Wow, really can’t believe the near universally positive reception from you guys. I hated basically everything from these first two episodes, don’t think I’ll be coming back for more…
For some reason I’ve never noticed until now that the first mentioning of the name Anakin is when Ben talks to Luke on Dagobah. I always thought the conversation between Luke and Vader on Endor was the first time. It’s fascinating how casually they drop the name, as if we were just supposed to already know who it referred to (not that it’s particularly hard to figure out based on the conversation).
Yep. That’s the only reason I’m very strongly against SE Emperor - I don’t mind the makeup or the altered dialogue that much in general - but “offspring of Anakin Skywalker” kills it for me. It makes infinitely more sense for us to learn that name in an intimate moment with Luke and Ben, after Yoda passes and confirms Luke’s greatest fear. It’s a very deep and delicate scene, perfect for us to learn his name. And, of course, if you miss it, Luke says it to Vader in his face later on, also a good moment.
I suppose in the context of the PT, which is what the 2004 SEs were for, it makes more sense for the Emperor to say that than just “Luke Skywalker”, but looking at the OT as a trilogy, that’s a no no.
To me it’s in tiers as well.
The ST is in a weird spot for me, canonically. More often than not I find myself trying to fall in love with the movies but it’s just so hard to see them as a good continuation of the story. The good thing is that its biggest strengths lie in the trilogy as a meta narrative, each movie trying to communicate with the previous six in different ways. TFA and TROS I really dislike but TLJ I find a fitting coda to the saga. How “canon” those events are, though, is a different beast and I tend not to give it too much thought.
Is Harrison in the cockpit in the shot that begins at 0:03 ~ 0:04? I think it could use a bit more CC to blend in with the background better… or maybe he’s actually there and my brain is playing tricks on me. Either way Nev, this is incredible.
I was going to check out that video, but I went to that guy’s channel and…
I seriously don’t understand what about the prequels or George Lucas attracts the minds of terrible people like this. And not just that, but also the fandom menace people/far right portion of the fan-base that seems to love the prequels. Those movies are actively against everything these people crave, as is Lucas, it’s just crazy to me. And then they just shit on the worst aspect of the sequels, with slurs and offenses to both cast and crew. Kelly and Daisy had to delete their social media accounts for fuck’s sake, this is insane to me, truly. I just don’t get it. Same people that go “Star Wars is political now! Get it off my movies!” …buddy, you seem to not have understood a single thing about Lucas’ 6 if that’s how you feel…
Yeah, not a flaw at all. Complaining about Carano’s firing should be a major red flag.
It’s pretty dishonest to say that post-SE and post-PT there hasn’t been a narrative that George Lucas is a fraud and more of an “ideas man” that basically can’t do anything, and it’s often backed by people saying the Original Trilogy and the original movie would’ve failed and were saved by its editors, chiefly amongst them Marcia Lucas, or by Gary Kurtz, who “heroically left after George decided to turn Star Wars into teddy bears and stuff”. And George’s own contributions go to shambles.
If one is to look at it objectively, Marcia’s statements both disprove the narrative that she and the other editors “saved the film” and the narrative that Lucas is a mastermind who’s never made a mistake and needs no help.
It seems that Marcia Lucas has some strong feelings about the ST.
Hallway scene is only ‘cool’ because we care about Vader. Otherwise he’s a monster committing atrocities. It’s a terrifying scene, if you shut your eyes it’s like you’re listening to a psychopath in a horror movie killing desperate people. For someone that doesn’t know Vader, that’s just scary and evil incarnate.
For me, it was the first time I saw him as purely a monster too, no personal motivation, just a hateful killing machine slaughtering people fighting against tyranny. His ‘evilness’ in the original Star Wars is shadowed by Tarkin’s for the most part, and in Empire and Jedi it becomes personal so it’s less cold. In Rogue One it’s just pure, free and needles hate. And on top of that, for us fans, it does look cool as well. I don’t see a problem with it.
