You must log in or register to comment.
The sequels aren’t bad because they’re woke (are they woke, though?), they’re bad because they’re bad.
For example, I think Daisy Ridley played the part very well, and the character fit in the overarching universe. But the plot was awful and predictable.
And somehow Palpatine returned.
EDIT/ADDITION for emphasis: I loved the acting. Especially Finn. I didn’t find Kylo Ren to be a believable character, but Adam Driver did a great job regardless. Everyone did a great job with Ep VII, except the writers and Disney execs.
These memes always rub me the wrong way. First, they’re making fun of hateful Star Wars fans, which is great. But they’re also ignoring just how bad the sequels were. Make no mistake, they were BAD.
This, heaven forbid a fan who legitimately wanted to like the movies just didn’t like them. No problem with the time skip, the actors, love interests, etc. the plot just sucked, the story was haphazardly thrown together. Disney wanted to cash in on nostalgia and pumped out 3 movies with no prior planning or guiding direction between the films. But if anyone complains they’re being hypercritical, or racist, or sexist, or doesn’t appreciate the spirit of the movies. Fuck that, at least Filoni is slowly fixing it. Stomach literally sank when I learned he wasn’t in charge of the acolyte in some form.
Removed by mod
Episode 7 is still good. Is it a rip of episode 4? Sure. But it’s still actually fun to watch, with good pacing, and good characters.
Also, Kylo stopping, and holding, a blaster shot mid shoot is fucking cool!
The biggest problem with episode 7 is that it gives us “Empire vs. Rebels 2” which i hate as the direction for the future that episode 6 set up. The second biggest problem is its a bunch of mystery boxes with no plans to back them up i.e why is Rey important? Who the fuck is the green goggle lady? Why is Luke a hermit? What is the purpose of the map to Luke? Who fucking cares cause JJ sure didn’t
But it’s still actually fun to watch, with his pacing, and good characters.
I disagree with all of this.
Eight was half of a good movie. Seven was a series of vinettes of varying quality that ended in disappointment.
7 is fine, 8 is better imo, 9 is atrocious. If they were able to just make 9 decent the sequels would be acceptable. They really, really needed to have these movies thought out from the start though. You can absolutely tell they have no idea where the story goes from one movie to the next.
It’s so fucking cool… and makes no god damn sense whatsoever. Especially when you realize he’s supposed to be some hotheaded half-trained guy who probably has undiagnosed ADHD. He couldn’t concentrate enough to do that if he was sitting meditating in the most serene place in the galaxy, much less in the middle of a trainwreck that the scene took place in.
It was unimaginably forced with no basis in plot or the established universe.
Which pretty much speaks to the entire direction of the sequels in general. “Ooh, pretty… but super fucking dumb”
That Kylo scene is my favorite ever display of using the force. It was so fucking awesome and ominous and powerful.
Finally! All the complaints about the plot essentially being a redo of ANH are completely valid, but they don’t make it a bad movie. It’s actually fun to watch and the characters have some character, which is not something you can say about a certain crowd favourite around here…
Not a big fan of Star Wars (I know right? Why would I mention that here) and even I got to admit that laser holding scene was badass.
There was some social commentary in that golden casino planet where the rich lived in excess while the poor barely got by (pay no attention to the Jabba behind the curtain)
And, of course, they cast minorities in leading roles!
Lando Calrissian deserved more screen time in the original trilogy. He was an incredible character.
There was some social commentary in that golden casino planet where the rich lived in excess while the poor barely got by (pay no attention to the Jabba behind the curtain)
Good world building, but it did nothing to move the story forward. The entire casino planet could have been cut and the story would be unchanged without any social or story impacts.
If they were going for social commentary, they could have set it up to find out that rebel weapons like the X-wing fighters and whatever macguffin they needed so save the main plot line were built by slave labor.
Semi-evil procurement character: “Yeah, I understand what you need. I can have it built in a day. Its an extremely toxic manufacturing process and because I’m not set up for that work, 20 or 30 slaves will die but thats no problem. Yeah, I can get it for you in the day you need it.”
They would have had to make a choice between save the slaves or getting the macguffin. They could have still chosen to not come away with the macguffin because they chose to save the slave labor and at least that would have given purpose to the whole distraction of that storyline.
And, of course, they cast minorities in leading roles!
I liked that part. John Boyega, among others, was a great actor. Kelly Marie Tran did as best she could with the bad writing.
