In this shot:
I never noticed the droid at the console on the bottom left before. It’s hard to make out the details of it, but it sort of looks like EV-9D9 from Jabba’s palace. It might be sort of a precursor to the K-2SO droids.
The thing is, a lot of people have interpreted the prequels as saying that the Jedi were in the wrong, and that they were psychologically harmful to Anakin. But I don’t think George wrote the prequels with that in mind. I think, in his mind, Anakin was clearly in the wrong, and the Jedi were right. Anakin was written to be essentially an arrogant brat who throws a tantrum when he isn’t granted the rank of Master at 22 years old, a moment that was meant to show Anakin being ungrateful rather than the Jedi being mean to him. He repeatedly gets angry over perceived slights by the Jedi, but all those “slights” basically just amount to him not advancing at the breakneck pace he thinks he should be.
What I think happened is that the whole prequel Jedi philosophy simply didn’t gel well with modern audiences, so people came up with interpretations that placed the Jedi as the ones who wronged Anakin rather than Anakin just being in the wrong. It’s perfectly fine to choose to interpret the prequels as being critical of the Jedi. I just don’t believe that was George’s intention when writing them.
A point of contention when talking about the prequels is the Jedi Order’s stance on attachment. A particular scene people often come back to is Yoda’s conversation with Anakin in RotS, where Yoda seems to give some questionable advice about grief. This issue was brought back to my attention by a scene at the end of one of the episodes of Book of Boba Fett, where Luke is shown to be carrying on that same anti-attachment philosophy.
There’s been a lot of back-and-forth on this, mainly on the question of whether or not this is a good philosophy, and if it’s not, whether that was intentional on the part of George Lucas.
For example, there’s the fact that the Jedi take on new members when they’re babies, because they don’t want prospective Jedi to develop attachments to their families. To me, this flies in the face of the argument that the Jedi are only against possessive, selfish attachments, since familial bonds don’t really fit into that category. If you accept that even the love between a parent and child is something that’s selfish and dangerous, then that leaves you to conclude that all interpersonal relationships are selfish and dangerous and lead to the Dark Side.
It’s true that Anakin consistently takes things too far in his obsession with keeping people in his life. His reaction to his mother’s death is odd in that he focuses on himself, angrily vowing never to fail again, and when he fears for Padme’s life, the language he uses about her is very possessive and dependent to an unhealthy degree.
Basically, Anakin’s relationships are an extreme negative example of the pitfalls of attachment, rather than what would be the norm for all Jedi. Ideally, Jedi would be coached in how to deal with emotions like grief, and how to come to terms with the loss of loved ones so that it doesn’t cloud their judgment. But instead of doing that, the Jedi try to keep their students from even having loved ones at all, and directly associate the act of mourning with negative emotions like jealousy and greed.
This whole issue is further complicated by the ending of RotJ. Luke refuses to kill Vader because of their relation, and it’s Anakin’s attachment to his son (and thus his desire not to lose him) that pulls him back to the Light and causes him to destroy the Emperor. So we have a scenario where familial attachment saves the day and brings victory for the Light Side, with the main difference being that Anakin acted on his attachment in a self-sacrificial way this time, though it’s not certain whether he knew the act would kill him.
This seems to suggest that Lucas’ intention was for the Jedi to be wrong about attachment. And this interpretation was inadvertently backed up by Luke’s portrayal in the old EU, where he’s fully open to attachment and allows it for his students. But there’s something important to keep in mind. The Jedi’s rules on non-attachment hadn’t been invented yet when the OT was being written, and therefore, the EU writers obviously didn’t incorporate it into their stories. By the time George was writing the prequels, he had changed a great deal as a person (as all people do), and therefore was approaching those films with a different perspective. The Jedi’s stance on attachment seems to be something he came up with in the gap between trilogies. And of course, he’s also spoken against the idea of Luke ever getting married in his version of events.
Keeping that in mind, when we look at Luke’s depiction in BoBF, things start to make more sense. BoBF is a project that Dave Filoni is closely involved with, and Filoni was especially close to George and seems to understand his vision and intentions. So, it’s fairly safe to say that Luke’s portrayal in BoBF aligns pretty closely with Lucas’ vision for a post-RotJ Luke.
TL;DR Luke being pro-attachment in the old EU was just a happy accident caused by George simply not having decided yet that attachment was a bad thing.
I feel that any prequel is always intended to be watched in release order; ie the very fact that it is a prequel means that it should be watched with the knowledge of the film that comes after it.
Chronological order ruins the viewing experience, at least for a first-time viewer (people who have seen all films can choose any order).
