[The new crap] Helps to reveal it never really was “good”.
Helps to revisit the old stuff to start seeing the flaws…
The comedian Stewart Lee (not to be confused for the Steward Lee involved with Star Wars), had some astute observations in some interview, pointing out the confusion in it, like around princess Leia… She’s a princess, but helping the rebels, but also racist against the wookie… XD
It’s very freeing to realise how much it does not make sense, riddled with inconsistencies, a hodgepodge of ideas copied from far superior sci-fi, cinema, and literature.
I feel like it was a cheesy space opera, until it tried to pivot to the Marvel style action comedy dressed up as hero epic.
Cheesy, theatrical one-liners (“You failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”) are replaced by quips that try to be humorous (“Every word of what you just said was wrong”) instead. The textbook dramatic arc of conflict, catastrophe and resolution is replaced by a comicbook escalation of ever greater threats. The final conflict of Ep VI was spiritual in nature, where Ep IX saw the Evil Wizard Reborn reach into his magic hat and pull out a fleet so massive that the only way to destroy it is a supercharged reprise of “dying lightning blast”.
Whether they’re good isn’t relevant here. Both are cliché executions of their respective genres, but cliché doesn’t have to be bad, nor does it strictly need to be good to be entertaining. My point is that they’re different genres to begin with, and it’s that genre shift that prompts fans of one genre to find the things they dislike about the other.
I think I could have enjoyed the Sequels as an “entertaining enough in the theatre” series, if they weren’t such a jarring departure from the setting and associated expectations they were tacked onto.
Goes for a lot of things in life
Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, DC; it’s all creatively exhausted corporate entertainment product at this point.
This happened for me less than half an hour into The Phantom Menace.
All the people who know how it supposed to be good are left by now. Only those who have no idea how good it used/supposed to be stayed. Nobody else but them cares if they say “it’s good now”. In other words: fanboy echo chamber.
Star Wars were always as stupid as they are now. The only reason you think something changed is that you grew older. Motherfuckers who were like 7 when they listened to I hate sand monologue, believe that sttar wars is supposed to be something other than pew pew lasers in space
It’s a kids movie about space wizards!
That one scene in that one specific movie doesn’t really compare to modern SW movies. Prequels were not as good as original Trilogy mainly due to attempting to be modern style movies. And even original movie had this specific kissing scene that got deleted later for a very peculiar reason. We can complain about each movie. But man, nothing can beat “Somehow, Palpatine returned”.
spoiler
Rogue One was quite good, actually.
I absolutely love Epsiode 9 and have watched it several times (generally in the background, mind you) because it feels like the creators decided to give up on making an actually good movie and instead double down on camp.
I mean, come on, not only does Palpatine return, but the first quote of the movie is:
The dead speak! The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, a threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE.
Absolute camp gold.
"It’s-a clear desa separatists made a pact wesa desa Federation du Trade. Senators, "dellow felagates. In response to this direct threat to the Republic, mesa propose that the senate give immediately emergency powers to the supreme chancellor
This beats somehow returning palatine for sure. But forget that one, the main central guy of all 6 movies turns out to be immaculately conceived by a bunch of medichlorians whatever they are, and y’all are ok with that now. I vividly remember how everyone was up their buttholes about that 20 years ago, but now it’s a great cinema apparently and only new thing bad. And if you think original plot made more sense, your judgement is just clouded by nostalgia, because it was the same nonsense and the same cycle of criticism.
The only reason I dislike somehow palpanite returning more than the rest of the nonsense, is because they fucked up a nice theme about everyone being worthy of force that was beginning to emerge. And this only shows that they actually had a theme going on that could be fucked up.
Who the fuck said “its good now”??? lol out these lying cunts!
Andor might be good, but its not Star Wars. And yes, I know some will clutch their pearls at that. But its a fact. Star Wars is supposed to be high adventure. Andor was more focused on being cerebral. It was a fantastic show, and it had some truly gripping moments, but it wasnt Star Wars. It wasnt “fun” in that classic sense. And to be honest, it had no business being called “Andor”. He wasnt the focus, he was only part of the story. It should have been called “Rebellion” or something alone those lines.
I dont know why Disney is so averse to making more of what everyone loved about the OGs, but here we are. Not one single thing they have made is in the spirit of the OGs and their love of the old serials that George watched when he was a boy.
The original trilogy is enjoyable, and The Empire Strikes Back stands out as the strongest of the three.
Andor is top tier, with Rogue One serving as a decent conclusion.
Beyond that, nothing else really leaves a lasting impression for me.
The sequel trilogy sucks. Nothing they (Disney) come out with comes to par with TOR which was for the few trailers it had, were the only thing that captured the essence and vibe of Star Wars since the original 2D Clone Wars animated show. The Mandalorian is alright but it has too many Disney aspects to it that remind of how they mucked up sequel trilogy. GL failed us and sold the franchise to this realms Jabba The Hut.
I really liked Andor, but that’s because it was trying to be a political spy thriller first, and a star wars show second.
Most Disney Star Wars is really in love with the fact that its Star Wars, to the point that it feels like a child smashing their toys together, than an actual show or movie
Disney Star Wars is really in love with the fact that its Star Wars, to the point that it feels like a child smashing their toys together
Mood.
In a similar vein, I’ve been calling anything post-buyout as “Disney fanfiction”. Some fanfiction is great! But it’s not canon.
I’m proud to have kept my anti-Star Wars stance for so many years now. Yes, a good amount of it is spite because people in general won’t stop talking about it; However, I’ve seen enough of the films to find them not entertaining. I won’t claim that anything I like is superior, it’s just been more fun to tell people that I don’t give a flying fuck about Star Wars.
