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Is it ironic that The Last Jedi is actually the best of the ST?

pramod

Banned
They are all trash but TLJ at least had some memorable(but dumb) scenes. The throne room. Poe vs the Dreadnought. Space Leia. And Luke force projecting himself across the galaxy was pretty badass.

TROS is of course at the bottom of the heap but now that i look back, there really was nothing that special about TFA besides the nostalgia factor.
 
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carlosrox

Banned
7 is better. 8 dropped the ball.

And I say this as someone who likes 8 for what it is.

But fuck the comedy in that movie and fuck Luke's lightsaber toss. Easily the stupidest, cheapest moment in the whole series.

Ps. I actually enjoy all Star Wars movies. Shocking I know.
 
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AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
It's not ironic because it's not true. 7 might have been a boring safe reboot, but subsequently it was also pretty inoffensive and hard to poke faults in other than the fact that it was just A New New Hope. Would have been absolutely fine as a springboard for the next two movies.

TLJ had some neat scenes, but it put a dagger in the ST. Johnson had absolutely no interest in the bigger picture, he just wanted to make his own movie and was a fucking awful choice to take over something this big, despite actually being a decent director.

After TLJ, TROS had no chance, and it still managed to be even worse than I imagined it was going to be. 1/3 of TROS was sweeping Johnson's mistakes under the rug and pretending they didn't happen, another 1/3 was squeezing every last drop of nostalgia out of the husk of the franchise, and the final 1/3 was a ludicrous attempt at an adventure movie while trying to juggle the other two components.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
I enjoyed The Force Awakens enough.

Last Jedi was a slog that had me begging for it to it to be over, and left me with the combined feelings of complete and utter apathy, disgust, and intense dislike when the credits rolled.

That was a few months ago. The crazy thing is, I walked into it prepared, and to try to enjoy it for what it was, and I still felt that way.

It might be the biggest cinematic failure ever, in that that it not only ruins itself, but two whole other trilogies, and arguably the crown jewel of modern American pop culture. In that sense, I almost see the backlash being quite understated and kind, in comparison to the damage caused by a single filmmaker with zero regard or care for what he was working on, the people around him who either brought, or were bringing, past and future installments to life, or the many generations in love with these stories and characters.
 
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nush

Gold Member
They are all trash but TLJ at least had some memorable(but dumb) scenes. The throne room. Poe vs the Dreadnought. Space Leia. And Luke force projecting himself across the galaxy was pretty badass.

TROS is of course at the bottom of the heap but now that i look back, there really was nothing that special about TFA besides the nostalgia factor.

I liked Last Jedi, but I'm aware of the narrative problems it created.
 

Compsiox

Banned
It really was a good movie. It was the first time I was really invested in a star wars movie. Usually I just watched them out of boredom.
 
TFA was a bland soft reboot, that put too much focus on introducing bland new characters while handling the original trilogy ones very poorly, but it had potential to be a springboard for bigger and better things.

TLJ then just shat the bed and systematically destroyed almost everything worthwhile about the franchise.
 

sobaka770

Banned
TLJ is not only the best of ST it's only second to Empire in terms of SW movie quality. Abrams really dropped the ball by retconning half of the stuff that Rian set up and instead of closing the story of Kylo Ren descent he wrote a trilogy in a single movie with another planet-destroying weapon.

Too bad that people today are hooked on Marvel easy-digestible brand of entertainment. The whiplash they would've gotten if a boring and slow "half-of-the-movie-is-a-boring-chase" ESB was to be released today would be unfathomable.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Stilton Disco Stilton Disco is pretty much right - it was a reboot of the original, with a new gritty tone which unfortunately left characters a bit bland (one of the things about the originals is that the limitations in effects and budget meant that what we got was kinda stylised rather than realistic, and stylised always holds up better over time than realistic, as we have all seen in games). There was some good stuff in there with potential. Having a storm trooper turn was huge, for instance, and could have set up some really cool things. It's really criminal that they didn't do more with him especially as he was one of the more memorable characters (I couldn't pick Poe out in a line-up and Mary Sue was way too stage school - sounds too posh to be tough, consider how princess Leia was played with much more verve). Ultimately the story was just a bigger and badder death star, but as an introduction to a new villain it was fine.

