Star Wars Discussion Thread (Spoilers Inside)

[zitothebrave]

The original trilogy was re-released in theaters when I was a kid. It set off my love for the franchise.

Kind of similar for me. I mean I watched the OT on VHS first. So some parts were a little jarring, but it was great. Especially the re-release of Toys. I still remember playing a ton with my friend he would get the Empire stuff and I would get the Rebel stuff. So I had like the Luke or Han in the millenium falcon turret and an X-Wing and he had the Tie Fighter and BOmbers, he had the AT-AT/ST I had the speeders. And I remmber how great the T-47 Air Speeder was.

[zitothebrave]

I'm dropping The Last Jedi argument for the time being. Suffice to say it was a divisive movie. I will say the sequel trilogy as a whole was pretty bad regardless of the quality of individual movies. While the acting and cinematography was miles better than the prequels, the prequels at least were a unified story.

I think changing directors midstream and then changing back was a massive mistake. If you're going to change directors then you need a strong hand controlling the story and the narrative choices made. That wasn't there in the sequels. Abrams sets up the mysteries of Snoke and Reys parents. Johnson kills Snoke and makes Reys parents nobodies. Abrams brings Snoke back and makes Reys grandparents important. There was a tug of war over this series that made the final product disjointed.

I think the sequel trilogy (and Solo) would have been much better had Kennedy tapped someone like Filoni to control the Star Wars creative content. You can let the directors have a free hand in a lot but having a Star Wars savant who has demonstrated the ability to produce exceptional Star Wars content ensure the trilogy stayed on the rails would have really improved things.

TO me I think they less need someone to control the creative content and more need someone to storyboard and keep things canon. So I don't disagree with you. I don't think necessarily that's FIloni, I love him, but he hasn't really done anything on films. All his work has been in long form TV story telling. I think a small team would have done better. I won't know until they all come out, but like with the Project LUminous. where they were writing in heavily collaboration with each other. If the results are great, then that's the way forward for the films. Combine someone like Filoni or Hidalgo who knows the lore, partner with a quality director who will work with them, if said director can write like Johnson than great. If not pair a director with a writer.

[Krgrecw]

Zito how old are you?

[zitothebrave]

Zito how old are you?

I'll be 33 later this year.

[Krgrecw]

I'll be 33 later this year.

Gotcha. I knew you were younger then me (43). I was wondering how you watched the originals in the theatre than I realized they were re-releases

[zitothebrave]

Gotcha. I knew you were younger then me (43). I was wondering how you watched the originals in the theatre than I realized they were re-releases

Right, my brother had them on VHS which I remember watchign beforehand. I have **** memory, I may not even have seen ANH Special Edition in theater and just bought the toys first. But I know I've gotten them. Since DVD release I"ve owned almost every form of Star Wars. I got the DVD's that had the 480p theatrical, I got the blu rays, and the 4K blurays and assorted mixed in. I haven't watched the 4K blurays yet. I have to commit to watching the ****fest that is Rise of Skywalker. But I have 2 Lego Sets that need to be built so maybe sometiem soon I'll build those sets and watch those films.

[striker42]

TO me I think they less need someone to control the creative content and more need someone to storyboard and keep things canon. So I don't disagree with you. I don't think necessarily that's FIloni, I love him, but he hasn't really done anything on films. All his work has been in long form TV story telling. I think a small team would have done better. I won't know until they all come out, but like with the Project LUminous. where they were writing in heavily collaboration with each other. If the results are great, then that's the way forward for the films. Combine someone like Filoni or Hidalgo who knows the lore, partner with a quality director who will work with them, if said director can write like Johnson than great. If not pair a director with a writer.

The structure of some unifying force isn't really as important as there being one. I still can't fathom how they thought it was a good idea to just let each director take control of everything. Imagine if Favreau had decided to kill off Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and that have been allowed to happen. It would have thrown a huge wrench into the rest of the MCU. That's essentially how the sequel trilogy went though. While Feige is the steady hand at Marvel making sure none of the individual movies screws up the greater narrative, the Star Wars sequels didn't have that.

So when taken as a whole, the sequel trilogy is awful. Honestly, I'd rank them as a whole as worse than the prequels as a whole. The individual movies of the prequels have some pretty huge problems but at least they tell a coherent story. I honestly have no idea what the story of the sequels is.

Filoni is unique in that he has massive Star Wars knowledge, has directed and produced major products, and has a track record of creating excellent Star Wars content. I'd be fine with a small team that included Filoni. Have some other people that bring other skills. I'm fine with that. Ultimately there has to be some kind of unifying force. Let writers and directors take the lead and do what they want just so long as they don't stray outside the lines the universe needs.