Oh noes. I need to go out and buy some pearls to clutch.
Star Wars is about as a woke as it always has been. Some people are mad about strong female roles when the first movie that came out in the 70s and every after it has had strong female roles.
There is a difference between well-written female characters that also happen to be strong vs hollow, soulless, undeveloped charachters whose only defining feature is being a “strong female character”.
See the difference beetween Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Leia, Padme, Rita Vrataski, Gamora, Nebula, Naomi Nagata[1], and so on vs Galadriel (rings of power), Capitan Marvel, Ironhearth (MCU), She-hulk and whatever happened in Star Wars Acolyte (I could go on like this for a long time, but I think that you get what I mean already).
[1] I even included modern examples, to highlight that it’s not old good, new bad
I’m guessing these same people aren’t big fans of Aien
Palpatine was supposed to return. The clones eventually were turned into a way to let Palpatine jump bodies. But in the immortal words of the Matrix, “Not like this. Not like this.”
They removed Finn from the poster for the Chinese release. Star Wars is not and has never been “woke”, Disney always just does what makes them the most amount of money.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are not woke. If it maximises their returns, they will definitely do anything they think will get them the woke crowd’s money (see also the shoehorned lesbian kiss in ep9). They will also do their best to get the money of the anti-woke crowd (see also: removing the black man from posters; keeping the lesbian kiss contained to five easily cuttable seconds for certain releases).
It’s more correct to not think of them as woke nor not woke, they are just whoring themselves out to whomever they believe they can get to bring them the largest amounts of money (see the company’s history of political donations).
Yeah my point was they don’t have a political agenda besides what makes them the most amount of money. If trans people become universally socially accepted, they’ll make movies with trans characters. If the US keeps moving to the right, they’ll probably stop having minority characters altogether. All that matters to them is money.
Rainbow capitalism at its finest. My girlfriend showed me a clip from an interview with the writers behind The Acolyte saying it’ll be the gayest star wars ever. The shows not over yet so they might be right but so far they had a lesbian couple and couldn’t manage so much as a peck.
It’s not critical to the plot or anything but it demonstrates that there’s some really simple lines Disney still won’t cross when it comes to LGBT representation.
I was genuinely shocked to see how good an actor Hayden Christensen was when he wasn’t in a Star Wars movie.
I didn’t know he has been in any other movies.
Off-screen. Like all the great moments…
Gotta get that sexy JJ magic box plot to get all the kiddies hooked without doing any legwork!
That’s one of the things what’s good about The Boys. Show it to the audience, not tell them.
“Hey guys, so I just did a bit of returning off screen and made 10,000 death star ships”
I feel so bad for the cast that gave it their all and performed well in a film that sound up being so shit. Frankly the crew too. Imagine living the dream being a camera operator on Star Wars and even though your work is exceptional, the film sucked.
Breaks my heart.
Somehow… eh? Let me tell you about Darth Plagueis the Wise and his asshat of apprentice.
But yes, even a grade school pupil with crayons could have it better explained.The first two movies are fucking incredible. A+ implementations of the creators’ favorite ideas, blended into something distinct and novel enough to support fifty years of screwing around in the same universe. It barely matters that the third movie was already so-so. The original trilogy, as a whole, is still genuinely fantastic and deserving of its reputation.
The most recent trilogy is a hot mess. That’s not just old farts scoffing at Kids These Days™ or modern audiences rejecting a vintage genre. They are broken products. 7 is shallow fanfiction, 8 is an anarchist deconstruction until it careens back toward the status quo, and 9 is a plot faucet recounted by a toddler. I am an ardent defender of The Last Jedi being the best of the three, with some amazing ideas that visually convey its thesis, and I still admit it’s a flop.
Rogue One is excellent despite having no reason to exist. Solo is conceptually dumb as hell for trying to explain away the magic of the first movie, but it does function.
The prequel trilogy is the only thing this post could apply to. If you were a kid and enjoyed them - great. But a lot of kids didn’t. They’re a weird pulpy mess that tries redeeming some racist caricatures as alien mannerisms. They’re directed by a fat old man surrounded by yes-men. And they’re ultimately about the coolest bad guy ever growing up as a whiny child and then a whiny teenager.
Obligatory “just watch Andor” comment.
Seriously. Go and watch Andor. It proves that good Star Wars content can be made. It has a diverse cast. You just need good writing and a vision. That’s what’s missing from the new content.
