8 really ruined it. 7 had problems but I could forgive some of them because “Disney still trying to figure it out.”
Then 8 happened. Closed off all story threads from 7 without any fanfare at all, and closed off all of its own potential threads within itself, leaving absolutely nothing for 9 to follow up on. Multiple character assassinations, and the entire Canto section could be deleted from the film and zero context would be lost.
9 was never going to succeed. It couldn’t have. There was nothing for it to build on from 8.
What story threads? There were no story threads. There was hopeful fans who wanted to create things out of thin air. That’s about it. There was more from 8 to lead off from than 7.
8 gets a lot of hate along with the rest of the sequels, and I remember being pissed off of its scorched earth treatment of every single plot point from 7 after watching it in the movie theatre, but looking back… at least it tried to be original. The scenes are visually memorable, and its message that even nobody can rise up to be a hero, is miles better than… whatever the 9 did with Rey.
They had Andy Serkis playing a villain in a Star Wars movie. With basically a blank slate that they could do anything with. Instead, nothing.
There was a mystery about who Rey is. Could reveal something interesting there. Instead they went with she’s related to nobodies. But nobodies that the First Order seemed to know about for some reason.
What was Luke looking for on that island? I guess nothing, he just went there to be a hermit or whatever.
Who are the Knights of Ren? Not even mentioned.
What did TLJ set up for the next movie? Rey and Kylo Ren fight? Rey and Kylo Ren kiss? Both of these things happen in RoS and it took like five minutes of screen time. Kylo Ren was the only villain left and there were maybe a couple dozen Resistance left at the end to TLJ. There wasn’t much they could do other than bring back an old villain, Ian McDiarmid was available so… somehow Palpatine returned.
I actually respect RoS for not trying to give some bullshit explanation. It’s just like “you like the Emperor, right?” Yup. “Well here he is. Darkside-cloning-whatever” Good enough for me! Now show him shooting lightning bolts! “Sure! BZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz!”
3/5 stars, because it showed Emperor Palpatine blast an X-Wing with lightning. RoS gave no fucks and I love it for that.
7 put Luke hiding on an island while a war was going on and left 8 to take the flak for explaining why. There was no way to make 8 without pissing people off.
Then I don’t understand. 8 developed Poe further by exploring the character arc for the daring overconfident pilot. Finn was given a reason to fight for the rebellion instead of trying to run away with Rey every 5 minutes. We got some absolutely great character development with Rey having a natural inclination to the dark side which builds on the fact she used the dark side to defeat Kylo in 7, and we use her as a lens to explore the “born special” trope in Star Wars, getting into more of her past history and getting satisfying answers.
Yeah Disney cheaping out on paying Mark Hamill for more than one movie (other than cameos) was probably the biggest problem with the ST. But TFA portrayed Luke Skywalker with a cameo better than TLJ which had him for a whole movie.
Sure Disney killing off the character that symbolizes hope to save money was always going to piss people off, but FFS at least give us one movie where Luke goes on an adventure to save the galaxy. And the ending where “it was all just illusion” made me think “well this movie sucked… he never even left that fucking island, but at least he’s still alive so maybe he’ll do something in the next one” then the movie is like “haha nope!” It was the most infuriating way to handle a studio mandated character death possible.
Luke using an illusion to save the rebellion was the best ending to the arc they established. He spends the whole movie angry that everyone is mythologising him and expecting him to be perfect. Then he uses his myth to trick the bad guys. If he’d showed up in person, he would have been giving in to the pressure to be this mythical figure. His arc would have been accepting that everyone who thinks Luke Skywalker is perfect is right. But instead, he uses the myth for shenanigans, which is a very much Luke-like thing to do.
If you think 7 is good you are a hopeless movie watcher, it set up nothing just typical jj abrams mystery boxes, is a straight up rehashing of A new hope and it did nothing of note. 8 tried to deviate from another shadowy mysterious bad guy aka Wish.com palpatine and do something different and it did it well.
And then 9 is a straight up piece of shit the only good part of it is the first montage with Kylo Ten being the boss and fucking shit up, they really dropped the ball by backpedaling from 8
I didn’t say 7 was good, only that I was willing to be more forgiving since it was Disney’s first Star Wars film.
8 did nothing well but destroy Star Wars at every turn. I would say because of what it did, I consider 9 to be better than 8. 9 could never have been good, and that is completely the fault of 8.
9 is a flaming piece of shit on every level. I think its even insulting to call it a movie given how fucking shit it is.