Filoni and Favreau have probably shown how Star Wars needs to be approached in the future. The Mandalorian is arguably the best Star Wars content ever made. It's not something either could have achieved on their own.

[striker42]

I've recently rewatched the prequels and they rightfully catch a lot of flack. The acting is frequently atrocious, Lucas is unrestrained in his use of CGI, and some of the writing is laughable.

That being said, there's more there to like than I remembered. While Lucas overdid it on the CGI, you can't dispute that he also did some revolutionary things with it. The Phantom Menace came out in 1999 and some of the CGI still holds up today.

More importantly, each of the prequels gives us moments that are completely epic. The Duel of the Fates when Maul ignites the second half of his lightsaber is an incredible moment. I still found myself grinning when I saw Yoda pull out his lightsaber in Attack of the Clones (the movie I like the least of the prequels). And the scene after Obi Wan cuts of Anakin's legs is just tremendous (Hayden Christensen's poor acting is the only thing that brings it down.)

Ewan McGregor's portrayal of Obi Wan was one of the best things about the prequels. It's why I'm really hoping they don't screw up the Obi Wan series.

So I have to say I'm surprised. In some ways they're worse than I remember (I didn't remember just how bad some of the acting was) but on the whole they're not as bad as I've long thought they were.

[zitothebrave]

What's interesting to me is you mention moments that are epic. And I agree with you. Though I don't think the epic moment was Yoda lighting up the lightsaber. I found that moment to be a bit hacky. To me the epic moment was the huge Jedi attachment fighting the Droid Army. Up until that point we never saw more than 3 force users in combat together, and here we see over 200 (can't remember if 212 counted Anakin and Obi Wan or not) Jedis in combat together. Coupled with the rescue by the Grand Army, it was a high point cinematically. Yoda's battle with Dooku was a chance for Lucas to flex his CGI muscles. I hated it. I wish instead Yoda spanked Dooku with the force. I've never been a fan of the concept that the best wielder of the force is the best lightsaber duelist. We could have seen Yoda using the force to toy with Dooku up to and including turning his lightsaber off and taking it from him. To me seeing Yoda wield a lightsaber, especially in such a bouncy way, was cheap.

Also keep in mind unless you have an early DVD of TPM you're seeing remastered versions. I forget the numbers but there's at least 2 more versions of the film. Including the big one being the 2011 BluRay which featured a lot of cosmetic changes to all the films. I haven't cracked into the 4K ones yet.

McGregor's Obi Wan and McDiarmid's Palpatine were the best parts of the films by a long shot. Almost every new character was cut too short or bad.

Lucas made 2 critical errors in the prequels that if he didn't make would have made them much better.

1. TPM. Listen, the time jump was gonna be risky, but to do it and only recast one character is jarring. I'd talked about this earlier in the thread. If instead we started with the events of AotC, where the movie deals with Anakin's penchant of embracing the dark side to win battle being on show. The second and third movie are basically Revenge of the Sith. The second movie runs very similar to how RotS runs. And culminates with the scene of Anakin walking into the Jedi Temple with the Clone Troopers. The third movie is about the Jedi Purge and exile. We didn't get to see Anakin embracing the darkside much. Here we see him running through the temple with the Clones killing all the Jedi, not just a scene igniting a lightsaber on some younglings. Here we witness Vader embracing the darkside and beating force wielders. Not his destruction of the CIS leadership. Everything else largely goes the same. Again there's small things I would change, but if you instead killed TPM, had Anakin and Padme be known lovers already. Removes the awkward courtship and instead you're focusing on the Taboo nature of their relationship.

2. No new force powers. We saw better versions of force powers seen in the OT, but no new forcepowers annoys me. I needed something. Something to show that Yoda was special, that Palpatine was special. Instead we just got the same rehash of their old abilities.

[striker42]

What's interesting to me is you mention moments that are epic. And I agree with you. Though I don't think the epic moment was Yoda lighting up the lightsaber. I found that moment to be a bit hacky. To me the epic moment was the huge Jedi attachment fighting the Droid Army. Up until that point we never saw more than 3 force users in combat together, and here we see over 200 (can't remember if 212 counted Anakin and Obi Wan or not) Jedis in combat together. Coupled with the rescue by the Grand Army, it was a high point cinematically. Yoda's battle with Dooku was a chance for Lucas to flex his CGI muscles. I hated it. I wish instead Yoda spanked Dooku with the force. I've never been a fan of the concept that the best wielder of the force is the best lightsaber duelist. We could have seen Yoda using the force to toy with Dooku up to and including turning his lightsaber off and taking it from him. To me seeing Yoda wield a lightsaber, especially in such a bouncy way, was cheap.

