Channel72

I agree the Jedi should use lightsabers more sparingly. Although, the “defense only” thing is hard to salvage even with the OT alone, given that Kenobi was supposed to be a war-time General. Even in A New Hope, Kenobi violently murders those two alien thugs in the Cantina. It was self-defense, obviously, but Kenobi could have handled them in some non-lethal manner, presumably. I mean, he could have tried to “mind trick” them into leaving Luke alone, for example.

This reveals that the Jedi underwent some conceptual evolution even between 1977 and 1980, because in Empire Strikes Back the Jedi as described by Yoda are much closer to a “defense-only” Zen Buddhist school of thought, whereas Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode 4 had at least some traces of the stereotypical haughty Samurai who doesn’t hesitate to whip out a katana sword and put some unruly peasants in their place.

In practice, George Lucas sort of side-stepped the whole issue in the Prequels by making all the “bad guy minions” to be droids whom the Jedi can freely stab and slice to pieces while bypassing ethical dilemmas and undesirable MPAA ratings.

BedeHistory731 said:

Channel72 said:

But it’s just so fun to whine about.

It sounds absolutely miserable for the people who don’t like the movies. What’s wrong with just ignoring media you dislike, just pretending it never happened? Hell, Legends is right there as a different canon to follow.

Shrug. It’s just an aspect of certain human personalities. Some people, myself included, just enjoy exploring and discussing the various reasons that explain why some piece of media sucks. The Prequels used to be one of the primary targets for discussions like these, but that honor has now been passed along to the Sequels.

Of course, like 95% of everything sucks. Most things that suck are not worth discussing. But some things that suck are more interesting to talk about, because they’re connected to things that don’t suck - which evokes a sense of lost opportunity. This is why the suckiness of the Prequels and Sequels is fascinating to me.

Connor MacLeod said:

I find it hilarious and highly fallacious how people think the message of this film is “let the past die,” as if that was some deep revelatory insight, when Kylo was LITERALLY referring to murdering his own father. Because that was his response to Rey when she asked why he killed his father. So for people to think this kill the past nonsense is great are literally advocating for murdering your parents. Very disturbing.

I think “let the past die” actually IS a message or theme of the film. Yes, Kylo - the villain of the film - says this line, and yes, in context, Kylo is making a point building upon the fact that he recently killed his own father. But a similar message is also expressed by the “good guy” character of Yoda. Yoda capriciously burns down the Jedi library - a repository of past knowledge - and tells Luke that Rey must move beyond the past Jedi masters by learning from their mistakes. Moving on from the past is certainly a theme of the movie, and the meta-commentary woven into the script suggests the message is something like “we need to move beyond the tropes of old Star Wars movies and embrace something new”. This message is also consistent with the actual events of the film, wherein Rey learns almost nothing from Luke (who represents “the past”) except what NOT to do - i.e. learning from past mistakes or failures.

The fact that Kylo Ren (a bad guy) and Yoda (a good guy) preach equivalent or thematically congruent messages is simply another result of the thematic dissonance in TLJ. (At best, and giving TONS of benefit of the doubt to this stupid film, perhaps Rian was trying to juxtapose “healthy” ways of moving on from the past with “unhealthy” ways of doing so.) Also, Kylo’s line “let the past die” is not necessarily ONLY referring to the murder of Han Solo, but in context, it refers also to Rey’s need to let go of past expectations built on false beliefs about her parents. So there is clearly at least SOME wisdom in what Kylo tells her. But the whole thing is a thematic mess that needed several additional rewrites.

The trailer looks kind of meh… but who cares? Tony Gilroy has already proven he knows what he’s doing. If anyone deserves some benefit of the doubt, it’s Gilroy, for producing probably the single best piece of Star Wars content since 1981.

Can he pull off another miracle with Season 2? Probably.

JadedSkywalker said:

Han dies alone on a bridge

The same thing happened to Captain Kirk. Why do these legendary characters keep falling off bridges?

BedeHistory731 said:

Whining about The Last Jedi is still a big red flag for me. So what, a bad movie came out that didn’t do what you wanted with a character? Move on with your life and just never acknowledge it.

But it’s just so fun to whine about.

Anyway, after watching that cool victory party on Endor back in the 80s, I was totally looking forward to seeing my favorite trio of characters again 40 years later. It’s so awesome how the new Republic they fought so hard to establish was summarily blown up as an afterthought, and all three OT characters basically accomplished nothing and died in increasingly pointless and depressing ways.

