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It’s still by far the best of the sequels, because it’s actually trying to do something. Rian Johnson has heard of themes before, and some of his movies have them, which is more than I can say for JJ Abrams. Plus Star Wars has always had problems with its starships just being WW2 era navy battles, it’s just more obvious here.
They’re better than the sequels. Interesting ideas explored badly are still way better than 7 or 9.
They hardly even have that interesting of ideas.
7 is better than every prequel. Craft matters. Nothing saves the atrocious dialogue, camera work, editing, etc of the prequels. 7 is a retread and a simple adventure, but it’s at least well made, acted, paced, and shot. There’s nothing wrong with simple adventures, especially when the prequels aren’t exactly arthouse.
9 is the only one that gets prequel bad because of the rushed editing of the opening and the comic book level plot. Even then, it’s only about as bad as ROTS and I’d still probably watch that garbage over AOTC.
Been a while, only saw it in theaters. What themes did 8 have? There was one scene that had absolutely zero effect where Benicio del Toro says “weapons dealers sell to both side.” Rose’s line about saving what we love instead of fighting?
I thought the stuff with Luke and Rey was interesting, about how you have to let go of the past and all that. I don’t think the themes of 8 are amazingly complex or impressively told, but they still make it better than 7 and especially 9.
See that theme could have been effecive, if it wasn’t undermined by the end of the movie. Rey and Luke went back to being Jedi (Rey even keeps the sacred texts) and Kylo Ren became a sith lord. “Let go of the past” but still end up recreating the exact scenario that the movie began in, except worse off.
star wars space battle is so entirely devoid of consisentcy and logic you really just have to take it at its face and not think about it. star wars ships are literally like napoleonic sailing ships transposed to space with ‘lightspeed’ being the maguffin that lets the plot traverse wide distances
in this case they were doing like a master & commander ship pursuit shtick
doing like a master & commander ship pursuit shtick
But doing it poorly.
Man a Star Wars movie or episode of a show that actually rips off Master and Commander well would be so cool. Imagine seeing the gritty daily life onboard a Republic cruiser, with 1970s computers filling up entire rooms, droids beeping at each other and naval officers doing complicated star chart navigation, and engineers doing maintenance in tight industrial corridors. There’s a subplot about a reactor leak that takes a few lives midway through the story, there’s tension between the officers and the crew who are clearly from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and it all ends with a climactic engagement against a Star Destroyer. Throw in a POV character who has a bit of a spiritualistic point of view (maybe a force using culture that isn’t the Jedi) and you’ve got a perfect Star Wars story.
as a reformed star wars nerd who grew up before the prequels and read a ridiculous amount of the sw universe books, the prospect of a star wars show/movie that doesn’t include ANY of the canon characters and just gets into some interesting corner of the universe is the only thing that keeps me checking in on star wars at all. I’d love some gritty noir detective thing, and if disney has to do callbacks let news or chatter around the characters refer to big events in the canon.
Mandalorian felt like such a breath of fresh air for this reason. Plenty of callbacks to the movies but they were all incidental to the main characters and plots. Then they started putting shit in from The Clone Wars, and it started getting worse.
gritty
imagine a zach “not a single theme in alan moore’s watchmen penetrated my thick skull” snyder star wars movie
[ancient lamentation music]
pump have you ever watched a star wars movie everything is literally covered in grit and it is gritty pump
So what you want is like, Battlestar Galactica if they maintained the old 70’s sets and charms lol
Or at least until the new show shat the bed with the plot
Also that just plays into my favourite pet theory on Star Wars, which is that it gets more interesting the fewer Jedi are actually involved with the plot
it gets more interesting the fewer Jedi are actually involved with the plot
fuck yes. thats what made star wars galaxies so fun to play before they made it too easy to be a jedi. its much better when a force user showing up somewhere borders on coming across an eldritch horror or some shit
Basically yeah.
My theory on great Star Wars media is this: take a “Genre” plot, add a sci-fi coat of paint, and give it just a little bit of mysticism. The OT is a hero’s journey with some cool force bits. The Mandalorian is a western with the cool Mandalorian culture/religion. The good episodes of Star Wars Visions are just Shounen Anime and/or Samurai movies with the force, and the same could be said of the good plotlines from The Clone Wars.
The prequels and sequels all fall apart because despite the billions of dollars dumped into their special effects, bad writing is bad writing. Seriously every single one of those movies feels like a first draft, I have no idea how they kept making this mistake over and over again after Episode I George Lucas should have had his typewriter taken away from him and Disney should have found somebody to write the sequels that wasn’t involved with Batman v Superman.
it gets more interesting the fewer Jedi are actually involved with the plot
One of my favorite pieces of star wars anything is the one where a zombie outbreak happens aboard an imperial prison ship. It was gripping, violent and there wasn’t a single jedi around to nerd it up. Also zombie wookies
TLJ elicits this weird contrarianism where people hype it up as good and clever because it does something different from the usual Star Wars movies, but actually it’s just dogshit from beginning to end and all tropes are subverted in the laziest, most nonsensical ways possible.
I remember someone doing a quick review of the space battle in the opening scene where they pointed out that a small change in the First Order’s formation or a change in the dreadnought’s first target would’ve ended the movie right then and there with the Resistance crushed, followed by pointing out that the video author could’ve made the same argument for about half the movie with ease. The plot literally only works if every single person in the movie grabs hold of the Idiot Ball from the title sequence onwards.
Edit: As if to prove my point, here’s a thread full of people going “IT’S THE ONLY GUD STAR WARS MOVIE!!!1” as if tESB isn’t sitting right there being better in every way.
Here’s one that’s gonna piss you off: If the giant enemy ship can track them through hyperspace, why don’t they all just fly off in a different direction? The enemy dreadnought can chase down one of them, but you can save 95% of your fleet - compared to the “until we run out of gas” plan which ends up getting 95% of the fleet destroyed.
I like TLJ’s themes and the Rey/Kylo/Luke stuff but the script needed to be reworked from scratch. Oh and the bombers thing was almost fine - Star Wars space battles are just WW2 dogfights, so the concept of strategic bombers in space fits, but the way they all blow each other up is extremely stupid and the fact that they apparently only needed one of the twenty bombers they sent out to actually destroy the enemy ship negates the sacrifice of everyone else (and is your first indication that the Resistance’s command is hilariously incompetent).
I DEMAND HYPERREALISM IN MY SPACE OPERA WHERE X-WINGS AND TIE FIGHTERS HAVE MADE AEROBATIC MANEUVERS IN A VACUUM SINCE THE VERY FIRST MOVIE
The entire rebel subplot is by far the worst part of that movie. I remember reading some early leaks (probably just 4chan bullshit) about the chase taking place in some kind of nebula where everyone’s ships would be flying blindly and it would’ve been some kind of cat and mouse submarine deal.
Instead we get this goofy extended pursuit that appears to last like a week given Rey spends several nights on that ocean planet lol. No wonder folks got antsy and mutinied.
