Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, available on home video

[Keith]

Prediction - Rise of Skywalker will raise the value of 7 & 8, just like Sith raised 1 & 2.

[kajnrig]

1 minute ago, Keith said:

Prediction - Rise of Skywalker will raise the value of 7 & 8, just like Sith raised 1 & 2.

Also this. When did this sentiment - both that Ep 3 was good, and that it elevated Eps 1 and 2 - begin to take root? I know the general consensus is that 3 is the best of the trio (I'd personally go 1 > ...gulf... > 3 > ...another gulf... > 2), but does that make it a good movie?

[Kanedas Bike]

30 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Eh, so it was a tenuous hypothesis at best. Just saw an unusual bam-bam-bam of R1 mentions and wanted to make sense of it.

 

You could be correct, mine is only 1 of 18 gazillion opinions. 

 

12 minutes ago, Keith said:

Prediction - Rise of Skywalker will raise the value of 7 & 8, just like Sith raised 1 & 2.

 

IMHO Sith was the least horrible of the PT. For me the only redeeming parts were Order 66 and Obi Wan vs. Anakin. Otherwise Revenge of the Sith is about as throw away as the rest of the prequel trilogy. 

 

8 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Also this. When did this sentiment - both that Ep 3 was good, and that it elevated Eps 1 and 2 - begin to take root? I know the general consensus is that 3 is the best of the trio (I'd personally go 1 > ...gulf... > 3 > ...another gulf... > 2), but does that make it a good movie?

 

Short answer, no it does not make a good movie.

But I'm cautiously optimistic for Episode VIII. Besides I just want to see Rey jump over the Tie Fighter - seriously that alone is worth the price of admission. One for the "kewl" factor and two for the amount of "true" Star Wars fan, fan-rage. 

-b.

[Keith]

29 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Also this. When did this sentiment - both that Ep 3 was good, and that it elevated Eps 1 and 2 - begin to take root? I know the general consensus is that 3 is the best of the trio (I'd personally go 1 > ...gulf... > 3 > ...another gulf... > 2), but does that make it a good movie?

Immediately after I saw the trailer for it, before release actually.

[fenrir72]

Post ep 9 going on hiatus? As if they(Lucasfilm/Disney) had a choice!

[Sildani]

I like most all of them, for different reasons. 

The “Saga” episodes are the adventures of a blue and white astromech droid, and the meatbags and other droids who are along for the ride. These adventures, like any saga, are entertaining, hit you over the head with big, blunt Important Lessons, and grow more exaggerated with the telling. 

Rogue One, Solo, the Clone Wars, and so on shine a light on parts of the galaxy far, far away we’ve never seen before. Since they’re canon, I value them highly because they give me my best chance at seeing how that universe’s creator sees those things, how they interact with the other things we have already seen. It’s fascinating. 

Finally, this is all I’ll say: Luke was a Jedi. Luke was a Skywalker. Luke was a Legend. He was also mortal, and it wasn’t the first time he screwed up. Hell, Yoda allowed the Sith to rise. Windu put his faith wrong. Obi Wan was just too passive where Anakin was concerned. Jedi, whether padawan, Knight, or Master, fail. 

I’d like to know what made Luke fall to despair earlier on, so that he was so weary and hopeless that the same man who saved the soul of the second most evil man in the galaxy would think killing a young apprentice in his sleep a good idea.  

You see, my main problem with the sequels is they started too many years later. Too much happened between Last Jedi and New Hope.

Although, now I think about it, Luke saved that soul AFTER cutting off his hand and driving him to the ground a hair’s breadth from destruction. 

[Mog]

Well, his dad did have a bit of an impulsive streak and some anger issues. 

But for me, I’m a 3>1>2 guy.

There are days where I rank 3 higher than 6 even.

But 3 never changed my opinion of the other two prequels.

1 had the unenviable task of living up to everyone’s expectations.  But had too much dumb luck all over the place.

But 2 screwed up the Anakin-Padmé relationship and the Ani-Obi brotherhood/banter, making it the worst prequel.

But TLJ is still my personal worst.  Despite some utter crap choices, there is a good story to be found in TPM and AOTC.  A plot change here, a change in the story focus there, some better dialogue, and you could have had good or even great films.

Can’t see those sort of salvageable changes being made to TLJ.  Just too much was messed up.

[no3Ljm]

 

 

 

On 4/13/2019 at 8:51 PM, seti88 said:

Congratulations noel.