How can you say that 9 is better than 8 because 8 destoryed stuff (what exactly?)
Meanwhile 9 literally destroys the whole OT and PT story arc of Anakin/Vader
I’m just here to second the opinion that, while 7 was uninteresting, 8 basically destroyed Star Wars as a franchise, and that as imperfect as 9 is, it’s practically a miracle that it was as good as it was with what it had to follow.
A pity they already had the entire EU to work from and decided to obliterate it all… until they fucked up their own shit so badly they started bringing it back.
We could have had another trilogy centered around an established strong female character.
Mara Jade.
Sure, mix and match in some new ideas to make it work better as films than novels. The idea of Finn (a defecting stormtrooper) absolutely works in this setting.
But the original cast is too old for that time period!
Well we’ve now seen that Luke can be portrayed reasonably well with another actor and face and voice changing tech.
Have a whole trilogy set in basically the Mando/Asoka time period, but use the Mandalorians in a more adult story about the difficulty of establishing and maintaining alliances when the New Republic is young, the Imperial Remnant still exists, and now basically its chaos as various factions are picking sides.
Thrawn can be the big bad, but his presence is barely hinted at in 7, makes his appearance in 8 and has a major victory, and is defeated in 9.
You could even work in Boba Fett and Asoka! Maybe Thrawn sends Fett to assassinate Luke in 8 and he is seriously wounded or his new gaggle of Jedi trainees are fucked up, but Asoka helps Luke fend him off on the Millennium Falcon!
But uh nope, instead we got A New Hope v2, A B and C plot clusterfuck with a side of break hyperspace and all space combat lore, followed by Duct Tape and Bullshit.
We could have had another trilogy centered around an established strong female character.
Mara Jade.
The character that could’ve broken the barrier against having older women do action would’ve been Princess Leia. And they were too gutless to have her do anything. She was in a coma for most of TLJ and hid in a bunker (too afraid to face her own son) for the rest of it. They say they make movies about strong women, but it’s only if they’re young. You can have older men do action, but they aren’t going to have an older woman do action.
No, there’s the original trilogy, the prequels, and the “Oh, it was Palpatine the whole time. …again. How original.”
8 really ruined it. 7 had problems but I could forgive some of them because “Disney still trying to figure it out.”
Then 8 happened. Closed off all story threads from 7 without any fanfare at all, and closed off all of its own potential threads within itself, leaving absolutely nothing for 9 to follow up on. Multiple character assassinations, and the entire Canto section could be deleted from the film and zero context would be lost.
9 was never going to succeed. It couldn’t have. There was nothing for it to build on from 8.
What story threads? There were no story threads. There was hopeful fans who wanted to create things out of thin air. That’s about it. There was more from 8 to lead off from than 7.
8 gets a lot of hate along with the rest of the sequels, and I remember being pissed off of its scorched earth treatment of every single plot point from 7 after watching it in the movie theatre, but looking back… at least it tried to be original. The scenes are visually memorable, and its message that even nobody can rise up to be a hero, is miles better than… whatever the 9 did with Rey.
They had Andy Serkis playing a villain in a Star Wars movie. With basically a blank slate that they could do anything with. Instead, nothing.
There was a mystery about who Rey is. Could reveal something interesting there. Instead they went with she’s related to nobodies. But nobodies that the First Order seemed to know about for some reason.
What was Luke looking for on that island? I guess nothing, he just went there to be a hermit or whatever.
Who are the Knights of Ren? Not even mentioned.
What did TLJ set up for the next movie? Rey and Kylo Ren fight? Rey and Kylo Ren kiss? Both of these things happen in RoS and it took like five minutes of screen time. Kylo Ren was the only villain left and there were maybe a couple dozen Resistance left at the end to TLJ. There wasn’t much they could do other than bring back an old villain, Ian McDiarmid was available so… somehow Palpatine returned.
I actually respect RoS for not trying to give some bullshit explanation. It’s just like “you like the Emperor, right?” Yup. “Well here he is. Darkside-cloning-whatever” Good enough for me! Now show him shooting lightning bolts! “Sure! BZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz!”
3/5 stars, because it showed Emperor Palpatine blast an X-Wing with lightning. RoS gave no fucks and I love it for that.
7 put Luke hiding on an island while a war was going on and left 8 to take the flak for explaining why. There was no way to make 8 without pissing people off.