But I don’t want quality content when I open up a Star Wars series. I want the same old Republic vs Empire setting, some easygoing action with light sabers, bit of humor, a couple of furry characters and plot holes I can drive a truck through.
Edit: make that a barge. I want to drive a barge through not a truck.
I felt like Andor was pretty dang boring… Loved Rogue One, though.
I’m good thanks. I’m not subscribing to s streaming service where the business model is pumping out content faster than the competition
🏴☠️
No
of course the movie franchise about killing space nazis famously had no woke agenda whatsoever until they gave a woman a laser sword
I know right? Fucking liberals.
Misogynists hated Leia back in the 70s, too.
I was too young to have to listen to their shit then though.
If by “hated” you mean “wanted to bang” then yeah.
One often fuels the other
The new show isn’t great for reasons other than Disney being woke.
I feel like a lot of “woke” shows are not great, but they get a cult of defenders and haters boosting it’s popularity because of some perceived culture war. When it’s really just execs trying to make their
milk toastmilquetoast slop shamelessly appeal to a wider audience.No one complains about Spiderverse (after it came out) because it was good
Bigots aside, I’m convinced most people are 100% fine with queer and gender non-conforming characters so long as they’re well written.
People like characters that act like actual people – not pandering, one dimensional, rainbow capitalistic tokens.
Like how Marvel writers lately keep saying they’re getting hate for writing strong female leads, when really they’re getting hate for writing idiotic Mary Sue’s.
The standard for a Mary Sue character has gone way up too. The Japanese really figured out the formula with isikais where the protagonist is almost always good at everything or OP in some way, but the writing/world building is better. There are enough gems amongst the garbage that people know what a good one should contain now.
There’s also a pile of harem anime that used most the same ideas.
I’m really not sure how the isekai genre comes up if we’re to look for good writing. Every isekai protagonist seems like the definition of a Mary Sue, or whatever the male term is.
i’ve heard of ‘gary sue’ before but i dont really think it fits well
At least they don’t use black face
Exactly. You’re not supposed to mention what they “identify” as. Or any other gender nonsense. Unless it is the focal point of the story to be told, then don’t mention it. That’s how you normalize something. By not drawing attention to it.
My favorite example is a character on Agents of Shield. He was a scientist that had a drinking problem. We knew about it from the start but didn’t find out why until later in the season. Years prior, he was drinking and driving while his husband was in the passenger seat. Got into a wreck, and his husband died. It wasn’t until that moment that we knew he was gay. Why? Because it was irrelevant. Spoiler alert, no one cared. He was a well written character, who was easy to sympathize with, who coincidentally happened to be gay.
milquetoast btw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milquetoast
confusing isn’t it?
Thank you my dude 🙏
I prefer milk steak.
while not movie media, the same can be said with games. BG3 is blatently woke, hell the emperor blatently hits on the player regardless of gender and other elements. Elden Rings mythos is basically full of woke elements (Marika creating Radagon, who is basically herself, but in Male form to get into a romance with Renalla. just on this element alone, it is either considered trans (Marika having a clone who changed genders) or lesbian (if you choose to believe Marika is always female and trans not being a thing) as the relationship with renalla happened.)
while there will be people who will complain about it, if the contents good, people will overlook it.
Totally, the other thing both of your examples did well is actually integrate the “Woke™” elements into their world in a natural and believable way. None of it unearthed established canon or went out of its way to score rainbow capitalist diversity points
I’m pretty sure the defenders are 99% bots.
I saw someone saying the little girl who played princes Leia is a “national treasure” on reddit. I don’t think a normal person goes around talking like that.
I liked Obi-Wan because I liked seeing Obi-Wan hit Vader with a lightsaber and Corran Horn being semi-canonized
Everything else is irrelevant.
I don’t like the visuals of Spiderverse
Some people say all art is subjective
They are wrong, like you!
i dont like food
On the one hand I don’t mind some new interesting plots involving same sex partners or similar. However, I agree with you that modern studios are forcing the issue to the point that it ruins everything.
That’s great and fine but you can apply this meme to every new show 🤭
There’s a pattern.
My entry point into Star Wars was KotOR so I’ve always been pretty critical of the average Star Wars media. I really enjoyed Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian S1&2, and Clone Wars S7. Star Wars can deliver sometimes.
With a budget of $180M I was hopeful that Acolyte could be great, and it hasn’t delivered yet.
It’s on a positive trajectory however.