The only problem is that Luke’s death in TLJ was probably slightly too meaningful. Instead of dying from over-exertion after an astral projection, it would have been WAY cooler if Luke just collapsed randomly one day from coronary artery disease while he was out fishing.

^ I was introduced to the Klingons mostly through their TNG/DS9 depiction as well. But I always found the “space viking” thing a bit too reductive. I mean sometimes it gets really ridiculous, like there’s an episode of DS9 where Klingon soldiers use Bat’leths instead of disruptors during an actual military battle.

But on the other hand, the TOS/TOS-movie Klingons didn’t exactly have a well-defined culture beyond “generic vaguely Eastern stand-in for the USSR/China”, valuing collectivism over individuality. The TOS writers (I think it was Gene Coon) said that the Klingons were based on the USSR and China, but also a little bit on Imperial Japan during WW2, and the original script for the TOS episode “Errand of Mercy” explicitly refers to the Klingons as looking like “Orientals”. I think it was this strain of their thematic DNA - based on Imperial Japan - that evolved into the “Space Viking”/Samurai-esque honor-based warrior culture of the TNG era. The USSR metaphor was kind of obsolete after 1991 (I still blame Gorbachev for the Praxis disaster), but Samurai/Space Vikings can be cool in any era.

Superweapon VII said:

Channel72 said:

Superweapon VII said:

I generally accept DS9 as canon, though not many of the elements I dislike about TNG that carried over, such as the depiction of Klingons. I’m not sure if I accept Jadzia’s death and Ezri Dax’s existence as canon.

The TNG depiction of Klingons is just a slight variation on the depiction of Klingons in The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country. (Except they no longer have pink blood in the 24th century I guess, and the honor culture thing gets cranked up to 11.)

I’d say the TNG Klingons are flanderized versions of the TOS film Klingons. Also TUC had the most well-rounded depiction of the Klingons.

Yeah, in the 1980s the Klingons still had some USSR in their DNA, but the honor-based warrior culture was suggested by things like, for example, the impulsive glory-seeking behavior of that idiot Klingon captain in Star Trek 5. One of the ironies of Klingon thematic evolution over the years is that we ended up with a warrior race that values honor and dying in battle but also is particularly well known for their (cowardly) cloaking technology. That thematic incongruity probably dates back to TOS, when Klingons were depicted as using Romulan technology due to budgetary limits at the time probably.

On an unrelated note, I was recently watching a DS9 episode where they’re in the Mirror Universe aboard Terok Nor, the Cardassian name for DS9. In the Mirror Universe the station is still a Cardassian station, because the Federation doesn’t exist. But there’s this one point where Evil Kira talks to the computer, and the computer voice still sounds like Lwaxana Troi, instead of like, some Cardassian voice. That irritated me so much I actually wrote this post about it.

It’s just so hard to take Star Wars seriously if Rise of Skywalker is actually a thing that happened. Where do you even go after “secret fleet of 10,000 Star Destroyer Death Stars” and “Palpatine magically returns and electrocutes the sky”?? I can’t take it seriously after that because we are now firmly in the Spaceballs Universe and only Mel Brooks should be allowed to direct from now on.

Superweapon VII said:

I generally accept DS9 as canon, though not many of the elements I dislike about TNG that carried over, such as the depiction of Klingons. I’m not sure if I accept Jadzia’s death and Ezri Dax’s existence as canon.

The TNG depiction of Klingons is just a slight variation on the depiction of Klingons in The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, and The Undiscovered Country. (Except they no longer have pink blood in the 24th century I guess, and the honor culture thing gets cranked up to 11.)

As for my personal canon: TOS, TNG, DS9, the original movies (1 thru 6), and that’s it. Maybe some of the Peter David TNG novels. But none of the TNG films, no Voyager, no Enterprise, certainly no J.J. Abrams nonsense, and none of the newer post-Abrams Star Trek series either.

I’d probably want to make some edits also. It’s a little hard to accept stories like Star Trek 4 where time travel is something anyone with a starship can do at any time whenever they feel like it. I mean, that really creates a very sloppy Universe. In fact, I’d like to remove most time travel episodes, because most of them are written as comedies anyway. But things like “Cause and Effect” and “All Good Things” are fine.

I’d also like a better resolution for Gul Dukat’s story arc than just ending up as a clinically insane Satan worshiper. I get that this was thematically consistent as an antithesis to Sisko’s role as the Emissary, but whatever. How awesome would it be if instead they had a multi-episode arc depicting Gul Dukat on trial on Bajor for war crimes, like the Nuremberg trials? (And then like one of the regular cast-members could end up somehow having to be his defense lawyer.) Instead, the writers had him fuck around with some wormhole demons and then fall into a volcano or something.