I think once again it’s a lot more meta than anything. Mental gymnastics are required for Luke to be a legend in the galaxy - his story after Star Wars was very intimate and personal, not grand or anything. Lando, Han and Leia should rightfully become legends, but Luke? No one besides Leia and Han would even know he was on the Death Star anyway, the only people that saw him died…
Rian is playing up to Abrams’ fantasy of Luke being insanely powerful which was fed to him by over 30 years of Luke becoming the quintessential hero in pop culture - exactly because he’s not your common hero but much deeper than that, as Servii rightfully pointed - and of course the Legends stuff with Grand Master Luke Skywalker, single most powerful being ever to have been born.
Everyone expected Luke to be moving entire planets with his mind or something of the sort - he deserved it after going through such hardships in the OT. But life isn’t quite so good, and mistakes will haunt you until the end of time.
The Rebellion didn’t treat Luke that way. They didn’t hinge all their hopes on whether or not he showed up to help. Despite his abilities, he was still just one man, and one small part of a larger faction. The fact that the Resistance is so hyper focused on recruiting someone who, as far as they know, abandoned their cause years ago, and is hopeful that he’ll return, is naive and reflects poorly on them.
He’s still just one man, regardless of his powers, and it takes a long time to train a new generation of Jedi, so that’s hardly an immediate concern for the First Order. The line in TLJ when Rey tells Luke he needs to “bring the Jedi back” to stop Kylo Ren is really odd, since it makes it seem like Luke can just flip a switch and restore the Jedi after years of sitting around.
It’s also odd that Snoke is more focused on finding Luke than he is on destroying the Republic. His priorities seem backwards. He and the First Order have much bigger fish to fry than an inactive Luke who might be a potential threat in the future, yet Snoke talks about finding Luke like it’s the most important step in winning the war. But if the Republic and Resistance were destroyed, Luke coming out of hiding would be a nuisance, at best.
After accomplishing the feat of destroying the the Death Star, you don’t see Luke being treated with any sort of reverence in TESB. He’s still just a squad pilot among many, and his mastery of the Force is merely a personal journey. Absolutely nobody amongst the Rebellion shows the slightest concern with reviving the Jedi Order, because the conflict between the Jedi and the Sith was one of many narratives in the OT.
This is echoed in the PT, where the Jedi Order have grown to overestimate their role in the Galaxy, as Luke points out in TLJ, so much so that when the Jedi Order is dismantled nobody cares.
The ST contradicts this by turning the Jedi Order into a vital component of galactic society. Max Von Sydow’s character says that without the Jedi there can be no balance. There’s this bizarre belief that Luke must be brought back into the fold and Snoke worrying about the potential return of the Jedi Order strikes me as paranoid and a little psychotic.
Wholeheartedly agreed, which is why the ST functions better as a meta-level sequel to the Star Wars trilogy, so to speak. Rian plays with Abrams’ concept of Luke being a legend - something that he’d never be in-universe - because he’s a legend to us, the audience, and shows that even our heroes are people that fail. And Rian did that just right - what is the only reasonable explanation for Luke to be in that situation? To believe that isolating himself from the Force is the correct thing, and he does that expertly by playing in the whole point of the PT which is that the Jedi were a harmful institution by that point, which leads Luke to believe that such darkness is at the heart of the Jedi religion.
People seem to think that’s the point of the movie - but it’s not, it’s that no matter who you’re meant to be or what you’re told to be or what you think your institutions are, you’ll always be a hero and a legend to someone if you do the right thing. On top of everything it also functions as a direct sequel to TFA because it questions but reassures the importance of the structures that movie so desperately builds up and just mindlessly loves.
7 and 8 do not link together. The characters from 7 are not the characters from 8, because both directors had their own interpretations. When people defend 8, they are defending their love of the movie and their parasocial love of Rian, not its cohesiveness in the trilogy or how well it meshes with the other 2 films.
