James1027

I thought the ST was a very, very serious blow overall to the credibility and seriousness as a franchise to Star Wars.

TFA resets the entire galaxy off screen with little to no explanation or effort. George Lucas always had an expanding world and story. TFA also added very little in the form of new looks, technology and the Forcr was very slowly creeping in power to an unrecognizable level. I don’t have a problem with new abilities but once we start breaking in universe rules that begins jumping the shark.

TLJ basically cemented the way these new stories would go. Luke and the old guard are broken, weak, and dumb while the new empowered crew has to save the day. TLJ supposedly has a theme about failure. Yes, everyone failed. Except Rey. She successfully resists the dark side, resists Kylo, lifts countless rocks to aide the rebels, escapes snokes damaged ship and steals his private craft, bests Luke in mock combat and is able to show she is truly greater then all the other miserable failures in the film.

Putting that aside, the parking ticket side plot was really dumb and the whole ship chase wasn’t exciting. The movie did look absolutely gorgeous however.

TROS was horrendous and it simply amazes me (well it doesn’t if you think about all the things that JJ Abrams’s has in common with everyone else in Hollywood) that people like him fail upward.

The plot of TROS made little sense, and the emperor returning only to be defeated easily by Rey was a slap in the face to long time fans of the movies invested in Anakin Skywalkers redemption in the eyes of his son.

Overall the ST has accelerated the death knell for Star Wars. The magic is gone and you can’t recapture it because the people who run the franchise don’t understand what made it successful in the first place.

Very well written and intelligent replies by everyone here. So many fascinating takes, all with a slightly different perspective.

I’ll give mine:

I never had any experience with the RPGs, I played the SNES games “Super Star Wars, Super ESB, Super ROTJ” and they actually just went by the movie plots, and were very difficult but extremely fun. The EU, which OP doesn’t explicitly cover, also demystified the saga in a way I found off putting at times.

However, how can something that’s so popular and mainstream remain mysterious, unexplored and tantalizing forever? It’s a tricky question but I think the most installments took away some of the “mystery” of Star Wars starting with ROTJ. The prequels did a far better job at expanding the galaxy than Disney has. The last Jedi felt like a high school football game in its conflict.

While a natural conclusion, the series has reached a point of massive over saturation and fatigue. It no longer feels sacred nor special.

To OPs second point about the familial reveal. This was actually a surprise because Lukes father was supposedly killed years earlier. It’s revealed he became Darth Vader and now serves the emperor. OP is spot on here, as the this has been entirely misinterpreted to mean the whole saga is about having hidden lineage and JJ Abrams entirely convoluted this into a constant tease of who Rey’s parents are. Luke’s father only became important after the reveal, and it was never implied he had a mysterious or secret parent. So, as an audience, we’re genuinely surprised in ESB. But as movie makers and content creators, teasing the issue of hidden family that is powerful does the opposite; it sets us up for something that is an twist and ends up being stale.

TLDR:

Mystery is hard to maintain and Star Wars has been misinterpreted to be about secret family relations, which was a one trick pony that has dried up.

G&G-Fan said:

I do think it’d be weird to make a prequel trilogy without Obi-Wan finding Anakin and bringing him in to become a Jedi as it was explicitly mentioned in ROTJ. Having Anakin be brought into the Jedi on-screen also allows us an organic introduction to them and the Republic (since we’d be from the perspective of someone from the Outer Rim) through our protagonist.

Yeah, I get that sentiment and what you say makes sense from a story telling perspective in many ways. I just thought there was too much going on in the story and anakins character ended up being disjointed through 3 movies.

Following up on my previous reply, episodes 1 and 2 were basically wasted exposition. Could have very easily made the revenge of the sith opening battle the start of the prequel trilogy and extend the timeline/era to 7+ hours for 3 movies.

One of the only consequential happenings in 1+2 was the clone army and that was oddly left entirely unexplained. The Republic just uses a random clone army that the Jedi council said they didn’t authorize and the template is fighting for the other side? Who paid for it? Who trained them? It was a subpar storyline and wasn’t believable in regards to rules of the universe we are used to. I know, it was explained in comics cartoons etc. but something that big deserves more resolution and explanation on screen.

Is there any sense of excitement for this movie? I think Disney may be throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks in regards to buzz and merchandise. Ridley’s character and story were not compelling and this movie bombing would sink the franchise. If it isn’t sinking already.

This is my first post here, I have been browsing for years off and on. I love the more mature discussion.

I enjoyed the prequels in general but I don’t think they were great by any means. I like Episode 3 the most and thought it was an interesting take but the execution fell short.
Like a lot of people, I imagined something entirely different, from the aesthetics to the plot and everything else. From an aesthetic look, I thought everything from the battle of Geonosis until the end of ROTS matched what I thought. Episode 1 and parts of 2 felt like an entirely different franchise from the looks category.

I had a pretty young mind when speculation began but I thought a few things:

From the ESB novel, the Jedi and the republic fought Mandalorians and their clone armies. However, when Princess Leia told Luke he is too short for a stormtrooper, I thought stormtroopers could have been clones as well. It was called “the clone wars” not “clones vs droids”

I figured the emperor played both sides, but thought there was possibly a sith council/ order (at the time I had read the word but didn’t know what it meant, I just called them bad/dark Jedi) For me the rule of 2 was interesting but overall was just too much added to an already convoluted plot. I didn’t think there would be thousands of Jedi, maybe a few hundred at the most. I just assumed the emperor would use both sides to eliminate the Jedi and sith, including potentially his own master.

I also thought we would see open field battles, Jedi and troops vs dark side user and troops.

Lastly the portrayal of Darth Vader as a young man missed the mark. The speech patterns didn’t line up very much. I also thought Vader, based on some of his OT dialogue, would have joined the dark side out of a desire to bring order to the galaxy. Never would I have thought that he was crying over a woman, and literally killing kids over trying so save his wife. Really odd and didn’t line with up with his original portrayal. I thought padme would have been a really minor character who left anakin when he was starting to get weird and she didn’t tell him she was pregnant. She has the kids, leia remembers her, and after her body returns to its pre pregnancy weight, she confronts him or whatever and she dies.

I have other thoughts but maybe another time, this post getting a wordy.

Ok, it’s good to be here. Love the forum.