Yessss! 

 

[no3Ljm]

^ Weird, that it has a big white space on Seti's post quote. And I can't even edit that post.

 

[seti88]

What SITH trickery is that!!

[tekering]

You guys are surprisingly generous with the prequels.  Is there a good story to be found there?  Probably, but it's buried under a mountain of dismal writing and miserable acting.  Most of the performances are so distractingly bad, and the dialogue so inept, that it's impossible the appreciate the structure of the plot they're hung on.  Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid do incredible work, but they're left adrift by the rest of the cast.  Even reliable actors like Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Christopher Lee come off as bland and unconvincing, upstaged by CGI characters like Yoda and Jar Jar.  Perhaps children of the '90s, who grew up with these films, have difficulty eyeing them critically (the same way children of the '80s accept the Ewoks unapologetically).

The sequel trilogy is far more infuriating, I think, because the story and writing fails to support the stellar work of the cast.  The performances are much better across the board, the principal characters are more engaging, and the dialogue is functional, but the characters have no agency.  They are jerked around by the machinations of the plot, and the only influence they have on the story seems to be at the behest of The Force (or rather, The Mouse).  The plot happens around them, not because of them.  

I consider both the Prequel Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy to be failures, but -- ironically enough -- for completely different reasons.

[hachi]

6 hours ago, Sildani said:

Haha this feels accurate.

To be honest, I'm not as invested into SW being only a casual fan. I was a little kid when it came out and on TV showings I barely understood anything of what I saw. (Obviously too young to even have seen it in the theatres.) I mostly remember the cool 'pew pew' scenes and the cute ewoks and that was it. Now imagine the disappointment of hard core fans who were very invested and didn't get their expectations met. Kathleen Kennedy is no Kevin Feige but what's done is done. Pleasing older fans AND creating new fans is hard (hello Macross Delta).

I liked both TLJ (except for the Rose x Finn) and Rogue One. I liked TFA except for the death star part. (I didn't bother to watch Solo.) I'm just happy these movies gave us new compelling characters that we can talk about for years to come (and not anything worse). And I'm still probably going to watch IX as early as I can to avoid spoilers.

[Chronocidal]

I think I tend to fall along those lines as well, just from a "what this movie brought to the franchise" standpoint.

In terms of the prequels... I think time and nostalgia both play a part, because while I remember the acting and dialogue being bad, the story and universe still felt mostly consistent, and it's easy for me to do some mental post-production by imagining this or that line being said differently.  You know how it's sometimes hard to remember what someone said if you aren't paying attention, or don't like them?  That applies to bad movie dialogue, at least for me.  I don't have a hard time filling in visuals and story with imaginary dialogue that feels more natural.  (Also, reading the novelizations of the prequels might have a similar effect.)

The sequels though have the opposite problem.  The acting is between good and great, but the story is so off-the-rails, I want to strangle half the characters for their terrible decisions.  There are absolutely ways I can imagine the story starting and ending the same way, with most of the middle gutted, but that's a lot more work than hearing lines differently in my head, and it doesn't make up for the bad taste left in my mouth by the characters' actions.

Like.. in the context of a story, I can like, or even identify with a character whose part is acted badly.  It's much harder to accept well-acted characters who are written doing things that make me actively dislike them. 

Edited April 15, 2019 by Chronocidal

[hachi]

2 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I think I tend to fall along those lines as well, just from a "what this movie brought to the franchise" standpoint.

In terms of the prequels... I think time and nostalgia both play a part, because while I remember the acting and dialogue being bad, the story and universe still felt consistent, and it's easy for me to do some mental post-production by imagining this or that line being said differently.  You know how it's sometimes hard to remember what someone said if you aren't paying attention, or don't like them?  That applies to bad movie dialogue, at least for me.  I don't have a hard time filling in visuals and story with imaginary dialogue that feels more natural.

The sequels though have the opposite problem.  The acting is between good and great, but the story is so off-the-rails, I want to strangle half the characters for their terrible decisions.  There are absolutely ways I can imagine the story starting and ending the same way, with most of the middle gutted, but that's a lot more work than hearing lines differently in my head, and it doesn't make up for the bad taste left in my mouth by the characters' actions.

Like.. in the context of a story, I can like, or even identify with a character whose part is acted badly.  It's much harder to accept well-acted characters who are written doing things that make me actively dislike them.  