What does this mean, you admit this particular show is not very good but might eventually be good?
This stupid woke/dei shit is just the culture war du jour, if the product that was being released was excellent, there wouldn’t be as much fuel to call a show bad for whatever reason.
But as the previous poster noted, there have been properties that were celebrated on release because they are good. The first Mandalorian episodes meet a near orgasmic fervor.
Acolyte at best is maybe just ok to not very compelling imo, that’s up against the other now recent star wars properties like Andor, which is and was critically acclaimed. The argument just falls apart when you use an objectively not very good show like Acolyte.
I mean the shows premier was a rocky start but it’s getting better. I think it’d a decent set up. Even the first three episodes of Andor were pretty slow. You have to set the stage. Introduce the characters. The plot. The season is going to be good, I’m very sure.
It’s a CW level show
Fair points, all of them, I’ve heard from a friend that the most recent episode is excellent. I’ll keep giving it time.
It was mad. Definitely worth it.
In what world is it a positive trajectory? The first two episodes were by far the strongest, and it’s been falling fast in 3 and 4.
Lol
For as schlocky of an adventure the OT and Prequels were, they still drew on real world inspirations. The OT pulls inspiration from WW2 and the Vietnam War as the backdrop, a small rag Tage group of guerilla style freedom fighters fighting off the highly militarized empire with weapons that can destroy entire jungles I mean planets in its path.
The Prequels, for as bad as the dialoge was (because Lucas was surrounded by Yes Men instead of people who actually knew how to cover his weaknesses), was about the decadence of the 80s and the exploitation of the labor of 3rd world countries (see the disparity between Anakin being a slave on Tatooine and Padme being a queen of/senator for Naboo), in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
And this isn’t really some reading between the lines speculation, George Lucas has said that these real world conflicts served as inspiration for the movies. Could it be post hoc rationalization? Yeah it could be, but it’s kinda hard to make those justifications even years after the movies have been released.
The sequels just aren’t pulling from any relevant sources. It was all nostalgia bait without any substance the first order is literally just Hugo boss wearing good stepping nazis 2.0, aka The Empire Again, the New Republic narratively exists only to be blown up by The Empire 2.0, everything is “Look its just like the Original Trilogy!” and it all lacks a cohesive vision and an actual hero’s journey for someone to go through. Like everyone has great setups, a rogue stormtrooper, an ace pilot for the rebellion and a girl who survived childhood gathering scrap from dangerous derelict. And they just all get sidelined for all the nostalgia bait.
in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
Sir, The Phantom Menace was released in 1999
The first WTC bombing was in 1993, and Oklahoma City was 1995.
America has been on the path for a while though, with the John Birch Society and the like working from the background. They’ve been around since the 1958, and lots of their literature and networks fostered the turn. Others like Bill Cooper, Alex Jones, etc, were active in the 90s and affected by JBS. Waco also had already ocurred.
OKC has some influences from Cooper, and the JBS and other right wing people initially thought OKC was a huge setback for inroads with general audiences, and kept working to change how people feel. Tea party was a huge comeback for them, as people who knew of the JBS warned the Tea Party was just a resurgence.
I don’t know if Lucas or other writers knew at the time, so you might be right. However, there were people warning about it back then, just not really heard or paid much attention to.
The entire paragraph is is about the Prequels, I said phantom menace was about 1980s decadence and the Prequels theme suddenly shifted to post 9/11 and the transition of republics to empires.
And honestly I think it’s part of why people leave Phantom Menace off of their watch lists because thematically it doesn’t really fit thematically with the other 2 prequel movies.
No, the writing was just bad.
I strongly prefer strong female leads (and my tastes only get more LGBT when it comes to novels), but those movies were terrible. Just horrendous. I still can’t bring myself to watch episode 9, or anything star wars since then
I’m not even that big a star wars fan. I love sci-fi and fantasy, because I love the new ideas they contain - star wars was never special to me, it was just good
I’ll never forget leaving the theater after episode 7, my whole department took off to see it on release. I just remember everyone being relatively satisfied, even the extreme star wars nerds, but I just looked at my team lead who I shared an office with. .
We used to talk about Star wars all the time, especially the extended universe, but we looked at each other and I saw pain in his expression, and I knew I shared the same look. I don’t think we ever spoke about Star wars again
And after episode 8, I now just feel dread when I see a blaster.
It wasn’t that nostalgic for me, it wasn’t that my standards were unreachable - they were just bad movies.