One of the interesting things was that it hinted that revolutions don't tend to lead to a glorious future straight away, and that the follow-on is messy.That does of course make the end of ROTJ a bit less meaningful, but it could have worked, there was much that could have been done to walk through that backstory as the old empire found its feet in the successor organisation - though the risk there is that we end up going somewhat down the path of episode 1 with its politics (though I liked it - others did not). That we just got Palpatine coming back was such a lazy hack.
 

Soodanim

Gold Member
TLJ basically made sure the next movie would fail because the director did not care about continuation. So, no, that says to me the movie was shit. Well, it's also Disney's fault or Kathleen Kennedy for failing to understand how to make a trilogy.
It’s crazy that they could have contacted Lucas for help but didn’t. Or called Fiege, who Disney must have on speed dial. Or asked Hamill. Anyone. But they just ran with it and turned Star Wars, something so iconic, into generic sequel city. Lucky they’re expanding the universe with Mandalorian and others.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
TFA is the best. ST starts okay and goes downhill as soon as they meet Han Solo. From there the quality is a continuous slide into the dumpster.

The nadir is the nihilist traffic jam plot the next film wastes our time with. JJ tried to save it but TLJ was so bad he had nothing to work with. Luke died because they couldn’t find their way out of a cave? Really? Not being able to get out of a cave? This is a plot from the Andy Griffith show.

As bad as ROS I would still rate it above TLJ. Fuck that movie.
 
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MilkyJoe

Member
They are all trash but TLJ at least had some memorable(but dumb) scenes. The throne room. Poe vs the Dreadnought. Space Leia. And Luke force projecting himself across the galaxy was pretty badass.

TROS is of course at the bottom of the heap but now that i look back, there really was nothing that special about TFA besides the nostalgia factor.

The last jedi destroyed the value of the brand :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 

EverydayBeast

ChatGPT 0.1
Felt like one long movie, labeling “Star Wars 7, Star Wars 8 etc” is a scheme by movie directors it’s a movie called Star Wars and it makes the Internet look silly every time
 

ExpandKong

Banned
TLJ and ROS are both utterly terrible movies in surprisingly different ways. I was not terribly impressed with TFA when it came out but as a Star Wars movie, as a science fiction movie, and as a movie that has a somewhat coherent structure, it's the best in the Disney trilogy by default.
 

SinDelta

Member
The Sequel Trilogy and its fanfiction.net tier storylines should be retconned out of existence.

Even the Prequels for their mistakes had a cohesive overarching story - The fall of the Old Republic, the Jedi and Anakin Skywalker with the rise of the Empire.

The Sequel Trilogy had what exactly as its overall story arch?

Says a lot about Disney Wars that Rogue One, their arguable "best" Star Wars movie was the one where everyone dies in the end.
 
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They are all trash but TLJ at least had some memorable(but dumb) scenes. The throne room. Poe vs the Dreadnought. Space Leia. And Luke force projecting himself across the galaxy was pretty badass.

TROS is of course at the bottom of the heap but now that i look back, there really was nothing that special about TFA besides the nostalgia factor.

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TLJ had a goal and a vision - it may have been dumb as hell and as petulant as possible in that vision, but RJ had a vision and stuck with it. That makes it unintentionally hilarious in a way that other modern SJW/Marxist reboots (e.g. Picard) are not. I can't watch Picard without feeling pissed, while with TLJ I always find something new to laugh at. The guard fight scene alone is full of terrible choreography.

TFA is okay at first glance, but (like the beginning of everything else JJ touches) it was always just a shallow attention grabber. Sort of like Lost, it just presents things to grab the audience's attention without any idea what any of it actually means. It's entertaining, but then you get to the end and realize how much time it wasted for nothing. So after ROS I don't think I can call TFA good because it isn't really a standalone movie, just a promise that was unfulfilled and made without any idea on how to fulfill it.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
I can enjoy the things I liked about TLJ but I can't get past how corporately generic TFA is every time I see it. It's been said TLJ made TFA retroactively worse for throwing away its plot threads but I think the greatest problem it highlighted is that the sequels did not establish a distinct creative universe and aesthetic. It's just vaguely reminiscent of the OT without going all in on that look and feel. Disney bought Star Wars to be an active prolific franchise but after 3 entries, it's gone completely off the rails with no next film project in sight. The responsibility lies entirely with the unimaginative first project.