Luke was one small puzzle piece of that shitpile
Then I don’t understand. 8 developed Poe further by exploring the character arc for the daring overconfident pilot. Finn was given a reason to fight for the rebellion instead of trying to run away with Rey every 5 minutes. We got some absolutely great character development with Rey having a natural inclination to the dark side which builds on the fact she used the dark side to defeat Kylo in 7, and we use her as a lens to explore the “born special” trope in Star Wars, getting into more of her past history and getting satisfying answers.
Yeah Disney cheaping out on paying Mark Hamill for more than one movie (other than cameos) was probably the biggest problem with the ST. But TFA portrayed Luke Skywalker with a cameo better than TLJ which had him for a whole movie.
Sure Disney killing off the character that symbolizes hope to save money was always going to piss people off, but FFS at least give us one movie where Luke goes on an adventure to save the galaxy. And the ending where “it was all just illusion” made me think “well this movie sucked… he never even left that fucking island, but at least he’s still alive so maybe he’ll do something in the next one” then the movie is like “haha nope!” It was the most infuriating way to handle a studio mandated character death possible.
Luke using an illusion to save the rebellion was the best ending to the arc they established. He spends the whole movie angry that everyone is mythologising him and expecting him to be perfect. Then he uses his myth to trick the bad guys. If he’d showed up in person, he would have been giving in to the pressure to be this mythical figure. His arc would have been accepting that everyone who thinks Luke Skywalker is perfect is right. But instead, he uses the myth for shenanigans, which is a very much Luke-like thing to do.
Oh… soooooo say i’ve seen 8, but never got around to seeing 9… I should just chill and consider it done?
Yes probably. I forget if it had a single good scene.
If you think 7 is good you are a hopeless movie watcher, it set up nothing just typical jj abrams mystery boxes, is a straight up rehashing of A new hope and it did nothing of note. 8 tried to deviate from another shadowy mysterious bad guy aka Wish.com palpatine and do something different and it did it well.
And then 9 is a straight up piece of shit the only good part of it is the first montage with Kylo Ten being the boss and fucking shit up, they really dropped the ball by backpedaling from 8
I didn’t say 7 was good, only that I was willing to be more forgiving since it was Disney’s first Star Wars film.
8 did nothing well but destroy Star Wars at every turn. I would say because of what it did, I consider 9 to be better than 8. 9 could never have been good, and that is completely the fault of 8.
9 is a flaming piece of shit on every level. I think its even insulting to call it a movie given how fucking shit it is.
How can you say that 9 is better than 8 because 8 destoryed stuff (what exactly?) Meanwhile 9 literally destroys the whole OT and PT story arc of Anakin/Vader
I’m just here to second the opinion that, while 7 was uninteresting, 8 basically destroyed Star Wars as a franchise, and that as imperfect as 9 is, it’s practically a miracle that it was as good as it was with what it had to follow.
Episode 9 was the worst thing in existence, well would have been if not for Season 8 of GoT.
They had a proper face-off of who can make the worst fucking thing in existence
A pity they already had the entire EU to work from and decided to obliterate it all… until they fucked up their own shit so badly they started bringing it back.
We could have had another trilogy centered around an established strong female character.
Mara Jade.
Sure, mix and match in some new ideas to make it work better as films than novels. The idea of Finn (a defecting stormtrooper) absolutely works in this setting.
But the original cast is too old for that time period!
Well we’ve now seen that Luke can be portrayed reasonably well with another actor and face and voice changing tech.
Have a whole trilogy set in basically the Mando/Asoka time period, but use the Mandalorians in a more adult story about the difficulty of establishing and maintaining alliances when the New Republic is young, the Imperial Remnant still exists, and now basically its chaos as various factions are picking sides.
Thrawn can be the big bad, but his presence is barely hinted at in 7, makes his appearance in 8 and has a major victory, and is defeated in 9.
You could even work in Boba Fett and Asoka! Maybe Thrawn sends Fett to assassinate Luke in 8 and he is seriously wounded or his new gaggle of Jedi trainees are fucked up, but Asoka helps Luke fend him off on the Millennium Falcon!
But uh nope, instead we got A New Hope v2, A B and C plot clusterfuck with a side of break hyperspace and all space combat lore, followed by Duct Tape and Bullshit.
The character that could’ve broken the barrier against having older women do action would’ve been Princess Leia. And they were too gutless to have her do anything. She was in a coma for most of TLJ and hid in a bunker (too afraid to face her own son) for the rest of it. They say they make movies about strong women, but it’s only if they’re young. You can have older men do action, but they aren’t going to have an older woman do action.