It also felt unoriginal
The prequels go well with the sequels. Star wars is a story about collapse followed by heros saving the day and it all makes sense. It comes from both a hero’s journey and tragic plays. The problem with the new stuff is that they abandoned the old way of story telling. Not only did they fail to come up with a plot more complex than big weapon destroys planet they completely failed to tell it in a way that made me care. It felt cheap despite having a much bigger budget than the original A new hope.
I remember sitting in the theater for Episode VII. I had a sense of excitement because it could be anything. It wasn’t an adaption of a book I’d already read, like Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a remake, like the Disney live action stuff. It was a reboot, but in a totally new direction since they threw out all the EU stuff.
It was retreaded garbage.
The only movie I’ve ever been more disappointed in while sitting in the theater was Cowboys and Aliens, because I was so excited for it to be xenomorphs. So sad. But it did cement that I will never trust a movie with old Harrison Ford in it.
After I saw 7, I thought, okay the story is super derivative, but I’m actually connecting with the characters like I used to in the original trilogy. Watching the prequels I was never fooled at any point into thinking these were actual humans on screen, but this time I felt something. So leaving the theater, I thought, well, at worst 8 and 9 will be a lot of fun, if you don’t focus on the plot.
It turned out that a portion of 8 was like that for me (I thought the scenes between Rey and Kylo were very cool) and the rest was stuff I never wanted to see again. And then 9’s plot was nonsensical to the point that I don’t think I’ll ever want to subject myself to it again.
I’ll never ever understand why even the most cynical studio in the world would want 7, 8, and 9 to be made without even a skeleton of a plot drawn out for the whole trilogy before starting on the first movie. It’s absolutely insane to me.
They somehow managed to lose even some of the most dedicated fans.
I love that we still can see a sane take sometimes.
For me the issue is not only the bad writing, but the over saturation of content as well.
There are just too many spinoffs and sequels now, ever since Disney bought the rights. I got bored of The Mandalorian halfway into season 1. Same goes for Obi Wan. Rogue One was great, but I didn’t bother with Solo or even Episode IX. Stopped paying attention after that.
The only Star Wars content I’m looking forward to is the remake of Knights of the Old Republic, and only because the original was among the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Couldn’t care less about anything else. Disney killed off my enthusiasm for the franchise. Maybe I just wasn’t as much of a fan as I thought I was…
Solo was pretty alright - worth seeing once. And Andor was fantastic.
Seriously, if you like star wars but find everything you’ve seen under the Disney release umbrella to be underwhelming at best, watch Andor. It is incredible. The worst thing about it is it is proof that good Star Wars content can be made today, and instead all the make is garbage.
“I bypassed the compressor!”
Still sucks that some audience minds associate character to actor a bit too much. Rei’s actor didn’t do anything wrong, and she deserves future chances.
Star wars, star trek, loads of other shows have suffered the same problem here.
I don’t mind female leads or LGBT, or Latin / Asian / African or whatever typenof actors, none of it is a problem, ehy should it be?
I mind when the writing is cringe worthy bad, but I’m supposed to like the show because of reasons like
“the main actor is black, … AND A WOMAN, gasp!”
or
“But 30 percent of the characters are gay, it MUST be good now, RIGHT?”
or
“That widely know character with a rich and very well defined backstory is now a stone cold murderer AND lesbian, this show rocks!”
I’m tired of existing shoes being ruined this way. You want to make a show where all characters are black transgender women? Go ahead, make a NEW show, leave existing stories alone. If the writing is good, I’ll watch it, I don’t need a brave gay black Winnie Pooh.
But that won’t happen, because they’ll take an existing show, shoehorn in a whole bunch of check boxes, black check, gay check, ooohhh bisexual check! And that’s it. Writing? Oh yeah, sure, we’ll have someone throw up over paper and we’ll use that because we have all the checkboxes, we gon be great!
And another show lies ruined.
Watched any good movies with strong female leads lately? I just watched Birds of Prey and thought it was the best live action DC movie in a long time
I’m intrigued, I’m not a big fan of DC movies but I’m willing to give them another chance. Could you give me a quick synopsis?
Hmm. Harley Quinn breaks up with Joker, meaning all of the people she’s pissed off are no longer afraid to go after her. Along the way she meets the ensemble cast of heroines who also want to fight criminals and they team up for some grand finale where they all fight bad guys together.