I can at least thank Disney for making me appreciate the prequels far more.
 
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Fbh

Member
7 was the only decent one.

It's extremely safe and sticks to the creatively bankrupt and nostalgia heavy formula that JJ is known for.
But it was fun enough and at least left me interested in seeing where things would go from there.

8 completely dropped the ball. Not only was it a bad movie but it completely killed my interest in this new era of Star Wars.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
The responsibility lies entirely the unimaginative first project.

Nonsense. JJ Abrams didn't decide they needed to make two standalone movies mired entirely in the original movies, nor did he have anything to do with TLJ, nor did he have anything to do with the best thing to come out of nu-Wars, The Mandalorian, which ironically also relies heavily on things you've already seen, or at least mutations of those things. What he did do was invent half a dozen new core characters which someone could have utilised to a much better extent in the following two movies. When that failed in 8, they dragged him back in to clean up the mess, and he only made things worse.

Responsibility lies mostly at the feet of Kathleen Kennedy for a multitude of reasons, and hiring Johnson is a big one. Not because he's inherently bad, but because he had no interest in making 8 what it needed to be. He should have been given a spin-off project, and not one rooted in the OT.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
No, it was terrible. It fucked up continuity and characterization. While I applaud bold creative moves by a director as a general rule, they're not always gonna work out, and this one definitely did not work out.
 

Tesseract

Banned
i only recently finished the trilogy

rise had some terrific moments, hell of an intro

strikes back stays winning, jedi outcast, kotor, shadows of the empire ...
 

Shouta

Member
It definitely is the best one, warts and all. TFA is a more palatable movie but it feels like it's going through the motions rather than trying to do something with the franchise.
 

Paltheos

Member
...no? I'm still waiting for quarantine to end to watch the last of these movies with my friends (hate-watch), but TFA is a better movie than TLJ. TFA swings between bad and boring, but TLJ is bad... the entire way through? There's not one scene in TLJ I can say "I liked that" about. I can't say that about TFA (I like Rey's character intro scenes on the desert planet and the chase scene in the Falcon).

I've gone off on these movies allot and don't feel like going into more detail right now, sorry. Tbh for the most part I wish we'd just stop talking about them. They're not worth all this discussion.
 
TLJ is not only the best of ST it's only second to Empire in terms of SW movie quality. Abrams really dropped the ball by retconning half of the stuff that Rian set up and instead of closing the story of Kylo Ren descent he wrote a trilogy in a single movie with another planet-destroying weapon.

I am always interested on which kind of story TLJ defenders think Lucasfilm should have done after TLJ.
There is literally nothing left anymore.

Snoke was dead.
Kylo Ren is a joke. It's been shown again and again he doesn't stand any chance against Rey.
Hux is a joke. Shown as a clown type character in TLJ.
Luke is dead.
Han Solo is dead.
Poe was nerfed beyond belief in TLJ.
Finn's Stormtrooper backstory amounted to nothing.
The rebellion is 13 people chatting happy on the Millenium Falcon.

And Rey is as boring as watching wall paint dry. Her parents were "nothing", anyway, like Kylo said in TLJ. Her whole story line and main motivator being trashed by that.

So, yeah. RoS was shit.
But there was literally nothing to salvage from the wreck that was TLJ.

TLJ singlehandedly destroyed one of the biggest franchises of the last 100 years.
 
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ExpandKong

Banned
Her parents were "nothing", anyway, like Kylo said in TLJ. Her whole story line and main motivator being trashed by that.

This was actually something I did like and that could've taken her character in a good direction for the third movie; the closest thing she had to a personal goal was reuniting with her parents and finding out "who" she is. Knowing that her parents were literal garbage people that would not be coming back for her even if they were still alive, where does she go from there? How does she define who she is, what path does she choose? Or whatever.

But nope lol she's a Palpatine, Luke and Leia knew the whole time or something, then she's a Skwalker, fuck it who cares.
 
