Yeah I think this basically it. The Empire's greatest victory was erasing just how messy and dysfunctional the Old Republic got, and you can make a reading that the New Republic just speedruns all of its late stage mistakes while only making window dressing improvements like rotating the capital.
A Star Wars movie that just starts out "And the New Republic broke away and successfully recreated the exact political moment before a genocidal tyrant took over! Unfortunately..." would have been great.
I rewatched the force awakens the other week and jj blowing up the entire republic was one of the most catastrophic decisions in the series imo. Such a massive bungle
Immediaty put me off the whole movie. All these cool characters I watched go through so much shit from the time I was a child and we never even get to see them enjoy ten minutes of the world they worked so hard to build. JJ just says nope, bigger death star, and blows it all up. Total hack.
Not only did he decide that but the movies never adequately explain it either. It's just... There, in the background, vital context they barely bother to share with the audience.
It should have shown the republic growing complacent and corrupt, stomping out dissent. So they're the new empire, and Kylo Ren and whoever become the new rebels. That would have required some guts, though.
On top of that it leads to one of the most egregious & audience-insulting mismanagements of stakes I've ever seen in any movie: having finn lie about knowing the superweapon's workings, jeopardizing billions more people, so that can try to rescue one person
I was already pissed when the sequels escalated drama by blowing up more stars in the first place instead of just making the bad guys more insidious or clever or popular or etc. like we get it you made a sequel
Absolutely! It really was just trying to shoehorn "a new hope" into a movie but like why does rey know how to fight with lightsabers like luke got his shit ROCKED in empire because he wasn't ready but "she's magic" because they really wanted a Kenobi v Vader moment
Doesnt she fight with the staff a couple of times? I don't really have problems with Rey grasping the force quickly. She's kind of already a desert ascetic with some fighting experience. She has a lot more life experience and self reliance than Luke did. It's a little silly that she can stand up to
A trained swordsman but I can live with it. Doubly so bc they actually made the fight look fairly good and impactful after all the over-avtive jumping around in the prequels. I think the saber fighting might be one of the only things I actually approve of in A Newer Hope.
It's absolutely bonkers to me that like the first thing we learn about Rey is she fights with a staff, and over the course of three movies never fights with a double-bladed lightsaber.
The folding saber is a vision of a Dark Rey. iirc she gets a double one at the very end of RoS, but we've only ever seen her use it in the Lego(!) specials (which is the only Star Wars my kid will watch)
She was a great character and her being from nothing was a lot of fun in TLJ especially with that broom ending too but yeah I think JJ just got really into "no she has to have lukes journey"
that bit they actually did work into her fight choreography, it was one of the bits I still really like.
Rey's fighting technique is all pokes and sweeping deflections, because she's fighting with a staff that is way shorter than shes used to, and meanwhile Kylo Ren is just pure tantrumming power
She's spent a lot of time taking care of herself in hard desert conditions while Ben is a spoiled rich kid school shooter. Rey's core motivation is a genuine desire for family and connections which is more or less what the Light is, while Ben is a fan boy with no real sense of self. In that regard
The series doesn't know what to do when the story isn't "scrappy small Rebellion versus overwhelming militaristic Empire," so they had to flip the table rather than figure it out.
I dunno, I might be able to blow up some planets too if I hollowed out a magic crystal planet, shoved and gun in it, and sucked up the sun every ten minutes
The reasons why they're actually bad had to lie low and marinate for a few years while the dumb chuds yelled themselves hoarse about the fact that it had girls in it
I have consistently been annoyed that there was never a good critical conversation about TLJ because the discourse stratified into Asshole Chuds versus everyone else
What l think may be true is that the people with legitimate issues with TLJ invested a lot of time into the extended universe stuff.
For people like me who mainly consumed the movies, it generally stands out as one of the best of the series.
Hard disagree. The lightspeed jump alone was Lore breaking. It just renders so many pass battles nonsensical. Why even build a Death Star when you can just strap a hyperdrive on an asteroid and achieve the same effect?
