Star Wars Rewatch

[MarkB]

I disagree, personally, I think if he'd done all three movies or even just both the second two, no-one would be saying anything like that. But the arms dealer/casino bit in TLJ is a bit orphaned from the rest of the movie, vibes-wise, even though I think it's kind of cool and shows a different side to the SW universe (that has been hinted at before).

I do mostly like TLJ, but that plotline isn't merely orphaned from the rest of the movie, it's counterproductive. If Finn, Rose and BB8 had stayed on the Raddus, the Resistance would have been significantly better off - and that's not something that Finn deserved as a character.

 

[Belen]

That's why I said "older Gen Z". About 35-40% of younger male Gen Z/alpha currently have fairly extreme far-right-adjacent opinions, including an absolute ton of misogyny, homophobia and racism. I'm definitely not saying your son is anything like that, to be very clear, for all I know he's super-cool and I will assume that, but certainly a significant proportion of male kids he knows in his life or at school will be, probably including at least some of his friends. The same is not true of women/girls in that generation, notably (so there's a divide). Keeping their male kids from becoming like that is a major concern for most of the parents I know.

He's 12. Politics is not on his radar nor have I seen anything related to it with his friends unless complaining about school is now political.

 

[Belen]

I was just watching Camp Cretaceous Chaos Theory, and noticed it is trying to do the same thing for Jurassic World: Dominion. Retroactively make it suck less by filling in plot holes.

Camp Cretaceous is a great show. I wish the new film had used their characters.

 

[Hussar]

Sigh. With the new Andor released, I'm definitely going to have to rewatch Andor Season 1 again before I watch 2. I've forgotten too much to just start watching.

Gonna sit on this for a while though and avoid any fandom screeds about how great/bad the show is and try to judge it on its own merits.

 

[pukunui]

Sigh. With the new Andor released, I'm definitely going to have to rewatch Andor Season 1 again before I watch 2. I've forgotten too much to just start watching.

If you don't feel like rewatching the whole thing, there's a decent ~15-minute recap of Season 1 on Disney+.

 

[Zardnaar]

If you don't feel like rewatching the whole thing, there's a decent ~15-minute recap of Season 1 on Disney+.

Meant to do a rewatch but got side tracked with D&D/other shows and BG3 honor mode single class runs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don;t know, I thought they got off to a very promising start with the Force Awakens. I am not an Abrams fan at all*

I think the key part is the lack of ambition. Abrams has rarely shown much ambition when directing movies. I think that last time I saw him genuinely seem to have any goals beyond "Make a good movie I guess" was probably Super 8. Certainly not TFA or TRoS.

TFA basically wasn't going anywhere. I think the general opinion of the sequels would actually be slightly worse if Abrams had done all three - just worse in a different way.

I don't know. When I'm watching a Rian Johnson movie, I feel like I know I'm watching a Rian Johnson movie, and I know exactly what Rian Johnson wants me to think about contemporary society.

I don't see it at all. There are literally two of his movies which are about that, and they're both very mannered and exaggerated in a way that's distinct from the rest of his movies. Both are also after TLJ.

Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, you're trying to tell me they're centered on "thinking about contemporary society" more than any other director? Come on.

So to me this seems like backfill/retcon.

Agree on TLJ feeling a bit antagonistic to fans.

I feel like this is massive Gen X-ish projection. There's absolutely nothing in the movie that supports that.

The issue is entirely external, and all about the headcanon of older fans, which tended to revolve around EU-ish visions of Luke (either directly or indirectly informed by the EU books). Thus they find deviations from that "antagonistic".

The biggest SW fans I know all loved it except one - and he was the only one who had very fixed EU-based ideas about Luke.

 

[Bedrockgames]

TFA basically wasn't going anywhere. I think the general opinion of the sequels would actually be slightly worse if Abrams had done all three - just worse in a different way.

