Servii

I’m saying Palpatine didn’t reclaim the galaxy in the ST.

He did. The First Order was essentially a puppet state to Palpatine, and the First Order effectively controlled the galaxy, so yes, he did.

They prevented the complete takeover in TROS.

The takeover had already happened. The First Order was already in power.

And yet the OT heroes DO overcome their failures. Luke becomes the legend he was meant to be and allows the galaxy to rise up on Exegol and defeat the FO across the galaxy. The Republic is inherently flawed, so the galaxy >cooperates in TROS.

Han dies a failure. His death is purely in service to Kylo’s arc. Luke commits suicide by trolling his nephew from a remote location. Leia dies to send a message to Ben that somehow redeems him, and Ben then proceeds to contribute nothing for the rest of the film besides reviving Rey.

The “legend” of Luke’s actions on Crait is ridiculous. How did the story spread? How would people even make sense of what happened there? Luke taunts Kylo, then disappears. This action is just the bare minimum to keep the Resistance alive, which Luke should have been helping from the start. It does not excuse his abandonment of his family and the galaxy in the hands of a monster he helped create.

And why do the people of the galaxy only show up to help when Lando convinces them? Were they already organized and ready to fight? If so, why weren’t we following that resistance instead of this little measly one. Or did they just wait a year after Luke’s death for no reason?

And? What’s wrong with paving the way for new heroes?

Paving the way for new heroes shouldn’t come at the needless expense of the old heroes. That’s bad storytelling.

Reread my point: “It’s just that they refused to militarize because they became the Empire because they militarized in AotC. Remember, they had no military before AotC. They inferred that demilitarizing would make sure >they never become another Empire.”

Except the Republic knows that the Empire still exists, is still out there somewhere gathering strength, and is still entirely hostile. When there is a large, looming hostile faction beyond your borders that fully intends to reclaim its territory from you and destroy you, total demilitarization is suicide.

Dude, they imply he’s survived death in ROTJ, backed by ROTJ literally showing us that he did blow up twice.

It doesn’t matter what you thought they were “implying.” Implying is not explaining. Throwaway lines aren’t enough for a huge plot point like this.

Do you really think “To cheat death is an ability only one had achieved, but if we work together, I know we can >discover the secret” referred to Plagueis?

Yes. That’s right.

TestingOutTheTest said:

Oh. You’re a r/moviescirclejerk user. That explains a lot.

Oh. You’re a /r/saltierthancrait user. That explains a lot.

I browse a lot of subreddits, especially Star Wars ones. STC is one of them, yes. (I do apologize for the r/moviescirclejerk comment. That came off as needlessly mean.)

Look, you’re forgetting the main problem of all this. Palpatine came back. He was back for 30 years. The Empire came back in full force, so much so that they were even more advanced and deadly than before, as you admitted. Our heroes didn’t prevent anything. They failed offscreen, and so the new heroes were forced to come in and clean up the old heroes’ mess. The OT heroes, despite having succeeded onscreen during the OT, left behind a legacy of failure and abandonment. It’s not comparable to the PT, since the PT actually ended in tragedy, so it made sense for Obi-Wan and Yoda to look to the new generation to make right their mistakes and not repeat those failures. The OT then shows us the heroes succeeding, but the New Canon has everything get shot to hell just for the sake of setting up the ST. Now, the OT heroes have been retroactively demoted to being just the stepping stones for the “real” heroes of the ST.

All victory is temporary, this is true. The problem is allowing that victory to be completely scrubbed away through in-universe negligence and incompetence. By TRoS, there was nothing left of the OT heroes’ victory to be preserved. Therefore, the ST is not a story of preserving and preventing. It’s a story of the “real” heroes cleaning up after the previous ones, who were made foolish and incompetent to serve this newfangled story.