Oh totally fair and yeah it got poisoned with discourse. I liked it a lot upon rewatch but not at all in theaters so I’m never like “how dare you” about criticising it and also… it’s just a movie lol. Like it’s fun to hear other people’s opinions on why they loved or hated a movie
I felt this way about the Ghostbusters remake. The actresses had no chemistry. It felt like watching 4 stand-up comedians doing solo bits at each other, but there wasn't any room for that conversation what with the ongoing manbaby cataclysm. Then Shaun made a video about it and I was like THANK FUCK
My thought has always been that TLJ is a good movie on its own, but a terrible second movie of a trilogy. It does not pick up from the emotional beat of the preceding movie, and it leaves way too much to be resolved in the third movie. A reset to Zero was not the way to end it.
Finn and Rose's plot was potentially the most important plot point in the franchise. It's only pointless now, because Abrams apparently didn't even notice that it happened.
The original Ghostbusters was lightning in a bottle, capturing a bunch of people who knew improv comedy with their souls and letting them go on a script which should NEVER have worked.
But it did. It did so despite clearly having a visible weak link in Ernie Hudson's part of the script. (NOT HIM!)
i loved TLJ but i will concede that i have made a point of not watching it a second time for fear that whatever alchemy made it work for me in the theater will not replicate itself on the small screen
Rise of Skywalker, though, that one i've never watched and never will
That's right. There's nine films and that includes Rogue One. Fuck JJ Abrams. He had Rian Johnson set up some interesting plot strands for him and he threw those away in favour of the most boring fan service outcome.
He's got a hell of a long way on confidence and a pair of nerd glasses
JJ Abrams is the king god of fan service. “The Death Star but more” is as creative as he’s ever been. It hit so fucking hard when I saw it but I was irritated by the plagiarism the second the credits rolled
It's very funny because the Expanded Universe novels did like a half dozen takes on "The Death Star but more" and everyone thought that was the cheesiest, most hackneyed shit ever, where was all this hype over the Sun Crusher?
My guess is that nobody paid $17 to read expanded universe content on an imax screen. I’m not saying they wouldn’t, I’m just saying it hasn’t happened yet
That was the specter of the what could be (Death Star II only blows up a Rebel cruiser in the last act). We actually see what Starkiller Base can do right off.
I almost turned it off when they did the briefing and we found out there's another motherfucking *trench run*.
I mean, I loved the
OG trench run, and the new one didn't completely suck, but for the love of gods, either make a str8up remake, or get some *new material*.
My only Star Wars take is (well, two, I also want a standalone Lando movie) is there needs to be a Trilogy in the style of Top Gun that's just about Wedge Antilles and Rogue Squadron
Obviously all the Wraiths and Rogues are great, but also just think how much we're missing out never getting to see somebody ham it up as Zsinj. Such a loss for the world.
I will accept no casting other than Brian Blessed, getting ever more hysterically flummoxed at the antics of the Wraiths and his plans getting foiled yet again.
To be honest, and this is just my personal exp, but as a one time military person, the hammy/jokey/slapstick stuff is actually literally how you live your life in that situation.
You see these people 18 hrs a day and sleep the other 6. If yall don't come up with jokes you'd go insane and die
Technically only the New Republic Capital system were blown up in TFA, it was TLJ that had the entire New Republic Fall... offsceen in the opening crawl so.. yeah super lame what a missed opportunity.
It seems like every single EU/Legends story was "Death Star III," "Luke/Han/Leia/their kids," and "Palpatine didn't die so Empire II." The sequel trilogy somehow managed to do all 3, and poorly. Luke, Han, and Leia should have been 1-2 scene cameos and focus on Rey, Poe, Finn, and Ben.
And it would have been so much better if Rey *wasn't* a Palpatine, because it turns the entire feature film into Skywalker vs. Palpatine Family Feud instead of a much bigger story.
Everything that happens in Andor feels hollow if you zoom out to see the cyclical clusterfuck spanning tens of thousands of years in the Star Wars lore.
