yotsuya

screams in the void said:

yotsuya said:

And face it, Threepio was pretty comic in the OT.

Face it , Threepio’s comedy in the OT was actually funny and played off the other characters in service of the story .The prequels had him resorting to bad puns and quips …" I’m beside myself ." " This is such a drag . " , " What do you mean naked ? My parts are showing ? Oh my !" etc I did like some of the early episodes of Clone Wars where Threepio was teamed up with Jar Jar though , as he was annoying ,even to Threepio . I felt that show handled Jar Jar better than the films overall .

I felt Jar Jar’s humor fit with the story. And yes, Threepio in AOTC was really bad. Several of those things you quoted are from the head switch sequence. Take that out and the rest of his lines fit with the OT, but those are as way off as the sequence they are in.

I don’t think my opinion of Ep I has changed much over the years. I loved it in 99 and I still do. I am not a fan of the longer pod race. I think that wrecks the flow of the film so I like the original cut, but I do like CG Yoda to match the other two films. I never did object to Jar Jar or the Gungans. I thought it was a brilliant piece of world building by Lucas. And face it, Threepio was pretty comic in the OT.

AOTC has issues. I think this one could have been done so much better. I think Lucas took his time on Ep I and on Ep II he brought on a co-writer and it bombed. And Lucas’s attempt at comic relief with Threepio and the battle droid switching heads is the most horrible sequence in all the films. It is on part with Harvey Corman’s alien chief in the Holiday Special. This should have been a film where you see the friend relationship between Anakin and Obi-wan. Anakin’s fall would have been that much more bittersweet if Obi-wan was too much of a friend and that is why he failed to teach Anakin. That argument in Padme’s apartment just derails their whole relationship. The story outside that is fine. But that is enough that I rate AOTC 8 out of 9 in the Saga.

I think the flaw in ROTS is subtlety. Too much of it. After a lot of views and a lot of contemplation I can see the depths of the story, but it is just so … unexplained on the surface that it draws it down. But the subtlety here started in Ep I. So he was at least consistent. But there were things he did that could have been more obvious that would have gotten a better audience reaction. I feel that Palaptine used the dark side to unwillingly turn Anakin once he was vulnerable. I think Palaptine sucked the life force from Padme so she would die to cement Vader’s turn. And I think that Palpatine used the force to keep Vader alive. Possibly all along, but definitely from Mustafar to Coruscant.

I think the biggest flaw of the prequels stems from the success of the OT. No one wanted to direct a Star Wars film and no one wanted to give Lucas any constructive feedback on his scripts. I think those things are where the negative comes from and disguises the same genius who gave us the OT.

JadedSkywalker said:

Was he trolling when he had Vader yell NOOOOOOOOO! in Return of the Jedi, because Lucas knew fans hated it in Revenge of the Sith? Like when he said Empire Strikes Back was the worst film because he knew fans would read that and flip.

Replacing Shaw with Hayden his whole explanation for it didn’t make sense but i don’t think at the time he did that to anger OT fans. But the 2011 Blu Ray change might be trolling. Still not gaslighting like the things he says about the Greedo scene or having this one big script thing in 74 when there was barely one movie. Or the Oxymoron thing about not being able to give us the originals.

I think most of us around here are aware that Lucas plays it loose with the truth and accuracy.

Many fans in 1980 and even later in the 80’s felt TESB was the worst film. I did for many years. My opinion changed. And I don’t for a moment think that Lucas gave a single thought what fans wanted when he worked on the SE changes. I think he did what he wanted.

And Lucas did have a larger script. It basically went from ANH and leaving Tatooine, to Bespin, to Endor. Except Bespin was Imperial so it was kind of like the Death Star part of ANH, but on a city in the clouds. That was his big story. The script exists. I’ve read it. It is a huge story that would have made 2 movies, but with him taking the climactic space battle for ANH, he had to rework the rest of it which expanded it out to 3 films. But what he had was definitely more than 1 film in that script.

As for the originals. We are all aware around here of what can be done in restoring film. We know that the original version is easily within reach. It is not lost. But doing from the original negatives might not be possible. Like that has stopped anyone from restoring any classic film. They just can’t do it by running the original reels through a machine so it isn’t worth the effort as far as he is concerned.

JadedSkywalker said:

I liked the aspect of the force being more democratic and mysterious and its choosing a neophyte no one to restore the balance. I liked that Last Jedi basically made the whole mutant inherited bloodline thing, irrelevant. Only for Rise to make Rey a Palpatine and undo the idea of Star Wars going back to the style of the original where Luke was a no one, who had the courage to leave Tatooine and confront the Empire. Originally Luke was a brave kid who went on an adventure he wasn’t the son of a super-villain/mutant with the most mitochondrial DNA or midichlorians whatsits in existence to some prophecy. Its undermines the force and free will. Its junk.

Luke was always the son of a Jedi. Jedi didn’t start out being monks. That is a prequel thing. I think it is important to see both that any old nobody can be a Jedi, and that the force can run strong in a particular family. Anakin was a nobody. Luke was his son. Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter (or daughter of his clone). Nothing can negate that Anakin and broom boy are nobodies. Most Jedi came from nobodies because the prequels made them monks - no attachments means no kids so no Jedi bloodlines. So there is a lot more to the saga that says a no-one can become the chosen one than that you have to be part of a bloodline.

As far as I’m concerned, Lucas started messing up from the beginning. The leaked script drafts from the OT show that he is correct, he did have a story and he cut it up for ANH. He abandoned some concepts he came back to later. He like some things he was cutting and changed the story. And then once he had his story for the first film roughed out, he spent a lot of time editing it and refining it. He killed off Ben for dramatic effect.

So when it came time to make a sequel, he had to go back to the drawing board. The entire Hoth sequence was added. Ben training Luke in ANH was expanded and Ben was replaced with Yoda. In some ways Hoth is the planet side battle that was cut from the original Death Star Battle. He brought back the city in the clouds but had to change what it was. That had become the section on the Death Star in the ANH. So it went from Imperial facility to a mining facility. He created the entire Vader’s hunt as a post Death Star reaction. And of course Vader being Luke’s father. So most of TESB is created to bridge to the finale with little pieces from the original story.

Then in the development of ROTJ, Lucas brought back his original concept for the final battle. The combined battle was mostly restored. But because he’d pulled Chewie out and made him tech savy, Wookies became Ewoks and shrunk, with no less ferocity in action, though a lot less in appearance. But that didn’t make a full movie. So the rest is the continuation of Han’s capture and Jabba the Hutt and then Luke facing Vader and the Emperor.

From the drafts of the scripts, the concept art, and more, We can see that Lucas likes to change things. Consistency in story is not as important to him as dramatic impact and story. That really becomes clear with the Prequels. Sure he said he created the back story while he was working on the OT, but all he had was a few details. In order to make the PT, he had to flesh it out and see what worked with the story. Sure some things don’t line up perfectly with the OT, but things don’t line up in the OT much better.

