Star Wars 9 : The Rise of Skywalker

[Phildo]

Right, but we also know it wasn't exactly a long flight from whichever fucking planet they came from (seriously, it is bad that I don't even know the answer to that, what a bunch of shit worldbuilding) to their arrival to Exo-planet-thing.  I mean, who knew the heretoforth uncharted regions were so accessible, takes like 8 minutes to get there.  Anyway, what I am suggesting is that they should have had men, or bombs, or literally anything with them besides livestock, regardless of how sexy that livestock was.

Everything is 8 minutes from everywhere in the Sequel Universe.  Hyperspace is now near-instantaneous travel to anywhere.

[Khaldun]

Look, yes, it was just a really well-made movie. But you gotta remember that back then, nobody really expected it to be more than Star Wars 2: The More Star Wars--that's what sequels to these new summer blockbusters were. Jaws 2 came out in the summer of 1978--sequels were cheap repeats of a successful film that recycled the formula.

ESB was actually the middle act of a trilogy--it had a story of its own to tell and it moved the larger story ahead, and it had surprises (the hero gets the crap beaten out of him by the bad guy! The bad guy is his dad!) etc. That was the subversion of expectations--that the story moved ahead, that it deepened the pulp into something more mythological, etc.

[Samwise]

That was the subversion of expectations--that the story moved ahead, that it deepened the pulp into something more mythological, etc.

So it was good because it subverted expectations by being good?

[Cyrrex]

That was the subversion of expectations--that the story moved ahead, that it deepened the pulp into something more mythological, etc.

So it was good because it subverted expectations by being good?

I assume he means the reveal itself was the subversion and that made it good, or added to it.

I don’t agree, however, because ESB was good from start to finish.  It was also for some reason the first Star Wars film I ever saw, and it blew my damn mind to an irreparable degree.  Without and expectations to subvert.

It is also still outstanding 30 years later.

[BobtheSomething]

Right, but we also know it wasn't exactly a long flight from whichever fucking planet they came from (seriously, it is bad that I don't even know the answer to that, what a bunch of shit worldbuilding) to their arrival to Exo-planet-thing.  I mean, who knew the heretoforth uncharted regions were so accessible, takes like 8 minutes to get there.  Anyway, what I am suggesting is that they should have had men, or bombs, or literally anything with them besides livestock, regardless of how sexy that livestock was.

If you think I was arguing against you, you are mistaken.  The problem is that everything in this movie is nonsensically stupid.  The voodoo shark from Jaws 4 is more grounded.

[HaemishM]

Let's keep in mind that ESB also took Lucas's original plan for a sequel and was redone by an actual good writer and a better director. The producer and studio didn't just let the writer run wild with whatever idea floated into their head.

Also, I will disagree with Ab on one point about ESB. It did not have the greatest swordfight in cinema history. In fact, despite the rest of the movie being shit, I will posit that the lightsaber fight between Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Darth Maul in Phantom Menace was better. FITE ME!

[eldaec]

Luke vs Kylo in 8 is also better.

If we widen it to TV, obiwan vs Maul in Rebels.

And outside star wars there are probably a million Asian films, but the training room in Crouching Tiger comes straight to mind.

[Cyrrex]

Right, but we also know it wasn't exactly a long flight from whichever fucking planet they came from (seriously, it is bad that I don't even know the answer to that, what a bunch of shit worldbuilding) to their arrival to Exo-planet-thing.  I mean, who knew the heretoforth uncharted regions were so accessible, takes like 8 minutes to get there.  Anyway, what I am suggesting is that they should have had men, or bombs, or literally anything with them besides livestock, regardless of how sexy that livestock was.

If you think I was arguing against you, you are mistaken.  The problem is that everything in this movie is nonsensically stupid.  The voodoo shark from Jaws 4 is more grounded.

No worries, I was not disagreeing with you, just like ranting.

As far as duels go, it depends on how you define good.  But I would generally go with OB1, QG and Maul.

[Goumindong]

JJ's plan may have been written on a napkin and vague, but he was clearly setting things up.  Those were discarded in favor of a new plan - and that is what did the most damage to this trilogy as a trilogy.  Hate all you want, but that is the biggest problem with the whole of this trilogy.

If JJ was “clearly setting things up” then RJ took everything that JJ gave him direclty and ran with in precisely the direction that made the most sense from TFA. If JJ had a plan it pretty much had to be how TLJ was filmed.