Knowing where and when to be ambitious with an existing property is important though. In a way, he was ambitious with the Star Trek movie he did (but for me, they were the opposite of what Star Trek is meant to be). With Star Wars he understood he had an existing franchises but he threw in some cool ideas (things like showing blood, small though it was, was very impactful and denoted a shift in tone that could have been interesting: something he undermined in the 3rd movie; and Hux, that was a break out villain if there ever was one: which , Johnson totally undermined. ).

But I don't know how you get worse than three movies that do not fit together for a trilogy. The Last Jedi's sin isn't that it is an awful movie, it is that it isn't a good star wars movie and it doesn't fit in the middle of a trilogy at all. Honestly I would have taken something like trajectory TFA was beginning. When I look back, that movie actually did some interesting things, but they got undermined by Johnson. And I do think The Last Jedi was a good movie on its own, it just was, as I said, not a good Star Wars film. I do agree, the last movie, nearly unforgivable and a big stain for Abrams in general. To be clear, I am not an Abrams fan at all. I like Rian Johnson as a director more, actually. Looper is ten times better than anything I have seen from Abrams. I don't hate Abrams. I am just not a fan (I think the only writing credit of his I genuinely like is Regarding Henry, and the only directing credit of his I like is TFA). I don't think he is a bad director or anything, he just directs movies I don't normally find myself interested in. Even stuff like Lost I wasn't a fan of.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I do mostly like TLJ, but that plotline isn't merely orphaned from the rest of the movie, it's counterproductive. If Finn, Rose and BB8 had stayed on the Raddus, the Resistance would have been significantly better off - and that's not something that Finn deserved as a character.

I don't think characters are owed anything. They are fictional. And I don't think characters have to succeed or improve things. A lot of great movies are about failure, and this is the middle film which is meant to be more like Empire Strikes Back. Not saying this sequence was amazing, but I also don't think this was one of the movie's major issues (Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega I thought had good chemistry and I think the series would have been stronger in the third movie if they had at least followed that romantic thread between them)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

He's 12. Politics is not on his radar nor have I seen anything related to it with his friends unless complaining about school is now political.

The key difference to when we were kids is phones and YouTube/TikTok giving people a way to deliver detailed and consistent messaging and ideas, in a convincing and well-produced way to kids without parents knowing (which they're never couching as "political" - that'd be a turn-off, but rather as "here's how the world is, learn from me so you can be strong/clever/powerful"). That's literally why this change has happened (and why it disproportionately impacted one gender), and it's impacting kids younger than 12 where parents are giving them free access to YouTube/TikTok/etc. That said it's much worse in the 14-18 age range, most 12 y/os are probably still likely ignoring Andrew Tate etc. in favour of Minecraft and so on!

In a way, he was ambitious with the Star Trek movie he did (but for me, they were the opposite of what Star Trek is meant to be).

I don't think he was ambitious in any meaningful sense with them.

He just was, by his own admission, not really a Star Trek fan or very interested in Star Trek prior to making the movies, and he just profoundly does not get the Star Trek "vibe". Like I don't think he even knows what a utopian future is! He clearly did some research prior to making the movies and he certainly understood the personalities of the TOS main characters, but overall? Ooof.

When I look back, that movie actually did some interesting things, but they got undermined by Johnson.

I don't think he got "undermined" anywhere near as much as people suggest. I mean, Abrams is the one who made Luke a lonely hermit and a failed Jedi master (as established in TFA), not Johnson, but people have consistently acted like it was Johnson.

The only thing Abrams was mad about was what was frankly a much better choice than his - to make Rey NOT a Skywalker or other existing famous Jedi lineage. Making her into a Palpatine was an absolute car crash imho, and not even really necessary to the plot of TRoS.

I actually think Lucas would have done the same thing as Johnson here, had he made the sequels. The Jedi hero (and there would have been one) would not have been a Skywalker/Palpatine/similar with Lucas I believe, but someone new.