So when it comes to the ST, Lucas was in a bad place after ROTS. All the bad fan reaction led him to call the saga closed. Plus, my understanding of his early ideas for the ST were basically, wouldn’t it be neat to have these stars come back to reprise their roles and pass on the torch to a new generation. And I don’t think there is a diehard fan out there who isn’t aware that Harrison wanted Solo to die in ROTJ. What else Lucas was thinking post ROTJ is a mystery.

So when we get to the point where he actually started fleshing out the ideas, there are some things that should have been expected. Han and/or Luke dying should have been expected. R2 and Threepio surviving to the end should have been expected. Some return to conflict and a return of the Dark Side should have been expected. Pulling from the same type of sources that he did the first time around should have been expected. What I’ve seen in negative fan reaction has largely been based on these things that are pretty obvious to expect based on what we knew being disliked. It is called Star Wars so any ST was going to have a war. That in itself means that the glorious new Republic would have an enemy it would have to fight off. That we have planet destroying weapons leads to having a better version of that to imperil the galaxy and the Republic. Luke being in self exile comes from myths.

Now the quality of the writing is very much in the eye of the viewer. My gripes with TFA are all about the writing and how it fails to craft a strong story. I feel it is more about scenes than a complete story. So I can’t say that everyone should like every writing choice made, but I feel very sure that the ST we got is based on Lucas’s treatments. They definitely dumped a lot of what Lucas had, but from our PT experience, I don’t think that part would have gone over well. I think if Lucas would have done it himself that we would be having a very similar discussion. But we would be talking about how HE screwed up the PT. We’d be complaining about who he cast, the wooden dialog and acting, how no one wanted to help him write or direct the stories, etc. I think the only way they could have gotten made with any quality was for him to sell the franchise and turn the reins over.

We would be having the same discussion about what his original intentions were, his original treatments, but then about how HE screwed them up.

I don’t think dreaming that Lucas’s own versions would be any better. And I think it is very fitting for the saga that when you look at credit for each film in chronological order, it goes from Lucas doing this solo (technically he wrote and directed the first 4 movies) to him letting go for the OT and then completely stepping back for the ST.

I am very confident that I like what we got more than I would have liked what Lucas would have done.

Servii said:

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.

JJ is famous for his mystery box ideas. What I was saying is that it is likely he had in mind bringing Palaptine back as part of that, but he originally didn’t intend to be involved in IX. When he got involved that the idea was there. And considering the schedule, 2018 is not a surprise. That is when we found out Williams was coming back as well. So that timing fits with the general casting of the movie. You write the movie and then cast the actors. I think it is only foreshadowed by Rey’s theme being based (partially as you say) on Palpatine’s theme, but Abrams isn’t big and pre-planning the solultions to his mystery box ideas. Too much time in TV so he leave them open in case someone else is charged with crafting the solution. I’d claim this is another flaw in TFA, not TROS.

The thing I really don’t get and totally disagree with is that TLJ undoes TFA and TROS undoes TLJ. I don’t see that and I don’t agree with it. What I do see is that TLJ is the middle act and like TESB, nothing seems to go right. We have Kylor Ren and his philosophy dominating the dialog, but in the end, what he had to say was not the message of the film. Countless people around here have claimed that “kill the past” was what Rian Johnson was trying to do when that was Kylo Ren and the Dark Side. What the Dark Side character has to say is never the point of a Star Wars film. Luke in Exile was decided before Rian was hired, or even JJ. Rey had to find a way to bring him back to the galaxy and in the end it took Yoda to do it. What Luke sarcastically said at the start becomes what he does at the end. Instead of killing the past, the movie embraces it to move forward. 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. And Snoke’s rise to power was full of questions, until you find out Palpatine was behind him. Another puppet like Count Dooku, but this time a more mailable clone. I think that TLJ’s “anyone can be a Jedi” was not aimed at Rey, but at Finn and countless other. Rey was not a Skywalker and that fits in very well with the message. Her being a Palpatine makes that transition to central hero even more significant. Rather than being at odds, I see the three ST films and building on one another. I was disappointed in TFA, not because it was similar to ANH (something else I disagree with), but because it is a series of beautiful scenes that really didn’t form a full story. The film is charming in its own way, but it fails to have the impact that many other Star Wars films do. JJ was too concerned about his mystery box setups to craft a cohesive story.

I think the parallels to the OT and PT are to be appreciated and enjoyed. Lucas wanted the saga to have poetry and I feel that the ST we got gives it. Some fans complain about Han, Luke, and Leia dying, but that is what happens to the previous generation. That is what the OT does to the PT characters. They all die (except R2-D2, C-3PO, and Chewbacca). And I think many forget the inspirations behind Star Wars. Flash Gordon in 1980 ends with a closeup of Ming’s ring and Ming’s laugh ringing out indicating he isn’t really dead. That is exactly what we get in the ST, just without the foreshadowing. Palpatine is back like so many great villains (such as the Master in Doctor Who). So rather than any part of the ST ruining Star Wars, I feel that JJ and Rian really understood the saga and its roots and honored that with what they created. It has elements of the classic serials, the nearly unkillable villain, classic films, with a bit of comic relief in a glitzy package that pushes the movie making envelope of the time. It really is a better successor to the OT than the PT were.

Not that I expect everyone to agree. Just ponder the ideas I put forward and think about what George created and how it was born and where he expected it to go. Luke and Han were always going to die if Harrison and Mark came back. That was a given. Luke was supposed to die in Ep VII, but they couldn’t work him into the story so his death was moved to the climax of episode VIII and Han dies in VII, like Ben in IV and Qui-gon in I. Poetry, symmetry, myth and legend, part of the hero’s journey.

Channel72 said:

theprequelsrule said:

I really thought the whole plot where Palpatine is basically running both the Separatists and The Republic really strained credibility. At least have the reveal that Dooku was a Sith take place in ROTS - make the audience think he is truly a rogue Jedi fighting against a hopelessly corrupt Republic and that The Separatists were actually the good guys.

Yeah - and as a morality tale it’s a bit hollow because it’s so far removed from how these things play out in real life. Real life dictators aren’t far-seeing puppet masters that expertly pull off elaborate conspiracies to seize power. They just take advantage of existing weaknesses in the political system. Caesar marched his army into Rome because he gambled that after years of war, his legion would be more loyal to him than the Senate. Hitler took advantage of a politically divided and economically depressed Germany.