Then plan that got thrown out the window was between 8 and 9. When it was time for bus throwing because the grognards gonna grognard and Disney doesnt care to make art anymore.

[Draegan]

Ok so lets rank Star Wars Movies

ESB
ANH
R1
SOLO
ROTJ
FA
RotS
TLJ
CW
RoS
TPM

With that being said, the new trilogy was dog shit. Nothing was planned. Nothing was Marvelize. They took a billion dollar property with the most entrenched and fanatical fan base and shit all over it. It was only rescued by a cool TV show that was done by someone who had ties with *checks notes* Marvel.

JJ would have been the perfect director of the first movie if someone handed him the script and told him the story he was shooting.

It was clearly obvious Rian Johnson was a clown and wanted to be all meta and fuck with the audience because Star Wars needed to be fucked with some how. He's an idiot.

[Goumindong]

Star Wars was always been meta... the force was always a standin for plot. There is a clear audience insert character. The standard rescue the princess plot is turned right on its head... it uses, subverts, and comments on an entire era of movies that came before it.

TLJ
SW
ESB
ROTJ
R1
TFA
Solo
The rest of them
Rise of Skywalker

Edit: I thought RoS was Rise of Skywalker and RotS was Revenge of the Sith?

Edit: Added Solo because... well it was a decent movie

[HaemishM]

Ranking:
ESB
R1
ANH
ROTJ
FA
SOLO
TPM
TLJ
CW
RoS
RotS

I cannot in good conscience give RotS any credit - even its good points are quickly drowned out in the shit editing. At least TLJ had that cool shot of Purple Hair Hyperspeed Ramming the Star Destroyers. RoS had the memes (I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND). I struggle to remember much about either Solo or CW so they were just forgettable. TPM had that incredible saber duel.

[Khaldun]

I LOVE

Empire Strikes Back
A New Hope

I LIKE

Return of the Jedi
Last Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Force Awakens

I WILL WATCH JUST THAT ONE SCENE WITH UNRESERVED AFFECTION BUT OTHERWISE DON'T LIKE

Phantom Menace

I ENJOY THE MEMES BUT HATE THE MOVIE

Clone Wars

I FUCKING HATE WITH ALL MY HEART

Rise of Skywalker

[Rasix]

ESB
ANH
ROTJ
R1
FA
------------- Below this line, I will not ever watch again unless my family asks me to.
RotS
RoS
TLJ
PM
-------------- NO. <Tracy_Jordan.gif>
AotC

Have not seen and will never actually try to see:
Solo

[Draegan]

Solo is a good flick. If it wasn't Han it gives B tier mandoloriian vibes in retrospt.

[Velorath]

HEY SOMEBODY DID SOMETHING GOOD WITH SW

ESB (non-Special Edition)
The Mandalorian
Kotor games
X-wing/TIE Fighter games
Tales of the Jedi comics


I CAN ENJOY THE NOSTALGIA

ANH (non-Special Edition)
The parts of ROTJ with the Emperor
Dark Forces Games
Battlefront Games
Star Wars Arcade Game


THAT LAST LIGHTSABER FIGHT WAS COOL AND HEY, LIAM NEESON

Phantom Menace


DUMPSTER FIRE

Everything else

[jgsugden]

If JJ was “clearly setting things up” then RJ took everything that JJ gave him direclty and ran with in precisely the direction that made the most sense from TFA. If JJ had a plan it pretty much had to be how TLJ was filmed...

Well, if you discount everything that was ever said by th people involved, including JJ and Johnson, that might be true.  If, however, you look back at everything they said between the two films, this is as full of shit as the last guy on a human centipede that has some extra tight stitches in his ass.

[Raguel]

I think the stories in SWTOR are great. The game itself isn't all that good and its cost is kinda ridiculous.

I guess I'm just too dumb to know my expectations were subverted in TLJ. I mean some story decisions were just bad but the only thing truly shocking was the suicide run.

Also everyone has their pet peeves but I still think even with a plan for the trilogy it would have been doomed from the start if that plan wasn't set on focusing primarily on the new cast or the old one.

[Riggswolfe]

I'll join in, why not!