To be honest, even in the original theatrical release, where Han does the obviously correct thing by shooting first, the scene is still a little wonky.

It’s not entirely clear if Greedo approached Han initially with the intention of killing him. Presumably, Greedo didn’t necessarily plan to kill Han at first, but just wanted to turn him over to Jabba and collect the reward money. The dialogue confirms this explicitly. After Han says “Even I get boarded sometimes. Do you think I had a choice?”, Greedo responds by saying “You can tell that to Jabba. He may only take your ship.”

Okay, so it’s pretty clear that Greedo isn’t interested in killing Han at first, but rather seems to want to force him at gunpoint to walk over to see Jabba, I guess. But then Han says “Over my dead body”. Apparently this makes Greedo change his mind for some reason and decide to kill Han instead. So now even in the original, non-special edition version, Han essentially kills Greedo in self-defense, because Greedo directly told Han that “I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time.”

This isn’t necessarily the clearest of death threats (maybe Greedo meant something more like “I can hardly wait to kill you after Jabba is done with you”.) But it would certainly be reasonable for Han to interpret this line as an imminent death threat.

Assuming Greedo did intend to kill Han imminently, it’s kind of weird that Greedo suddenly switched from “You can tell that to Jabba” to “I’ve been looking forward to killing you” simply because Han objected to the idea of Jabba taking his ship (which has nothing to do with Greedo). I guess Greedo maybe just lost patience and was like “fuck it this guy isn’t cooperating I’ll just kill him”.

My preference for this scene would be to write it so that Han clearly and unambiguously murders Greedo in cold blood just to get away from him. After Han says “Over my dead body”, Greedo should just say “that’s the idea” (meaning Jabba will probably kill Han), and then Han should just shoot Greedo under the table. But having Greedo say the additional line “I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time” opens up the possibility that Han acted in self defense, even without the Special Edition weirdness.

WitchDR said:

rocknroll41 said:

So having all the main characters be men instead of women is “stepping out of gender politics”?

To be fair, Disney can’t write a single good female character to save their life. The only characters that have had any staying power are all male characters: Cassian, Din, and Grogu.

Mon Mothma and Dedra Meero are both incredibly written female characters. They’re more interesting than any of the male characters in Andor, except probably for Luthen. But I agree these are exceptions or outliers among mostly crappy Disney Star Wars productions.

We’ll never see another Mulholland Drive. And now there’s nobody alive who knows what it’s actually really about

henzINNIT said:

It will never cross the uncanny valley

If by never you mean by 2027 or something, then yeah, probably.

On a forum like this where everyone else is also a Star Wars nerd, I say A New Hope, because that is the clearest possible way to refer to this movie. When talking to normal people, I just say “the original Star Wars” or “Star Wars 1977” or something like that.

JadedSkywalker said:

Every director has their style and eccentricities. I just don’t get how people don’t notice the same issues in his earlier films maybe because they are better movies?

Or maybe he had help with the screenplays.

The whole digital cinema and we’ll fake it in cgi and fix it in post, is almost every major comic book or fantasy or science fiction film now.

Lucas had some help writing the Prequels also - people exaggerate when they claim that Lucas wrote the Prequels entirely by himself. However, it is true that Lucas had way more help writing the Original Trilogy, obviously, where for ESB and ROTJ he mostly wrote plot outlines or very early drafts and then had other people flesh out the actual script.

Also, the Original Trilogy truly had ground-breaking special effects for the time. Nobody had seen anything remotely like the Death Star trench run, for example, with moving star fields and dog fights in space. And while the Prequels certainly had a similar effect in terms of revolutionizing the VFX industry (Jar Jar was the first completely CGI character I think) and pushing digital film-making into the mainstream, the overall impact and “wow factor” was much less pronounced from the perspective of the average audience member.

I mean, I’m fairly old, so I remember experiencing various ground-breaking movies as they were released over the past 30 years. I remember being blown-away by new special-effects technology precisely three times in my life, and the Star Wars Prequels were not one of those three times. Those three times were Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and the portrayal of Gollum in Lord of the Rings. I haven’t seen anything else that truly seemed revolutionary or game-changing to me, except possibly AI Luke Skywalker in the Boba Fett show a few years ago. But the Prequels never stood out to me as particularly revolutionary in terms of visual effects, even though, factually speaking, I realize they had a dramatic impact in terms of pushing Hollywood in general towards digital film-making, paving the way for all the Marvel stuff we have now. Yet even in 1999 when the effects in Phantom Menace truly were state-of-the-art, some people were already complaining about the overuse of CGI, with some early reviews complaining that some scenes looked less like Star Wars and more like “A Bugs Life” or something.