This was actually something I did like and that could've taken her character in a good direction for the third movie; the closest thing she had to a personal goal was reuniting with her parents and finding out "who" she is. Knowing that her parents were literal garbage people that would not be coming back for her even if they were still alive, where does she go from there? How does she define who she is, what path does she choose? Or whatever.

But nope lol she's a Palpatine, Luke and Leia knew the whole time or something, then she's a Skwalker, fuck it who cares.
But that's what TLJ did for EVERY FUCKING CHARACTER.
There were a lot of themes and ideas that were strewn into TFA.

And RJ took every one of them and trashed them to pieces, because he wanted to tell his own story, and all the stuff that was built up in TFA (and all the Star Wars that came before in general) was just hindering him to create his own Sci Fi movie.
 
7 was good at setting up the new cast, though it was pretty shallow. Most people seemed to like Finn, Poe, and Kylo. Rey was criticized for being a Mary Sue, but still wasn't hated. She was trying to get training, and they hadn't explained who she was yet, so there was lots of potential. The greatest Jedi master of all time was alone on an island with the first Jedi Temple, possibly researching the force in ways we've never imagined.

8 needed to do the heavy lifting in terms of world building, and because it did the opposite, the entire trilogy fell apart like a house of cards. It needed to explain who Snoke was, why Kylo Ren was evil, where the First Order came from, and what Luke was doing. It held basically the entire plotline of the whole trilogy, and decided to purposefully tear it all down as an exercise in subversion and minimalism. Snoke was no one. Rey was no one. The First Order was nothing. The republic was 15 people in a small ship. Kylo was evil just because Luke was an asshole. Luke was a loser hiding out doing nothing, and not even using the force - just drinking milk and fucking around. The entire legacy of the previous 7 Skywalker films fizzled out into nothing, representing nothing.

9 then tried to bandage all the worst offenses while telling the story of 3 films in the first hour, and then attempting to bookend the previous 8 in the last 20 minutes. It was a Frankenstein abomination.
 
But that's what TLJ did for EVERY FUCKING CHARACTER.
There were a lot of themes and ideas that were strewn into TFA.

And RJ took every one of them and trashed them to pieces, because he wanted to tell his own story, and all the stuff that was built up in TFA (and all the Star Wars that came before in general) was just hindering him to create his own Sci Fi movie.

RJ wanted to make an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Ship low on fuel, crew stressed out and fighting with the admiral. That's about all he had, and he would have been good at that.
 
RJ wanted to make an episode of Battlestar Galactica. Ship low on fuel, crew stressed out and fighting with the admiral. That's about all he had, and he would have been good at that.
I actually think he could create an awesome Sci Fi movie.

It's just tragic, that they let him do Star Wars, when it's clear he doesn't understand the lore, universe and characters of and in it.
 
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pramod

Banned
I can enjoy the things I liked about TLJ but I can't get past how corporately generic TFA is everything I see it. It's been said TLJ made TFA retroactively worse for throwing away its plot threads but I think the greatest problem it highlighted is that the sequels did not establish a distinct creative universe and aesthetic. It's just vaguely reminiscent of the OT without going all in on that look and feel. Disney bought Star Wars to be an active prolific franchise but after 3 entries, it's gone completely off the rails with no next film project in sight. The responsibility lies entirely the unimaginative first project.

I can at least thank Disney for making me appreciate the prequels far more.

Yeah not only was it generic, it was lazy, unoriginal, and plain boring at times. Although I admit the first 20 mins of TFA is probably the highpoint of the entire 3 movies, you felt the excitement and newness of all these characters but sadly the potential was never fulfilled.

In fact TFA was so unmemorable I don't even remember how they blew up the super Death Star ultimate weapon whatever thingy. Did they just sneak into it and plant some bombs or something that ridiculous?
 

ExpandKong

Banned
But that's what TLJ did for EVERY FUCKING CHARACTER.
There were a lot of themes and ideas that were strewn into TFA.

And RJ took every one of them and trashed them to pieces, because he wanted to tell his own story, and all the stuff that was built up in TFA (and all the Star Wars that came before in general) was just hindering him to create his own Sci Fi movie.

Oh for sure, by no means am I defending TLJ or RJ or any of that. I just think as far as Rey specifically is concerned it could've led to something a bit more interesting than what people thought we were gonna get before TLJ, and what we ended up getting after.
 
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