Also keep in mind unless you have an early DVD of TPM you're seeing remastered versions. I forget the numbers but there's at least 2 more versions of the film. Including the big one being the 2011 BluRay which featured a lot of cosmetic changes to all the films. I haven't cracked into the 4K ones yet.

McGregor's Obi Wan and McDiarmid's Palpatine were the best parts of the films by a long shot. Almost every new character was cut too short or bad.

Lucas made 2 critical errors in the prequels that if he didn't make would have made them much better.

1. TPM. Listen, the time jump was gonna be risky, but to do it and only recast one character is jarring. I'd talked about this earlier in the thread. If instead we started with the events of AotC, where the movie deals with Anakin's penchant of embracing the dark side to win battle being on show. The second and third movie are basically Revenge of the Sith. The second movie runs very similar to how RotS runs. And culminates with the scene of Anakin walking into the Jedi Temple with the Clone Troopers. The third movie is about the Jedi Purge and exile. We didn't get to see Anakin embracing the darkside much. Here we see him running through the temple with the Clones killing all the Jedi, not just a scene igniting a lightsaber on some younglings. Here we witness Vader embracing the darkside and beating force wielders. Not his destruction of the CIS leadership. Everything else largely goes the same. Again there's small things I would change, but if you instead killed TPM, had Anakin and Padme be known lovers already. Removes the awkward courtship and instead you're focusing on the Taboo nature of their relationship.

2. No new force powers. We saw better versions of force powers seen in the OT, but no new forcepowers annoys me. I needed something. Something to show that Yoda was special, that Palpatine was special. Instead we just got the same rehash of their old abilities.

I'll agree that the actual fight between Yoda and Dooku could have been better. Just having Yoda flipping around was a missed opportunity. The moment that was epic was him opening his cloak, using the force to pull out his lightsaber, and igniting it. Yoda is an iconic character. The most powerful force user we've seen to that point but also small and seemingly weak. Drawing his lightsaber shows that he's not just someone with great knowledge of the force, he's a full Jedi with 900 years of practice. The massive Jedi fight was cool but I felt it was a missed opportunity. They could have shown off more of the whole battle but instead focused mostly on the main characters. The nonsense of R2 and C3PO running around was just wasted time.

I think I have an old copy of the Phantom Menace somewhere. And while copies you see now are enhanced, a lot of the original effects still hold up.

You're right about new characters being cut too short or bad. Padme ends up just being annoying most of the time. One of the most interesting characters they introduced was Mace Windu. The only person ever to defeat the Emperor in a true duel and played by a fantastic actor. But they didn't do enough with him. I'm really hoping they bring his character back somehow and flesh him out. You don't explicitly see him die and if there's anything that's true in movies like this, if you don't see the body they're not dead.

As for the errors, I agree that TPM could have been done away with. You'd have to have something at the start of the film showing Anakin's origin. It's the only important thing to come out of TPM. You lay that foundation and skip ahead to Anakin as a padawan. Him meeting Padme when he's assigned to guard her and them falling in love would have been way better than the creepy child romance vibe that played out.

The time jump also hurt the overall story. There's no real backstory for the CIS breaking off or even what the deal was with Dooku. AOTC just drops you into this stuff that's already going on. It makes it difficult to care about the conflict.

There were a couple of new force powers but nothing terribly impressive. They built on the superhuman physical abilities of Jedi. You see Luke jump out of the Carbon Freezing chamber in ESB but you see much more impressive jumps and landings in the prequels. The only other new force power I can think of is Yoda's ability to deflect or absorb force lightning. Something completely new but not terribly impressive. If Lucas was going to go wild with CGI, he should have gone wild showing off force abilities.

[zitothebrave]

Another thing I forgot, the prequels should have had an overarching villain. While Lucas intended this to be Palpatine, he wasn't truly a villain.

Instead we got throwaways. Maul tossed away in the first film. Dooku tossed aside essentially after second film and Grievous was barely there in the third. It should have been Dooku over the majority of the films until the Vader turn.

[striker42]

Another thing I forgot, the prequels should have had an overarching villain. While Lucas intended this to be Palpatine, he wasn't truly a villain.

Instead we got throwaways. Maul tossed away in the first film. Dooku tossed aside essentially after second film and Grievous was barely there in the third. It should have been Dooku over the majority of the films until the Vader turn.

It was like Lucas was trying to keep Palpatine's identity as a sith Lord as a surprise except it as soon as you heard the name Senator Palpatine, anyone with any Star Wars knowledge knew he was the villain.

I'm fine with a rotating cast of henchmen, the problem is Lucas made the henchmen the villains at the expense of underdeveloping Palpatine.