^ yeah but Andor

I’m not the biggest Nolan fan but this does sound interesting. There really hasn’t been a definitive adaptation of The Odyssey in the same way that, say, many people view Peter Jackson’s LOTR Trilogy as a definitive adaptation of Tolkien. I think the last time Hollywood produced a Homeric epic was when they adapted The Iliad into a movie called Troy, starring Brad Pitt, which (I vaguely recall) sucked pretty badly. But I have a bit more faith in Nolan, I guess. I’m interested in seeing how Hollywood will interpret The Odyssey in terms of casting and character design, and how all the mythological elements like the Cyclops, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, etc. will be depicted with modern VFX technology. I at least trust Nolan enough to use some restraint and avoid indulging in a CGI explosion like Peter Jackson often does.

Also, the latter part of The Odyssey (comprising most of the 24-chapter epic poem), where Odysseus returns home to Ithaca in disguise, is probably difficult to adapt faithfully due to the vastly different cultural values we have in the 21st century, compared to the Bronze Age sensibilities of Homer’s original audience. I’m referring to the fact that in the “grand finale”, Odysseus violently murders dozens of Ithacan noblemen (some of whom begged for their lives) for the “crime” of courting his wife Penelope, even though these noblemen really did nothing wrong from their perspective (aside from perhaps being rude) because they all believed Odysseus was dead. Odysseus even brutally murders his own household slave girls because some of them slept with the noblemen. I assume stuff like this will not be included (without sufficient modification) in any modern Hollywood adaptation because Odysseus is the protagonist and his violent murder-spree would come off as incomprehensible to a 21st century audience. Regardless, I’m all for seeing Nolan attempt to adapt this stuff anyway, because it would be hilarious to see a modern Hollywood production written with a Bronze Age conception of morality.

Hopefully we’ll also get a Homeric Cinematic Universe featuring tie-ins with The Iliad and Virgil’s fan-fiction epic The Aeneid, culminating in an Avengers-style crossover event where Odysseus, Achilles and Aeneus join forces to fend off an invasion from the Underworld led by Hades and some guy named Elpenor (deep cut reference alert) who died after getting drunk this one time and falling off a roof.

I haven’t watched this show, and it’s encouraging to read all the positive reactions. But it seems this show barely registered on this forum’s radar, judging by the extremely limited engagement in this thread. In contrast, the thread for The Acolyte (which had a mostly luke-warm or negative reception on this forum) generated like 15 pages of posts, and the Andor and Kenobi threads generated even more than that. It seems this forum is just not particularly interested in Skeleton Crew. I wonder if this is a more universal phenomenon that extends beyond this forum. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case, because this show does not use widely-known pre-existing characters and has a very unique or niche premise for a Star Wars show.

This reminds me of a larger conversation about awareness and advertising for streaming shows. I mean, 20 years ago whenever a Hollywood film or network TV show (especially something as culturally impactful as Star Wars) was released, the marketing would be pretty much unavoidable. You would become aware of the show fairly quickly, and then be constantly reminded of its existence via an unrelenting bombardment of television commercials, movie trailers, billboards, etc. But nowadays, fewer and fewer people (particularly younger people with Disney+ subscriptions) watch cable television or go to the movie theatre, choosing instead to watch things on YouTube or other online platforms. Of course, these streaming video platforms do embed video advertisements in their content, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad for Skeleton Crew. Perhaps there are fewer vectors available to advertisers nowadays to cost-effectively spread awareness among target audiences than there was in the past. Or perhaps the target audiences are scattered across too many different online platforms, making it difficult to cost-effectively reach them, unlike 20 years ago when everyone was watching the same television networks and seeing the same movies in theaters. This problem is probably further exacerbated by the niche premise of Skeleton Crew and the fact that its title lacks any connection to the Star Wars IP. Of course, if you already subscribe to Disney+ you’ll see new shows advertised on the home screen, but if you don’t already have Disney+ you might never become aware of new shows.