Why did the Republic fund the Resistance in secret? Why were the two factions seemingly estranged from one another? If there’s a resurgent Empire, clearly with malicious intent, that’s encroaching on Republic territory, kidnapping children to be soldiers, and building a massive, very conspicuous planet killer, then I think at least a small self defense military is justified. In fact, as long as the Empire still existed as a faction, even when they fled into deep space to regroup as the First Order, the Republic still should obviously had held onto some basic military force. You don’t lay down your weapons while the Empire is still out there gathering strength. That’s idiotic. Not to mention the Resistance is tiny, even measlier than the Rebel Alliance, despite being initially funded and supported by the dominant government of the galaxy. Why is that?

Except the movie DOES explain his return. He simply transferred his consciousness into a clone. It’s implied by “I have died before”, and the fact alone that he survived IMPLIES he’s discovered the secret to cheating death >that only one has achieved.

That’s not an explanation. “I have died before” and him being alive explain nothing. And besides, the immortality sought by Plagueis wasn’t possessing clones. It was maintaining life in a single body.

Jakku is a desert planet to visualize the hell Rey’s going through.

No, it’s not. It’s a desert planet because, in JJ’s mind, Star Wars protagonists are supposed to always come from desert planets, because reasons.

Having Thrawn would’ve made the ST disconnect from the PT and OT, unlike Palpatine. Stopping Palps’ return is a natural progression that lines up with the previous two trilogies and ties the saga together. Imagine if Voldemort was killed off in Book 5 and Snape took his role for the final two. There would be no consistent overarching villain. They wouldn’t feel like legitimate series finales to the other 5.

Then they shouldn’t have made a Sequel Trilogy. The saga already had an ending. It was called RotJ. If the only way they could think of to make the ST feel connected to the first 6 movies was to bring Palpatine back, then they just shouldn’t have bothered, since they had nothing to contribute.

In any case, it would have been better to bring in a new villain like Thrawn, one who’s imposing without being so powerful as to upstage the original villains, than to dig up the old villain to upstage himself. Have the ST act as more of an epilogue to the saga rather than trying to one-up what came before.

And no, Palps’ return does not ruin the OT. Anakin only did it to save Luke, and you’re somehow fine with it in Civil War, Logan and Infinity War.

I haven’t watched any of those three movies. I’m not a Marvel guy. But what you’re using here is Whataboutism. Just because the same issue might be present in those other movies doesn’t excuse the issue in the Sequel Trilogy. Other films having the same problem doesn’t make it okay.

From Anakin’s perspective, yes, he was killing Palpatine to save Luke. But from a broader saga perspective, it marked the destruction of the Sith and the restoration of the Jedi. Changing that moment to being just a little inconvenient speed bump in Palpatine’s plans was stupid and undercutting of the original story.

And no, TFA is not a rehash of ANH. Yes, it takes similar elements, but that’s because it was necessary for the characters and story. For example, Starkiller is a way of showing that the FO is more advanced than the Empire.

Why are they so much more advanced? How did they get that way? Why does the Republic not consider them a threat?

And no, nothing that they recycled was “necessary” to the story. JJ made clear in the commentary and interviews for TFA that he wanted to bring all these familiar elements back (desert planet, new Death Star, Cantina, Stormtroopers, Rebels, old ship designs) because they were familiar to the audience, and would be registered by viewers as quintessential “Star Wars” imagery. It had nothing to do with the story or characters.

Kylo killing Han is different from Vader killing Kenobi - whereas Vader killed Kenobi specifically because he was a Jedi, Kylo killed Han because he didn’t want to be conflicted anymore but it didn’t work and traumatized him >even more.

I will agree with you that the two deaths are different, since Obi-Wan’s death was far better. Han’s death was pointless and disrespectful. Having Han fail to save his son, then just get stabbed and falling (as a CGI corpse) down a bottomless pit was terrible. The screenwriters definitely intended the deaths to parallel each other, though. There’s no point denying that. Particularly in their placement in the story and in the way they affected the protagonist witnessing the death.

The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.

By that logic, the Holdo maneuver is perfectly explained by the shield things or whatever in TLJ’s novelization. We’re judging the movies on their own merits.

