Science Fiction

"Somehow, Palpatine returned"

No shit no one wants to watch this. ~~Marvel~~ Disney just milks IPs for a super long time and anyone thinking otherwise are blind and gullible.

Edit: whoopsie :l

The writing was just… so atrocious in the last trilogy. Like, no coherent themes or through lines, characters were bland and poorly executed, dialog was clunky and stilted, pacing was none existent and the story was disjointed with completely un-engaging stakes.

Like, some say “oh well that’s true of all the previous star wars films” and no, it wasn’t. Some of that was true of some elements of the first and second trilogy. But none were all of that at once.

I just have… no faith they’ll do anything interesting. Once is a fluke, twice is bad luck, three times is a pattern. Disney’s modern methodology for producing films is clearly flawed at some fundamental level. The chance that the corporate machinery has realized there is a problem, correctly identified it, and then actually fixed it is close to zero.

Fuck Disney.

Being bland is worse than being bad.

I can watch comically bad sci fi. But... I can't remember a thing about the last two movies of the trilogy. And I remember a whole lot of "meh" sci fi.

I know it's been beaten to death but I just finished re-watching all 9 + rogue one, and can confirm there's no reason for anyone to go back to the sequel trilogy. TFA gets some credit as a solid popcorn flick but doesn't change the fact it's retreading ANH, just to have every original story beat crushed by TLJ. By the time I got to Rise of Skywalker I was totally checked out, it's just noise and explosions with a plot that is borderline incomprehensible.

TLJ had me leave the theatre saying "that was terrible" haven't touched it afterwards.

Andor shits on the rest of Star Wars, also Solo was good.

The rest? Mediocre at best.

The last two of the new trilogy are borderline unwatchable. Just abysmal, b-movie level storytelling.

When the prequels came out, I didn't love them, but I absolutely had to wear it the fact that we got more Star Wars. At the time we really didn't expect to get any more out of the franchise. IMO Jar Jar notwithstanding, they were acceptable, but not up to the greatness of the originals. While far from perfect, they did tell a story, They added decent choreography and some reasonably pretty visuals.

The new trilogy tried to go all Kubrick on us.They try to tell a story through visual cues and really, it's not doing a great job at it. The characters have Backstories, but they're held from you until you're getting three-quarters of the way through the movie trying to figure out what the hell is going on while they get around to tying in the original characters. Star Wars requires that exposition.And honestly, another Death Star, another critical flaw, its bigger, its scarier, its all really low effort bullshit.

It was great seeing Luke and Han again, I really wanted to like Rey, They just utterly failed to develop her character, and then the crak with Snoke. You just end up coming out of the movie, feeling like you didn't understand half of what the new story is, and being utterly bored with the other half and all the horrible things happening to the protagonist that you don't really care that much about.

I remember sitting in the theater for Force Awakens. I remember the last preview finished, and I had a sense of excitement, because I didn't know what would happen. It wasn't based on a book or comic, it could be anything.

Then I watched A New Hope, but worse.

I understand it's scifi, but the stupid planet laser is one of the dumbest things Ive ever seen. Was the beam faster than light? Did it go through hyperspace? How'd they focus the laser at stellar distances? Is it a super weapon because it can destroy a couple planets or because it can shoot a mega laser beam through hyperspace or snuff out a star? Idiots.

Yeah, because they suck.

The Force Awakens was cool, I would always defend that movie.

But 8 and 9 were incredibly bad movies and bad star wars media.

The first one of the new set was ok. Slightly darker overtones.

Backing up a bit - the second trilogy had an all-star cast, yet a wooden log had more writing skill, acting ability, and charisma than the people on the screen. It was like people in a classroom being told to take turns reading out loud from the assigned book. The lack of acting and directorial skill was made up for by the abuse and overuse of CGI. Awful. I have never watched the second set since release. Lump the Boba Fett series in with this set, it was so wooden and poorly written they had to bring in the Mandalorian to rescue it.

Han Solo? Throwaway movie. Really didn’t do the character justice. Turned him into an Errol Flynn “Robin Hood”. I think everyone’s forgotten about it even existing.

The new set? Love the practical effects. Way less CGI. Awesome. But now the acting was ridiculous and over the top as were the characters. I know she gets some hate, but I think Ridley did a decent job of it with what she was given. The rest? Meh. Just written crazy with shameless bad writing, merch placement, and trite lines.

We’ll have to see about the new Mando movie.

Best Star Wars? ANH, ESB, R1, Andor. Some of the Mandalorian series. Probably some of the animated ones, but I haven’t watched them.

Eh, turned into more of a critique than I wanted, but I guess I’ll leave it.

The Force Awakens was fine, for a near shot-for-shot remake of A New Hope.

The Last Jedi is underrated, and I would argue the worst aspects are the attempt to redo the battle of Hoth. Overall a valiant attempt to make Star Wars something other than “the Skywalker Files.”

I made it ~15 minutes into The Rise of Skywalker before I turned it off. When did Leia become a Jedi Master again? Sometime after TLJ and the start of TRoS?

The best of these movies was okay. Of course no one is watching them.

I actually watched the second one twice, because I literally forgot I watched it the first time. Like, I saw it on the listing and said to myself "hey, I heard this is lousy, but maybe I can give it a try, I bet its at least fun and entertaining."

I got fully halfway through the movie before I realized that I had actually watched it before. I usually have a pretty good memory for films, but this thing has so little substances and held so little of my interest it just sorta slips through my brain without leaving anything behind at all.

I know for a fact that I have seen it twice because of that memory of realizing it halfway through the second viewing, but you know what? I still don't remember the movie at all. I have zero memory of it. I cannot tell you what its about or what happens. Nothing at all. It is like getting surgery. You are awake and then you are awake again a couple hours later. Nothing in between.