick but doesn’t change the fact it’s retreading ANH, just to have every original story beat crushed by TLJ. By the time I got to Rise of Skywalker I was totally checked out, it’s just noise and explosions with a plot that is borderline incomprehensible.
Rogue One is the only one of these new movies that I really enjoy and re-watch. I really didn’t expect Disney to allow that ending for the rebels sent Scarif but I’m glad they did. I also kinda love how they blend it into Episode IV.
And I think Transformers 2 is one of the greatest films of all time, up there with The Godfather and Citizen Kane.
You can just say you didn’t like Rogue One you don’t need to be sarcastic about it.
TLJ is what I think gave the sequel trilogy… hope.
TFA is very much a nostalgia grab re-tread of ANH. Which is the point. Evil has come back and something something it rhymes.
TLJ is all about breaking the cycle. The hero? She isn’t a chosen one. She is a random unhoused garbage goblin. The reluctant hero? He isn’t coming back for selfish reasons (wanting to bang Leia) and is instead realizing that he is part of something bigger than him. The confident scoundrel? He got told quite definitively that he is a childish moron who gets people killed and to do better.
And Luke? if he was really The Chosen One… why did everything repeat? The stories of our parents aren’t gonna solve things so let’s try something new. Let’s democratize force powers. Let’s ACTUALLY fight against tyranny.
And then China allegedly got pissed and Disney had JJ come back to undo everything in the first 30 minutes of ROS. And only really succeeded in making a movie that EVERYBODY hates.
That said? Rogue One and Andor were somehow snuck in there and those are very much a Star Wars made for people who grew up watching the prequels. And it is amazing for it.
Sorry, who is the reluctant hero and who is the scoundrel? I think the latter is Kylo, but who wants to bang Leia in TLJ??
Rogue one and Amdor are indeed stories for people who grew up
Luke was never the Chosen One, I think you’ve misinterpreted. It was Anakin who defeated the Sith. Luke just scored an assist.
Luke was possibly a second try for the Force (which assumes some type of agency, but any of these theories do). Anakin met all the Chosen One criteria, except he turned (thanks to the Jedi Council and Palpatine’s manipulations of them all). Luke was both a redemption for Anakin, a removal of the breaker of the prophecy (Palpatine), and a hope for the future. A second Chosen One, one who might be as or more powerful than Anakin in his prime, since he has the blood and gift but not Anakin’s personal trauma that haunts and detracts him.
I think the biggest flaw of the sequels was the vagueness of why Luke couldn’t renew or reimagine the Jedi again in a better form. It’s glossed over to give a minimal backstory for Kylo, Snope is even more unclear and ended up being nothing, and why it drove Luke into isolation still isn’t really told.
I liked TFA. I didn’t like the start of TLJ. I expected a better thing that Luke just “meh” with the saber and the apathy towards everything. I wanted something deep and dramatic, tragic even. I was okay with Rey being no one special, that actually was the best part of TLJ (the end with the kid and broom). That seemed very interesting to follow.
Then it lost me fully.
Technically Anakin brought balance to the force. There used to be a bunch of Jedi and a few Sith. Because of Anakin, now there are a few Jedi and a few Sith.
Shoot, what was that comic where Yoda demonstrated his concerns about Anakin using salt and pepper? He dumped them both out, stuck his finger in the middle, and blew all the rest off the table. He lifted his finger, showing only a few grains of each left, and said “balanced, it is”
I hadn’t heard that China might have pressured Disney about the democratization of heroism, but… I could see it. I agree TLJ felt like a bit of a downer – especially coming from the abandoned Expanded Universe novels where Luke hadn’t done the best job but at least had set a direction for Jedi to come back into the galaxy. I still don’t love Rey’s encounter with the dark side.
But the disruption of every story beat, the possibility of being a hero because YOU choose to step forward, that was a great twist. The broom scene should have set the direction of the terribly named Episode 9…
Maybe I’ll slip Rogue One in and drop Episode 9. Still 9 movies, and only really regret the first one.
I loved young Jedi knights!
Luke was the son of the evil warlord who single handedly changed the fate of not just The Rebellion but also The Galaxy (and yes, I know the EU expanded on that to make it less the case). Was he the one in the prophecy? No. But from a narrative/trope perspective, he was 100% The Chosen One.
TLJ wasn’t really a middle story, though. It was a downer ending. After that there was nowhere to go without a generational time skip and a completely new story that would be inappropriate for a trilogy. There was no big antagonist anymore, there was barely any protagonist left, and every dangling plot thread was ruthlessly cut short.
Contrast it with ESB and you see with that you while have a bittersweet end to the movie, you do not have an ending of the story. Lucas even left room to bring back Han who he just sort of killed.
This comment really perfectly sums up how I feel … TLJ ends with SO MUCH POTENTIAL in my eyes.
Harumph.