Of course, any explanation for Palpatine’s return is better than the absolute nonsensical drivel the movie gives us. TRoS doesn’t even try or care. As bad as the canon explanation is, I’d rather take a bad explanation over no explanation. I’m doing the movie a favor by including out-of-movie sources that try to prop the movie up, since it really can’t stand on its own merits.

That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.

Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.

Except what reason do we have to believe that Palpatine is gone for good this time? At least Dark Empire, for all its issues, bothered to explain how the heroes were able to prevent Palpatine’s return in future stories, ensuring that he could never come back to life. After TRoS, though, what is there to stop Palpatine from just possessing a new body somewhere else? Is he going to be like Sigma from Mega Man X and just keep coming back over and over again until it becomes comical?

Rey didn’t kill Palpatine in hatred. That’s the point. She even says as much earlier: “All you want for me is to hate. But I won’t. Not even you.”

You’re missing the point. Palpatine’s spirit is still out there. They just destroyed his body again, like in RotJ. So what give TRoS’s ending any more finality than RotJ’s ending?

TestingOutTheTest said:

SparkySywer said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

The ST is about stopping their respective returns.

In the end, what that turned out to mean was “Kill Palpatine again because we didn’t do it last time.”

It’s still different from the OT. The “similarities” between ANH and TFA are also different. I’d rather take a natural progression of the story than just making the ST about some random shit with Snoke and Kylo Ren or Thrawn or Maul or the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever.

Thrawn as the villain would have made perfect sense as a natural progression for the post-RotJ era. Having a new Imperial leader emerge in the power vacuum, one who isn’t a Sith, who takes control of the shattered Empire makes perfect sense and wouldn’t undermine the OT.

Palpatine being secretly alive for the whole 30 year gap and having his pickled Snokes in jars is out of left field and is not a natural progression. It renders the OT irrelevant, and makes the Skywalkers irrelevant in their own saga. The fact that Palpatine canonically saw Vader’s betrayal coming and was prepared for it is ridiculous on its own.

Also, let’s not kid ourselves here. TFA is extremely derivative to the point of near plagiarism. The script was rushed out very quickly with the “soft reboot” approach in mind.

That’s a little less compelling than the way you describe it.

Ah, yes, making sure that the personification of the metaphor for the current generation being affected by and facing the same struggles and battles as the previous one is gone once and for all is not compelling. Ah, yes, the new generation facing the same threats as before and defeating them in their own way or with the right lessons learned or whatever shit happens is not compelling.

Except what reason do we have to believe that Palpatine is gone for good this time? At least Dark Empire, for all its issues, bothered to explain how the heroes were able to prevent Palpatine’s return in future stories, ensuring that he could never come back to life. After TRoS, though, what is there to stop Palpatine from just possessing a new body somewhere else? Is he going to be like Sigma from Mega Man X and just keep coming back over and over again until it becomes comical?

TestingOutTheTest said:

It’s the equivalent to al-Qaeda attacking the World Trade Center on 9/11. They’re hiding to avoid another 9/11, even from the FO that isn’t doing well. Remember, al-Qaeda only succeeded because the location of the WTC was public.

I’m a little confused by what you’re trying to say. The U.S. government didn’t go into hiding in the wilderness after 9/11, nor did al-Qaeda sweep into America with huge armies and conquer the country. And besides, the Republic and the Resistance are different factions. These situations aren’t equivalent at all.

Also, essentially every building’s location is public. That’s a weird comparison. America isn’t hiding its building locations for fear of attack.

It’s never said or shown that they didn’t. Considering that the Resistance are hiding out in the wilderness on a jungle planet in TRoS, that leads me to believe that the First Order did essentially succeed in taking the Galaxy, and that there are just a few planets (not major systems) that are still holding out.

But again, the real problem is that this is all so vaguely relayed to the audience that it doesn’t really matter. I doubt that JJ Abrams thought very deeply about the state of the Galaxy during TRoS, so I don’t see much point in trying to make sense of something that didn’t matter to him.

Their goal was supposedly to take control of all major systems. As far as we know, they did.

Had the FO won in TLJ, then they would’ve become a true Empire.

