“This Death Star is going to be yuge. Nobody builds Death Stars better than me. Believe me. Slimy Ackbar and Nasty Mothma are very unfair in the statements they have made about me, and the Rebel Alliance is clearly filled with some very conflicted people. Sad.”
I think if one wanted to remove this apparent contradiction between RO and ANH in an edit, you could add some new off-screen dialogue during the first shots of Vader on the bridge, where we hear some Imperial officers say something like:
Officer 1: Sir, the rebel flagship is sending a transmission.
Officer 2: Track it!
Then, when Jyn and Cassian die, you fade to white and that is the last we see of Scarif. When we fade back in, it would be the shot of the Tantive IV somewhere in space. Now we can just assume the rebels beamed the plans to them from an unknown secondary location.
I like this idea, but I can already imagine people being like, “So you removed the best scene in the movie?!”
That would be great. Losing the hallway scene is a small price to pay.
In RotJ, Anakin throws Palpatine into Joh Yowza’s mouth.
Star Wars
Star Wars 2: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Jedi
Star Wars 4: The Beginning
Star Wars 5: Jar Jar’s Great Adventure
Star Wars 6: The Creeping Fear
Star Wars 7: The Clone Wars
Star Wars 8: Shadow of the Empire
Star Wars 9: Underworld: Dark Times
Star Wars 10: Space Bear
Star Wars 11: Underworld 2
Star Wars 12: Duel of the Fates
Sign me right up for this timeline.
Star Wars 5: Jar Jar’s Great Adventure
Star Wars 6: The Creeping Fear
Also, why do I get the uneasy sense that these titles are connected to each other. The “creeping fear” being that Jar Jar is really the mastermind behind all this.
TFA does go out of its way to make Rey’s victory over Kylo make internal sense, but that doesn’t mean it was a good story decision. Really, other than showing off how powerful Rey was, and bruising Kylo’s ego, it doesn’t accomplish much or advance the story. Rey defeating Kylo doesn’t have any significant effects on the plot, since Rey and Kylo are separated by a crevice and both escape SKB regardless. The fight being a draw would have had the same story result, with Kylo still being impressed by Rey’s power.
Generally, it’s a bad idea to so thoroughly humiliate your villain in the first part of your trilogy, especially if there are plans to kill off his superior and make him the big bad in the future. Watching Kylo flop around in the snow took away whatever degree of intimidation he had left, and made his character in need of rehabilitation over the following films. TFA implied this would happen with Snoke ordering that Kylo be brought to him because “It is time to complete his training.”
TLJ never gives us that training, though. Instead, it lampshades how embarrassing Kylo’s failure was, which was a good idea, but the movie never tries to rehabilitate Kylo or make him a viable threat again, even after Snoke’s death. So, the movie ends with a weak main villain leading into Episode IX. Given that, it’s no surprise at all that TRoS brought in Palpatine, and that Trevorrow’s DotF script tried so frantically to buff Kylo and make him a worthy enemy.
Also, of course, Rey being so powerful already undercuts her need for training. And her line to Luke about how she needs to bring the Jedi back “because Kylo Ren is strong in the Dark Side of the Force” rings hollow given what we know.
NH
ESB
TROTJIt was never called "the return of the Jedi, Just return of the jedi.
I think it’s a joke lol
The ESB.
We have a winner.
Technically, TESB makes more sense, but ESB just looks better and is easier to say. Though I usually just prefer to call it Empire.
“It’s like poetry. It sort of rhymes.”
Regarding the lightsaber colours, I have studied colour theory and the opposite of red is green, not blue. Orange is the opposite of blue. I suspect this because Star Wars is an American property, and because red and blue are the primary colours of the United States of America, Lucas settled on blue for the good guys and red for the bad guys. In fact, Luke’s RotJ lightsaber was originally going to be blue, as evidenced by the trailer, but was changed to green as it would stand out better against the blue sky.
I think the choice of red and blue mostly has to do with the preexisting connotations of each color. Red is the most primal color. It’s the color of blood, fire, and anger. While blue is a more ethereal color, much less common in nature, that’s associated with water, sky, and serenity. It was definitely a deliberate choice to pit a very carnal, visceral color against a very soothing, spiritual color.
In RotJ, change Luke’s saber color back to blue, and change the Tatooine sky to green.