Simple. Star Wars has 6 episodes, and that’s it. The rest is odd fan fiction that happens to be filmed in Hollywood. Now, enjoy!
Three, actually. They never got around to making 1-3
They made more star wars after 1977?
the One, True Star Wars fan. XD
Star War fan
I spy an old, but respectable man
wait, i’ve seen this one before!
What’s a rerun?
Simple. Star Wars has 3 episodes, and that’s it. The rest is odd fan fiction that happens to be filmed in Hollywood. Now, enjoy!
circa 2000.
I’m not so sure you got the joke. You made a Back to the Future reference so I followed up with another one.
you are correct. XD
Andor
Trek, baby.
Call me when they make a competency porn series again.
I’m over emotion trek.
ay, they hate each other too. XD same shit, different galaxy. XD
but if you can enjoy it, then definitely do so! i’m excited for Academy! and SNW is always rockin.
Sounds like something a borg would say. Bitch. 👍
no idea what you’re saying.
I can’t believe I am saying this, but I am starting to enjoy Star Trek way more than SW (and I really was a fan of SW in my childhood).
Not hating on Star Trek, because I love both franchises.
It’s sad. For almost ten years people have argued about what went wrong with Star Wars.
Too many genres? The EU was scattershot and unfocused at times, but never hurt the brand in a significant way. In fact, it led to some great books and games
Too much politics? The villain of TPM is named after Newt Gingrich, and nobody really cared. ANH was inspired by Vietnam, and was still a box office hit.
The fanbase hates (insert minority)? While the internet has magnified the extreme weirdos, all six films have some mix of assertive female leads and non-white characters. Lando blew up the Death Star, Mace Windu was considered second only to Yoda. Every clone, etc. Still had a successful brand. Clone Wars focused hard on the clones and is put above the prequels by many of the hardcore fans. This isn’t to say there aren’t awful people who acted unhinged, but that goes for basically every large group of people in human history, let alone fandoms on the internet.
The answer is quality of writing. The originals were written well, and had coherent world building. The prequels struggled with character writing and general complexity, which is why they are more divisive. Good writing is the difference between the comedy of C-3PO and Jar Jar. It’s the difference between Luke and Rey. And it’s the difference between soul and slop.
The people at Disney either don’t understand this, or don’t care. It is an organization of Nico Harrisons who don’t understand the fundamentals of their industry. This pattern has been repeating across pop culture since the 2010’s, and was blamed on culture war instead of the real issue. It’s a miracle that something like Rogue One or Andor was ever greenlit.
Also, did you know the box office drop-off between 4 and 5 is the same, down to the percentage point, as the drop-off between 7 and 8? And yet, 5 is the most beloved, while 8 had so much backlash that Disney panicked and turned 9 into damage control, instead of working off of 8.
The difference? ESB is well written. TLJ broke space combat entirely for a cool visual. I don’t want to absolve TFA, which gets off way too easy because of what followed, but this comment is already too long…
All that great writing and you chose to use acronyms instead of spelling the words.
It wasn’t just panic over fan backlash that made them screw up 9. 8 basically left them nothing to work with to get to the ending they wanted. Especially with the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher, who was meant to be the central character of 9.
That was down to a critical lack of planning.
the difference is only that toxic fandom has the bullhorn of the internet now. that’s it. that’s the only difference.
No, that’s the shitty excuse Disney executives like to hide behind. “PEOPLE ARE JUST MAD WE FEATURED A WOMAN/BLACK PERSON/GAY COUPLE!”
No, people are mad because your writing is shit. Most people are actually A-OK with minority characters, as long as you give them a reason to like the characters. (Except China, but Disney knew that so they made sure they didn’t feature the problematic black character over there). Make them interesting, don’t make them a Mary Sue, don’t build their plot up only to yank it away at the last second and turn them into just another background character.
But no, Disney can’t do that because they are terrified of trying new things. So they made the blandest, most milquetoast, characters possible and made the plot Baby’s-First-Starwars in the first sequel, took what the fans loved about Star Wars and literally burnt it in front of them in the second sequel (while telling fans they were stupid to ever like that part of Star Wars in the first place), and then backtracked HARD into Baby’s-First-Starwars again in the third sequel when they were shocked to discover that fans didn’t like being insulted.
So many issues with the sequels, complete corporate ignorance to just chalk it up to a “toxic fandom”.
whomever you’re talking to, it isn’t me.
It sure is! Don’t get mad when someone holds a mirror up to you making the same pathetic excuses Disney does for their failures.
Nope, I remember the absolute vitriol directed at the George Lucas-written prequels, and even actors themselves; and Disney wasn’t involved in those.
2009 was more than a decade ago, but I remember the Red Letter Media review like it was yesterday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Letter_Media
i’m sorry you’re so confused. i hope you find peace.
I dunno if Disney cares much about the writing so long as the property makes money. It’s hard to determine the cash return on streaming shows, though the viewership numbers definitely point towards a trend. Disney likes to characterize the production process as a product in an of itself, but subscribers are unlikely don’t translate that into viewership past the first couple episodes 🤷♂️
Me thirty years ago. In 1977 my entire life revolved around Star Wars. Still haven’t seen the last movie
Did you have that pop up book?
Is that the one the came with a vinyl for the audio? My dad had one of those that we dug out of my grandma’s basement
Omg the one that played the cantina music?
Same. 8 was such a ridiculous clusterfuck of a film that I lost all interest in seeing 9.
You’re not missing much. I’ve see the og movies more times than I can count. I’ve seen the sequels once. They are REALLY bad. Holy shit. I say this as a huge SW fan (I mostly read SW tbh)