A more realistic scenario would have Palpatine taking advantage of never-ending war to slowly implement more and more “emergency powers” (similar to the Enabling Act that gave Hitler power), until he became de-facto dictator for life. This is sort of what happened, except in the actual movies Palpatine also artificially caused the war in the first place, and expertly directed it towards an intended outcome. (We’re also never told why General Grievous et al takes orders from a mysterious hologram, or why all the thousands of Separatist planets suddenly just stop fighting just because Anakin killed their first tier leadership.) Plus, the movie implies that it was more the botched assassination attempt led by Mace Windu that ultimately cemented Palpatine as dictator than the years of war or the recent attack on Coruscant.

I would disagree. What I see in history is that successful dictators are fairly cunning when they rise to power. It is once they are in power and what they do to try to hold on to it that leads to paranoia and mistakes. Usually it leads to their undoing. So I see Eps I to VI as being a fairly accurate depiction of a dictator who has ruled for 23 years. He has a cunning plan for gaining power. He is wicked in his use of power. Then he becomes paranoid and/or overconfident (or both) and makes mistakes that lead to his downfall. Palpatine is overconfident that his cunning plan to trick the Rebels will go according to his plan. It does not. He is overconfident that Luke is putty in his hands. He is not. He is paranoid enough that he doesn’t have anyone around him. He is isolated. In many ways he has been isolated since his rise to power because he is leading a double life - the kindly Emperor vs. the evil Sith Lord. But after 23 years, it doesn’t look like he has very many people around. There are something like 3 or 4 odd looking people in his party. They’ve always been called diplomats, but what if they are his Sith followers. Could be both. But that isn’t the entourage he used to travel with. I think it very much matches what we see happen to many of these dictators who trust fewer and fewer people until they are practically alone.

theprequelsrule said:

Channel72 said:

In retrospect, the biggest problem with the Prequels is they’re told in a way that often ignores their own premise. In theory, the most interesting thing about the Prequel story template should be Anakin and the circumstances behind Alec Guinness’ wistful recollections to Luke in ANH. This is a classic “good guy turns bad” story. The problem is that this type of story is very difficult to write convincingly. This type of story was done in the Godfather Part I and also Breaking Bad - but the latter had 6 seasons of television to pull it off, and the Godfather involved a much less extreme transition from good to bad than is required for Anakin, who has to go from Obi-Wan’s good friend to a mass murdering tyrant in only 3 movies.

This is just a REALLY hard story to write convincingly in only 3 movies. It requires a lot of upfront planning of story structure. Yet bizarrely, it seems that Lucas wasn’t even primarily interested in Anakin’s story and the obvious drama that could be mined from it. Instead he wrote Episode 1, which was a meandering side-story that introduced us to the world of the Prequels, but barely connected with the other movies. It seems clear that Lucas didn’t see the “Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker” as the primary reason for writing the Prequels. Rather, Lucas saw the Prequels as more like a general backstory to the OT that showed how the Republic turned into a dictatorship and the Jedi order was destroyed. That could certainly be interesting as a political/military drama if done correctly, but Star Wars movies are generally simple character driven stories. It seems by the time Revenge of the Sith came around, Lucas suddenly realized this saga was supposed to be more about Anakin and less about Palpatine’s crazy schemes to get elected or mysterious clone conspiracies. But by that time, it was virtually impossible to make up for lost time and write a compelling arc for Anakin in only one movie.

Most of all, it’s eternally baffling to me that so much of the Prequels are framed around MYSTERY plots. Episode 1 is about a mysterious hooded figure who operates in the shadows. Episode 2 is a detective story about a conspiracy involving a mysterious clone army created decades ago for unknown reasons. But none of these mysteries are ever really explicitly resolved because ultimately they’re superfluous to the story. More importantly, why would anyone frame a PREQUEL around mystery plots, when we all know how everything turns out? We know the mysterious hooded guy is the Emperor and that all the Jedi die, so why pretend the story is some kind of deep, compelling mystery or political conspiracy thriller? The only reason the Prequels really should exist is because the story of Anakin and his mentor/friend Obi-Wan had the potential to be an amazing character-driven drama and fantasy/sci-fi adventure story.

Very good points, ones I never thought of specifically before. A much better script for all 3 prequels is needed to tell both the fall on The Republic and the fall of Anakin Skywalker simultaneously.

I really thought the whole plot where Palpatine is basically running both the Separatists and The Republic really strained credibility. At least have the reveal that Dooku was a Sith take place in ROTS - make the audience think he is truly a rogue Jedi fighting against a hopelessly corrupt Republic and that The Separatists were actually the good guys.

Also; remember how evil Tarkin and company were in SW77 when they are all sitting around the conference table on the Death Star? Now remember the similar scene on Geonosis, with all those weird comical looking aliens? Creates a completely different feel. The Separatists seemed like a joke.

I find myself sympathizing with Stardust1138 because I often lack tact in my strong opinions.

But he does have some ideas that bear looking at. If you miss some of the things that George included in the prequels (especially if that led to not liking them and not wanting to watch them again) then your hate of one or more of the prequels might be based on not having really understood the story. There are things I didn’t catch right away (at least not consciously) that have added to my understanding of the story. I’m also not content with just the films, but in learning more about the backstory behind the story. For the prequels there is a lot in the OT, but there is more in other places. George’s original vision of the Emperor was that he was a puppet (ANH novelization). He took that and the powerful Sith lord he created for ROTJ and merged them into the same character by making him duplicitous. So you have the public face of Palpatine. He’s is a nice guy, friendly, amicable. He seems genuinely concerned. A bit of a pushover really. But then you have the real power - the Sith Lord. He is using the force to manipulate votes and get his way. He uses the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo to become Chancellor. He lays the plan for the Clone Wars by picking the source for the clones and having order 66 instilled in them. He plays the victim when he is disfigured. It is a brilliant political move. And it is the reason the separtists are a joke. He intends them to fail. He wants to destabilize the Republic and seize power for himself. He made an enemy of the Trade Federation and this seems in part revenge.

And then there is Anakin’s fall. Something I didn’t consciously catch until recently is that Palpatine uses the force on Anakin to bend him to his will. Anakin was susceptible after he stopped Mace Windu and you can hear the special effect in Palpatine’s voice when he gives Anakin instructions to take then Jedi Temple.

It is all about what you noticed and how that impacted your opinion of the films. I had a bad first viewing of TFA and I don’t think I will ever truly like that film because of it. So really get that once your opinion is formed it is hard to change. But hey, this is Star Wars. Isn’t it worth digging deeper and seeing if you missed something that might change your mind and giving each film at least a second chance? I think it is. I keep giving AOTC and TFA more chances. Basically without an edit both of them are doomed as far as I’m concerned. But the rest of them can stand in their theatrical forms and I can appreciate them.