I joke, but this his would not be an issues if everyone had an option to watch the unaltered theatrical cuts. 😃
the image is not mine: https://twitter.com/BrandonMutala/status/1471499989448753161
That’s really the main intended purpose of Machete Order. To preserve the Vader twist while allowing a new viewer to recognize who the heck that young ghost guy is in RotJ.
It might be fun to do fan edits of AotC and RotS that account for Machete Order. It’s grown on me as a way of watching the films.
As for Rogue One, it can really be watched whenever, as long as the person has at least seen ANH beforehand. I made the mistake of showing Rogue One first to someone, and they were very confused about Darth Vader.
The worst aspect was Harrison basically having nothing to do and going through the motions. Han was the weakest part. Mark Hamill was fantastic as Luke and really delivered. Carrie was sort of just there like Harrison, just to finish the thing. Out of obligation but Leia was also a much weaker character in that film.
I noticed that’s a recurring problem with the third film of each trilogy. The third film kind of gets tunnel vision on the main character at the expense of the other characters.
I noticed something else that I didn’t mention in my original post. How did Vader track the Tantive IV through hyperspace when hyperspace tracking wasn’t possible yet? And as they’re escaping, Captain Antilles gives the order to prepare the escape pods, as though he knows they won’t be able to get away.
His family would have told him about his grandfather returning to the light, or Anakin’s force ghost could have told him.
That’s another thing about the new Canon that bugs me. Apparently, Luke, Han, and Leia all kept the identity of Ben’s grandfather a secret from him, and he only found out about it through the Holonet. I think that’s very out of character for all three of them. Realistically, Day 1 Lesson 1 of Ben’s Jedi training would be a Skywalker family history lesson, so that he could learn the cautionary tale of Anakin.
I’m only upset they so poorly used Mark Hamill and the character of Luke. They had him lose fifty pounds for what, to milk a sea cow?
This scene lasts like twenty seconds
They still put it in the movie, instead of the scene of Luke mourning Han Solo.
What, out of interest, would you say are some of the discrepancies between the Sequels and the Original Trilogy?
There’s a few I can remember.
The second Death Star being so intact despite it being vaporized in RotJ.
The fact that the Wayfinder on Mustafar apparently belonged to Vader, which would mean Vader knew about Exegol, yet he never told Luke about it as he was dying or as a ghost.
Characters repeatedly enter and exit hyperspace within a planet’s gravity well, or come out of hyperspace literally right above a planet’s surface, which should be basically impossible. In general, characters use hyperspace far more recklessly. Another example of that is lightspeed skipping, which really shouldn’t be able to happen.
Rey having to translate Chewie’s words to Luke, despite how long they’ve known each other.
Resistance and First Order ships coming from the same arms dealer despite clearly being from different sources like the OT-era ships were.
Some of the new Force powers, like object teleportation. Or the fact that lightsabers now “call” to people, deliver visions, and “choose” their rightful wielder. Anakin’s lightsaber never called to Luke. Also, Rey being able to use a mind trick successfully despite not knowing what a mind trick is. In general, training is devalued in the sequels, and objects, like lightsabers, are overvalued based on their history.
The Resistance being so much smaller and weaker than the Rebellion, despite them being the victors in the last war.
And arguably, Force ghosts being able to use the Force directly on the physical world and grab physical objects. This one is debatable.
On paper, I don’t have a problem with the OT heroes being killed off. I expected it to happen. But I think their deaths weren’t executed well. None of the characters’ death scenes really “landed” for me. I saw Han’s death coming from a mile away, and I thought having his lifeless, CGI corpse fall down a bottomless pit was in poor taste. And Luke and Leia’s deaths were just confusing and weird. They died from using the Force too hard? Just odd. None of the deaths got to me emotionally.
When Anakin’s ghost appears in ROTJ, he appears distraught and starts to say something about Exegol.
Luke: “I’m sorry! I can’t hear you over the music!”
Something else I hadn’t mentioned yet was the issue of Luke’s ideology in TLJ. One of the things TLJ got praised for was tying itself back to the prequels by having Luke call out the failings of the prequel-era Jedi Order.
The thing is, there are plenty of legitimate issues to be raised about the prequel Jedi: the fact that they separated Force-sensitive babies from their parents and never let them know their own families; the fact they encouraged an unhealthy level of emotional repression and detachment from the outside world; and the fact that they remained servants of the Republic even as it grew more corrupt and self-serving, going so far as to lead a war against a faction trying to secede.