ANH (This is purely nostalgia. Subjectively, ESB is a better movie, but ANH started it all and I just can't forget that.)
ESB
ROTJ
RotS (The only prequel movie I'd say is "good". It's at least fun to watch.)
FA
Solo
RoS
R1 (The last 45 minutes of R1 is the only fun part of the movie. The rest of it drags as it is basically "Fetch Quest: The Movie")
TPM
CW
AOTC
TLJ


Yes, I'll watch the Clone Wars movie and AOTC again before I'll watch TLJ again.

[jgsugden]

...Also everyone has their pet peeves but I still think even with a plan for the trilogy it would have been doomed from the start if that plan wasn't set on focusing primarily on the new cast or the old one.

TFA was not good, but there was a plan in this regard.  JJ's plan was to focus on the new cast and give each of the primary trilogy "OGs" a good sendoff over the last three films by making them a pivotal player in one film, primarily in the last half of it.  Han in TFA, Luke in episode 8, Leia in episode 9.  Johnson held true to that in 8, but Fisher passing abbreviated that in 9. 

I'm not saying it was well executed, but there was a plan. 

[Draegan]

I rank R1 higher only because the visuals and writing are really as close as you can get to the originals while adding modern stuff to it. It's also closish to Mandalorian.

Regarding SWTOR. Cool lore in the game and setting. The people making the game were idiots. I met most of them once or twice. Every design decision I questioned them about they actually rescinded 4 months later as the game tanked.

[Draegan]

...Also everyone has their pet peeves but I still think even with a plan for the trilogy it would have been doomed from the start if that plan wasn't set on focusing primarily on the new cast or the old one.

TFA was not good, but there was a plan in this regard.  JJ's plan was to focus on the new cast and give each of the primary trilogy "OGs" a good sendoff over the last three films by making them a pivotal player in one film, primarily in the last half of it.  Han in TFA, Luke in episode 8, Leia in episode 9.  Johnson held true to that in 8, but Fisher passing abbreviated that in 9. 

I'm not saying it was well executed, but there was a plan. 

I've said it before, I really like the character arc that Luke had about turning into an angry and bitter hermit, but that should have been the focus or at least a center portion of the three movie arc instead. I mean he kind of is, but only in the background and not really mattering or doing much other than spending 3 hours looking for him in one movie and then watching him whine and have a shitty battle at the end of a second.

He could have been a more dark an ominous figure too. But they fucked that up as well.

I feel like any one with an ounce of talent could have written a really cool story. I mean they were given the license to fuck everything up and they did, but they didn't even have fun with it.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, not to restart this, but sure, while I'd concede that the character arc for Luke could have been more planful and artfully executed, the basic idea was great and a really important way to think about the afterlives of heroes.

[Draegan]

Well Star Wars is dead anyway now. They killed it. All you can do is live in nostalgia. They new movies did nothing to build additional fans. At least the prequel had the clone wars cartoon that built a new generation of fans.

The Mandalorian is a good way to keep Star Wars in the culture zeitgeist. Maybe in 5 years they'll try to reboot it with a whole new "story".

[jgsugden]

Well Star Wars is dead anyway now. They killed it. All you can do is live in nostalgia. They new movies did nothing to build additional fans. At least the prequel had the clone wars cartoon that built a new generation of fans.

The Mandalorian is a good way to keep Star Wars in the culture zeitgeist. Maybe in 5 years they'll try to reboot it with a whole new "story".

Mandalorian is the reboot.  It is the cornerstone on which all new Star Wars will be built.  They slapped their collective heads when they saw what Favreau and Filloni did and said, "Oh, yeah.  That makes sense."  It is why everything was derailed in the middle of last year. 

Feige's Mace Windu  (my speculation for the Feige SW film) film will have some free hands, but the rest are going to lean more heavily on the Mandalorian and a New Hope than anything else. 

I doubt Rian Johnson gets to make his trilogy, or that we see another film before 2023 December - and that one is likely to be the Feige movie. 

[Draegan]

We'll see. I don't see them squeezing more movies into the ANH time period.

[jgsugden]

We'll see. I don't see them squeezing more movies into the ANH time period.

I see them continuing to tell stories that take place in the era *before* TFA: in the hundreds of years before PM through the starting time frame of TFA.  I also see a possibility that they do a soft reboot of Star Wars with a galactic calamity storyline that negates a lot of the destructive things that episodes 7, 8 and 9 did - and possibly addresses the question of how could this all have been a long time ago without impacting us.

There are dozens of scripts for a gangster world (Sopranos in Star Wars) that Lucas was preparing for a TV series.  I do not think those are dead, although they may form the outline for an animated series rather than a live action SW series.