Potential for a completely unrelated future story, not the end of the one they were trying to tell. TLJ is why RoS is as bad as it is. It sacrificed the future for a subversion level high score.
I think a third part could have been really well done from where TLJ ended … you have a goodie who has literally come from nothing and maybe doubts herself as a result, and a baddie who got that way because he came from a dynasty of important people and believes his own press.
From there a story could be woven on the themes of them both changing who they are, how they see their respective worlds … to achieve success, or forgiveness, or love.
I’m not sure pivoting to a romance movie for the finale would have been any better received.
Love doesn’t necessarily mean romance - it was mentioned that Ren had been sent away too early, so his weakness for the dark side may have been there because of a lack of parental love, for example
Disney pitch room:
“Okay, hear me out. What if: … a bigger Death Star!”
“Excellent! What will we call it?”
“Hmm… how about Star Killer!”
“GENIUS.”
Same, I started rise of Skywalker, and only after the ridiculous opening sequence I was already done with the whole thing. And I love Star Wars.
I still can’t believe some writer penned “some how, palpatine returned” into the script and didn’t light the whole draft on fire right there. I guess between the hamfisted bloodline reveal and the magical sith dagger guiding the way to the star destroyer parking lot - who cares at that point. Fuck it, send it.
Oscar Isaac did an interview recently where he revealed that line was added in reshoots. So that line was written in an attempt to fix whatever catastrophic wreck the script was in before then.
I’m imagining some writer going “wait a minute, did we ever explain why Palpatine was back?” And then writing that and leaning back with a smug “whew. Nailed it.”
As bad as it is, that line and “they fly now” are Lucas level shit dialogue and the only two memorable lines from the trilogy. Compare that to the atrocious dialogue of the prequels that have become such beloved memes you don’t even have to add the words.
That palps line represents so much more than the dialog quality to me though. It’s all about the context, TRoS built up nothing around this and suddenly jumps sideways into a plot that neccessated invalidating a significant moment of the original trilogy. It’s jarring as a viewer and there’s no explaination for why it’s happening. THEN the film has the audacity to imply through dialog, actually the audience should not worry about the details - this is what we’re doing. Almost feels insulting in some ways.
I agree. It’s just a snippet of Lucas level dialogue in a trilogy that otherwise isn’t Lucas grade throughout. SW fans may have shat on the Prequels when they came out but have more or less forgiven and embraced them for what they were because the hardcore fans know George is a great visionary, terrible execution. The actors did the best they could and there’s a charm to what the director wanted to convey but the clunkiness of the words. The shift from Hayden and Ahmed hate to fan love shows that realization. SW now operates in two realities. The realistic grimdark of Andor, or the classic good vs evil camp of Lucas. The sequels delivered neither.
I still can’t make it through rewatching the prequels, which premiered my first year of college.
I think nostalgia will probably polish the sequel turds just like it has done with the prequels.
I just want the in fucked with OG prints in 4K, and I’ll rewatch Andor and Rogue One, and even fucking Skeleton Crew one more time.
Sure hut fans where demanding it. I thought they where going anyone can have the force. They shown it with little kid and broom. But all fans where like she has to be somebody there is no way she can’t be a nobody. Has to be blah blah blah. And the SIMPs Disney are now they are like let’s give it to them.
I will give Rise of Skywalker one thing and one thing only: Babu Frik. I know he was probably designed by committee to be cute and endearing, but man I love that little dude.
As a fan of the Dark Empire comics, I had already accepted that Palpatine returning was a possibility. The lack of any real storyline hinting at that in the two movies leading up- I expected disappointment. And I got what I expected, though visually Exegol/life support Sheev was cool. The idea that he had an entire fleet of Death Star Destroyers fully staffed and just chilling was implausible. That they were dependent on one transmitter was ludicrous. That the attack run on them was a cavalry charge of space horses was one of the stupidest fucking thing I’ve seen on film.
What pisses me off about that movie is that they spend a fair bit of time building out that Rey has super powerful force healing. So, like, what if she healed Palpatine? What if the ending to this saga of endless galactic war was not more death, but an act of healing? Maybe Palpatine still dies, but he’s at least made aware of what he’s done or something.
Nope. Rey use two lightsaber. Rey block real good. Palpatine go dust dust.
HEY-HEY!
The best part about the whole modern star wars franchise is the endless parodies mocking them.
Jedi Party, by Auralnauts, is my preferred way of watching the Prequels.
Auralnauts is canon as far as I’m concerned.
BEHOLD! THE SINGULARITY ENGINNNNNNNE! CAN YOU SEE ME NOW, FATHERRRRR?!?
Auralnauts are geniuses of satire and of god damned audio mixing, it’s genuinely sublime what they made of it all. I really love their Larry! series.
Creepio, have you seen… anybody?
It’s the strangest thing, they’re all dead. You killed them!
Master sir, what are Midichlorians?
It’s Heroin.