These are all legit grievances that could’ve been brought up. The problem is, TLJ doesn’t mention any of those. Luke says some stuff about how the Jedi allowed Sidious to destroy them, which means they apparently deserved to be destroyed, for some reason? He says the legacy of the Jedi is failure, despite the fact that the Jedi had been able to keep the Republic together and thriving (for the most part) for thousands of years. And he says that the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi, which isn’t some groundbreaking statement. Everyone already knew that. The Jedi never claimed that the Force belonged to them.
I get that the point is that Luke is supposed to be wrong, so we can see him have a change of heart at the end. The problem is that Luke’s whole anti-Jedi stance in the first part of the movie is such a flimsy, poorly constructed strawman that there’s no way Luke would have believed it for 6 years. He would have seen through it before then, because of how little sense it makes.
There’s also the fact that Luke, given his unconventional path to knighthood, would definitely not have been the traditionalist, prequel-like Jedi the new canon portrays him as. He would have reformed the Order to correct its flaws, rather than just throwing the whole thing out without trying to change anything. But, I’ll save that for another post.
Honestly, the Sequel Trilogy is simultaneously to me a great series of films… and some of the most frustrating.
I very much enjoyed reading your post, thank you.
One thing I think gets overlooked is that the Sequel films did attempt to pay homage to the Original Trilogy, to try and respect it and its legacy. Whereas George wrote so many inconsistencies into the Prequels, contradicting the OT, it felt anything but that. It was as if George was trying to reinvent Star Wars and his “grand plan”, and was quite happy to diminish the OT at the expense of his Prequel Trilogy to try and achieve this.
When I think of some of the issues that the Sequels have, I try and give them a little more of “a pass” just for that. That respect, and that trying to make three films more in keeping with the Originals, in spirit at least. TFA and TLJ are easier to do this for, and TROS is more difficult, as that is one crazy break neck film with far too much happening too fast for anything to sink in. For me, anyway. As you posted, another year to help production for the film to iron out some of its issues would have helped considerably.
I can’t say I agree. For a few reasons, but also for one major reason: the sequel trilogy made it so that the OT is actually the least important, least consequential of the three trilogies. The prequels show us Palpatine’s rise to power. The sequels show us how he’s finally defeated at the hands of his granddaughter. You could actually skip the OT altogether, since it’s the least relevant to the overarching saga story. Ultimately, Luke and his vision of a revived Jedi Order just ended up being the husk from which Rey and her new version of the Jedi would emerge. And the Skywalkers, while still being fairly important, are no longer the central figures driving the saga. They’re secondary to the Palpatines.
Both the prequels and sequels make the mistake of trying to reframe the saga around the new protagonist. You can see that in saga promotional material (and even in things like the startup screen for the new Lego game, which has Rey at the top and center of the group of characters, framing her as the main character of the saga). Part of the problem is that both trilogies are essentially pulling the saga in opposite directions, and as a result, the saga becomes disjointed.
I don’t doubt that the writers of the sequels have a lot of reverence for the OT. I do think they tried to have the new movies respect the old. They just fell into the trap of what I can only describe as reckless storytelling, where key plot points aren’t really thought through for what their implications would be. And there are quite a few inconsistencies between the new films and the OT. I’d say about as many as the prequels created.
And I think the most brilliant thing about the ST is bringing Palpatine back. People think this was a last minute change, but I think JJ had this in mind from the beginning. It was pointed out before TLJ came out that musically Rey’s Theme was a variation on Palpatine’s theme.
But they didn’t do that. And on top of that, they didn’t ask Ian McDiarmid to come back as Palpatine until a point in 2018
It was actually Jan 2019
Wow, that’s worse than I remembered.
LexX said:
The point is, I love the original trilogy and I remember the time before TPM like it was a full life even though I saw the OT in 1996 for the first time. It was great time all around. After the PT I had lost this feeling. There still were the same movies I loved but with them came this other thing that wasn’t anything like it.Small rant incoming.
The OT is like this beautiful, smart, funny woman who agreed to marry me. And after years of marriage her drug dealing, abusive son from a prior marriage now comes back and moves in with us. The son is the PT.
You can kick him out and pretend he doesn’t exist…but you know he is alive…somewhere. And even if he died, the memory remains. He is family.
That is the problem with the PT for me. And the ST for that matter. I try to do the whole “personal canon” thing, but I can’t. The OT is forever tainted for me. Can I still enjoy them to a certain degree? Sure. But can I ever look at Darth Vader again without part of me knowing how Anakin was portrayed in the PT? No! Can I look at Luke Skywalker again without occasionally remembering him sucking the milk from the boobs of some space cow or running away like a coward leaving an evil force to grow in the galaxy? No!