Rey was someone in TFA, Rian decided she was “no one” and then JJ decided she was someone again. There is no way that Rian thought she was a secret Palpatine when he made 8.
Kylo was Vader obsessed in TFA, 4 minutes later in TLJ (in universe time) he isn’t, and ROS he is back to Vader obsessed.
Snoke was a mysterious new emperor in TFA, TLJ said he was a joke nobody, ROS then said he was back to being a mysterious new emperor (clone thing). This is on record that JJ did not expect Rian to kill off the big bad unceremoniously.
This is not saying JJ’s writing is good. This is saying that the two different directors clearly had different visions of what they wanted the characters to be.
Listen, I fail to understand this. How was Rey someone in TFA? The only thing TFA says is that she’s someone destined to do great things - but that doesn’t mean she’s a big character’s daughter or granddaughter or whatever. Sure, Abrams resorts to cheap tricks (which is all he knows) like cutting away from Maz and Han discussing who she is and setting up an empty mystery box - something Star Wars has never been known for (it’s always been straightforward and makes its characters and plot interesting without the need for such flat techniques) - but you can’t say for sure she’s someone just because Abrams wants you to chew on who she is. Her being nobody is a more interesting way out thematically and story-wise as well. New blood, dammit, it’s a big galaxy.
Snoke - as, the way I see it, an insert of Rian - tells Kylo he’s a failure as a “Vader wannabe” and tells him to “take that ridiculous mask off”. Kylo then sets off to find an identity of his own after spectacularly failing in being a worhy successor to Vader in TFA. That’s an interesting character choice which allowed the writers more freedom and a potentially more compelling character arc for him in IX, since Kylo became completely independent from anything of the past in TLJ, something that makes sense. His 180° wasn’t out of nowhere, it was carefully constructed.
TLJ never said Snoke was a “joke nobody”. Sure it may have told the audiennce that setting mystery boxes like that is a stupid thing to do - because it is - but the characters all know what’s up. We don’t because Abrams chose to set his movie 30 years in the future and do little to no worldbuilding.
The thing here is: TLJ needed, to please everyone, to be a 4h picture structured like The Godfather Part II. Abrams didn’t set up a single thing in this post-ROTJ universe. During the making of TFA he was enjoying this fantasy of being 1976 George Lucas and threw us in the middle of a story, but he demonstrates laughable writing skills when compared to Lucas in terms of how he builds his world. TFA being Episode VII also means he has to do a lot more explaining here - he doesn’t have the freedom Lucas had, he’s not creating a universe from scratch - so he needs to set up the political state of the galaxy in order for us to understand why anything the characters do matters, and he needs to set up his characters, both old and new, their motivations, etc - something he arguably did for most of them, but, as your complaint about Snoke shows us - clearly not all of them.
Rian had to answer all of TFA’s questions - both about the past and the present - while also being a movie with its own voice - and it succeeded as much as it could. Rian even uses flashbacks, something no Star Wars would ever dream of doing, because of the shit hand Abrams dealt him. But all the characters in TLJ are an absolute continuation from those of TFA, to a tee. A direct sequel if I’ve ever seen one, and a good one at that. I’m convinced TLJ is the best movie we could possibly have gotten given TFA.
TROS I’d rather not acknowledge, but if I have to, I’ll just physically cringe for a second in the corner.
My understanding is that the Rebellion grew much larger after Scarif and even more so after the Battle of Yavin. The way I see it, Scarif is probably what prompted Biggs to defect the Imperial Academy and join the Alliance.
Good call. My last ranking was over a year ago and I re-evaluated a big portion of the franchise during the period.
Bumping this thread because I think I’ve finally arrived at my definitive ranking of these films:
- Star Wars
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Return of the Jedi
- Revenge of the Sith
- Rogue One
- The Last Jedi
- Solo
- Attack of the Clones
- The Clone Wars
- The Phantom Menace
- The Force Awakens
- The Rise of Skywalker
As you all can see… I’m not a fan of J. J. Abrams.
