Star Wars Star Wars Discussion Thread - LET THE PAST D-! Oh, wait, nevermind
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evilchumlee
Well-known member
My initial comment was "it's as popular as it's ever been" not "it's of particularly great quality".
Quality is always going to be entirely subjective. Even then i've rated it as... mediocre.
The Sequel Trilogy is definitely the worst thing to come out of Disney.
Rey is just... a terrible character. She could have been a good character, but Kennedy was too caught up in the "the Force is FEMALE!" bullshit to actually make her a good character. Instead she just had to be the best at everything automatically, because female.
I think it's great to have a strong female lead, but actually make her earn something.
Finn was also an utterly wasted character with no point. And then Poe is also kind of just superfluous.
Jaenera Targaryen
Well-known member
Disagree; watched that once before, while it's bad, it's still infinitely better than any of the sequels.
Typhonis
Well-known member
Did you see it on tape or when they first broadcast it?
evilchumlee
Well-known member
Come on now.
The Sequels are just... not particularly great. Even with as much as I despise The Last Jedi with every fiber of my being, I couldn't realistically sit here and say it's worse than the Holiday Special.
Jaenera Targaryen
Well-known member
On tape, why?
Skallagrim
Well-known member
You can watch the Holiday Special ironically. The sequels can't even be enjoyed in that way.
Bigking321
Well-known member
Is the holiday special canon?
Typhonis
Well-known member
As I said the first time I saw it was on live TV. I thought you either saw it that way or on video tape. Unless you are younger than I am.
evilchumlee
Well-known member
TFA and TRoS are still fun movies. They're both a mess in their own way, but I would watch TFA and TRoS over Episodes 1 and 2. Not that Episodes 1 and 2 are even all that bad, but TFA and TRoS are better.
Even with as much I as despise TLJ... I can't in any honesty say i'd prefer the Holiday Special. Even Holiday Special has a charm to it that is ok for the occasional every decade-or-so watch, but if you held a gun to my head and I had to sit and watch TLJ or the Holiday Special... i'll pick TLJ.
I actually don't think TFA is particularly bad. It was an ok start to a new trilogy. Yeah, Rey is kind of shitty and a Mary Sue. The plot is similar to ANH. But it set up something at least decent. Rian Johnson came in an subverted expectations that Star Wars would be good. TRoS tried to pick up the pieces and make... something out of it. It ends up being an absolute dumpster fire but still... oddly entertaining.
I honestly think that overall, the ST is better than the PT. We were all having these same conversations around this same time post-PT... 20 years later, now we like the PT. Give it time, I don't think the ST will be remember in quite the same way, but I think time will heal some of the wounds.
The difference is that the Holiday Special was disavowed and was hidden away as much as possible by George Lucas. You can't buy a copy of it, and the only reason you can watch it now is because someone recorded it on their VCR and shared copies. Get back to me if that ever happens to the Sequels. 
evilchumlee
Well-known member
The difference is that the Holiday Special was disavowed and was hidden away as much as possible by George Lucas. You can't buy a copy of it, and the only reason you can watch it now is because someone recorded it on their VCR and shared copies. Get back to me if that ever happens to the Sequels.
It didn't happen with the prequels, either. They're even worse that the Sequels* except TLJ. That's the worst thing.
If you can't see a difference between a throwaway 70's shoe string budget TV special and major motion pictures... I don't know what to tell you.
The Holiday Special was also like, already embarrassing to everyone involved even at the time. The sequels are triggering to super hardcore Star Wars fans... there are also alot of people who actually enjoy them and they made absolute boatloads of money...
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I disagree with that assessment. It might be a difference of priority: I care, first and foremost, about the writing. Engaging story, solid worldbuilding, grounded characters, meaningful themes. If it has that, I'll overlook most other fuck-ups. There are series and films that looked like shit even when they came out decades ago, but I love them because they have the above.
Modern SW looks good, but has none of the above.
The prequels had some of the above. Not all, evidently; but some elements of excellence. That makes them better than the soulless cash-grab sequels by default.
TLJ is the worst, most mean-spirited film I've ever watched. It's the cinematic equivalent of force-feeding people dogshit. I'd rather watch the Holiday Special five times a day for a week than watch TLJ once this week.
It's completely empty. It's not aggressively bad because it isn't anything. JJ Abrams with his "mystery box" nonsense. Just give people a bunch of empty promises, and don't bother to have any answers. To be sure, Johnson followed up on that with the worst shit imaginable, but even if Episode VIII had been a masterpiece-- then all the credit would belong to that film's writer, and none would belong to Abrams. The man did nothing but a hollow re-tread, but now with an unrelatable, poorly-written lead character.