This is why the director/s and writer/s are important. You can have the greatest actors but if the directors/writers aren't up to the task then you'll have a problem. I still hate Shyamalan for what he did in The Last Airbender. I had'n followed Airbender the cartoon when I saw the movie but I could still tell the movie was crap.

[Chronocidal]

Pretty much, exactly.  A terrible movie adaptation of a good book might sour the reputation of the book in the eyes of the wider audience, but it doesn't retroactively make the story itself bad.  I've always felt like the novelizations of the prequels were better than the movies, because I could detach the stories from the bad acting, and imagine them being much better than what I saw on the screen.

To be fair to TFA and TLJ, I haven't tried reading novelizations of them, so the same might prove true there.  I did hear the TFA novelization explained Starkiller in a slightly more believable manner, and added some useful bits of exposition that were left out of the movie.  It might be worth a shot to read those, and see if they help the movies work better in my imagination, if not on the screen itself.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Chronocidal

[no3Ljm]

13 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Pretty much, exactly.  A terrible movie adaptation of a good book might sour the reputation of the book in the eyes of the wider audience, but it doesn't retroactively make the story itself bad.  I've always felt like the novelizations of the prequels were better than the movies, because I could detach the stories from the bad acting, and imagine them being much better than what I saw on the screen.

To be fair to TFA and TLJ, I haven't tried reading novelizations of them, so the same might prove true there.  I did hear the TFA novelization explained Starkiller in a slightly more believable manner, and added some useful bits of exposition that were left out of the movie.  It might be worth a shot to read those, and see if they help the movies work better in my imagination, if not on the screen itself.

I respect that. But sad to say, I'm not a big novel reader. But I appreciate movies based on a novel. Like I really don't need to read it just to understand the movie. I know for a fact that if I try to read LOTR and HP books I know that I will start to somehow hate the movies, which I love watching it from time to time, because they change or remove stuff from it. Whereas Star Wars were made to be a movie the first time for me to read a novel based on the movie with added content to explain stuff more. I mean, they didn't need to write a novel just for me to understand the original trilogy. So why do I need to do that now?

Just my 2 cents.  

 

[tekering]

I sought out the tie-in novels just to find out who the hell the "First Order" were, and where they'd come from... since JJ provided no exposition whatsoever.

Star Wars: Bloodline provided some political backstory, but... it really wasn't worth the time to read.  

[jenius]

Does who they are and where they came from (the first order) matter? A New Hope doesn't tell you about the empire at all... The whole original trilogy doesn't really bother. When Lucas did show its development the fans groaned "enough about politics!"

[Convectuoso]

1 hour ago, jenius said:

Does who they are and where they came from (the first order) matter? A New Hope doesn't tell you about the empire at all... The whole original trilogy doesn't really bother. When Lucas did show its development the fans groaned "enough about politics!"

But the original trilogy started with the Empire already existing. It's part of the setting. The new trilogy is a continuation of the OT, where the empire is supposed to have been defeated, so it's not so easy to just assume that First Order is there. A couple of lines telling that the remnants of the empire formed a new force called the First Order would've helped. 

 

[azrael]

12 minutes ago, Convectuoso said:

But the original trilogy started with the Empire already existing. It's part of the setting. The new trilogy is a continuation of the OT, where the empire is supposed to have been defeated, so it's not so easy to just assume that First Order is there. A couple of lines telling that the remnants of the empire formed a new force called the First Order would've helped.

Well.....

Ep 4 opening crawl:

Quote

It is a period of civil war.Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy.....

Ep 7 opening crawl:

Quote

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.

With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.

Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke's whereabouts....

In retrospective, watching the fall of the Republic to the creation of the Empire from the prequels probably helps when we get to Episode 4. From Episode 6 to 7, we don't see the attempted reformation of the Republic and the rise of the First Order, which probably doesn't help. This is probably where the EU...Legends handled this better with the New Republic and the Remnants of the Empire because the Remnants didn't go and suddenly change their name. They were still the "Galactic Empire". 

[Dynaman]

The thing about the First Order is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  The Republic DESERVED to fall if they let a rogue military organization run around like the FO.  Then to only (apparently) have the resistance doing anything about it is even worse.  Rebels striking from a hidden base against a tyrant government makes some sense, rebels striking against an outlaw military that the normal military seems to ignore makes no darn sense at all.