The other big thing that I think colors our opinions of films is expectations. If you expect too much or something too different from what we got, that can ruin a film. I try to avoid having any story expectations. I still get them. I felt sure that Rey was a real Skywalker after TFA. Or a Kenobi at least. The whole nobody and then Palpatine could have thrown me but I didn’t go into the film expecting that. I went in and let the story flow. I was totally unsurprised that Han died in TFA or that Luke died in TLJ. From how Lucas and Hamill talked, I knew Luke was going to die to pass the torch. I expected that Harrison would want Han to die. He got one of the most awesome death scenes as far as I’m concerned. The look, touching Kylo’s cheeck, everything was so perfect.

But we can’t all of us have the same opinion. Just remember how divided the fans were over TESB and ROTJ. We have some members here who all these decades later still don’t like TESB or ROTJ. And I bet there are many who would like to change their minds - for them to give it another chance. If they only saw it this other way. Well, that obviously is not happening at this stage. I think every Star Wars film deserves a second chance, but if your issue isn’t going to go away, then that might not do it. Though there have been some that have given these films a second chance and have revised their opinion of them.

So some opinions are never going to change. They are set and some of us don’t understand it, but there is nothing to do about it. Everyone has a right to their own opinion and tastes. It doesn’t mean the rest of us are wrong, we just aren’t on the same page. But likely there are a few films we do agree on.

What I’ve been able to uncover about what George’s treatment for VII was going to be about was very similar to what we got. Even before Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney, Luke was pushed out of VII and into VIII. VII was going to be about finding Luke. I think it would have been better if we hadn’t seen him and the end of VII was more like the end of TESB with Rey and Chewie going off to find Luke and then a gap between the two films. But Rian Johnson really nailed the opening of TLJ with out Abrams left TFA. Really all 3 films have an epilogue (Rey finding Luke, the broom boy, and Rey burying Luke and Leia’s sabers). I think TFA is the weakest one. It sets up the story and most of the flaws consistently pointed out in the other two films stem from what Abrams setup in TFA. I don’t agree that they are necessarily flaws, but I feel that Abrams set them up. Some of them Lucas setup. Lucas had the girl as the Jedi in training. Lucas had Luke in exile. I love what Rian Johnson did with Luke because given what Abrams established in TFA, Johnson mined ANH and TESB for qualities and traits that Luke had the might resurface in the face of a tragedy that would make him go into self-exile.

I’ve studied how movies develop, particular the Star Wars movies, and what I see in Lucas’s original ideas and the pre-Abrams draft of IX are a basis for how the films developed and mutated into what we go. TESB and ROTJ went through similar mutations. I think Abrams played it too safe with TFA and make some bad story telling choices. I think if he would have been more daring like he was with TROS that it would have been a better film.

Funny to read this. I consider ROTS to be considerably lesser than the OT. I just can’t put my finger on it. I think that the script just wasn’t polished enough. Lucas didn’t have any help on this film and I think it shows. He needed script help to make a good film. Someone to edit his work and curb his worst ideas. I definitely don’t consider ROTS to be a masterpiece. The best of the PT for me is TPM because I think it captured the right mood. I feel the script is polished. I know some people don’t like Jar Jar or some other characters, but those things have never bothered me.

I felt The Phantom Menace felt like Star Wars but set in the Old Republic. I love Qui-gon. I do not hate Jar Jar. Jake Lloyd was not bad as Anakin. After spending time with 9 and 10 year olds recently, some of them sound like that. And I also saw something he did right before he played Anakin. I have nothing to hate about this movie. I love it. The theatrical version anyway. I do not like the DVD cut. I do prefer CG Yoda over the puppet. That was one horrible puppet. And the CG makes it fit better with the following two films.

Attack of the Clones is mostly good, but it has some terrible stuff in it. The droid factory sequence is probably the worst in all of Star Wars. Comic relief is one thing, but that was over the top and totally ridiculous. And the way Anakin acts does not fit with his character. Not Hayden’s acting, but the way the part is written. That argument in front of Padme is out of place and the way he acts when Padme falls out doesn’t fit. He’s attached to her and madly in love with her, but he isn’t a total idiot.

Return of the Sith is mostly great. It is dark, but the story doesn’t play out quite as expected (based on the other 5 films that came out before it). There isn’t anything I can put my finger on, just a feeling that something is off.

Overall the Prequels setup the story nicely for the OT. They aren’t as good, but prequels rarely are. I really feel that Lucas spent time on TPM and did it right, but rushed the other two and didn’t have a good partner to make sure the script was top notch before filming them. He had too many people who weren’t critical enough of his work and the films suffer for it. AOTS in obvious ways and ROTS in more subtle ways.

thebluefrog said:

A major problem with all 3 movies was Rey’s constant winning and Kylo’s constant losing.

A hero and their journey is only as good as the villain and their antagonism.

Imagine if Obi-Wan had WON the very first lightsaber duel back in 1977.

That would’ve killed Vader’s character from the start.

Kylo’s loss at the end of TFA was the first crack. Then losing against Rey again in Snoke’s room. And then being humiliated by Luke. And then losing again to Rey again 1/2 of the way through Rise. Also, her ability to beat Luke while training didn’t help any character progression either.

Rey had no consistent hero’s journey. Yes, yes, you can make all sorts of arguments about scene x or development y, they’ve been done before–the point is that the growth of the heroic character overcoming obstacles isn’t coherent. Since Kylo was neutered as a threat midway through TLJ, they had to use Palpatine to give her a new challenge, which didn’t thematically fit at all from her starting point.

One theme is Star Wars is redemption. We see Anakin return to the light so Ben returning to the light fits very well. And Kylo didn’t really lose in TFA. Chewy shot him and he was fighting injured and the ground split open before their duel was finished. And he didn’t really lose in TLJ, the saber broke and he didn’t want the pieces and left Rey to fend for herself. And he filled Rey with doubts about her identity. Luke’s journey was defined by doubts about his ability. Rey’s journey was defined by doubts about her identity. Bringing back Palpatine was brilliant in terms of her identity crisis, echoing Legends, echoing the Flash Gordon serial origins of Star Wars, and is mythic

Those who don’t like these films find ways to explain why they don’t like them. That some don’t like them because they are too different and others don’t like them because they are too similar shows that both views are in they eye of the viewer. Apply the same critiques to the PT and you will get the same result. They are either too similar or too different. TPM, ANH, and TFA all have similar beats and echo each other. In each one a young person with no direction finds a mentor and before the mentor can impart very much, they die. In each one there is a space battle where the hero plays a decisive part (in TFA Rey helps plant the explosives that opens the whole for the destruciton of Starkiller base where in the other two Anakin and Luke are the fighter pilot who fires the shot that destroys the base). The hero meets the other two in the trio that carries through the trilogy. TPM doesn’t have any plans or map as a McGiffin. And I could go on, but why? I think I made my point.

Buzz Lightyear said:

I enjoyed it. Not as much as the Mandalorian, but that’s okay. It was still a good time and a nice little bridge between Mando season 2 and 3.