Very basic fare, so if you don’t like superhero movies (it’s a saturated market, I don’t blame anyone who does) then skip it. But it does feature Ewan McGregor playing a guy who likes peeling people’s faces off which was a funny tone shift.
The less said about the sequel trilogy, the better, but do yourself a favour and don’t miss out on watching Andor just because of the movies. That show is just really good and also incidentally Star Wars.
The bad batch is apparently also great, along with the latest clone war seasons (according to my friend at least)
I’m just not ready… Seeing Star wars just fills me with negative feelings. I hope I’ll get there one day - I loved the EU and the more they accept back into cannon the more I want to get back into it… But I just can’t give it another chance yet
I’m just not ready…
I’m almost the same way. I’m not really feeling negative about it, though. I just feel nothing towards it, which is almost worse. Like you said, though… maybe some day. The interest is still there somewhat, just not nearly enough for me to act on it.
The thing is that, depending on your tastes, there’s a good chance at least some of the new content will appeal to people, but I do absolutely understand getting that bad aftertaste every time you remember that it all leads canonically into those three movies and … nyeeeerrrrgghhh.
By the way, it seems that even a good portion of the producers seem to at least partially share that feeling, which makes it doubly sad that disney is making almost everyone shoehorn in some hint of retroactively created foreshadowing with the goal of explaining that no, palps returning that way isn’t the ass-pull it obviously was at all, nuh-uh!
Wasn’t the writing always bad though? (I might be biased, I never liked Star Wars.)
The dialog was always mediocre to bad, but otherwise the writing was pretty good. Characters had growth arcs, acted in understandable ways given their characterization.
The original trilogy was hero’s journey stuff, mythology for a modern age. Episode 6 was the weakest, though.
The prequel trilogy was an envisioned world - for all of its writing weaknesses, it felt like a living, breathing universe.
The sequel trilogy was lifeless. 7 was an okay start, and I actually quite enjoyed it despite being derivative, but 8 was muddled trash (how many times did Poe commit mutiny while they were doing the slow-mo chase?) and 9 was dreadfully mediocre.
And this is coming from someone who loves many of the spin-off media on their own merits, many even more than I love the prequel trilogy.
It’s not nostalgia. Some of us just genuinely dislike how shit the sequel trilogy was, and how bad they did our boy John Boyega after episode 7.
And the problem is not even the corporate wokeism (although it’s feels about as insincere as all of the current corporate wokewashing) it’s just… bad writing. “Lifeless” is absolutely on point as a description for the sequels. It felt like they only existed to yank my nostalgia while at the same time trying to do so with less thought and love poured into them. Plastic, lifeless, sanitized, insincere, corporate profit driven nostalgia-fodder CAN NOT compare to simply good writing, actors with chemistry and sincerity.
I watched 7, suffered through 8 and didn’t even care about watching 9. Yes, I am nostalgic, but that’s precisely what the sequels were created to evoke. But just nostalgia isn’t enough!
Like you, I really enjoyed most of the spin-offs. They had a story to tell and they had direction, believable characters and did not feel like just trying to yank my nostalgia for the original trilogy. I mean… they DID yank my nostalgia, but then they went above and beyond that and told interesting stories.
I watched 7, suffered through 8 and didn’t even care about watching 9.
I almost didn’t watch 9. Then a friend of mine who’d walked out of the theater while watching 8 told me 9 was actually good. So I took his word for it. Episode 9 was okay. Not good or bad. Felt like they were trying to cram two movies into one. But, without getting into spoilers, compared to 8, 9 was still okay.
Hot take: Star Wars is not sci fi. It’s space western at best.
The originals were fantasy. I’s not a hot take, it’s fact - Swords, wizards, castles, knights, the heros journey. Some of the other shows and media since departed from that. Mandelorean is a western, solo was a heist movie, and most the shows don’t fit the fantasy tropes that well. None of Star wars, to my knowledge, fits sci fi at all.
The Thrawn book trilogies are probably the closest I’ve found to Star Wars being sci fi. There is a specific focus on real world physics in a way that is very absent from everything else Star Wars especially when they write about space battles. Only things that stay firmly fantasy and require that suspension of disbelief are, of course, the Force and Thrawns preternatural ability to read an enemy’s battle tactics from their species artwork
Mandelorean is a western
It nakedly and obviously cribs from Seven Samurai, The Good The Bad And the Ugly, and Wolf and Cub.