They did win in TLJ. It was a pyrrhic victory, sure, but the last major faction opposed to them had been reduced to almost nonexistence. I’d call that a win.

Just because the First Order doesn’t control literally 100% of the Galaxy post-TLJ doesn’t change the fact that they’re the ruling regime.

TestingOutTheTest said:

They couldn’t have. If they did, then it WOULD be a rehash of the OT.

I’ve got some bad news for you. It was too late. It was already a rehash. The whole ST is just a reboot disguised as a sequel.

And even in TROS, we know the FO isn’t doing so well - it’s what drives Kylo to hog Palpatine’s fleet to make the FO a true Empire.

TRoS is also very vague about the First Order’s level of power and reach. We hear Pryde say that the new fleet will make up for the loss of Starkiller Base, and Kylo makes some vague remark about how the fleet will finally make the FO into an Empire. But again, we never get a sense that the FO is struggling or losing its grip on the Galaxy. That’s just conjecture. We hear a fleeting mention of “free worlds” that will be forced to submit, but we never are shown or told anything about these worlds or their strength or quantity. And besides, during the OT, there existed worlds outside of the Empire’s control as well, but no one would argue that the Empire wasn’t the dominant, reigning power in those films.

TestingOutTheTest said:

REY: The First Order will control all the major systems within weeks.

You’re not listening to what I’m trying to tell you. We know the First Order is in the process of seizing control during TLJ. We’re never told how successful they are in that effort during and after TLJ. Did the First Order gain control of those systems in the weeks following TLJ? Or didn’t they?

TestingOutTheTest said:

Simply, we don’t know whether it was complete or not. We’re never told or shown either way.

The crawl and Rey’s discussion with Luke say otherwise.

All they said was that the takeover was in the process of being carried out. We have no idea if the First Order succeeded or failed elsewhere in the Galaxy. That’s the problem. Did the First Order complete its takeover within those next few weeks after TLJ? We don’t know.

TestingOutTheTest said:

But the takeover wasn’t complete. That’s the point.

Simply, we don’t know whether it was complete or not. We’re never told or shown either way. These movies are so damn vague in their worldbuilding that different people will have radically different interpretations of the state of the Galaxy during their events.

Even the question of “Was the New Republic actually destroyed in TFA” is a matter of fan contention.

TestingOutTheTest said:

@Servii Imagine ignoring everything else in my comment.

What you said doesn’t change the fact that the First Order had become the dominant, reigning power in the Galaxy by the end of TLJ. Just because they’re overthrown eventually doesn’t change what happened. The good guys failed to prevent the Empire from regaining control.

TestingOutTheTest said:

And yet they still stop that anyways, with Luke inspiring the galaxy, with the FO not doing so well and being in need of becoming a new Empire, and with the galaxy working together and defeating them in TROS.

Well, they stopped the First Order (just barely) from annihilating the Resistance entirely. But that doesn’t account for the rest of the Galaxy that’s being conquered by the First Order offscreen. The First Order wasn’t ignoring everything else just to focus on the Resistance alone. By the end of TLJ, the Resistance barely even exists anymore, and the First Order, despite its losses from the Holdo maneuver, essentially holds the Galaxy unopposed (which is part of why the ending of TLJ is so tone-deaf). TRoS then nerfs the First Order in order to make Palpatine’s fleet matter.

TestingOutTheTest said:

What I mean is that they didn’t fully take over the galaxy. They stopped the Empire and Palpatine before they even got to complete their takeover. And no, the First Order doesn’t rule the galaxy in TLJ, if you’re thinking of “The First Order reigns”. The crawl mentions Snoke is sending his legions to seize military control of the galaxy, and Rey herself admits that their takeover is only complete within weeks, implying it isn’t finished.

By saying that, Rey also implies that the First Order’s takeover is inevitable and just a matter of time. That without additional help for the Resistance, the First Order has already basically won and just needs to carry out the formality of assuming total control. And for all intents and purposes, by the start of TLJ, the First Order is the ruling status quo of the Galaxy, with everyone besides the Resistance seemingly accepting of that.