People really need to stop projecting so many expectations onto Star Wars. Actually modern fandoms need to do that in general, I swear there’s not a single fandom
nowadays where the fanbase collectively enjoys more than 1% of its content.

Life is more fun if you learn to just sit back and enjoy the ride, instead of picking everything apart and fixating on how you’d have personally handled various details.

^^^^^
This!

You mean he should have been in the suit before the last few minutes because he was dubbed Darth Vader as soon as he rescued Palpatine.

JadedSkywalker said:

Luke’s sacrifice in Last Jedi is beautiful as is his letting go of his fear. The scene where he fades into the force facing a rising sun is palpable.

And its all undone in Rise of Skywalker by bringing him back to lift the X-wing in an unnecessary scene.

Rey already had the training she needed watching Luke fail according to Last Jedi, but all of a sudden we need Leia to train her. Leia suddenly a Jedi Master who never was even a Jedi Knight.

These movies don’t work in sequence.

You mean like Ben’s sacrifice in ANH was undone by him coming back in TESB and ROTJ to tell Luke things Yoda could have told him? Luke coming back as a force ghost was pretty expected and in keeping with the past. In TROS we see the Jedi Master that could have been and he is great. And I don’t see what is wrong with Leia having been trained and being able to train Rey. It answers that lingering question from ROTJ about why Luke wouldn’t have trained her. He did, but she had a vision that it was not her time.

And Leia is the one who brought Ben Solo back to the light, not Rey. Rey stabbed him and gave Leia the opening and Leia did the rest, like his vision of his father.

Stardust1138 said:

yotsuya said:

fmalover said:

Stardust1138 said:

I don’t think fans really wanted another Luke, Leia, and Han trilogy per say. I know for me I just wanted something that respected them as characters and felt like a natural progression to where we last saw them. Instead it feels like a regression.

Luke - He ended Return of the Jedi as the last Jedi. In the Sequel Trilogy he ends his story arc no different from where he was during the end of the previous trilogy. The only difference is he’s now broken and depressed as he failed. I didn’t need Luke to be Superman but I do feel seeing him pass on what he knew to the next generation as foreshadowed by his talk with Yoda was an essential part of his character development that felt promised to be told. He could fail at first to convey a Fisher King like narrative but instead he fails and everything is given to Rey because the plot says so and not because she earned it. Luke could definitely fail at first after following the teachings of the Jedi that came before but it’s poorly written and conveyed.

Leia - She’s in the same position she was at the start of A New Hope. She’s leading the Rebel Alliance then and now she’s leading the Resistance. Her growth to becoming a senator and even Supreme Chancellor is squandered. She fails at being a mother.

Han - He’s back to smuggling and where he was at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. He doesn’t continue to grow and become a respected figure in the Republic as his arc in Return of the Jedi implied when he became a general in the Rebel Alliance. Instead he’s back to smuggling, failed as a father, and loss the Millennium Falcon for reasons. Everything he overcame is thrown out the window.

All of these issues stem from The Force Awakens decision to be a soft reboot. The characters are mostly delightful and fun but the problem is the story they’re going through has no sense of consequence or baring on what comes afterwards. Hardly anything in the film has an emotional payoff or point in viewing things retrospectively. It’s there just to look like Star Wars but it doesn’t actually feel like Star Wars as it serves no purpose in the grand scheme of things.

I was ready to explore a new generation of characters with the trio serving as mentors. I wanted to see the children of Han and Leia and if in the cards Luke. I knew though George wasn’t so keen on the Expanded Universe in part because he didn’t see Luke as having children. So Luke having a kid may not have been likely but he could have served as a surrogate type parent. Instead we’re following characters they’ve never met or don’t have a connection to them directly or indirectly. The Skywalker saga is about generations of the same family and suddenly not following them in favour of a “Nobody” then Palpatine just feels very anticlimactic.

You don’t need your heroes to become regressed failures to convey a good story to prop up a new generation.

This makes the white-hot outrage over Luke’s characterisation in TLJ even more laughable.

At the end of RotJ, Han and Leia are respected leaders and heroes to the New Republic. Fast forward to TFA and Han is back to being the scoundrel smuggler we were introduced to in the first movie, and Leia is back to being a Rebel leader, and thus we have two characters who made a 360° turn.

It’s strange how Abrams hasn’t received any backlash for this deliberate regression, but Rian Johnson gets all the blame for ruining Luke Skywalker.

Well, it wasn’t even Abrams who did that setup, it was George.

And I disagree that Leia is in the same place. Before she was trying to bring down the Empire and now she is trying to save the New Republic from the First Order. She is fighting the entire time to preserve what she had achieved. While some argue the wording of the opening crawls implies that the First Order had won, the fleet we see in the end of TROS shows that they had not yet won, just intimidated the various system governments.

Han was going to die in George’s version anyway (so was Luke for that matter). Abrams at least gave us a glorious scene for him to exit on. And it is far from pointless. Johnson has that event derail Kylo and it ultimately leads to his return to the light in TROS. So it is a pivotal scene for the characters. And face it, most of us wanted to see the Rogue Han Solo over a respectable Han Solo. It was a good character choice in many ways.

And ultimately when you come down to the myths and legends that Star Wars is built on, everything about the former heroes not still being on top of things falls perfectly in line. Han went back to what was comfortable, Leia is protecting the Republic like she fought the Empire, the fall of Kylo Ren and the destruction of his school has ripped off the veneer of mastery that Luke had put on to reveal the flaws in his character. Luke more than the others has become a different mythic figure. Not the wise old man waiting for the hero, but the disillusioned hero not ready to help the hero.

It was J.J. though. In Return of the Jedi it’s naturally implied as part of the story and the films before it that the part of destroying the Galactic Empire is over and that re-establishing will be the next step as there’s a power vacuum created by the Empire being defeated but also the Hutts as well. That will be a tricky situation to get under control if someone tries to exploit it. There’s no set up for the Empire to rise again except possibly the fleet we see at the Battle of Endor that seems to have escaped but even then that doesn’t explain how they’d become the First Order and have the funds to build a bigger Death Star and have a huge fleet. It might be in a novel but you shouldn’t have to need supplement material for what should be in the movie to explain essential story.

It’s too late. As Holdo says, "We are the spark that that’ll light the fire, that will restore the Republic. The spark is that the Resistance must survive. This is our mission.”. The New Republic is gone. It was destroyed by Starkiller Base as the people who show up at the end of The Rise of Skywalker are ordinary people who’ve had enough of the First Order and possibly Final Order. It’s never said they’re part of system governments but people.

