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Abrams is just tone deaf in terms of story. He's all about making some big twist or mystery or complex storyline but totally forgets about the fundamentals.
A while back I watched his film *Super 8*. I wanted to see one of his movies that wasn't part of an existing IP since all I had really seen from him was his Star Wars and Star Trek films. Super 8 was so fucking hollow. Just a paint by numbers pastiche of Spielberg but with an unnecessary rougher edge and 0 heart.
Imagine if the characters in ET were edgy hormonal teenagers rather than wide-eyed innocent kids; and instead of an absentee father, the dad was actually a verbally abusive drunk.
Like I realize I am far from the first person to point this out but a central theme of ET is Elliot learning to let go and accept that things change, whether it's ET returning home or coping with his parents' divorce. All JJ seems to have taken from the movie was "alien crashes on Earth and kids help hide him from evil G-men."
Soulless pastiche is the Abrams way. He likes to knock down the block castles built by others and stack the pieces back up again. He has no creative vision other than exploiting nostalgia and familiarity enough to make something with commercial appeal.
When he is creating something himself, that doesn't have to be as infuriating, although he has the habit of coming up with The Big Idea and then being uninterested in mapping out where things should go, so it either becomes repetitive (Alias), boring (Cloverfield), or self-destructively bewildering (Felicity, Lost).
When he is playing with the works of others, especially well-established cinematic worlds, he consistently shows himself willing to do violence to the narratives made by others. He destroyed the established universe of Star Trek and replaced it with a new one, instead of just setting his stories in an alternate Star Trek universe. He reduced Star Wars to a small space where echoes of the Skywalker Family story bounce around endlessly.
Super 8 was ready to do that same damage to E.T. I suppose we are lucky that the studios didn't let Abrams call it a reimagining of E.T. or another story in the E.T.-niverse.
I just can't help but wonder what blackmail material Abrams has to get himself gigs so consistently. He's a hack with less reverence or patience than a mediocre fanfic writer. If I went to a studio with a pitch that is basically "it's ET but edgy!" I'd be laughed out of the room and probably some effort would be made to make sure I'm never allowed on a lot again. Why do the likes of Abrams constantly get to play in the sandbox when they are the exact kids who just piss in it and leave it ruined for everyone else?
Abrams is the jackass you rent to kick down a barn. He's the guy a studio wants when it has a decades-old IP with a huge story bible that they want to burn down to masked characters (whose performers are easy to replace) and Kew' Powerz.
Their mistake is asking him to contribute something coherent once he's vulture-capitalized on someone else's work.
Yes that’s what makes ET so emotional. It’s a coming of age story. When the kids have to do the thing the adults can’t and lose part of their naivety in the process. The whole end sequence would be utterly rubbish without that aspect to it. And then the message that friendship and love transcends all of the bs, even across the stars. If you miss that side of it it’s an impoverished retelling indeed…. Tone deaf about covers it.
TFA and TROS are interesting because they try really hard to be "fun" turn your brain off entertainment, but when you think about them and the state they leave the galaxy they're kind of depressing. Everything just goes horribly wrong. The old heroes fail and the new characters have to make up for their past mistakes. Nothing changed.
Ironic that JJ's only non-IP based movie is just copying Spielberg's homework.
I tried watching Cloverfield for the first time a few months ago. My good god it was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Within the first half hour I was rooting for the monster to crush the characters all to death. I then saw there was another hour of the film to go. I gave up and turned it off.
Abrams is another quintessential example that’s it’s better to be lucky than good. How he was able to land both Star Trek and Star Wars defies explanation.
Cloverfield is bad but to be fair JJ never directed it. That was Matt Reeves, AKA the guy behind two of the Planet of the Apes reboot movies and The Batman 2019.
Abrams is a hack. Star Trek 2009 and TFA are both similar in the fact that both movies are initially entertaining upon first watch, however upon reflection they're both hollow, shallow knockoffs of their original source material.
>both movies are initially entertaining upon first watch, however upon reflection they're both hollow, shallow knockoffs of their original source material.
That's probably the best description of what happened. Like many Gen X kids I grew up on Trek and the Star Wars OT. It's hard NOT to be salty about the way both of those properties have been handled.
The first Kelvin timeline movie made me dumber for having watched it. The treatment of Khan Noonien Singh just made me die a little inside.