It’s funny/weird that Dune is much more “more fantasy than sci-fi” than Star Wars, but somehow it’s still considered one of the greatest sci-fi stories of all times.
maybe, just maybe, there actually isn’t that big of a difference between sci fi and fantasy
Eh. Speculative fiction is different from magical realist revanchism in a lot of critical ways.
But they both routinely serve as metaphors for the modern era.
Well, Dune at least does a half-assed attempt at explaining how this is a projection of a possible human future. Star Wars didn’t.
That being said, I wouldn’t call Dune “crunchy” sci fi at all. It’s a perfect example of why fantasy gets lumped in with sci fi so much (which, honestly, I hate)
Dune is more theological fiction than fantasy or sci-fi.
so red rising is fantasy and not sci fi?
Dont know what that is, tbh. I lost interest in the series after Disney kept doing their thing. I can’t speak for any of the new stuff from the last few years.
it’s a completely unrelated novel series. set in space and clearly sci fi, but has castles, dueling, war games, and peasants
Red Rising isn’t hard sci-fi, but it is more notably sci-fi as a series after the first novel and the weird little obvious Hunger Games sequence ends.
The combat-oriented Golds are also an obvious ripoff of 40k Space Marines and the author absolutely betrays the overall message in the third book but that’s not related to the question, I just hate that he did it.
There can be peasants and feudal social classes in sci-fi. Sci-fi explores how society will react to future events and technology, but you could absolutely have a, for example, post apocalypse sci-fi novel about knights fighting over fiefdoms with swords in the ruins of Earth.
One of the reasons Star Wars gets criticised for not being sci-fi is that the science just doesn’t matter to the story.
You could have told the exact same story with samurai/warrior monks, horses, and wooden sailing ships, so the science is an aesthetic, not a plot element.
Like, they have a literal slave race of androids, fusion, FTL, everything, and it just doesn’t fucking matter. There isn’t a robot uprising. Everyone’s poor for no discernable reason, despite AI being a thing and the society effectively having unlimited energy, etc etc etc.
Red Rising might have had their weird little Youth Death Tournament but there was a point to the society doing that, to create a militarised group of the next generation of the ruling class.
Why is there poverty in Red Rising? Because they’re eugenics powered space fascists and it’s a control mechanism.
Why is there poverty in Star Wars? Because Lucas apparently never considered it should be anything else.
Oo that’s fancy! Thank you for sharing
It very much sci-fi fantasy. It’s the tech level, availability, and the fact that universe used is literally a galaxy where people actually travel to other galaxies (using spaceships with some very fictional abilities). Kamino is in a minor galaxy that is close by and you see Luke and Leia on a ship with a unspecified galaxy out the view port in the background.
Other tech that puts it into sci-fi: controlled plasma blades, neurally connected prosthetics, bacta, droids, weapons with stun and kill, repulsors, reactors for personal ships, energy shields, hyperdrive, industrial cloning.
I’m sure there are other good examples as to why it qualifies as science fiction. If Star Wars isn’t in a sci-fi genre, then Star Trek is a political drama.
To me, Star Wars is a fairy tale in space.
arguably the space part makes it sci fi
Star Wars belongs firmly in the “science fantasy” category; it’s a work that draws on both sci-fi and fantasy tropes.
Star Wars isn’t bad because of “woke” inclusivity. It’s bad because the people who were supposed to be responsible for carefully curating and engineering both the past and future lore of the universe were at the very best taking a maverick approach to storytelling and at worst actively trying to to sabotage the canon for the sake of their own selfish artistic pursuits.
I don’t dislike the nu-trilogy because it makes an effort to include women and minorities in leading roles. I dislike it because it’s an incoherent mess of a story that doesn’t mesh at all with what came before it, and the only thing holding it together is the veneer of Star Wars, but only the parts that made Star Wars iconic and not necessarily the ones that made Star Wars good.
Yep. No one disagrees. The meme makes a point because it could be trotted out for ever single new release. Including back to the sequels.
No one says it about Andor though. Star Wars really is bad now. Your meme is saying that Star Wars is just as good as it ever was and we’re wrong for pointing out that it’s bad. But it is bad. And it didn’t used to be.
They took the never tell me the odds two seriously
No I miss old star wars content. Specifically where Luke and Leia make out and where exactly George was going with that shit.