I personally just headcanoned they were the equivalent of Star Wars Iron Front getting ready to fight a fascist uprising being ignored by the New Republic's liberal democracy, but actually doing something with that would require a better writer than Abrams
i hate how the new republic acts in the booms (well specifically aftermath, i was mad enough i didn’t read the others). as soon as they can they basically disband the entire military. which if your universe is called star wars….maybe it could be useful
I think it's supposed to reference republics in antiquity where after the war soldiers went home to plow their fields? Except that wasn't even sustainable in antiquity let alone with galactic distances and star cruisers.
I swear the TFA visual guide established the NR fleet, even massively downsized, is still the largest in the galaxy. But then the FO fleet was always larger was established later? Thats always confused me
Honest to god if the magical fleet palpatine summons at the end of tros was ghost ships with no crew aboard animated by pure malevolent sith magic I would have respected that choice more than "no there's a million people here in the fleet hiding at the dead world, we're feeding them all somehow"
You mean The Dark Force Rising from the second of the HTTE Thrawn trilogy? The Katana Fleet was a New Republic virgin flight that picked up a hive virus at its first port and disappeared into hyperspace never to be heard from again.
Resolving this consistently - preferably with "it's all gone" - could have done a lot to give the movies better storylines.
The point of Last Jedi and the sequels should have been like what Kylo said: The Jedi and Sith have destroyed themselves and EVERYTHING, let's start over without them.
To be fair this was a struggle for the old EU as well. KJA’s Jedi academy series had a long forgotten imperial admiral become a major threat due to having 4! Star destroyers. Other books would describe such an amount as rather cute.
I remember thinking at the end of TLJ, if there’s only enough Resistance members left to fit on the Millennium Falcon, maybe your best bet is to just go build some huts on Dagobah and forget it
I had a very big problem with Jedis being back to being completely mythical in the short in-universe time between Episodes VI and VII while sitting in the theater, although I guess so many people memory holing COVID retroactively mostly fixes that bit for me.
i’m still confused about how when starkiller base destroyed all those distant planets at the same time, the good guys could see them all exploding from where they were standing. like suddenly the entire galaxy was the size of half a lunar orbit
I was so excited for TFA, and then as Starkiller fired and the beams, uh, intelligently?, targeted planets about which I knew nothing, I actually got teary-eyed and turned to my wife, saying "I have no idea what's going on." For all their flaws, I knew exactly what was going on in the prequels.
Well Palps was talking to Darth Maul on Coruscant, Maul called him 'Master,' Palps called him 'apprentice,' and Maul said "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge." So all that told me they were master and apprentice, that they were hiding themselves from Jedi, 1/
and that they had violence in mind. The mission Maul was sent on was clear also. So I had no confusion about Maul's purpose.
And the Trade Federation stuff was clear too. Palpatine wanted to be Chancellor, so as Sidious he started a crisis on his home planet in order to get rid of the 2/
Yeah, I don't really get the confusion about the trade war, it was a vehicle for Palpatine, who represented Naboo, to topple the existing Chancellor and get himself elected.
Darth Maul made sense in Ep 1, their relationship was adequately explained. Dooku wasn't as well explained, but I 1/
essentially figured "This was a desperation move by Sidious and Dooku will just be a placeholder until Anakin comes around," because everyone knew Anakin would be Vader at some point. 2/2
Right?? And I sh!t you not, I walked out of there thinking "would have been nice to see more Coruscant view as it was getting destroyed," only to be told weeks later that it WASN'T Coruscant, but some other planet, in a solar system of planets, and I shook my head for what felt like 10 minutes.
The prequels were shittily written with good foundations. The sequels were serviceably written with no foundation to speak of. Probably best evidenced by the overwhelming quantity of prequel/ot centered content as opposed to anything at or near the time of the sequels; they had shit to work with.
I didn't pick up on this as a kid but in IV you have Leia consoling Luke over a guy he'd just met like 9 hours ago when everyone she has ever known along with billions of her people were just incinerated.
A lot of the old EU was also essentially about the Republic eating shit, if not quite so fast. The struggles of a new regime to consolidate weren’t as attractive as let’s fight the Empire/Sith again.