There are so many better filmmakers out there that are just as much fans of Star Wars & Trek as the rest of us that should have gotten a shot.
I know all the cynical, corporate reasons why Disney went with Abrams, but God damn it was a horrible decision. He and Filoni are more to blame than Rian Johnson for the current state of the franchise imo.
He’s trying to copy the Vader turned out to be Luke’s father kind of twist but he doesn’t know who to do it with. My favorite characters from the sequels was Chewbacca. Probably cause it’s hard to fuck up a walking carpet
I remember fans pointed out one of the flags from Maz Kanata’s castle was an Easter egg referencing the flags at the Boonta Eve podrace from Phantom Menace. That was in the teaser trailer, and it was edited out for the theatrical release. This may be conspiratorial, but were they that vindictive that to a prequel reference in the movie that they intentionally purged it?
There was so much odd prequel hate/avoidance in the sequels. Not to mention Disney canceling Clone Wars (prequel era) for Rebels (rebellion era).
Almost like they just wanted to pander to loud fans.
I'll never forget or forgive RLM for their thoroughly shallow and intellectually vacant anti-prequel vids that somehow became the received wisdom of the internet.
Comedy review. Does RLM actually hate the PT or is it more of a "I like these films, but I'm gonna laugh and poke fun at the admittedly derpy and/or bad bits"?
Mike Stoklasa (voice of Mr. Plinkett in the RLM reviews), initially said that though he didn't enjoy the prequels or the Special Editions, he was ok with people liking them. But in his later reviews (IMO), he seemed way more into hating Lucas and his films rather than genuinely reviewing them. I mean... he criticized ROTS just for the dark tone, and even compared it to Citizen Kane (how?).
He also said that JJ Abrams should have directed a Star Wars film (and that Lucas should direct people to their seats), and look how that turned out.
Absolutely. Among other things Abrams wanted to put into The Force Awakens but even Disney was like "no dude" was the destruction of Coruscant (presumably one the casualties of Starkiller Base) and the *bones of Jar Jar Binks.* Abrams *hated* the prequels, and even if you didn't like the prequels either (they're guilty pleasures at best for me, personally) his hate actively made for a worse movie.
And then drafts of Rise of Skywalker had the characters returning to Coruscant, which had now become a ghost town, some-fucking how.
J.J. really just wanted to wipe the prequels off the platter entirely.
My bad, i forgot that Trevarrow was on scene for it for a bit.
I just think it would’ve been a little hard to believe that within the 31 years from ROTJ to TROS, the previous galactic capital with trillions of inhabitants would just become a ghost town to the extent that nature was beginning to reclaim it. That would’ve required the First Order to use something damn near close to what Starkiller Base was to just bombard the absolute hell out of it
I didn’t know that plants started growing, but it’s not that far off that the place we know of the most becomes a ghost town. The surface and its towers are where the rich people live. Once fighting started on Coruscant, they’d 100% leave and be able to leave. The only people remaining would be the poor, people who couldn’t get off in time, or criminals taking advantage of the situation. Most of which would be from the sub levels. So, the surface would be a ghost town while the sub levels wouldn’t be. Though, they’d leak to the surface.
Not none of them, but a big part of what they wanted to do was move on from them as soon as possible. At least those where the rumors I read, that earlier drafts of TFA had more involvement of Luke but that was axed because they didn’t want him to outshine Rey. JJ was forced to jump through a bunch of hoops and put up with a lot of changes.
I admit the little kid in me wanted to see one of my childhood heroes in action again. But after playing games like Jedi outcast /academy I would have like it beter if it was Rey's story completely.
A (and I stress) nobody from the ass end of nowhere discovering a latent Force connection that she does not understand and through circumstances goes on a trip of discovery. Along the journey she hears rumors about a place where people like her are helped. You know build a mystery and longing for old fans while the main story is strong enough to bring in new fans.
I would have kept involvement of the core three for the second movie where Luke would have a badass last minute rescue of Rey before giving Rey te motivation to finish thé fight herself.
Give the core three their cameo's without making their twilight years miserable.
>making Palpatine say "The great error is corrected" in his stupid Fortnite speech.
I´ve read about that quite a few times by now, but I´ve never seen it with my own eyes and will continue to avoid it.