They were both going to die in George’s Sequel Trilogy but we only know how with Luke. It was going to be in Episode IX after he restored the Jedi Order. It’s difficult to say how Han would have died but Harrison Ford said it would’ve happened in Episode VII like we got during the lead up to The Force Awakens. I’d say it’s still pointless with Kylo/Ben in the end as you have to take in account Leia too. She sensed the death of him if she continued her Jedi training. He still died. His parents both died for nothing. He was redeemed and saved Rey but that’s it. No Skywalker lived on to continue the legacy. Instead Rey is the last one standing but she’s a Palpatine and the Republic must be established again as it was destroyed. It’s more or less the same story position as Return of the Jedi. How is everyone going to react when they find out Rey is related to Palpatine? Will it be like in the books when Leia nearly loss everything when it was revealed she was Darth Vader’s daughter? It creates so many unnecessary problems and complications. It may have been fun to see Han rogue at first but it’s regressing his character and not letting him grow up as he did across the entire Original Trilogy. He went from selfish and self centred to one of the Rebel Alliance’s most loyal members and very selfless towards Leia and his friends. It’s only natural to expect him to continue to grow. They could’ve still played with Han’s smuggler backstory under the power vacuum scenario since it’s all about crime syndicates in George’s story for example trying to overtake the Republic but not at the expense of his personal growth.

It’s all about the execution of said ideas. Why does Han need to go back to the only thing he’s good at? Is he not allowed to rise above what he worked very hard to overcome with the help of others? The Republic is gone. They’re trying to restore it just as the Rebel Alliance was trying to do. Leia is doing the same thing she was thirty years ago. She’s still fighting an Empire in so many words. With Luke though George also had him as broken but he overcame it and in the end restored the Jedi Order. It’s all about execution and respecting character growth. Instead we got a failure who passed on the mantle to Rey because the plot says she must be the last Jedi now. It doesn’t ever show us why she’s earned the right to it. It’s just given to her as the plot says she’s the protagonist like with the lightsaber, the Millennium Falcon, Luke’s X-Wing, and even Leia’s training. Leia will train a Palpatine but not her own son? Star Wars was an ecological value system before and the collective whole. It was not not just one individual collecting everything and being the only hero. Even with Anakin being the Chosen One he still needed help from Luke. Just as Han needed help with overcoming his smuggling past. Just as Leia needed help to get off the Death Star. Just as Luke needed help destroying the Death Star. It was a value system of the collective whole of people helping people.

These things just don’t sit right with me. It needs to be clear within the narrative what is going on. You shouldn’t need to read or look up supplement material to understand the story the films are trying to convey. There’s only one rare instance I find in George’s story where you may need supplement material to understand something and that’s the mystery of Sifo-Dyas. However it’s something he planned to explain in his Sequels as he was the secret apprentice of Palpatine. So it would’ve been addressed eventually and supplement material wouldn’t be needed for it.

Ulimately on my part I’m glad you enjoy the the Sequels. I genuinely wish I could see the things you see. They are pretty fun on their own merits in some ways and have some Star Wars like qualities but ulimately I find they’re lacking in consistency that makes sense within the context of the first six films.

On the state of the Republic I have to disagree with you. The Hosnian system was destroyed. The capital is gone, but the member worlds remain and have not been conquered. They are never seen to be conquered. There has been no passage of time form TFA to TLJ for them to be conquered. Some may have surrendered, but even that is not mentioned. You have the First Order Fleet trying to control things AND trying to chase down the resistance. There is no indication in the films that the First Order is actually running anything except a fear campaign, which is working and which is why none of Leia’s contacts provide any help. Looking at their actions logically, the resistance is too small to be effective or be worth saving and they everything they to protect themselves. The First Order splintered the Republic, but has not taken over. The trilogy is about saving the New Republic. It is not about starting over, but about saving what was already created. So Leia’s legacy has not been destroyed, just taken a severe hit.

And that is also why Han falls back to his old ways. Their son has fallen to the Dark Side and his wife is running the resistance in the outer rim. And if her name is tainted by the revelation of her father, where does that leave him? His return to smuggling is logical and makes sense.

Luke suffered the most when Ben turned to Kylo. His entire school was destroyed (not just the building, but the students). By his nephew no less. So his jaded attitude stems from guilt over a member of his family falling to the dark side just like his father had. And by this point he has studied the records of the TPM era Jedi and come to the same conclusion that I have that the Jedi were responsible for Anakin’s fall because they gave him no tools to wrestle with the temptations of the dark side. In the PT Anakin is just told to avoid any temptation. But he is never told what to do if there is temptation. He has fear in TPM. What is he supposed to do with that. And Luke meets the same fate as Obi-wan - losing a trusted student to the Dark Side. Anakin destroyed the temple on Coruscant and Ben destroyed the new temple. Obi-wan and Yoda went into hiding and Luke goes into hiding. He wallows in self-pity as Luke tends to do. Too much is made of his rise to the occasion in ROTJ without recognizing that he is the same person he always was with the same flaws. Just because he overcomes them at that point does not mean they can’t come back later. So we are presented with the cause of why he reverted. It is a human and believable story and very true to character. In TLJ Luke is probably the most realistic and human his character has ever been.

So all of these characters were handled very well in my opinion. Very true to OT form and very logical from the fall of the only Skywalker of the new generation. Everything that has gone wrong prior to TFA stems from Ben Solo becoming Kylo Ren and does so in a way that rings true to their humanity and rings true to how old heroes are portrayed in myths and legends.

fmalover said:

Stardust1138 said:

I don’t think fans really wanted another Luke, Leia, and Han trilogy per say. I know for me I just wanted something that respected them as characters and felt like a natural progression to where we last saw them. Instead it feels like a regression.

Luke - He ended Return of the Jedi as the last Jedi. In the Sequel Trilogy he ends his story arc no different from where he was during the end of the previous trilogy. The only difference is he’s now broken and depressed as he failed. I didn’t need Luke to be Superman but I do feel seeing him pass on what he knew to the next generation as foreshadowed by his talk with Yoda was an essential part of his character development that felt promised to be told. He could fail at first to convey a Fisher King like narrative but instead he fails and everything is given to Rey because the plot says so and not because she earned it. Luke could definitely fail at first after following the teachings of the Jedi that came before but it’s poorly written and conveyed.

Leia - She’s in the same position she was at the start of A New Hope. She’s leading the Rebel Alliance then and now she’s leading the Resistance. Her growth to becoming a senator and even Supreme Chancellor is squandered. She fails at being a mother.

Han - He’s back to smuggling and where he was at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. He doesn’t continue to grow and become a respected figure in the Republic as his arc in Return of the Jedi implied when he became a general in the Rebel Alliance. Instead he’s back to smuggling, failed as a father, and loss the Millennium Falcon for reasons. Everything he overcame is thrown out the window.