I have come to the point where I am more interested and fascinated by the train wreck nature of this franchise and by the toxic battles within its own fandom then the actual material.
Perhaps it is time to get out…again.
I know how you feel. I felt the same way for a long time, and it killed my interest in Star Wars for several years.
I’ve taken to compartmentalizing each trilogy and viewing each of them as its own three-part “saga,” like three different legends all taking place in the same setting. In a way, we’re lucky compared to fans of TV shows that went downhill in later seasons, like Game of Thrones. Those poor people don’t even have a clean cutting-off point where they can stop watching and just remember the good times. The whole show becomes tainted, because you can see big setups in the early seasons, and you’ll remember the disappointing payoffs those setups got in later seasons.
Compartmentalizing isn’t a perfect solution, but it definitely makes watching Star Wars easier, so I’m glad there are such clear dividing lines between each “era” of Star Wars movies. And it helps that I never really registered OT Luke and ST Luke as the same characters. Or OT Vader and PT Anakin, either.
And I think the most brilliant thing about the ST is bringing Palpatine back. People think this was a last minute change, but I think JJ had this in mind from the beginning. It was pointed out before TLJ came out that musically Rey’s Theme was a variation on Palpatine’s theme.
I strongly recommend watching this video by a channel that analyzes musical scores:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FstNC8T4LjA
He goes in depth into the details of Rey’s theme, and calling it just a variation of Palpatine’s theme is misleading. When analyzed, Rey’s theme contains traces of the Force theme, the Imperial march, and Palpatine’s theme, and can be harmonized with Yoda’s theme as well as others. The conclusion he reaches in the video is that Rey’s theme was deliberately designed by Williams to be as vague and versatile as possible, because he knew that the writers hadn’t decided on an origin for Rey yet.
Also, Daisy Ridley said in an interview that Rey being a Palpatine was not at all part of the original plan. She actually said there was talk of making Rey a Kenobi.
And keep in mind, the EU already did the whole thing of bringing back Palpatine. And arguably, the EU did it better because it actually accounted for how the heroes were going to prevent Palpatine from returning again in the future. And even then, it was an extremely divisive move at the time. And if the ST writers were really planning early on to bring him back, they would have at least foreshadowed it in some way, however subtly. But they didn’t do that. And on top of that, they didn’t ask Ian McDiarmid to come back as Palpatine until a point in 2018 when the production of TRoS was already well underway. All signs point to Palpatine’s inclusion being a last-minute choice.
So, I did a little bit of digging, because I distinctly remember Rian Johnson saying a lot of inflammatory stuff back in 2018 and getting mired in Twitter arguments at the time. It does look like he deleted quite a bit, so I had to do some looking on some more unsavory clickbait sites.
I found this article talking about it:
I don’t think any of Rian’s Tweets shown here are particularly bad, but the fact that this article even got published is a reminder of how well known Rian’s back-and-forth with fans was at the time. Looking back, I can sympathize with him, and I can see he was getting understandably frustrated dealing with angry people on social media. And to his credit, he did apologize afterwards for making fun of Mike Zeroh:
https://mobile.twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1036812353990324224
But it was still a mistake of him to stoop to insults, even if the people he was insulting did often deserve it. And while he claims his insults were only directed toward people who harassed those involved in the movie, he really seemed to fall into the trap of conflating a wide range of people as all being “haters” and “trolls.” I remember a lot of the Lucasfilm writers “clapping back” at “toxic fans” on Twitter back in 2018. It was always treated as justified because they were “owning” the “trolls” who supposedly deserved it. But their definition of “troll” seemed to be pretty wide, at times.
Of course, I don’t know how you justify something like this:
And Rian was never nearly as bad as Chuck Wendig, whom I was reminded of by this other article:
Just really, really unhinged seeming. Some of his later Tweets were worse than this, and he ended up getting really vitriolic.
And there’s also some of Pablo Hidalgo’s Twitter antics, like making fun of StarWarsTheory. But, I’m getting off topic, so I’ll leave it at that. The point is, Lucasfilm’s social media presence in general has been needlessly aggressive and fractious the past few years. And that’s done far more to drive me away from Star Wars than the quality of the franchise itself has.
I remember when my girfriend and I went to see TLJ for the first time. We both came out of the theater with an overall good impression.
Then we went and saw it again, and the flaws started to appear.
In other words, the movie passed the Refrigerator Test (unlike TFA or TROS), but didn’t bear repeat viewings as well as, say, the OT.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s nowhere near terrible, it’s just that it is very messy in many ways.
I think “messy” is really the core problem with all the post-Disney Star Wars stuff. Everything just feels very all over the place.