Personally, I was aware of Skeleton Crew and its Goonies-inspired premise months ago, and I subscribe to Disney+. But I still haven’t watched any episodes. I’m not even sure why. The limited promotional material and positive reviews I’ve seen simply haven’t sufficiently motivated me to actually go watch it, even though I (perhaps hypocritically) really do want to encourage the production of original shows like this that take creative risks with the Star Wars IP. That’s how you get really outstanding stuff like Andor.

Sometimes the overwhelmingly positive reevaluation of the Prequels that occurred across the Internet around 2015 makes me start thinking that I was too harsh on these movies and I should probably give them another watch and maybe reevaluate the positive aspects. I mean, I really want to like them. But every time I try this, the flaws stand out so sharply to me and I just end up rediscovering why I never liked these movies in the first place.

People often say that the actual story of the Prequels was excellent, and it’s only the implementation or execution that resulted in such flawed films. I agree with this, but I don’t think it’s a particularly compelling or interesting point. The actual story outline of the Prequels - broadly speaking - was already known back in the 1980s: Kenobi trained Anakin to be a Jedi and the two became good friends. A manipulative Senator named Palpatine orchestrated a coup by leveraging influence with Trade Guilds and large corporations, overthrowing the Republic and killing all the Jedi in the process. Anakin betrayed Kenobi and sided with Palpatine who appointed him chief “Jedi Hunter”. Then Anakin and Kenobi dueled near a volcano and Anakin fell into lava. Kenobi then arranged for Anakin’s children to be raised in secret. (Yes, even that specific detail about Trade Guilds was known in the 1980s).

So the basic story outline was already known before Lucas began production of the Prequels in the 1990s, and many Star Wars fans were familiar with this story and how it ends. So the entire point of actually making these Prequel films after all these years was the implementation details - the casting, the dialogue, the performances, the fleshed-out finer-grained plot points surrounding the Clone Wars and Anakin’s fall, the identity and personality of Anakin’s wife, the Jedi Order as it existed during “a more civilized age”, etc. The implementation was what everyone was waiting for. We already knew the story and how it ends, but we wanted to see an implementation of this story realized on the big screen. We wanted to see Kenobi and Anakin fighting side by side while exchanging cheesy quips. We wanted to see their great friendship tragically torn apart after Anakin embraces the Dark Side. And we wanted to see their dramatic final showdown atop the volcano.

And yet, almost every aspect of the implementation was fucked up in some way, beginning with the entire plot of Phantom Menace wasting a whole movie on an irrelevant side quest that had little bearing on the overall saga and prominently featured overtly juvenile characters and tone. The finer-grained implementation details fleshing out the Clone Wars and Palpatine’s conspiracy were mostly under-developed and hand-wavy, and often defied audience expectations in the least interesting way possible or created weirdly unnecessary continuity problems. This botched execution was so consistently pervasive throughout all aspects of all three films that praising the underlying source material registers to me as pointless. I still can’t comprehend how it was even possible to so colossally fuck up such dramatically compelling story material on almost every level. The only major implementation details that genuinely worked well were some of the casting decisions (Ewan McGregor is great), certain elements of the fight choreography, and John William’s score was also great (because of course it was). Even many of the visual effects (which George Lucas is famously known for as a pioneer and visionary) aged poorly due to the over-reliance on early-2000s 3D rendering to portray characters and environments.

JadedSkywalker said:

Can someone explain why everyone thinks Mace is this badass lightsaber duelist. He went out in a very weak way. Blown out a window due to unlimited power. After Anakin chopped his hand off.

It’s just a classic case of “telling instead of showing”. We all have this idea in our heads that Mace Windu is supposed to be a “badass lightsaber duelist” because of meta-contextual info like Samuel Jackson’s prior career and his role in things like Pulp Fiction where he’s very intense and says awesome shit. The only actual “showing” of his skills in the Prequels is when he decapitates Jango Fett (which I admit is cool) and when he fights Palpatine and (presumably) wins. But even the Palpatine fight never registered to me as particularly compelling, because the fight choreography between an aging Ian McDiarmid and Samuel Jackson was sort of clunky and relied on strategic editing to make it appear less ridiculous.

All of this is reflective of George Lucas’ overall bad creative choices: a character like Palpatine, who represents a “wicked sorcerer” and “evil mastermind” archetype, should not be doing backflips in a nicely furnished office. He should be sitting behind his desk, adopting a Monty Burns pose, and saying delightfully evil things while dominating everyone with Force powers that don’t require him to get up.