The way you call the sequels "fun movies", TFA "an ok start" and TRoS "oddly entertaining" gives me the impression that you are way more forgiving of complete crap than I am.
Which is fine, but it doesn't actually make them good. It makes you tolerant of stuff that is bad. Which is, again, fine. But trying to convince people that crap is good because you're happy with it is... well, in my opinion, not altogether fine.
I don't think so at all. The prequels were pretty widely liked. Sure there were detractors, but the biggest wave of prequel hate came after the fact, with the RedLetterMedia Plinkett reviews. Those had dozens of imitators. The bulk of prequel hate started there. See also: The People versus George Lucas, which was released over a year later.
That wave of prequel hate passed. In fact, it was already on its retour by the time the sequels were made. But Abrams is on record saying that he only really loves Episodes IV and V, so he put practically zero prequel elements in TFA. Which was ultimately a miscalculation.
The sequels received criticism from the start. TFA was an empty bag (or "mystery box", if you will), so people were willing to wait and see. But still, an oft-heard thing about TFA was "it gets dumber the more you think about it". Which is never a good thing. And then TLJ pretty much broke everything. The most ardent defenders of the sequels are crybullies who love to shit on actual fans. (Pretty much a bunch of mini-Rians, you see.) That's not the foundation for a legacy. Sequel defence is based on spite, not love.
The prequels are going to continue to be seen as flawed but interesting, and the sequels may very well get completely over-written ten or fifteen years from now-- when Disney has turned SW unprofitable and sells of LucasFilm in a bit of "corporate restructuring". Whoever buys it will go for a reboot... probably keeping George's stuff, but nixing everything Disney shat out.
Frankly, I'm looking forward to it.
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evilchumlee
Well-known member
I could partially agree with that.
While TLJ is godawful bad and one thing I will say WAS actually damaging to Star Wars as a whole, the Holiday Special is just... like... embarrassing bad. It's ONLY value now is as a historical curiosity.
Although, I suppose that has a slightly higher value than TLJ.
That's the thing though. The "mystery box" CAN work... Abrams just doesn't know how or care to finish it.
TFA worked well enough to establish a bunch of threads for others to go ahead and build on. Just so happened that Johnson had no interest in using any of them. Had TLJ not shit the bed so hard, I think we would have a much different view of the ST.
Well that's where the subjective differences come out.
I don't see the sequels as complete crap. They have value. They aren't as good as they should have been, and the middle one is an absolute epic pile of garbage for... 2 out of 3 are fine.
Granted, "fine" isn't some glowing endorsement. But i'd watch TFA and TRoS over TPM and AOTC any day.
That's where they will lose me.
I am perfectly ok with just kind of... ignoring the sequels. Star Wars is a vast canvas, we don't need to focus on a few years where the ST takes place or has any relevance. I don't hate the ST. I also don't particularly like the ST.
I *DO* at least "like" most that has come out under Disney. I've enjoyed every one of the TV shows to varying degrees, except for Visions and that's just more a personal thing of me just not like anime. I've tried. Just don't like it. But otherwise, the shows have been anywhere from fine-to-great. Rogue One was great. I honestly liked Solo and wish we continued on with that.
If somebody buys it an actively reboots it? Nope. I'm out.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
I think you're confusing concepts here. The "mystery box" is, by definition, what Abrams does, as intended. He certainly does understand it, because he came up with it. What you might be thinking of is, simply, a mystery hook. A set-up that has a pay-off later.
The crucial thing is that for a mystery set-up to work, the writer must know the answer. It may be hidden from the audience, but it must be known to the author. No ass-pulls. No empty boxes. There must be something in the box, and you must know what it is before you even reveal to the audience that the box exists.
Abrams does something else. His box is empty. He has no answers. His idea is that the mystery is in itself super interesting, and that answers are just boring. So he has none. His boxes are all empty. Which is why every time he has a project that runs beyond one film or season, it goes to shit. Because he has lots of set-up, but he has no answers. So when he's forced to present answrs, he has to pull them from his ass. And he's not actually a very good writer...
TRoS was a complete mess. Part of that is because Johnson screwed everything up as badly as he could (on purpose), but part of it is also that Abrams never had any answers. Rey Palpatine? He outright said he came up with that when filming was already in progress!
He had no plot, no resolution in mind. He made it up as he went, and he wasn't up to the task.
I don't see how someone buying it from Disney and erasing the Disneyverse is any different from Disney buying it and erasing the EU. The only thing I care about is whether what is made is good. You may feel that what Disney does is good, but I don't.
