Fuck Disney.
This is the right and complete answer.
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.
Rogue One was legitimately great. Probably because it broke the Star Wars mould.
Something that I think helps it stand out is that it doesn’t rely nearly as much on “marvel style” humor. There are some funny moments but they’re more character driven you know? Like when K-2 slaps Cassian to sell the idea to the Imperials that K-2 is in charge.
And I think Transformers 2 is one of the greatest films of all time, up there with The Godfather and Citizen Kane.
You can just say you didn’t like Rogue One you don’t need to be sarcastic about it.
Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane and the Godfather
Same, I started rise of Skywalker, and only after the ridiculous opening sequence I was already done with the whole thing. And I love Star Wars.
I still can’t believe some writer penned “some how, palpatine returned” into the script and didn’t light the whole draft on fire right there. I guess between the hamfisted bloodline reveal and the magical sith dagger guiding the way to the star destroyer parking lot - who cares at that point. Fuck it, send it.
Oscar Isaac did an interview recently where he revealed that line was added in reshoots. So that line was written in an attempt to fix whatever catastrophic wreck the script was in before then.
I’m imagining some writer going “wait a minute, did we ever explain why Palpatine was back?” And then writing that and leaning back with a smug “whew. Nailed it.”
As bad as it is, that line and “they fly now” are Lucas level shit dialogue and the only two memorable lines from the trilogy. Compare that to the atrocious dialogue of the prequels that have become such beloved memes you don’t even have to add the words.
That palps line represents so much more than the dialog quality to me though. It’s all about the context, TRoS built up nothing around this and suddenly jumps sideways into a plot that neccessated invalidating a significant moment of the original trilogy. It’s jarring as a viewer and there’s no explaination for why it’s happening. THEN the film has the audacity to imply through dialog, actually the audience should not worry about the details - this is what we’re doing. Almost feels insulting in some ways.
I agree. It’s just a snippet of Lucas level dialogue in a trilogy that otherwise isn’t Lucas grade throughout. SW fans may have shat on the Prequels when they came out but have more or less forgiven and embraced them for what they were because the hardcore fans know George is a great visionary, terrible execution. The actors did the best they could and there’s a charm to what the director wanted to convey but the clunkiness of the words. The shift from Hayden and Ahmed hate to fan love shows that realization. SW now operates in two realities. The realistic grimdark of Andor, or the classic good vs evil camp of Lucas. The sequels delivered neither.
I still can’t make it through rewatching the prequels, which premiered my first year of college.
I think nostalgia will probably polish the sequel turds just like it has done with the prequels.
I just want the in fucked with OG prints in 4K, and I’ll rewatch Andor and Rogue One, and even fucking Skeleton Crew one more time.
Sure hut fans where demanding it. I thought they where going anyone can have the force. They shown it with little kid and broom. But all fans where like she has to be somebody there is no way she can’t be a nobody. Has to be blah blah blah. And the SIMPs Disney are now they are like let’s give it to them.
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.
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.
I really loved The Last Jedi and how Rian tried to take it in a new direction. But the sequel series was honestly all over the place.
The Force Awakens was good but essentially a copy & paste of A New Hope. While Rise of Skywalker just did a 360 to change what The Last Jedi built upon and threw in Palpatine out of nowhere.
The original trilogy is the only one where all of them were good.
The first half of The Last Jedi is feeling off. I liked the second half though. When the ship is crashing into that monster ship it was such a cool moment in the cinema. Everyone was quiet and then that sound. So cool. I loved how Luke showed up. The betrayal on Snoke and the fight between Kylo and Rey was great too.
But in general I expected something fresh. They could have said that Luke fucked off to learn about Jedi and that not everything is black and white, but no, it has to stay black and white. Jedi good, Sith bad, no in-between. Would’ve made a better story. And then in part three they could’ve solved the issue with coming together for once.
I understand what you mean. I think it would have been nice to have something unique like not all sith are pure evil or not all Jedi are good.
I know some of the other shows portray this concept to varying degrees.
Tap for spoiler
What I liked the most with The Last Jedi was how Rey was just an ordinary person. Not a Skywalker or someone special and I felt that was really the most interesting aspect to me.
People absolutely hated the prequels when they came out. They were a joke with badly written dialogue and cartoon characters, at least for the adults of that era. But when the children of that era grew up, these children looked at the prequels with fondness and the bad dialogue became modern viral memes.
So maybe the same will happen with the sequels. The only issue is that social media have ruined the brains of children. I feel all conventional media will soon become irrelevant.
No one has the attention needed to watch a movie anymore, not even in the background while surfing the internet. People just have youtube or twitch or tiktok in the background.
The prequels were made with kids as the target audience. I’m not sure who the target audience was for the sequels, but it wasn’t kids.
I gave Disney the benefit of the doubt when they shelved the EU and JJ talked about doing something completely new. I was impressed by the lengths they went to to get the look right (even hunting down the original lenses). I went to quite some lengths avoiding spoilers.
It didn’t take long in cinema to realise I was watching a soft reboot trying to dismantle the original trilogy. I felt betrayed and disgusted. Since then I haven’t touched anything Star Wars and completely started to boycott everything Disney.
If you ever decide to try again, I would recommend Rogue One and Andor. They’re the best movie and best show to come out of the nonsense.
I haven’t seen any of the sequels, but why do they keep letting JJ Abrams write/direct movies? He ruined Star Trek too.
I was a big fan of 2009’s Star Trek. Saw it a bunch in theaters. I’ve rewatched it a time or two recently (wife digs it) and, aside from the cast, I really don’t like it. It doesn’t feel like Star Trek (and I’m someone who will find things to defend about Discovery and loved Starfleet Academy while DS9 remains my all-time favorite series). But boyhowdy is Chris Pine great as Kirk. Zachary Quinto is also phenomenal as Spock. I could actually go either way with the castings of Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu. But Karl Urban as McCoy must be defended at all costs.
Abrams, when it comes to Star Trek and Star Wars feels like he’s making what popular culture thinks of those franchises and not what the franchises themselves are all about, if that makes sense. It’s almost a parody.
yeah, he’s trying to make money. you do that by appealing to the LCD, violence and sex and easy to digest plots full of tropes.
thoughtful sci fi is niche, it doesn’t make any money.
because people love his 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.
Hey don’t insult b-movies