Dear Burbin, I worked on a little Hal/Blu-Ray hybrid for R1 and I believe Hal’s edit is a bit more red than the Blu-Ray, as opposed to your clips being on the green side.
To start this post off, my unpopular opinion is that midi-chlorians are completely in line with the original film that everyone has the Force and the potential to use it. ROTJ arguably does a lot more harm. “The Force is strong in my family, my father has it, I have it and… my sister has it.” Now that’s talking about how it’s completely genetics. But it’s not just genetics, which we know it isn’t from the original Star Wars and later on the PT, even if certain families have more affinity for the Force than others. But the Force never was Harry Potter magic.
Exactly. The Force can be with anyone at any time; microscopic life forms in the blood are a reductive and quite frankly destructive element which constrains the Force to practical irrelevance in its own story.
I never saw it that way, personally. And I doubt George does. From TPM:
ANAKIN: Master, sir, I heard Yoda talking about midi-chlorians. I’ve been wondering…what are midi-chlorians?
QUI-GON: Midi-chlorians are a microcopic lifeform that resides within all living cells.
ANAKIN: They live inside me?
QUI-GON: Inside your cells, yes. And we are symbionts with them.
ANAKIN: Symbionts?
QUI-GON: Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll hear them speaking to you.
QUI-GON: Life forms living together for mutual advantage. Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you’ll hear them speaking to you.
So what he’s saying is that midi-chlorians are what make life possible and that there’s several midi-chlorians inside every cell of every living being (kinda like what Yoda tells Luke in TESB, no?), and that they’re a bridge between the person and the Force. If people have more, then they’re more likely to become strong in the Force. If they have less, they could still become strong but possibly never as strong as someone else that just has more affinity.
I think it’s mostly a way of “quantifying talent”. Think of it like learning an instrument. Some people just are more talented than others, but if one wishes and works incredibly hard for it, they can absolutely be very good too. But some people are just naturals, and the midi-chlorians was a way to tell the audience that Anakin’s objectively the kid with the most Force potential ever, almost a freak. Not the most poetic way, but still effective and I don’t see how it betrays the script of the original movie.
Heck, one of the big issues with PT Jedi is how they’re basically on this ivory tower being total elitist assholes that train only those that have the potential to be strong, leaving them no say in the matter - as opposed to picking newcomers based on their character and desire and will to do good. No wonder they’re this corrupt and arrogant institution.
But yeah, according to TPM, even Han Solo has midi-chlorians (otherwise he wouldn’t even be alive!) and if he chooses to, he could hone his skills and become a Jedi.
I’m against it because it doesn’t belong in this movie, Star Wars predates all of that. However, should Ady decide to add it, it’s very easy for anyone to remove it for future viewings. I could easily see myself releasing (if I get Ady’s blessing) or even Ady himself releasing two tracks, one with and one without the march. But maybe that’d be too many audio tracks since there’ll already be one with the Mustafar duel music and one without…
LOL
Luckily Ahsoka is there to tie together the much more interesting parts of the saga than ‘whining farmhand tries to make genocidal tyrant good again’ and long may that continue.
I considered engaging in this discussion but if this is how you see Star Wars then it’s so wildly different from how I do that it’s probably not even worth it to try and argue anything.
Is that not the actual canon though?
So, why are Howzer and his squad such good guys?
She learns stuff because of the Dyad.
The Force is already instincual. Hence why Luke could use a mind trick in RotJ without any training.
lol
Yeah, and it’s not like it’s a throwaway line setting up a random ability he has, it’s a character defining trait.
Bobson, i believe these are 2.39:1, matching the latest Blu-ray. any chance you could release 2.35:1 versions of these, matching the previous Blu release/theatrical aspect ratio?
^ Jocasta actually has a canon appearance almost immediately after ROTS in Vader’s second comic book run, IIRC.
Spence’s edit ends on the funeral pyre.