Series you call fine-to-great, I call garbage-to-meh. (Except Andor, which is actually very good, but which I find thematically unsuited to the space fantasy essence of SW.)
Rogue One is also "meh". Solo is just below "meh" (part of it could be a good film, better than Rogue One, but it's sandwiched between too much terrible stuff).
The Disney continuity isn't particularly worth saving. They didn't bother caring about anything that came before, either, so let the same be done to their output. Decanonised and discontinued.
Going to disagree with you there. I hated the Prequels after watching them when they came out. I became a Plinkett fan because his criticisms resonated with me when I first came across them.
If anything, it's like the Sequels sucking as much as they do have made people go back and re-evaluate the PT as being better than they originally thought. I've seen the same thing with Enterprise, and I disagree with that, too.
Skallagrim
Well-known member
Enterprise was always bad.
The prequels had detractors -- and there are good reasons for that -- but were widely liked. Mind you, I'm not talking about hardcore fan reaction here, which is always tricky business. I'm saying most audiences liked the prequels well enough. And I think the key factor there is that they had a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. If you look back after watching all three, you can say "it started here, then went through that, and ended up there."
The sequels don't have that. They don't... cohere. Structurally, they're a big mess. And stories don't work when they have no good bones.
This is why the prequels will always be seen as flawed, but also having merit. There will be people who expected something else (something better), and will never accept the prequels. And that's valid. In fact, I greatly enjoy substituting my own fanon take on the prequel era and reading old EU books, all while pretending SW just stopped in 1999 or so. But that's always going to be a minority approach. Most people aren't so negative about the sequels--
And that was already becoming evident in the run-up to TFA. Generally speaking, most people who actually hated the sequels were invested fans, and so by definition a bit older than "kids" in 1999. But by the early 2010s, the kids of 1999 had grown up, or nearly so, and they'd enjoyed the prequels quite a lot, thank you very much. To them, it was never "my childhood is ruined". It was just "my childhood".
Are they too kind to the prequels because they have saw-them-as-kids nostalgia goggles? Are some others perhaps too unkind because the prequels didn't live up to expectations? (Honestly: would they have gotten any real hate if they hadn't been SW films?) Something to be said for both assertions, I think.
But here's a question: how many children liked the sequels? Say what you will of George Lucas, but he could make films that kids loved. Stories that defined childhoods. The sequels haven't done anything like that. Hence my prediction that the prequels will be remembered as flawed but possessed of certain merits, while the sequels will just be additions to the dusty ranks of "empty cash-grab sequels".
evilchumlee
Well-known member
That's how I felt about the old EU. I was perfectly ok with Disney scrapping it.
Although I really think it was less about not caring and much more of an issue of being realistic. They wanted to do new movies, and they wanted to use the OT cast.
There's just no way to do it while keeping the old EU intact. Due to actual actors ages, it HAS to be about 30 years after ROTJ... that's an awful lot of EU to try to get the audience caught up in an opening crawl... we're talking about an audience that cried about Ahsoka because you needed to watch Rebels and Clone Wars to get the most out of it. Now you're asking audience to read three decades worth of books and comics? It's just not feasible.
Now don't get me wrong, i'm NOT trying to defend the Sequels as some great accomplishment. One of them is the single worst piece of Star Wars put out. You might even convince me to put the Holiday Special over TLJ. The other two? I still maintain they're "fine". It's no great praise, but ALSO... everything kind of sucks now? They're fine considering the rest of the garbage media is producing today. I would still maintain i'll take TFA and TRoS over TPM and AOTC.
As far as a reboot... it depends on what you mean by reboot. If you're talking about another company coming in and only using certain entries as their canon and ignoring other things? That's fine. Despite my general defense of them, if Disney or otherwise decided the ST movies are to be ignored... i'm cool with that.
If you're talking reboot like we're going to redo Star Wars with a new cast and start a whole thing? No.
As an aside, we like the prequels more now out of nostalgia. I was 14 in 1999. I was the quintessential 90's Star Wars kid. I didn't hate the prequels, I also didn't like them. My biggest flip flop was when ROTS came out, I *HATED* it. Like almost walked out of the movies and cursed Star Wars forever hated it. Worse than my reaction to TLJ. I've since come around and it's the only remotely decent prequel movie. The prequels now... pure nostalgia hit. They're terrible movies. Laughingly, embarrassingly bad movies. They're painful to watch. But... I like watching them. AOTC in particular is just... dreadful. TPM is mostly pointless but is probably the best film of them all.
The sequels... they ARE mostly lifeless cash crabs, but TFA and TRoS aren't painful to watch for me. They aren't embarrassing. They're just... not all that great. They're perfectly fine turn your brain off popcorn space fantasy movies.