Jokes aside, pronouns is the dumbest possible hill to die on with regards to the starwars universe. OF COURSE gender is going to work differently when you put a bunch of wildly different species together. Gender dimorphism is not some universal rule the rest of the galaxy has to follow. Hell, sexual dimorphism isn’t even universal ON EARTH. why the fuck wouldn’t you run into a them or xir every now and then? What about those bug people from clone wars? You think bug people are gonna have mommies and daddies or what?
It does feel a little unnatural when they force the inclusion of some lesbian couple for the sake of inclusion. I don’t have a problem with that but don’t force it. Let the story develop over time where it feels natural. You don’t see rushed straight relationships in Hollywood.
You don’t see rushed straight relationships in Hollywood.
You may want to sit down now, because if you like, I can gather a list of all movies whose script contains the line
“and then the hero gets the girl despite there being no perceivable chemistry or other factors they have in common except him being the main character and her being The GirlTM in the movie. They kiss. The End.”
Why does every idiot who is not a Star Wars fan think that repeating the normie stereotype about it is very smart? Which is this pic BTW.
Star Wars since the OT and till around 2006 had very clear borders between, 1, that which doesn’t get mentioned, but follows from what’s shown, 2, that which doesn’t get explained, 3, that which is explained by magic, 4, that which has decent, but very roughly cut sci-fi descriptions and, finally, 5, that which is taken seriously.
Disney doesn’t understand how to use any of these categories, especially that core plot points can only belong to #5, that #1 is not just fan imagination, but part of the paradigm, that #2 is not a box for everything lazy, that #3 cannot be center of the plot, and that #4 is still necessary.
To answer your first sentence. Perhaps it to try and show an interest in something you like.
Yes, only it’s generally unpleasant to say condescending stuff of the “I’ve got you figured out and I see this thing deeper than you” kind to someone who’s very well familiar with the thing in question when you are not.
And in personal experience
to try and show an interest in something you like
people ask questions.
Perhaps with #2 and then #3 before #6 we could all be happy and all violence in the world would be finally over.
What’s #6 ?..
The only one after #10
I’m trying to get your joke here, because in my comment the connections between numbers and rules were given in the paragraph previous to the one with # notation.
I’m making fun of your comment as it doesn’t make sense.
Well, it does, and when a comment does make sense, but not to you, and instead of asking where you are wrong you are trying to make fun of it, it just means you are a clown.
Well I tend to be a little crazy so clown is probably not that far off
My shoes:
I just wanted to see Luke in the role of obi wan or Yoda after decades of Jedi training be a hero and pass on his legacy by training the next generation. But I would have been ok with one heroic lightsaber battle, and a reunion with han, chewy and Leia.
Watching the last Jedi and seeing someone who tossed his blade away because he saw the good in essentially “Space Hitler” try to kill his own nephew because he was having a nightmare so out of character. Then having him overdose on the force and die like a chump, broke me. I left the theater in silence. The last Jedi is also the only star wars movie with out a light saber fight. No blades ever touched.
Watched Episode 7 yesterday.
That was from 2015??? Nearly 10 years ago, which is completely crazy.
Really interesting how it is newer than Episode 3, but uses all of the Episode 4-6 style.
The music sucks, but the visuals are very nice. I love how they made the Lightsabers and Guns so much more realistic.
I remember episode 8 or 9? Where literally every scene was stolen from Clone Wars. That was a bit lame.
Also crazy how their cast is still 80% male. I always wonder if people would be shocked if it was 80% female…
The music sucks
You take that back. John Williams is an international treasure, and the only aspect which was consistently good throughout all nine films. Rey’s theme, March of the Resistance, and Jedi Steps and Finale were all stellar in my opinion.
It was clearly phoned in work that leaned heavily on previous themes.
Sorry I overthink it. Just the general impression was… kinda random?
Like many tracks in important moments were not memorable at all.
Omg
Force Awakens will be closer to Revenge of the Sith next year
I do miss being younger and happier.
Why do people defending Star Wars keep shitting on sci-fi and fantasy? “It’s just a movie about space wizards with laser swords” they say, as though having fantastical elements negates all criticism.
The original trilogy isn’t schlock. It’s fun, relatively lighthearted adventure in a fantastical setting. It has its flaws, but there is genuine artistry there, and it resonates with people because of that.
And even if I am looking at classic Star Wars through nostalgia goggles, that doesn’t invalidate criticism of new Star Wars stuff. Rise of Skywalker is a train wreck of a movie all by itself, no comparison needed.