For sure. I think the issue with TLJ over the others, however, is that the messiness gets in the way of the message, whereas with the JJ entries the messiness works to conceal the void where a message should reside.
That pretty much hits the nail on the head.
I’ve always wondered, do you think the reception to TLJ would’ve been different if the leaks hadn’t gotten out before it released and everyone was already pooping all over it just from the few clips they saw?
Because honestly, I really do. For a lot of fans on reddit or wherever, they had all collectively decided they hated it without actually seeing it. There was a group consensus from a big chunk of fans that the movie was bad before it even came out. The way the movie handled Snoke or Luke or whatever was already out there and people had decided it was bad, but they didn’t get to experience it in the moment. I think that would’ve made a big difference.
I avoided spoilers and online discussion, so I didn’t know about that reaction. I remember going to see it, thinking it was brilliant and everyone is going to love it, everyone in my theater loved it, all my friends loved it. Then I got home and fired up reddit and it was like they all saw a totally different movie to me. It was a very weird thing.
It’s kind of like what’s happening now with Morbius. I’m sure it’s probably terrible, but everyone decided it was terrible months ago. It never had a chance to surprise us. Same with TLJ.
I can’t speak for others, but I was almost entirely uninvolved in the fandom from 2015 to 2017, and did mostly avoid spoilers. So I went into TLJ with only some vague snippets of information, like the fact that Snoke died. I was actually quite on board with Kylo killing Snoke before I watched it, and I mainly wish it had been built up and executed better, in a way that felt more consequential to the story (i.e. not just having Kylo replace him).
I read reviews for the movie beforehand that praised it for taking Star Wars in a bold new direction, and I really hoped that was true. But I don’t think the movie was nearly as gutsy or bold as people made it out to be.
Of course, I wasn’t really expecting anything amazing, since I’d already gone into TFA (with no prior knowledge) and really disliked it, despite all the positive word-of-mouth about it. I definitely wasn’t setting out to hate these movies. And in general, I’m not overly critical about the movies I watch. I can relax and enjoy something just fine even if it’s deeply flawed. But I couldn’t do that with the sequels.
I understand how you feel, though. There are movies I feel similarly about, where I’m baffled by the negative reaction to them. And I do think it’s odd that TLJ got hit so hard while TFA was so liked. And with how easy-to-please Star Wars fans usually are, the TLJ reaction is a strange outlier.
So…
- TPM: Add the deleted scene where Anakin beats Greedo because he accuses him of cheating in the race.
- AOTC: Cut the scene of Anakin confessing to Padmé that he killed the Tusken.
- ROTS: Add the deleted scene where Qui-Gon’s spirit talks to Yoda.
- ANH: Replace the original duel with SC 38 Reimagined.
- TESB: Cut the scene of the kiss between Luke and Leia.
- ROTJ: Replace “Jedi Rocks” with the original despecialized scene.
I think this is the most conservative list in this thread. Lol.
These are pretty good. I’m just not a fan of SC 38 Reimagined.
Fuck RotJ.
No.
How is this one even RotJ’s fault?
I do think “balance” was the wrong choice of words by Lucas, since it implies an equal duality of some kind. That’s what misled a lot of people, most likely.
I couldn’t disagree more on force awakens. I mean they took Luke and made him a worthless maguffin. Who does that? He was the main character of the original Saga of episodes IV, V and VI. Because they couldn’t figure out a way to include him without upstaging the Disney characters. The one thing i did like was Finn, i liked Poe, i liked Rey and her scavenger on Jakku story. But its a bad unoriginal story and completely derivative on purpose due to the prequels having the perception of being so bad they left a stank on Star Wars.
You could still have new characters like Rey, Poe and Finn and easily set it in the far future. Don’t repeat the same beats rebels vs empire. Don’t crap all over the legacy characters. The sequels are a mixed bag. But the one thing they botched Luke, Han and Leia. Completely and utterly. Its almost unforgivable.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I believe that disposing of The Prophecy/The Chosen One is the best change one can make in a PT fanedit, aside from cutting the toilet humor in TPM. I just don’t like retroactively trying to reframe the OT as also part of “Anakin’s saga.” It’s just my preference and if you like the reframing that’s fine with me.
I agree. Over time, I’ve mostly soured on the whole Chosen One prophecy. Both for the reason you mentioned, and also because I think it undermines the ideas of free will that the OT had.
Thrawn & Mara Jade would have been awesome and better choices of story lines to continue the franchise.
Amen to that. If you have a huge back catalog of source material, as long as at least some of it is good, you might as well make use of it.
