MovieChat Forums > Recognizer > Replies
Recognizer's Replies
Well, if we're doing lists:
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Force Awakens
Revenge of the Sith
The Last Jedi
Rogue One
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
Rose. Much to my own surprise. I like the Gungans as a species, I thought Lucas was quite creative when he came up with them. So I can't hate Jar Jar entirely :) Rose was just straight up annoying, poorly acted, and had the wrong personality for an engineer, the latter mostly being quiet introverts.
Lol! Rain! He sure rained on this parade :/ But like I've said previously, I think the issue is his writing, not his directing or cinematography.
Disney does indeed appear to have an agenda to sweep away the remnants of the OT (Tarkin style). They even say so vicariously through Kylo Ren - "Let the past die". I think they might see this trilogy as a "passing the torch" scenario, after which they can write whatever stories they want without having legacy baggage restricting the creativity.
I preferred TFA over this, although this is better than Rogue One, IMHO. In my view, Abrams should have written this whole trilogy, even if others directed them. Then the plot would have been consistent right the way through.
With regard to your prequels comment, my response is: it depends on what criteria you're rating the movies. If you're talking about visual spectacle, artistry and cinematography, then you'd be hard pressed to do better than this movie. Even Lucas said it was a beautifully made film.
But, if you want to rate on the basis of plot/story, then this is one of the worst SW movies, if not the worst. Even the prequels had a good story with a consistent plot through the trilogy. The problem with the prequels was the execution (acting, dialogue, direction, etc...), not the story. The story of this one is all over the place, contains large amounts of superfluous sub-plots, largely fails to develop the characters and their back-stories, and (worst of all) pretty much ignores the plot threads set up by Abrams in TFA and goes off on it's own tangent instead.
TL;DR: This film is style over substance.
On a related note, all of the First Order command was male ...
Money corrupts everything
Interesting. I was not aware of the various levels. Did Lucas get final say in this scheme as to which level something was at?
This is why I maintain that the loss of the EU is a tragedy. If you read the Thrawn trilogy, you would know that it had plenty of interesting stuff happening involving the struggle to form a New Republic whilst dealing with the remnants of the Empire's military machine in the form of Grand Admiral Thrawn and various warlords vying for power over their own territories. These were ripe for the picking to adapt into movies, but Disney just discarded the whole EU like trash.
Yep, pretty much. I agree that large sections of it were boring. I knew something was up when the film seemed to drag on for ages and never end. When a film is good, you get to the end credits and don't even realise that 2.5 hours just passed.
I'm hoping Abrams can redeem it in Episode IX to some extent. Probably the best bet at this point is to just finish this trilogy, then move on to creating a new trilogy with all new characters, new Jedi order, etc... and maybe do something along the lines of the Yuzhan Vong invasion. Or maybe finish this trilogy then make a completely unrelated trilogy set in the Star Wars universe, but nothing to do with the mainline "trilogy of trilogies". I read something about Rian Johnson doing a trilogy set in a different galaxy, so maybe this latter idea is the plan.
With the original main characters gone, I can't really see how it can go anywhere now except where Kylo Ren wants it to ("let the past die").
EU all the way. The novels and games in particular were much better than this stuff. The Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn would have made a far superior sequel trilogy to these films.
Also, in my view, I don't care if Disney paid $4Bn, they have no right to declare EU to be non-canon. Lucas licensed the EU stuff, and that's good enough for me.
Indeed, the fact that Palpatine respected him while the Jedi Council obviously didn't was a major factor in why he turned. The refusal by the Council to promote him to Master (despite him fulfilling the requirements) was probably the ultimate insult you could give a Jedi.
I feel that the misdirection was a mistake, because TFA set up a number of plot lines such that there was a reasonable expectation among fans that those threads would continue in this movie. Generally speaking, misdirection of the audience is OK, and can make a film great and memorable because things happen that you weren't expecting. But in this case, I think diverging from what was established in TFA made TLJ feel more like Rogue One (i.e. a stand-alone film) rather than Episode VIII - the next chapter in an on-going, cohesive narrative.
Speaking of that scene: how is Phasma still alive? Finn and Han alluded to putting her in a trash compactor on Starkiller base, which was destroyed a very short time later. How did she escape?
That whole scene is extremely contrived anyway. I mean, BB8 stealing an AT-ST? Pffft!
It's possible, but for me it will depend heavily on what happens in Episode IX.
Yes, true. I was half expecting to see Leia using a saber at some point. Would have been cool, like seeing Yoda use one in the prequels.
There were two sort-of duels. Luke (albeit a Force projection) did face off with Ren with sabers, and Rey and Ren joined forces to defeat Snoke and the Praetorian guard. That one was more sabers vs vibroswords I guess (was nice to see the latter in a movie finally).
Because Disney is obviously not doing any QA on the writing. They're just hiring writers or directors and going "do whatever the hell you want". If they'd had any sense, they'd have kept Lucas on as a continuity advisor.
Lol, yes :P
What would be cool is if Rey and Ren turn each other half way and end up as Grey Jedi, embodying the balance of light and dark that stabilises the Force and brings peace to the galaxy.
The issue I had with Rose is that the character was either mis-cast or the actor chosen is just straight up not a very good actor. Not sure which. In short, the character didn't really work for me overall (but that had nothing to do with her physical appearance).
Yes, but this would have been actual imaginative writing that explores new possibilities rather than rehashing old ones, something that seems to escape modern script writers.