Your survey is using a highly biased population sample (i.e. people who took the time to make an account on OriginalTrilogy.com) and therefore the responses do not represent the “average Star Wars fan”. The people here (including myself) represent a distinct cohort of Star Wars fans with opinions that skew towards rejection of OT revisionism, dislike of the Prequels and Special Editions, and distrust of George Lucas as a creator. The responses you get will reflect the average opinions of this particular cohort of fans, not the average Star Wars fan.

I suspect the average Star Wars fan has very different opinions about Star Wars than the average member of this forum. I also suspect the average or median age of the people that participate in this forum is a bit higher than the average age within the “general population” of Star Wars fans. In fact, an old-school Internet forum like this (as opposed to a modern social media platform) most likely selects for relatively older people.

Spartacus01 said:

Channel72 said:

ESB, you have Luke fighting the man who killed his father (or so he believes), and in ROTJ you have a son fighting his own father.

However, it should also be pointed out that Luke did not interact with Vader at all in The Empire Strikes Back, nor did Vader have any particularly special relationship with Luke up to that point. The only thing Vader knew about Luke was that he was his son, but the two had no meaningful connection, and prior to that duel, Luke had never even spoken to him. Therefore, all the tension in that duel exists solely because you, the viewer, imagine what the two of them might be feeling in that moment. Which is essentially the same as imagining Anakin and Obi-Wan having more positive interactions off-screen compared to the ones that were actually shown in Attack of the Clones.

Revenge-based motivation doesn’t require so much previously established on-screen interactions. See e.g. stuff like Kill Bill vol 2, the Princess Bride, etc. “You killed my father, prepare to die” is all you really need before the part where “they fight”. (Although, some previous on-screen interaction can certainly only improve things.) Whereas, when you have two former friends (or a student/mentor) and one friend betrays the other, you need some mother fucking fleshed out details and some footage of the “good times” before the part where “they fight”.

Regardless, your criticism of Empire Strikes Back is essentially valid. More prior interactions between Luke and Vader (apart from the Battle of Yavin and Luke fighting Vader’s apparition in the cave) would only help to improve the duel, but it’s not as crucial as in the Kenobi/Anakin case.

Channel72 said:

CGI lava effects

The lava was not created using CGI. Footage was taken from Mount Etna — a real volcano located in Sicily, Italy — and then composited into the background. The only CGI related to the lava involved the instances where it rains down just a few inches away from them. Otherwise, the scenes used real footage of Mount Etna. Furthermore, there are not many alternative ways to simulate such a scenario other than CGI and real imagery pasted in the background, as there are not exactly many practical effects capable of convincingly simulating lava, and it is not like you can start throwing real lava at the actors.

Right. CGI lava effects.

Also, “practical lava effects” wouldn’t really improve anything here anyway. The criticism is about over-indulgence of spectacle to compensate for lack of actual drama, not about practical VFX vs. CGI. The Darth Maul fight in Phantom Menace arguably has the same problem, except instead of excessive CGI lava plumes they used the London Symphony Chorus.

The best duels are ones where the duelists have some major personal history and backstory that led to the duel happening in the first place. That’s why the duels in ESB and ROTJ are always the best. In ESB, you have Luke fighting the man who killed his father (or so he believes), and in ROTJ you have a son fighting his own father. Only the duel in Revenge of the Sith, where you had a former student fighting his former mentor and friend, even had the potential to surpass the Luke/Vader duels. But unfortunately, since the Prequel movies failed to establish a compelling relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan, the duel itself is just empty and over-compensates with CGI lava effects and John Williams.

I mean, John Williams could score anything and it would be awesome. A movie scene showing somebody doing their taxes set to a John Williams score would be amazing. Let’s call it “Tax Season II: The Accounting Begins”, with music by John Williams.

In other news, I’m making a new Star Wars trilogy.

Wait, nevermind. I just cancelled it.

I didn’t realize the potential Rogue One had until I saw what Tony Gilroy was capable of doing with Andor. It really puts Rogue One in a different light. I always thought Rogue One was mediocre. The main problem is the pacing and the characterization. The movie jumps around too fast (especially in the beginning) to really let any of the events resonate, which is a common problem with modern movies. Also, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor just came off to me as way too under-characterized. We needed to spend more time with them before the main events of the film, in order to get a sense of who they are. I could see some bare outlines of personality and chemistry in Erso and Andor, but not anything close to Original Trilogy levels. But now that I’ve seen Andor, which has amazing characterization, Rogue One comes off more as an imperfect, missed opportunity, rather than something hopelessly mediocre which I can just write off.