I mainly dislike Rose because she tazered Finn, thus derailing him from a more interesting storyline, and essentially hijacking his arc to preach to a former child soldier about oppression.
Finn’s demotion from co-protagonist in TFA to being confined to a filler D-plot in TLJ is something that will always rub be the wrong way.
Edit: Now that I think about it, the issues with Luke in TLJ are very similar to the issues with Superman in the Zack Snyder DC movies. The notion heavily implied in Snyder’s movies, that if Lois Lane were to die, Superman would basically lose his marbles and turn against humanity, is absurd, and shows a lack of understanding of the character, his resilience, and the strength of his convictions. It’s antithetical to Superman. Besides that, his lack of an emotional response to the mass destruction caused by Zod and himself during the final battle in Man of Steel, makes him seem completely lacking in empathy, since any ordinary person would be horrified by the death and destruction around them. The fact that he feels more upset about killing Zod than about all the civilian casualties during the battle, makes it seem like he lacks a strong emotional attachment to humanity, which is ridiculous, since he’s essentially human in every way that counts.
TLJ doesn’t humanize Luke, in the same way that Man of Steel doesn’t humanize Superman. They were already human.
Ultimately, Luke in the OT was an aspirational character because he struggled. He repeatedly stumbled and fell over the course of the trilogy. But while he questioned himself, he never slinked away from his sense of purpose, nor did he waver from his drive to help others.
The issue is that TLJ tries to show a Luke who has stumbled and ends the film with him “getting back on his feet” and being a hero again, but going into a suicidal exile for 6 years and convincing yourself that the Jedi deserve to die out is not some momentary weakness. That’s a massive character shift that contradicts two of Luke’s defining traits in the OT: his compassion, and his unwillingness to give up. Luke could have been shown as depressed or struggling while still keeping those core traits intact.
Letting the Jedi end because he doesn’t want more Sith to emerge is sort of understandable, but when there are Dark Siders actively terrorizing the galaxy, the least he could do is try to correct the situation before ending the Jedi for good. And Luke could of course renounce the Jedi while still assisting against the First Order in other ways.
This one might be a little spicy.
TLJ’s portrayal of depression through Luke is offensive to people actually struggling with depression. This notion in the film that depression caused by trauma makes it understandable for you to abandon your family and become a bitter, callous, generally crappy person to others for no good reason, is neither accurate nor helpful to depressed people, and doesn’t reflect how most people actually cope with mental health issues. TLJ Luke’s depression is a cartoonishly exaggerated form of depression written in a way that shows a lack of understanding of what it actually is and how it affects people. It conflates depression with being an awful person.
And yes, he does “redeem” himself at the end of the film, but it doesn’t come off as a genuine return to goodness, since he’s still trolling Kylo, the man he once traumatized, and generally still acting snide and sarcastic, while not making any attempt to right the wrongs he committed towards him.
Harmy’s a hero both to Star Wars fans and film preservation enthusiasts. I can never thank him enough for bringing classic Star Wars back into a modern format. And the fact that he’s still working at it and refining it with the new sources available is awesome to see. I’ve been watching his live streams of him working on shots for v3.0, and he really is a master at his craft.
I think the crawls do set the mood for the audience. They tell the viewer that what they’re watching isn’t going to be just another action movie, but something grand and operatic (though that feeling has diminished with the films after the OT). Also, they help enable that more “in medias res” form of storytelling that can throw the viewer right into the action without being confused by the time jump between films. Though I’d argue that some of the films (namely RotJ and TLJ, and possibly ESB) don’t need the crawls and would be perfectly understandable without them.
Just remove all the opening crawls. Screw it. Let the audience figure it out.
Change Obi-Wan’s Krayt Dragon call in ANH to a Godzilla roar.
I think she sounds bitter and spiteful more than anything else. Like the guy who played Boba Fett for the Jabba scene in ANH whining about the name of Fett’s ship. OK, maybe not that bad…
Still, I find her critiques paper-thin more than anything else.
To be fair, she probably only watched the movies once, when they first released. And she may not have even watched TRoS. So she’s not really in a position to go into further detail on them, and that’s not what she wanted to focus on here, anyway.
She came very close to dropping the “Mary Sue” dog whistle.