Worse is how our heroes messed things up so badly in just a couple decades.  You need more then a credits crawl to cover that kind of incompetence.  (though in real life that kind of incompetence is common)

[azrael]

34 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

The thing about the First Order is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  The Republic DESERVED to fall if they let a rogue military organization run around like the FO.  Then to only (apparently) have the resistance doing anything about it is even worse.

...

Agreed. The fact that this is covered in merchandising material (i.e. novels) is where I take offense.

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Agreed. The fact that this is covered in merchandising material (i.e. novels) is where I take offense.

That is unforgivable.  Movies should have all the important info in the movies, comics in comics, books in books, etc...  You can have an adaptation or side material in other mediums but nothing that pieces things together should be there.  Supposedly more information about how the FO was being handled was cut from the film.  Pity that.

[jvmacross]

17 hours ago, Sildani said:

 

I’d like to know what made Luke fall to despair earlier on, so that he was so weary and hopeless that the same man who saved the soul of the second most evil man in the galaxy would think killing a young apprentice in his sleep a good idea.  

 

Yes....I may have bought into the idea that maybe Ben Solo was so evil that he had to go....but nothing in the movie demonstrated that....heck Anakin killed pre-schoolers and I assume that must have come up in conversation with Obi-wan and YODA during Luke’s training....especially since both Obi-wan and YODA clung onto the idea that the only way to save the galaxy from the Sith’s grip was to kill them off...so anything to support that would have been fair game...

Yet Luke took the advise of the only 2 Jedi he knew and said...nah....I can bring Dad back into the light....dead younglings be damned!

But somehow we are to believe that Ben Solo was so much worse that Luke thought killing him was the only way?  The boy he knew since birth....his nephew....his sister’s only offspring....seriously?

Kylo does not deserve to be redeemed...It would take balls to let him just suffer the consequences for his bad choices....something tells me we’ll be seeing his happy force ghost anyway before the end credits roll...

 

[kalvasflam]

I think Disney is doing this whole thing so that they can have "content" to fill out the stuff in between.  I am technically ok with that, although the movies have done a horrible job about the background so far.  There is a bit of exposition, but really, a lot more needs to be filled in.

I think the smart thing to do is to hit pause on the movies for five or six years, while slowly filling in the background a la Marvel.  But instead of movies, use Disney+ and their little series here and there.  Because we'll probably end this series with Rey becoming the new grandmaster of the Jedi, or something of that type.  With luck, they won't just off Kylo, and that could set up the next part of the universe for Side Show Bob's cash machine.  

There are potentials for cartoons and live action, all to expand the universe.  SW will be going on a world building spree I predict once TRoS is done.

[azrael]

28 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

I think the smart thing to do is to hit pause on the movies for five or six years, while slowly filling in the background a la Marvel.  But instead of movies, use Disney+ and their little series here and there.  Because we'll probably end this series with Rey becoming the new grandmaster of the Jedi, or something of that type.  With luck, they won't just off Kylo, and that could set up the next part of the universe for Side Show Bob's cash machine.  

There are potentials for cartoons and live action, all to expand the universe.  SW will be going on a world building spree I predict once TRoS is done.

Disney’s boss already announced that Star Wars movies would be going on hiatus after Ep 9.

[Dynaman]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Disney’s boss already announced that Star Wars movies would be going on hiatus after Ep 9.

I take that to mean there will be a 2 to 3 (tops) year pause between episode 9 and the next movie.  They really did a dumb move releasing Solo a few months after Episode 8.  If they had waited till December it might have done better.

[kalvasflam]

4 hours ago, azrael said:

Disney’s boss already announced that Star Wars movies would be going on hiatus after Ep 9.

I know, and I think Sideshow Bob looked at how Solo worked out, and then looked at his own repertoire of stuff then decided to tap the brakes for a bit for the movies.  I bet that by 2024 or 2025, we'll have the next installment of Star Wars.  But this one will have some proper world building behind it. 

Besides, nothing builds frenzy like scarcity.

[electric indigo]

On 4/15/2019 at 9:31 AM, tekering said:

You guys are surprisingly generous with the prequels.  Is there a good story to be found there?  Probably, but it's buried under a mountain of dismal writing and miserable acting.  Most of the performances are so distractingly bad, and the dialogue so inept, that it's impossible the appreciate the structure of the plot they're hung on.  Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid do incredible work, but they're left adrift by the rest of the cast.  Even reliable actors like Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Christopher Lee come off as bland and unconvincing, upstaged by CGI characters like Yoda and Jar Jar.  Perhaps children of the '90s, who grew up with these films, have difficulty eyeing them critically (the same way children of the '80s accept the Ewoks unapologetically).