All of these issues stem from The Force Awakens decision to be a soft reboot. The characters are mostly delightful and fun but the problem is the story they’re going through has no sense of consequence or baring on what comes afterwards. Hardly anything in the film has an emotional payoff or point in viewing things retrospectively. It’s there just to look like Star Wars but it doesn’t actually feel like Star Wars as it serves no purpose in the grand scheme of things.

I was ready to explore a new generation of characters with the trio serving as mentors. I wanted to see the children of Han and Leia and if in the cards Luke. I knew though George wasn’t so keen on the Expanded Universe in part because he didn’t see Luke as having children. So Luke having a kid may not have been likely but he could have served as a surrogate type parent. Instead we’re following characters they’ve never met or don’t have a connection to them directly or indirectly. The Skywalker saga is about generations of the same family and suddenly not following them in favour of a “Nobody” then Palpatine just feels very anticlimactic.

You don’t need your heroes to become regressed failures to convey a good story to prop up a new generation.

This makes the white-hot outrage over Luke’s characterisation in TLJ even more laughable.

At the end of RotJ, Han and Leia are respected leaders and heroes to the New Republic. Fast forward to TFA and Han is back to being the scoundrel smuggler we were introduced to in the first movie, and Leia is back to being a Rebel leader, and thus we have two characters who made a 360° turn.

It’s strange how Abrams hasn’t received any backlash for this deliberate regression, but Rian Johnson gets all the blame for ruining Luke Skywalker.

Well, it wasn’t even Abrams who did that setup, it was George.

And I disagree that Leia is in the same place. Before she was trying to bring down the Empire and now she is trying to save the New Republic from the First Order. She is fighting the entire time to preserve what she had achieved. While some argue the wording of the opening crawls implies that the First Order had won, the fleet we see in the end of TROS shows that they had not yet won, just intimidated the various system governments.

Han was going to die in George’s version anyway (so was Luke for that matter). Abrams at least gave us a glorious scene for him to exit on. And it is far from pointless. Johnson has that event derail Kylo and it ultimately leads to his return to the light in TROS. So it is a pivotal scene for the characters. And face it, most of us wanted to see the Rogue Han Solo over a respectable Han Solo. It was a good character choice in many ways.

And ultimately when you come down to the myths and legends that Star Wars is built on, everything about the former heroes not still being on top of things falls perfectly in line. Han went back to what was comfortable, Leia is protecting the Republic like she fought the Empire, the fall of Kylo Ren and the destruction of his school has ripped off the veneer of mastery that Luke had put on to reveal the flaws in his character. Luke more than the others has become a different mythic figure. Not the wise old man waiting for the hero, but the disillusioned hero not ready to help the hero.

Hal 9000 said:

TFA had the easier job of setting up the story of the ST, and made what I consider a bad call in recreating the plot mechanics of the original film(s) of rebels vs empire. It deliberately chose not to build on the story as it had developed so far but to regress and recreate. I’m not interested in blaming specific people, so I personify the film when doing so because I don’t know if these decisions were mandated from on high or JJ’s own insistence. TFA works pretty good at executing this unfortunate decision and introduces a colorful cast of characters in a fun ride. You’re all right with the lack of a solid ending because you understand it’s part one of three. TFA bears its own flaws well enough, but leeches somewhat on what would follow and cannot stand on its own.

TLJ actually has some kind of a central idea, that idea is just kind of sophomoric. TLJ smells the above about its predecessor and wants to correct it before it’s too late. It does so respectfully, taking the events and story so far seriously even as it changes our view of them. It’s a critique of TFA and a dare for IX to be great.

IX failed that dare altogether. TLJ said, “I dare you to do better” without knowing it would be the TFA crew the message would be sent to. TROS was written on the bus to school and the administrators weren’t willing to give it more time. So, we got a bullshit story of “nuh-uh, Snoke didn’t really die, he was just Palpatine all along.” TROS is that kid who stubbornly insists he is winning a playground game and is the worst at turn-based storytelling games. I don’t have many good things to say about TROS. It doesn’t seem to say much of anything, at least when you exclude things the OT already said. There’s no new light cast on anything and nothing to go home thinking about that ROTJ didn’t do much better. It’s a shame for the entire Star Wars saga to end on such a note. I laughed through my first viewing because otherwise I’d just feel embarrassed and sad. It’s enough to hope for a 10-12 trilogy someday just to have another chance at doing what 7-9 ought to have done. Just down the road enough for the chance that enough turnover would let it be fresh.

I think your take on TROS is partly right, but I don’t think you are seeing it in the right way. The ending for ROTJ was epic. That is truly the huge ending in the saga. Even in Lucas’s original ideas, he had nothing truly planned beyond bringing the OT cast back to hand off the baton to a new generation. That lack of deep planning shows. But it also works for the story. In the OT the rebellion was fighting the fully formed and powerful empire. In the ST they are trying to save what is left of the New Republic from the reminants of the Empire. In some ways this was done to better effect in book form with Timothy Zahn’s trilogy. But in some ways that wasn’t as epic a story from the POV of the Skywalker/Jedi story. The ST proposes that something survived ROTJ and is rebuilding and the heroes must stop this rise of a new Empire before it is too late. That is complicated by an early strike on the fledgling new Jedi order that has sent Luke into hiding (George came up with that one). The promise of a new Jedi order from ROTJ is unfulfilled. So the ST trilogy must save the republic, stop the Empire from winning again, and start the Jedi again.

It does this by finally addressing an element from the PT that the PT Jedi teachings were flawed. Lucas set this up very nicely. To avoid the Dark Side a Jedi isn’t to just avoid the dark side, they are to avoid attachments which can lead to fear, anger, and then hate. So the Jedi in the PT aren’t teaching their Padawans how to avoid the Dark Side pitfalls, they are teaching them to avoid any hint of any path that strays even close. This is why Anakin fell. The ST has Luke come to this realization and be wallowing is dispair on how to proceed. He wants to restore the Jedi Order but he made the same mistakes. The Jedi need to be reborn in a new way. This fits with Lucas’s idea of the ST passing on he baton. Too many fans wanted a new Luke, Han, Leia trilogy when that was never what we were going to get. Luke, Han and Leia are supporting characters in the ST. They always were going to be. Hamill and Lucas both mentioned Hamill having the Kenobi role in the ST and when Qui-gon died in the PT, I expected that Luke would die in the ST. The is the way of mythic stories, the old generation passed so the new can take over.