I also think they will not learn their lessons well enough and will try to make a Luke or Vader film sometime.  Maybe a Leia learns the force film, too.

[Goumindong]

...Also everyone has their pet peeves but I still think even with a plan for the trilogy it would have been doomed from the start if that plan wasn't set on focusing primarily on the new cast or the old one.

TFA was not good, but there was a plan in this regard.  JJ's plan was to focus on the new cast and give each of the primary trilogy "OGs" a good sendoff over the last three films by making them a pivotal player in one film, primarily in the last half of it.  Han in TFA, Luke in episode 8, Leia in episode 9.  Johnson held true to that in 8, but Fisher passing abbreviated that in 9. 

I'm not saying it was well executed, but there was a plan. 

Yes. But i am discounting this plan as the "plan that Johnson totally changed everything on" because he uhhh... clearly didn't change anything on it. TFA was set up explicitly for Luke to be a bitter hermit cut off from the force. There was no other option from the text of TFA. Luke exiles himself because of the loss of his students as Kylo Ren, the son of his best friend, and his knights destroyed it. He isn't in mortal peril when Rey shows up. He is just sitting on his island. Did we expect him to be all "Oh i was just waiting for my lightsaber to come back to me and now that i have it i can go kick ass"?

You can even see this in some of the scenes of RoS. The movie was originally probably meant to end on the Death Star. Kylo gets stabbed by Rey after being distracted by Leia in the exact same spot that Kylo stabbed Han. She heals him(or doesn't). And then leaves. And Kylo throws his lightsaber away, rejecting the concept of jedi and its destiny and then the movie ends. Unfortunately we got some shiiiit.

[Draegan]

Well they are doing a bunch of books and comics called the High Republic which was 300 years before ANH.

Who knows if it ever makes it out of print.

Frankly they just need to set the time period 1000s of years in either direction of time and just have another story using the force. Maybe keep some of the aesthetics of architecture and ships.

[jgsugden]

...
Yes. But i am discounting this plan as the "plan that Johnson totally changed everything on" because he uhhh... clearly didn't change anything on it...

If you ignore that Rian Johnson said he threw out JJ's outline, and that JJ said Johnson was throwing out his outline.

Yes, they had to pick up the story where JJ left off.  But:

* JJ had plans for who Rey was.  Johnson nixed it.  JJ reinstated it.
* JJ gave the mask of Ren significance.  Johnson discarded it.  JJ reinstated it, and then paid off the destruction of it in a meaningful way.

There are a lot of examples of this type of thing all throughout the trilogy.  JJ starts it, Johnson nixes it, JJ reinstates it. 

But I am done talking about these shitty movies.  I'm waiting for what comes next and hoping I'm right that they're more Mandalorian than anything else.

[BobtheSomething]

If you want to get right down to it, RJ was right.  Everything g JJ reinstates was a groaner.  Pretty much everything in ROS was cringe-inducing.  RJ made the better calls (even if not the right calls), and his movie at least feels like a movie.

[Velorath]

Feige's Mace Windu  (my speculation for the Feige SW film) film will have some free hands, but the rest are going to lean more heavily on the Mandalorian and a New Hope than anything else. 

I'm sure taking a few years hiatus to come up with a new direction for the SW movie franchise and coming back with "Relatively minor Prequel Character Who Died: The Movie" would go over real well.

[Khaldun]

Well, Ahsoka is going to be in the 2nd season of The Mandalorian.

I think one EU/sort of Clone Wars thing they could reintroduce in The Mandalorian to great effect would be the Nightsisters, and/or other Force-using societies and organizations that are neither Jedi nor Sith. That is really needed to open up post-ROS storytelling that stll has Force-users in it.

I think they need to stay the hell away from trying to clear up the ROS mess the way that the SW official social media accounts have been trying to do. Just make it a narrative equivalent of a fart in an elevator.

[jgsugden]

Feige's Mace Windu  (my speculation for the Feige SW film) film will have some free hands, but the rest are going to lean more heavily on the Mandalorian and a New Hope than anything else. 

I'm sure taking a few years hiatus to come up with a new direction for the SW movie franchise and coming back with "Relatively minor Prequel Character Who Died: The Movie" would go over real well.

Any Sam Jackson goes over well.

[Abagadro]

They need to give it to QT and let it be a hard R.