And even disregarding the First Order, there’s also the fact that Luke’s New Jedi Order failed to produce a single new Jedi, let alone a new generation, and that the Republic was essentially a failed state that was incapable of fulfilling even basic defensive functions for itself or its member worlds.

TestingOutTheTest said:

The ST is about stopping their respective returns.

Except they didn’t stop them. Canonically, Palpatine inhabited his new body on Exegol almost immediately after his death in RotJ. Palpatine was still alive for that entire 30-year gap, and in those 30 years, he successfully managed to cause the destruction of the Republic and the Jedi Order again, and turn a Skywalker to the Dark Side again.

There was no preventing involved. Palpatine was still actively shaping galactic events for all that time post-RotJ. RotJ’s victory was made completely hollow and illusory. Even the title “Return of the Jedi” doesn’t make sense anymore. The Jedi failed to return.

If the Sequel Trilogy had involved some Dark Side plot to resurrect Palpatine by pulling his spirit back from the netherworld of the Force, and our heroes had to prevent this and make sure Palpatine stayed dead, then that would count as stopping his return. But that’s not what happened. RotJ was just a tiny setback to Palpatine.

And of course, they didn’t prevent the Empire’s return, either. The Empire was back to full power, so there was nothing left to prevent.

I would have been fully aboard with the more optimistic ST that you’re describing. One where the heroes fight to protect and maintain the peace they had built as they’re confronted with resurgent threats. We could have seen how Luke’s Jedi Order and the New Republic are put to the test against many of the same problems faced by the Old Republic and Jedi, all while struggling to prevent a lapse back into authoritarianism. We could have seen the Skywalker family struggling to stay together amidst these events, and seen Luke and Leia working to keep the new generation from repeating the mistakes of the past and falling to the Dark Side. That’s a Sequel Trilogy I would have liked to see. Instead, all of that interesting story basically happened offscreen before TFA, with the heroes having failed at everything they set out to do.

JadedSkywalker said:

The original Saga is i like to think in its own pocket universe it includes, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi the original cuts only. And it ends on an upbeat ending with our heroes on Endor.

Then you have Universe B which includes the Special Editions and Prequels which are Lucas So called Canon 1-6 Saga of Darth Vader.

Then you have Universe C which is the Disney canon and its the Rey Saga 1-9, or Palpatine Saga.

I completely agree with this.

As for George’s sequel trilogy treatments, I agree that bringing Darth Maul back as the main antagonist would have been an awful idea (if that’s what George had ended up sticking with). It would have been extremely confusing to the general audience, and so much would have happened outside of the movies that Maul would essentially be a completely different character from who he was in TPM. And while TCW and the EU were able to make Maul into a more interesting character, he’s simply not main villain material for a whole trilogy.

The thing about the EU is that, despite being very much a mixed bag, it offers a huge amount of events, characters, and concepts that could be played around with to tell new stories. It just seems like a waste to me not to take advantage of that massive fount of source material, grabbing the most well received aspects of it and ditching the worst of it, much like Marvel does with its movies. When you look at the EU and the reception of each of its stories, you can get a clearer sense of what works for fans and what doesn’t in the post-RotJ era.

Part of why I tend to be more lenient toward the prequels is because the prequels’ plot was much more constrained based on what needed to take place within just three movies. And there was little to no source material on which to base it (not that George would have used it, of course, but I digress). The sequels, on the other hand, had a more or less blank slate on which to tell any story they wanted, and a plethora of source material to draw inspiration from.

The Rise of Skywalker just doesn’t understand context at all and just added things because it fits a meme or whatever it’s trying to say.

Oh come now, let’s not be too harsh. Rise of Skywalker is a deeply profound, well thought out sequel. Without it, how else would we have known the earth-shattering truth that they fly now.

They even repeat it three times so you know it’s important.

JadedSkywalker said:

Luke, Han and Leia didn’t fail

Yes, they did.

She is the daughter Luke never had.