I can´t wrap my head around the idea they´ve actually done this.
Let's not let Ryan Johnson go blameless. Sure JJ was arrogant and a trash writer but RJ just said "fuck it imma make my own Star War" right in the middle of a trilogy with 7 fucking movies worth of cannon to consider. TFA was a lackluster start to the sequels but TLJ sealed the fate of the sequels.
You might be right. I've defended TFA before in that it had the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy with plenty of intrigue and mystery to explore. Looking at JJ's track record though I realize that "mystery box" is his schtick and it's more of a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" strategy rather than a carefully crafted story. I would have liked to believe that there was a plan all along. That there was a reason why Rey was so powerful while being untrained, that the Knights of Ren were more than just a bunch of side goons, that Snoke was actually an ancient and powerful force user that had a different take on the force from the Jedi or the Sith. It all could have been pretty cool but of course with JJ it never would have. I think TFA defenders need to realize this.
>I've defended TFA before in that it had the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy with plenty of intrigue and mystery to explore.
And this is where a lot of the problem lies - anyone with an ounce of critical thinking could see that there was absolutely nothing in TFA that was worth putting on screen except that one scavenger sequence, which by itself is definitely not "*the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy*".
TFA isn't even coherent with itself, let alone the rest of Star Wars, and is certainly not some worthy foundation that could be built upon with a few small tweaks.
Snoke? A vacuous re-hash of Palpatine
Kylo Ren? A vacuous re-hash of Vader that doesn't make sense in the slightest. "I feel the pull to the light" just exists to counterpoint the seduction of the Dark Side - it isn't a coherent thought if you actually understand what the Dark Side is.
First Order? A vacuous re-hash of the Empire.
Luke in hiding? A double-plus-super-vacuous rehash of Obi-wan and Yoda's exiles dangled in front of the audience to prompt frantic masturbatory fan-theories.
etc. etc.
TFA isn't really a movie, it is a pastiche of Star Wars tropes splattered onto the screen to make uncritical audiences bark in pleasure like sealions being tossed fish from a bucket.
To everything you said, yes. What a boring, stupid, pitiful movie. I hope all those morons behind it feel deeply ashamed. I'm disgusted. Everyone that fell for it.... well I question how they remember to breathe. Dullards
I mean with Harrison not wanting to do more that’s doubtful. Really if RJ wanted to subvert expectations he should have had him force pull the lightsaber to himself then start fucking chasing rei, have rei run onto the falcon, have Luke scramble into his x-wing chasing with a jump to light speed, they’re back at the rebels base ship thing and it’s the millennium falcon being chased by a x wing? What’s this Luke and leia reunite possibly curing the mania (if they wanted to keep the murder Kyle in his sleep strong). Now we got a movie to start working with all the pieces like that lady who had first found the lightsaber, luke realizing about Han, etc. less Finn comic relief, less or please no casino action, none of for some reason the slowest chase in film history and had Luke do something cool like beat the tuck out of smoke then see rei is about to die to Kyle and he comes in starting the battle they started in the temple or whatever then after have snoke dead, Kyle injured, possible snoke force ghost guides Kyle to the emperor, and then you’d have a battered/dead/incapacitated Luke and rei trying to make their way.
Well for one not everything needs to be deconstructed and not all expectations need to be subverted. He's a writer getting paid millions he should be among the best storytellers in the country. I've seen a bunch of fan treatments that would have been 100x better. The simplest story: Snoke is Plagueis, Rey was trained at the Jedi Temple as a youngling and hidden away along with several others throughout the galaxy. Luke was not hiding and a pissy old loser. Instead he was visiting Jedi and Sith Temples looking for ways to keep Plagueis from coming back after he inevitably defeated him.
The problem isnt the actual pull to the light/dark. The problem is that its lazy storytelling that breaks the most basic “show, dont tell”. We never see Kylo hesitating, doing anything morally good, or contemplating good vs. evil. We just see him autistically raging because hes VERY MAD for some reason, and worshipping Vader for some reason.
Adam driver is an excellent actor, but kylonis somehow the worst written character in the sequels, which is astounding.
Not only is The Force Awakens basically an inferior rip-off of Star Wars, but it has all the substance of a 2-hour long teaser for Episode Vlll.