And I feel TROS epicly rounds out the saga by bringing back Palpatine as a clone. And his return is like the rest of the ST. He has not risen to full power yet and must be stopped before it is too late. Rather than resetting the OT, the ST has reset to a point in ROTS where the old Republic could still have been saved. I find the ST a nice mix of the PT and OT. I also find it has fewer flaws than the PT. Lucas’s story telling is far too subtle in the PT. It is great if you like uncovering the layers, but far too many didn’t want to bother and the clear story has far too many holes in it. Too many mysteries unsolved. The ST returned to the OT’s more blunt story telling while having a few mysteries. Abrams crafted TFA with far too many for a trilogy. And wisely TLJ shuts a few of them down. TROS doesn’t really course correct as much as some people think. The ST was setup, not to be a restart of ANH, but to put the galaxy in the position that this time we need to stop them BEFORE this new enemy, a remnant of the old Empire, takes over again. The First Order is never the entrenched evil empire in the ST, only the rising danger. Leia’s resistance is positioned to block them. And they know it because they go after them. Even in TROS after a year they still haven’t solidified any hold on the Galaxy and victory is still possible for the resistance.

I think there is too much emphasis on the flaws of the ST without looking at how it succeeds. TFA is full of flaws forcing TLJ to cut a couple off and TROS has to tie up everything. And if you look carefully, the entire ST follows Palpatine’s vacillating. Palpatine doesn’t care if Kylo Ren or Rey wins, he just wants to possess the winner. The ST also bounced back and forth. First Kylo Ren is set on proving that Rey is nothing and no one, before he finds out she really is someone. Reversals are a staple of story telling. Think of LOTR. Who destroys the ring? It isn’t Frodo or Sam, it is Gollum. Star Wars is based on myths and in those ancient myths, things don’t always play out like you think. I think the ST does an imperfect but good job of using that mythic structure. It has a solid core, but if you don’t look beyond the surface, you won’t see it. Very like the PT and Lucas’s too subtle concepts.

screams in the void said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I guess i was expecting more swashbuckling action Anakin following Obi Wan on a damn fool idealistic crusade.

Yoda being Obi Wan’s teacher, Leia’s mom dying on Alderaan when Leia was like 5 years old or something. Owen Lars being Obi Wan’s brother.

Luke’s father being a good friend and a great pilot. And i mean in the films not having to go to other media to get that characterization, like the Clone Wars.

Showing the actual clone war on screen, the purge of the Jedi by Vader. All the things hinted at during the filming of the OT.

^ yup , and I will add , Anakin telling Obi Wan that he wanted Luke to have his Lightsaber when he was old enough , Anakin falling into a molten pit while dueling Kenobi being an accident, rather than getting his arm and legs chopped off by him in self defense after which he stands there and leaves him burning to death , the Clone Wars being plural and happening on screen and not just the start and the end of them , with the rest being filled in by a cartoon . These were the things that stirred the imaginations of my friends and myself in the 80s while playing out the scenarios with our action figures in the sandbox and talking about them .

And this is exactly why so many were disappointed with the PT Lucas made. Pre-formed expectations. The only thing I had ever imagined was the faux treatment, Fall of the Republic. Oddly, it has a lot of echoes to both ROTS and TROS (predating both by many years).

Unlike a lot of people, I was very disappointed in TFA. It had two great points. Great character introductions and some really great scenes, but there really wasn’t much of a story there. People compare it to the 1977 original, but the original was a self contained story with a solid end. TFA felt incomplete and open ended. Especially when the tacked on Rey meeting Luke to the end. So I don’t consider it an echo of ANH in the slightest. It failed some basic film making tasks and for me it is the worst of the saga films.

I think the trilogy redeemed itself with TLJ and rose to the occasion with TROS. Those two films for me are the best saga films since ROTJ. For both of those films, I was glued to the screen and mesmerized in my first viewing. Not many films can do that so I consider them very well made.

With the way the saga developed, I can deal with TFA. It has flaws, but it is a solid introduction to the characters. It is like a prologue to the following 2 parter.

I feel this episode puts the series in perspective for me.

Overall a good episode. I have felt all along that they had too few people. It shouldn’t have been just 2 Gamorrean Guards. And he should have been able to pick up a few people locally who wanted the same change. But then, as we’ve seen, a single Mandalorian comes to a fight worth as much as a squad of other troops. The armor and the toys make them formidable, and perhaps Boba Fett was counting on that. And Fennic Shand is nearly as effective herself. I just felt that there were too few on his side to start with. And then sitting there knowing that Cob Vance has been shot and likely isn’t coming and neither are his reinforcements.

I felt the Pike attack was wonderfully executed and I loved the scorpion droids (droidekkars on steroids). I did feel the timing of the Rancor arrival felt too quick. Is Jabba’s palace really that close to Mos Espa?

But other than that I loved this episode. I was disappointed that Grogu arrived with only R2, but in retrospect that is not surprising. It worked and kept the Boba Fett storyline away from the Luke/Ahsoka story line. I loved the showdown between Boba and Cad Bane. I loved that he won because of the Tusken training and weapon.

With this, I think it is clear that this series remains tightly tied to The Mandalorian. It is really a side story. I think they could have done quite a few things to make it better but I find no huge flaws with it. It is more lacking than badly done. With the way things worked out, I think Din’s scenes could have been spread out a bit rather than compacted into the final 3 episodes. I think the entire series should have been more like the final 2 episodes. The whole series would have benefitted. But the dialog portion of duel with Cad Bane really brought Boba’s story full circle and made this huge change Boba is trying to make tie in to his character origins. For those who wanted more OT Boba, that isn’t such a good thing, but for those of us who like complex characters, it is a fascinating and wonderful aspect to the story.

This series is definitely better than Resistance. It felt like one of those series of side stories in Clone Wars. Kind of like Boba’s episodes there. I think if you watched those episodes than this series, it would fit very well. Again, it could have been better, but overall really good.

fmalover said:

Now that you guys are touching upon it, that is one thing that has been bothering me for the past two decades, the characterisation of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the PT.

In TESB, Yoda says he won’t train Luke because he’s too impatient and reckless, at which point Obi-Wan retorts “Was I any different?”. Lucas contradicted this when making the PT, as throughout the PT Obi-Wan is portrayed as a very observant, by-the-book Jedi who never questions the will of the Council, and I suspect that Lucas got the roles mixed up, as Qui-Gon is the one with the rebellious streak Yoda spoke of. When Obi-Wan insisted on training Anakin because of his promise to Qui-Gon, Yoda says he senses Qui-Gon’s defiance in him. Really?

Padawan Obi-wan was a bit reckless. He was listening to Qui-gon. When he started training Anakin that ceased to be the case. And we didn’t see the much younger Obi-wan, the one Yoda trained, so we can’t really say what Obi-wan said to Yoda was not completely true.

Every hear people tell old war stories? Well, when someone isn’t around to check them, they often embellish and skew things. I wish people would stop taking every word that every characters says as 100% accurate. People don’t talk that way. Memories fail, things get forgotten or mis remembered, and some people just plain make things up. Like Vader betraying and murdering Luke’s father. Whatever Bail told Leia was close enough to the truth, but what she said doesn’t have to be the literal history.