We’ve been rewatching the movies this weekend, since my family remembered so little of them that “Andor was in Rouge One?” was a common question, and it’s such a bummer getting to the end of ROTJ knowing that the Empire is just gonna go on like this was a minor setback.
Agreed. Decided long time ago that TFA would be so much improved if New Republic and Imperial Remnant were both rival powers and Starkiller Base was a joint infrastructure project converted to a weapon.
They should have leaned into the political stuff they only lightly flirted with.
Disney should just do like comics and retcon away the last trilogy. Do a whole new post-ROTJ world like 1-200 years later, where all that happened after ROTJ was everyone lived happily ever after, and all the characters are new.
Comments
What? How did that happen?"
"Look! Han Solo!"
This happened roughly every ten minutes in the Sequels.
A Star Wars movie that just starts out "And the New Republic broke away and successfully recreated the exact political moment before a genocidal tyrant took over! Unfortunately..." would have been great.
And I LIKE her as a character!! She's insanely overpowered however
Rey's fighting technique is all pokes and sweeping deflections, because she's fighting with a staff that is way shorter than shes used to, and meanwhile Kylo Ren is just pure tantrumming power
I don’t like it but for other reasons dammit
For people like me who mainly consumed the movies, it generally stands out as one of the best of the series.
It was Finn and Rose and Poe's stuff I didn't care for, but only because they basically accomplished Jack Shit throughout the entire fucking film.
Finn and Rose's plot was potentially the most important plot point in the franchise. It's only pointless now, because Abrams apparently didn't even notice that it happened.
It sucks because Paul Feig didn’t understand what made ghostbusters work, not the actors.
But it did. It did so despite clearly having a visible weak link in Ernie Hudson's part of the script. (NOT HIM!)
Rise of Skywalker, though, that one i've never watched and never will
He's got a hell of a long way on confidence and a pair of nerd glasses
Future JJ: Hold my beer. What if there’s 1000 Star Destroyers and they all have Death Star guns?
I mean, I loved the
OG trench run, and the new one didn't completely suck, but for the love of gods, either make a str8up remake, or get some *new material*.
yub yub, commander
You see these people 18 hrs a day and sleep the other 6. If yall don't come up with jokes you'd go insane and die
And then Han showed up
The only person less thrilled with his presence was probably Harrison Ford
Plus I hoped Finn and Poe would fuck.
— man who caused a legendary number of new plot problems
“I need to come up with 300 pages of stuff for visual guide”
George Lucas: “he are 600 pages of notes and drawings, i guess you’ll have to cut a lot.”
Disney: “THIS ship has a REALLY BIG GUN, no wait TWO OF THEM!”
TFA: the first order has a planet-sized superweapon and the new republic exploded
TLJ: they have twenty ships total and the new republic doesn’t exist
ROS: they have FOUR HUNDRED STAR DESTROYERS and the new republic has a superfleet, for reasons
IMHO the biggest mishap with the sequels was not having one vision/director/writer.
Instead Disney played hot potato and both Johnson and Abrams had to work with a different preset film.
At the very least they should've kept Johnson on for film 3.
The point of Last Jedi and the sequels should have been like what Kylo said: The Jedi and Sith have destroyed themselves and EVERYTHING, let's start over without them.
They decided to make THE SAME MOVIES. TFA is a new New Hope. And from that premise, nothing could be salvage...
And the Trade Federation stuff was clear too. Palpatine wanted to be Chancellor, so as Sidious he started a crisis on his home planet in order to get rid of the 2/
Darth Maul made sense in Ep 1, their relationship was adequately explained. Dooku wasn't as well explained, but I 1/
The New Republic apparently has no military at all despite fighting Empire remnants for decades and then the inner core worlds all get vaporized.
Fucked the entire story from there out
Which mostly felt like a reason to make "the Rebellion 2: rebel harder", but still.
They should have leaned into the political stuff they only lightly flirted with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Newhart
The New Republic being incredibly incompetent and corrupt and dying to a stiff breeze comes straight from the old EU.