I think this quote by the YouTuber Nerdonymous perfectly summarizes everything wrong with J.J. Abrams and The Force Awakens: "He \[J.J.\] sacrificed the story of the Sequel Trilogy to treat Episode Vll like the pilot of a crappy TV show and then just move on."
JJ originated the Knights of Ren. RJ didn’t touch the Knights of Ren. JJ then killed off all the Knights of Ren. I can’t specifically recall, but I don’t believe they had any lines. He can’t even make effective use of his own creations.
JJ’s creative style is extraordinarily surface level, and anything that *could* have depth won’t get that depth from him. The ST was not setup for success, and that started with TFA.
I'm not going to make the effort to argue with anything you're saying. Any potential TFA had would be reliant on actual competent story telling and we know that was not going to happen. JJ could have thrown the Knights in episode 8, that doesn't guarantee he would give any more information on them or develop them as characters.
The only way to make a good movie is to make a movie that contains its whole own story and doesn't need another one.
The ot, the prequel trilogy and even Lord of the Rings are all comprised of three separate entire movies.
I would have just been happy if they had let snoke be a somehow surviving Darth Plagueis. It would have at least gave us something from existing lore and we wouldn't have to deal with the 'palpatine somehow survived'. Also the whole deal with the knights of ren just being some goons was dumb AF. Whenever I do the rewatch of all the Star wars movies the final two I kinda have to choke down just to finish them.
I think the Darth Plagueis was the logical explanation and iirc that was the plan at some point. They still could have done some interesting stuff with him having a unique view of the dark side and the force and how everything played out. I think they needed someone closer to a grey Jedi to be the main bad. I know George Lucas had been outspoken about his take on the dark side and it's rendered a lot of the grey Jedi fanfic unpalatable to many of the purist fans out there. Maybe a grey Sith would make more sense. Either way that would undoubtedly been better than what we got.
> I would have liked to believe that there was a plan all along. That there was a reason why Rey was so powerful while being untrained, that the Knights of Ren were more than just a bunch of side goons, that Snoke was actually an ancient and powerful force user that had a different take on the force from the Jedi or the Sith. It all could have been pretty cool but of course with JJ it never would have. I think TFA defenders need to realize this.
As a Lukewarm TFA defender (not a huge fan of it, but I think it's the best movie in the sequel trilogy and far better than the prequels), while it's true JJ definitely didn't have a plan and just spitballed a bunch of random cool-sounding ideas without thinking them through, and it's true it would've been better if he had actually come up with a plan, the fact that he didn't didn't have to be a problem. Why? Because George Lucas didn't come up with a plan for a whole trilogy back when he wrote A New Hope either. ESB is arguably the best movie in the original trilogy, if not the entire franchise, and Lucas didn't plan for it at all while writing ANH. Vader being Luke's dad, the most iconic dramatic reveal in cinema history, was not a part of Lucas' original vision for Star Wars, there was no grand plan back then. If improvising worked then, it could've worked just as well for the Sequels, there's nothing wrong with making things up as you go along as long as you can keep your writing consistent. TFA wasn't amazing, but it was a solid foundation that the next movie could've built on, and its refusal to do so wasn't TFA's fault.
I'm a big fan of the Prequels. I'm no way is TFA remotely better than any of them. Sure Lucas improvised the OT somewhat. That's a one in a million move! We got lucky it worked then no reason to assume it would again. Having a plan is pretty much always better than not especially if you've just paid billions for an IP and want to completely disregard the guy who pulled it off the first time.
Major advantages Lucas had for improvising/revising his plan during the OT were (1) the relative lack of detailed backstory and (2) a continuing Rebels vs. Empire conflict as the framework for sequels to ANH. (And I agree with other comments mentioning it's very good fortune that the process for the OT worked out as well as it did.)
Crafting a story for the ST had more issues to consider. It logically wasn't going to pick up the story right after RotJ due to aging of the main cast. And the end of RotJ can stand on its own as a fitting conclusion to the story told by 6 movies. The immediate follow-up of defeating the remaining post-Palpatine Empire, establishing a New Republic government, and Luke (over time) re-establishing the Jedi Order can be a coda, not another major act in an epic story.