[zitothebrave]

I personally don't think he underdeveloped Palpatine, I wish he went somewhere weirder myself. Granted I know this is way the **** out there. But imagine the twist that Lucas could have had.Imagine that Sheev Palpatine that we meet, is who he says he is. We see Darth Sidious as well. All that runs the same. The divergence is that Sheev isn't the one at the Opera, this is obvious by absence of Maz Kanata and any royal guards. Anakin says the Chancellor is a Sith Lord the go and confront Sheev, he is visibly confused, then we hear the igniting of a lightsaber and a red lightsaber through the chest of a jedi master and then slashing another and then force choking Kit Fisto you see Sheev's identical twin brother, he finishes off Fisto and Mace turns to battle, he thanks his brother for doing all the hard work, his shocked brother pleads with him, he then throws his lightsaber out the window before bringing it back to stab his brother and force pushes him out the window. Then everything else plays out as it has. That lets you do a Palpatine twist.

Anyway, it would have been better if Dooku was basically the Vader of the Prequels.

[striker42]

I personally don't think he underdeveloped Palpatine, I wish he went somewhere weirder myself. Granted I know this is way the **** out there. But imagine the twist that Lucas could have had.Imagine that Sheev Palpatine that we meet, is who he says he is. We see Darth Sidious as well. All that runs the same. The divergence is that Sheev isn't the one at the Opera, this is obvious by absence of Maz Kanata and any royal guards. Anakin says the Chancellor is a Sith Lord the go and confront Sheev, he is visibly confused, then we hear the igniting of a lightsaber and a red lightsaber through the chest of a jedi master and then slashing another and then force choking Kit Fisto you see Sheev's identical twin brother, he finishes off Fisto and Mace turns to battle, he thanks his brother for doing all the hard work, his shocked brother pleads with him, he then throws his lightsaber out the window before bringing it back to stab his brother and force pushes him out the window. Then everything else plays out as it has. That lets you do a Palpatine twist.

Anyway, it would have been better if Dooku was basically the Vader of the Prequels.

I think Palpatine was underdeveloped. We know so little about his back story, how he became a Sith Lord, what his motivations are, etc. We know more about Dooku's past.

Palpatine is a great character and a force user on par with Yoda. He needed more screen time.

[zitothebrave]

Yeah, or they could have just had a different primary villain.

[striker42]

I've made it to season 5 of Clone Wars in my rewatch of the series. This season is a slog. I wasn't a fan of the Onderon arc, the youngling arc was pretty bad as well, and the droids with the frog colonel is almost unwatchable. They got away from the formula that made the series good. I don't know if they were trying to appeal more to kids again after several seasons with darker content or what but season 5 is hard to watch at times.

[zitothebrave]

Season 5 I think was struggling in a number of departments. I don't necessarily think it was for the kids, I think it was to figure out what they could explore.

But it's got my second favorite arc as well. The Maul/Savage taking over Death Watch.

I liked the Onderon arc. It did a quality job of setting up the rebellion.

[striker42]

Season 5 I think was struggling in a number of departments. I don't necessarily think it was for the kids, I think it was to figure out what they could explore.

But it's got my second favorite arc as well. The Maul/Savage taking over Death Watch.

I liked the Onderon arc. It did a quality job of setting up the rebellion.

The Onderon arc is definitely better than the Youngling or droid arcs but I felt it dragged on too long. It was 4 episodes and probably could have been done in 2. I would like to have seen more intervention from Anakin and Obi Wan too. I felt their protests that the Jedi have to keep out of an internal affair was a stretch with Asoka running around with her lightsabers out. I would have liked more of the central Star Wars characters and less of the Guerras who I didn't like. Ultimately, I wont say it's a bad arc, just one I didn't enjoy.

I'm not sure even the Maul/Savage arc can make up for four episodes of the frog Colonel.

[zitothebrave]

The droids arc was pretty bad. But to me it does make up for it. It's so amazing. It's not my favorite season, but it's not my least favorite. The first is probably my least favorite.

To me I enjoy an expanded universe.

Also I really like the first episode with the Younglings. I love the weird mystic force stuff.

[striker42]

The droids arc was pretty bad. But to me it does make up for it. It's so amazing. It's not my favorite season, but it's not my least favorite. The first is probably my least favorite.

To me I enjoy an expanded universe.

Also I really like the first episode with the Younglings. I love the weird mystic force stuff.

I could have taken the one episode of the younglings. Showing Jedi getting their lightsaber crystals was cool. Four episodes was too much.

I liked the first season. It didn't try to do too much while expanding the universe. Second or third would probably be my favorites though.

I really want to see the back story of Obi Wan and the Duchess. I'm hoping they get into that in the Obi Wan series.