The sequel trilogy is far more infuriating, I think, because the story and writing fails to support the stellar work of the cast.  The performances are much better across the board, the principal characters are more engaging, and the dialogue is functional, but the characters have no agency.  They are jerked around by the machinations of the plot, and the only influence they have on the story seems to be at the behest of The Force (or rather, The Mouse).  The plot happens around them, not because of them.  

I consider both the Prequel Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy to be failures, but -- ironically enough -- for completely different reasons.

I'm with you on all points. Still, when I read the novelization of RotS, I was easy to imagine how great the movie could have been. Lucas had a bad reputation regarding his directing skills with human actors since AnH, and this goes into full blossom by the time the prequels were made. The visuals and many of the action sequences of all these three movies still stand the test of time, to my eyes, but the rest is best forgotten.

JJ managed to nail the Star Wars look and installed powerful leads in TFA, but it's hair-rising to learn that Kennedy didn't bother with a concept where the story should end by Ep IX before they even started TFA. Instead,  Johnson was applauded for axing even the faint construct Abrams had laid out.

It's symptomatic that the Fallen Order trailer has me more excited that the teaser for Ep IX.

[kajnrig]

I forget if it's already been theorized, but I have a strong suspicion that the movie subtitle is implying that Rey is Luke's daughter, and the titular Skywalker. And that... I dunno. The whole point of her arc in the last movie was that she had to get over her need to impart significance to her parentage and learn to be emotionally independent. Kylo Ren telling her that her parents were nobodies could easily be made a lie (though it was already a suspect statement on its face), but the truth in it was that, whoever they are, they no longer matter narratively. To have it once again be her major story arc would be rather regressive and disappointing.

[Keith]

45 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I forget if it's already been theorized, but I have a strong suspicion that the movie subtitle is implying that Rey is Luke's daughter, and the titular Skywalker. And that... I dunno. The whole point of her arc in the last movie was that she had to get over her need to impart significance to her parentage and learn to be emotionally independent. Kylo Ren telling her that her parents were nobodies could easily be made a lie (though it was already a suspect statement on its face), but the truth in it was that, whoever they are, they no longer matter narratively. To have it once again be her major story arc would be rather regressive and disappointing.

Anakin clone (look at the scene in TFA, when she first picks up Anakin's lightsaber).

[Bolt]

“Clone “

Are we talking trans-ANnie?

[ErikElvis]

32 minutes ago, Keith said:

Anakin clone (look at the scene in TFA, when she first picks up Anakin's lightsaber).

That would be an interesting twist but in the end I think that would diminish the likability of the character. 

[Graham]

On 4/15/2019 at 3:31 PM, tekering said:

You guys are surprisingly generous with the prequels.  Is there a good story to be found there?  Probably, but it's buried under a mountain of dismal writing and miserable acting.  Most of the performances are so distractingly bad, and the dialogue so inept, that it's impossible the appreciate the structure of the plot they're hung on.  Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid do incredible work, but they're left adrift by the rest of the cast.  Even reliable actors like Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Christopher Lee come off as bland and unconvincing, upstaged by CGI characters like Yoda and Jar Jar.  Perhaps children of the '90s, who grew up with these films, have difficulty eyeing them critically (the same way children of the '80s accept the Ewoks unapologetically).

The sequel trilogy is far more infuriating, I think, because the story and writing fails to support the stellar work of the cast.  The performances are much better across the board, the principal characters are more engaging, and the dialogue is functional, but the characters have no agency.  They are jerked around by the machinations of the plot, and the only influence they have on the story seems to be at the behest of The Force (or rather, The Mouse).  The plot happens around them, not because of them.  

I consider both the Prequel Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy to be failures, but -- ironically enough -- for completely different reasons.

Originally I hated, or barely tolerated the prequels when they first came out, but the Clone Wars cartoon series which I watched together with my son when he was a kid really helped me appreciate and enjoy the prequel movies more.

[ErikElvis]

I still can’t get over jar jar binks in phantom menace.  Clone wars has grown on me but still not the best movie. Revenge of the sith is prob in the top three Star Wars movies I watch with the empire strikes back and return of the Jedi.  Looking back the prequels do feel more like a “Star Wars” movie though in comparison to the most recent 2 movies.