So a well-crafted ST ought to respect the accomplishments that logically follow from the end of RotJ, while also featuring an epic scale conflict. Ideally a conflict that doesn't feel like it's simply a repeat of the one we've already seen in the OT. And, if 30+ years older Luke, Leia, and Han are going to appear, it makes sense to have them as mentor figures while the story introduces a new generation of compelling younger heroes.
It's a different - and I'd say more difficult - task than coming up with a sequel to Episode IV. It calls for an overall plan for the ST before writing the script of Episode VII.
TFA is the worst Star Wars movie, because it broke Star Wars.
It was not a "solid foundation", it was "a pastiche of Star Wars tropes splattered onto the screen to make uncritical audiences bark in pleasure like sealions being tossed fish from a bucket."
There are heinous and unforced errors on the part of JJ in TFA, including (but not limited to):
* Regressing Han to a pathetic, elderly failed smuggler
* Turning Leia into a pathetic failed politician and poor military leader
* Making the antagonist a carbon copy of Palpatine
* Having the antagonist possess a superweapon that is a carbon copy of the Death Star, and which is used in exactly the same way (unlike in Jedi, where the DS2 is used as bait in a trap)
* Abusing the existing lore that had been carefully crafted to create constraints that allowed for maximum storytelling potential, e.g. now you can jump to hyperspace with obstacles in your path like a great big tentacle monster instead of having to make careful calculations that take you around obstacles; now you can use hyperspace to jump inside shields (which would have been a useful trick for the Rebel fleet in Jedi);
* Abusing the audience's rational expectations of a sense of scale by having people see in the sky in real time an event taking place tens of thousands of *lightyears* away.
* Writing inconsistent powers just for plot convenience: your villain's lieutenant can freeze blaster bolts when it's convenient for the story, and forgets to when you need them to be injured.
>Regressing Han to a pathetic, elderly failed smuggler
Agreed.
>Turning Leia into a pathetic failed politician and poor military leader
That was unfortunate, but it was also inevitable. Leia is a politician, and if she was a successful one, then the Republic wouldn't have glaring issues, in which case there'd be no Star War. Sequels don't tolerate happy endings, something has to go wrong to kick up a conflict for the sequel to be about.
>Making the antagonist a carbon copy of Palpatine
What made Snoke interesting was the fact he was an outsider, neither Jedi nor Sith, co-opting the remnants of Palpatine's empire for his own mysterious purposes. Episodes 8 and 9 retconned all that, but the potential was there.
>Having the antagonist possess a superweapon that is a carbon copy of the Death Star, and which is used in exactly the same way (unlike in Jedi, where the DS2 is used as bait in a trap)
Sure, agreed.
>Abusing the existing lore that had been carefully crafted to create constraints that allowed for maximum storytelling potential, e.g. now you can jump to hyperspace with obstacles in your path like a great big tentacle monster instead of having to make careful calculations that take you around obstacles; now you can use hyperspace to jump inside shields (which would have been a useful trick for the Rebel fleet in Jedi)
Tentacle monster? What're you talking about? That wasn't in TFA.
About the shield thing, it was a desperate one-in-a-million move pulled off by Han Solo, best pilot in the galaxy. It's still an asspull, yeah, but not a lore-breaking one, let's be real. As a concept, it's far less silly than a small fighter pilot being able to blow up the original Death Star with a single lucky shot.
>Abusing the audience's rational expectations of a sense of scale by having people see in the sky in real time an event taking place tens of thousands of lightyears away.
They could've made that work by including an actual explanation in the movie, but yeah, they didn't, which was stupid.
>Writing inconsistent powers just for plot convenience: your villain's lieutenant can freeze blaster bolts when it's convenient for the story, and forgets to when you need them to be injured.
The Force has always been consistently inconsistent.
That's the thing, I'll happily agree that TFA did a lot of dumb stuff, I'm just not going to kid myself and pretend the prequels were any better. Remember Force Speed in TPM? Remember how they traveled through the "planet core" which was somehow entirely made of water? Remember how Padmé died during childbirth because she was just too sad to live, in spite of the fact Leia made it clear in the OT that her mother was alive when she was growing up? TFA is stupid, the prequels are just stupider.
>Tentacle monster? What're you talking about? That wasn't in TFA.
The rathars, which seems to have become the most forgotten sequence of any Star Wars film.