No, she’s not. TRoS tries to pretend like Luke and Rey had a positive, familial relationship, but they didn’t. Not at all.

As for the fall of the Republic, Palpatine had been working behind the scenes for decades to allow corruption to seep into the Republic. For the most part, that decay didn’t just happen on its own. It was largely initiated by Palpatine and other hidden malefactors. We were shown a galaxy in TPM where the well-intentioned but flawed good guys were in charge and struggling to keep under control an increasingly volatile galaxy. We see the steps of the Republic’s fall into authoritarianism. It’s not perfectly told, but the transition is more or less earned. We witness the tragedy as it takes place.

In the sequel trilogy, most of the tragedy takes place either off-screen or in throwaway sequences. There is no sense of a logical progression from the end of RotJ to the beginning of the TFA. The titular “return of the Jedi” failed to take place, and we had essentially another Jedi Purge occur off-screen. The Empire, instead of being at all diminished, is now comically overpowered. The New Republic is tossed away never to be seen again, partly for shock value, partly because JJ Abrams no doubt thought that having an established Republic be the galaxy’s status quo would be too “Prequelish.” So he threw that out and the New Jedi Order with no buildup or groundwork whatsoever. Thus turning Star Wars from a story of hope after tragedy into a depressing cycle where the failures of the past are forever doomed to repeat “just because”, and forcing the OT heroes to witness everything they worked for crumble within their lifetimes.

Han abandons Leia after the betrayal of their son, and regresses back to being a smuggler under the nose of the regime he helped found. Luke abandons his friends and family and leaves the galaxy to rot at the hands of the Dark Side because he somehow blames the Jedi for his own personal failings. Leia is forced out of the government she had devoted her life to restoring, with her family abandoning her and her son fighting for the Empire. Meanwhile, she finds herself exactly where she started, as a leader of a small guerrilla rebel force, her life having completely stagnated and the struggle to which she had devoted herself being made 30 years longer and mostly fruitless all for the sake of doing a soft reboot in the seventh chapter of a story.

That’s awful. What’s enjoyable about that?

Artan42 said:

Servii said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

You see it be used against the sequel trilogy, especially The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. Even Palpatine’s return is criticized for “undoing the Chosen One accomplishment”… especially when these people are well-aware that Anakin only killed Palps specifically to save Luke.

What people don’t understand is that everything is temporary. What people think is that the victory of the OT only matters if it lasts forever.

The victory of the OT allowed for galactic peace for three decades. People were born and lived in peace because of the achievements of the OT. You need to come to terms with the temporarily of reality. Nothing ever lasts forever and thinking anything will… sets you up for sadness and anger.

Thoughts?

That may be how real life works, but Star Wars isn’t real life. It’s a fantasy setting. And Anakin killing the Emperor was meant by Lucas (at least retroactively) to be an act of cosmic significance. It was the destruction of the Sith and the restoration of balance to the Force.

Also, it wasn’t exactly 30 years of peace when the New Republic was embarrassingly corrupt and incompetent, and the new Jedi Order failed to get off the ground, and the main heroes of the OT all ended up failing at life and becoming estranged from on another.

That real-world cynicism has no place in Star Wars.

True, which is why the PT is an example of a perfect democracy where a suitable leader was elected and didn’t plunge the galaxy into a decades long civil war where every system was under the direct control of the leaders personal army and the main bad guy was a failed main character who killed both of the other two main characters.

Thank the maker that SW has never used real life cynicism prior to TFA.

The Old Republic only became corrupt and fell due to decades of Sith subversion. It didn’t fall apart for just mundane reasons like real-world governments often do. And the fall of Anakin is a melodramatic tragedy that, like Luke’s story in the OT, is based in mythical archetypes. That’s not George Lucas just going “Well, real life sucks, so I’ll make my world suck too, lol.” It’s meant to be loftier than that. The Prequels tell a tragic story, but that tragedy is deliberately softened because we know the OT exists and that the good guys will win in the end. You can have low points in a story, but that doesn’t equate to cynicism.