Also, “Mary Sue” is not a dogwhistle. There are plenty of well known male Mary Sues/Gary Stus in fiction. I’m not sure what you’re implying about Marcia Lucas with that. I know people who avoid using the term because they don’t want to be accused of being some sort of reactionary, but it’s a valid term in character criticism.
I would love to hear Marcia Lucas give an in-depth critique of the PT and ST. I’m sure she’s not exactly eager to rewatch those films, but it’d be fascinating to hear her give a detailed discussion on what didn’t work about them compared to the OT.
I can only imagine how different the franchise would be today if she had continued to be involved in the creative process of the films. I’d love a glimpse of that timeline.
If they start ranting about Gina Carano’s firing, a “Lucasfilm civil war,” or even how there will be a “retcon of the sequels through the World Between Worlds,” then I feel the urge to disengage.
That’s a flaw on my part.
No, that’s fair. I roll my eyes whenever I hear people talking about Favreau and Filoni using the World Between Worlds to erase the sequels. People who say things like that aren’t paying attention to reality, and tend to be delusional.
Of course, poorly thought out takes like that aren’t something exclusive to people who dislike the ST. From what I’ve seen, I’ve found the majority of the online Star Wars fandom to be obnoxious and not very bright, regardless of what they think about each movie. This site is the best Star Wars fan community I’ve come across so far.
It’s important to acknowledge and appreciate Marcia and everyone else who collaborated with George and took part in the creative process. They’re crucial to why Star Wars was so great. But there’s a big difference between saying “George was helped” (which is true) and saying “George was carried” (which isn’t true). In the years after the Plinkett reviews came out, I’ve heard a lot of people online parroting the latter statement, worded in different ways, but all implying the same thing: that George was just some helpless fool who needed to let the “real filmmakers” step in and salvage his incompetence. RedLetterMedia did say things to that effect in their reviews, and perhaps they meant it jokingly, but I encountered a lot of people who took it seriously and believed it.
As usual, the truth isn’t as simple as people make it out to be. George is not a helpless fool, nor is he infallible. He’s an intelligent filmmaker who makes mistakes sometimes, like anyone else, and who benefits from bouncing ideas off other people, like anyone else.
It’s important to understand that, when it comes to liking or disliking a fictional space movie, morality has no bearing on a person’s opinion. Whether or not you like a space adventure movie says nothing about you as a human being, because it’s just a movie.
I remember after TLJ came out, and for the next couple years, there was a massive wave of articles by journalists that tried to either trivialize or vilify criticizers of the film. “It’s just Russian bots.” “It’s just a small group of racist trolls online.” “They’re not real fans, anyway. They’re just manbabies who don’t understand the true meaning of Star Wars.” I heard all of these repeatedly from journalists, with similar sentiments even being repeated by Lucasfilm employees. Of course, antagonizing your own customers is never a good idea, no matter how little you care about them. But the whole thing was so bizarre, I still can’t fully wrap my head around it.
People have often used the bullying and harassment of ST actors as proof that ST detractors are vile, hateful people. And the people who do those things are vile and hateful. Yet people seem quick to forget when Reylos harassed John Boyega and said a bunch of vitriolic, borderline racist things to him because he made a joke about their ship. Or when Reylos stalked Daisy Ridley, as well as Adam Driver and his family. Or when ST fans attacked Mark Hamill for posting a photoshopped image of all the OT heroes in the cockpit of the Falcon together. Or when Star Wars writer Chuck Wendig went on an extended Twitter rant calling detractors various words for “scum” and “human garbage”.
The point is, in a debate over a fictional story, there’s no “good side” or “bad side”, and it’s not helpful to view a debate like that in such terms. It’s important to take a step back sometimes and remember these are just movies. Anyone who views arguing over fictional, pop culture media as some sort of moral crusade is not in a healthy frame of mind.
I always heard “Sand People. Or worse.” as “Sand People. The worst.”
Also, when the Dianoga let go of Luke, I thought Luke said “I saw him, and he disappeared.” Like the dianoga literally teleported away before Luke’s eyes.
Now that I think about it, nearly all of my misheard dialogue is from ANH. It’s something specific to that movie.
Star Wars in 360 degrees. Looks to be 4K77 as well. A trippy time for all.
Wow, this really is a trip. Way weirder than I was expecting. I love it.
So, are people who like the ST awful people for liking it?
Nobody has said that. In fact, the opposite is said much more often.
People can like whatever they want.