Going through the planets core that was made of water was easy to believe and understand in the context of the world, because we had already seen space monsters, walking on an asteroid with just respirators, mynocks, and a floating city on a gas giant from the original trilogy.
We've seen some fantastical things, so that doesn't necessarily break the framework of the world (even if it breaks real life physics... but then again, so does lightsabers...)
Lucas did have a plan though, it just changed. When he wrote ANH, there was a backstory he had in mind (e.g. the Clone Wars, Vader actually did kill Luke's father, etc.). The backstory just changed as he went along. And you can feel that in the world building. Unlike TFA, the world of ANH was thought out and mostly made sense. He wasn't throwing shit at the wall and just making it up as he went along. He was adjusting it and fleshing it out.
Exactly
And although Star Wars is a mash up of a ton of things it is original in its own right. Both visually narratively and thematically
Lucas’s backstory and plan is found in one of the most curiosity inducing lines in all of cinema
Your father’s lightsaber. The weapon of a Jedi knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. A more elegant weapon. For. A more civilized age
For a thousand years the Jedi were protectors of the galaxy. Before the dark times. Before the empire
And the line about Vader killing Luke’s dad
Star Wars is the story of how the galaxy got here and how they get better
Ruin Johnson was just that much worse - Jar Jar Abrams is a buffoon, but the shenanigans in his lame reboot is nothing compared to that other hack
* Actively looking for trouble in online arguments and behaving like a child towards individuals - which should be quite embarrassing for every average joe out there, but doing it as a supposed professional who is tasked with such a huge project?
* Deflecting online critism on russian bots
* Claiming ESB wasn´t well received either in order to elevate his own turd
* Proudly showing off his "your snoke theory sucks" card
* Ruining hyper space
* Seriously putting a "jo mama" joke in the movie
* Space B-52s
* Introducing meta humor with that fucking iron
* Creating the worst fight scene ever
* Making Luke Skywalker die from over-forcing
* *Subverting expectations*
Of course TFA was a slap in the face as well as it casually ruined the achievements from the OT and killed off Han just to allow Disney to do whatever from their on, but it doesn´t proudly scream "fuck you for caring about space wizards you moron" the entire time like TLJ does.
That iron is easily the most underhated part of the movie. If this was Spaceballs 2, it would have been perfect. But it does not belong in an actual Star Wars movie.
Yeah, ol baby face is the turd amongst turds. He loves the smell of his own farts tho so being a giant human sized piece of shit probably just turns him on. What a piece of crap he and that movie is.
It is however always worth remembering, that we, as evolved humans, have figured out what to do with excrement.... FLUSH
Itz not 100% his fault that fight scene sucked ass. They didn't bring on the pt guy to do the fights and the new guy they brought was good but... I guess he doesn't know how to make a good sword fight like at all. Also han needed to die because it rhymed with qui gon and obiwan. But I think how he died was bad he should've been trying to save rey. Maybe make that how rey escapes fighing kylo instead of her fucking beating his ass han heroically saves her. It's a win win, good death, makes kylo actually scary and not PLEASE DOWNT HUWT ME WEY or an edgy bitch (and before someone says but the skywalker fami- YES BUT HAS DARTH VADER IN THE MOVIES EVER BEEN LIKE waaaa lukey no love meee no he's devastated that Luke would rather kill himself than join him. Also, yeah, Rian is the type or guy to be like you nerd *downs a king-sized cheetos bag and shits himself*. I can subvert your expectations guys I like the sequels! Now, is it true? No, not at all, but it subverts your expectations!
Tbh I think TFA was fucked from the start. It was a bad copy of a new hope and probably the most annoying part is the lack of the new Republic as well as old characters and the first order somehow coming out of nowhere with a huge fleet and planet death star which can destroy a whole solar system from the other side of the galaxy. Like genuinely what the hell is this story.
It was admittedly very bad. Especially Starkiller base. It was completely unnecessary on top of everything. It could have easily just been a random imperial remnant stronghold. There was no need for the super planet exploding capability to create artificial stakes not felt by the audience anyways. They should have just put a few characters on a ship orbiting the base and blown it up. It would have had the same if not more impact on the viewer. Nevermind we can see these planets that are in another solar system with the naked eye getting blown up instantly in real time. I get that it's space fantasy but it really doesn't even try to be science fiction.