TestingOutTheTest said:

You see it be used against the sequel trilogy, especially The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. Even Palpatine’s return is criticized for “undoing the Chosen One accomplishment”… especially when these people are well-aware that Anakin only killed Palps specifically to save Luke.

What people don’t understand is that everything is temporary. What people think is that the victory of the OT only matters if it lasts forever.

The victory of the OT allowed for galactic peace for three decades. People were born and lived in peace because of the achievements of the OT. You need to come to terms with the temporarily of reality. Nothing ever lasts forever and thinking anything will… sets you up for sadness and anger.

Thoughts?

That may be how real life works, but Star Wars isn’t real life. It’s a fantasy setting. And Anakin killing the Emperor was meant by Lucas (at least retroactively) to be an act of cosmic significance. It was the destruction of the Sith and the restoration of balance to the Force.

Also, it wasn’t exactly 30 years of peace when the New Republic was embarrassingly corrupt and incompetent, and the new Jedi Order failed to get off the ground, and the main heroes of the OT all ended up failing at life and becoming estranged from on another.

That real-world cynicism has no place in Star Wars.

Jesus, dude.

Okay, for one thing, this was the first Star Wars movie. Uncle Owen already told Luke his father was dead, so it was preestablished information. This comparison doesn’t even make sense.

The First Order being cartoonishly overpowered with no explanation is dumb and comes out of nowhere, and was only done for the sake of “rebooting” the story back to the OT status quo without earning that status quo.

I get that it bothers you that there are other people who don’t like the Sequel Trilogy, but the fact that you keep making these threads aggressively trying to defend it just makes you seem insecure and like you can’t accept disagreement. Those movies aren’t worth the trouble. Enjoy them if you like them, but let it go, man.

Rikter said:

Oh and of course the Tragedies.

If, by “the Tragedies,” you mean the tragic, epic story of a hero whose fear of loss and lust for power drive him sell his soul to save the woman he loves, thus condemning himself to become a servant of the very evil he was prophesied to destroy and to aid that evil in the downfall of democracy itself, then I guess you could call them the Tragedies.

SparkySywer said:

Luke and Anakin’s journeys should have paralleled a lot closer than they do in the PT we got. More than just a few visual references. Their arcs should be more or less the same, up until Luke sees he’s going down the same path as Vader and rejects it in RotJ.

Both Anakin and Luke would start their path becoming Jedi for the wrong reasons: Seeking out adventure, and becoming more powerful to help fight in a cause. They’ll both get their asses kicked by the villain of the story, but Anakin doesn’t get the revelation of the path his father went down. Anakin will start to seek out the dark side, which will leave him better equipped to fight in a war than the Jedi’s pacifist teachings. He’d defeat the enemy in a reversal of the RotJ throne room. Without his “I am a Jedi, like my father before me” moment, he kills the villain and ends up at Palpatine’s side.

I definitely think that the Clone Wars should have played a much larger, more visible role in Anakin’s development. Instead of seeming like a bad apple even before the War began, he should have experienced a loss of innocence as he grew up in a wartime environment. The Jedi who came of age during the War would have been of a more warlike sort, with Anakin never being trained or taught by Yoda like Luke was, leaving him as more of a warrior than a monk. This more martial personality would lead to Anakin becoming popular among the masses during the War, being seen as a champion of the Republic, while also leaving him much more vulnerable to the pursuit of more aggressive forms of power.

Hal 9000 said:

TPM is, as I believe Ebert said, “a pretty good bad movie.”

I definitely enjoy the prequels (especially TPM) in the same way that I enjoy the campier Godzilla movies. I lower my expectations, and I end up getting to enjoy a corny space adventure, with fairly impressive effects for the time, and some intriguing ideas that I can appreciate more now as an adult.

A big part of why the prequels were so lambasted for so long is because people only had the OT to compare them to. By any metric, the prequels were a huge step down from their predecessors, so that made them look far worse than if they had been their own series. With the new batch of Star Wars films, there’s a new basis for comparison, and many people’s perspectives have shifted, since the prequels are (arguably) no longer the low point of the saga.