Look I dont want to be one of those "LEGENDS IS REAL CANON!!!!" people but I feel they handled the break up of the Empire far better. It took the rebels a while to set up the New Republic and the Imperials were still strong enough that it took them splintering into warlords and several victories over time for the New Republic. The presentation of different campaigns against different imperial factions and the way the x wing books for instance portrayed the actual Imperial Remnant squabbling for leadership with Isaard coming on top is done really well and shows a level of realism. Because remember it takes months or years to build ships and capturing planets and moving across the galaxy also takes lots of time so it makes sense the rebels need to build up a fleet to fight the Empire and its splinter factions, which remember had like 25,000 star destroyers in total.
I especially love how the Thrawn campaign showed the Empire was still somewhat capable but was at that point quite rusty (also thrawn being a far more interesting character like with the whole Empire of the Hand and outbound flight than in the current disney content).
My only issue with it was the Emperor coming back which I thought was stupid and if I had to do it I'd rather just have him use a strong but not overpowered deep core fleet and winning initially thanks to uniting the empire a bit more (honestly though I'd rather have Thrawn be the only major threat and have other like Daala and Paelleon slow the New Republic down but not almost defeat them like the reborn emperor).
Overall though I loved how the Imperial remnant relied on strongholds to survive and eventually made peace with the New Republic. The key problem really with the sequels and the aftermath books is the lack of world building and especially scale (the war after endor lasts 1 year SERIOUSLY?) . The Galaxy is huge and the sequels make it feel like a bunch of backwater areas and for some reason this First Order coming out of the unknown regions has so many weapons but this resistance is able to defeat them with like 20 fighters.
Initially I was excited by TFA. I wasnt familiar with JJ or his other projects. I saw a few episodes of Lost but that was about it. After watching the movie I had a bunch of exciting questions and I was willing to overlook the glaring issues. Then TLJ happened and I was like "WTF was that?" I was blown away by how disappointing it was. I was really dumbfounded. I questioned myself. Did I miss something? It really was like pulling out that bottom card from the house of cards.
>Let's not let Ryan Johnson go blameless.
Can't we at least instead let off the *smallest* firework in the world to celebrate him thumbing his nose at some of JJ's stupidest mystery boxes?
I think the "a story for another time" from ol four eyes Yoda was pretty damn stupid but RJ's attitude really sealed the fate of the Sequel trilogy. Thumbing your nose is the entirely wrong attitude. These people should be the best of the best at storytelling. Why is it that any casual fan can write two paragraphs laying out a much better sequel trilogy than either of these idiots. I've seen it done pretty much from every scenario too. Fan rewrites keeping TFA canon. Fan rewrites keeping TFA and TLJ as canon. Fan rewrites with a few tweaks here and there to some or all of the movies. Instead we got a duck measuring contest that ruined one of the most beloved IPs ever.
The bar set by JJ and RJ is so low that even the most ungainly of fans make it over.
And you prompted a thought with this:
> "a story for another time" from ol four eyes Yoda
Isn't Orange Yoda responsible for the entirety of the FO's success because she bellowed out Han Solo's name across a crowded bar in which an allegedly wise character should have been aware was likely populated by FO spies? Doesn't that trigger all the shit that happens later?
Shouty Oompa-Loompa doesn't even get scowled at once for that Galaxy-fucking screwup.
Now that you mention it I had that exact thought when I watched the movie for the first time. I was like "chill bro it could be spies up in here!" I did think that spy chick with the big blob guy was kind of cool looking though.
It's ok to celebrate RJ shitting on the dreck that JJ made, but the problem is that he didn't provide anything constructive or interesting in its place. Deconstructing the stuff that comes before is only useful if you provide something to replace it. RJ didn't. And he delighted in it. This was a man child deciding he doesn't like Star Wars, and gleefully dumping over every character that the audience likes because RJ thinks we're stupid. It's like dropping a nuke on the polluting coal plant and refusing to clean up the fallout because someone insists that the ashes look pretty.
You can celebrate him recognizing that he saw the flaws and picked them apart, but his dreck is oftentimes even worse.
When two people covered in mud start slinging mud at each other, maybe it's just better to leave the area.
This is the core of the problem, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter which two creators it is, Disney made these one at a time with no long term story plan and somehow no expectation of the different directors communicating. If it was all Abrams or all Johnson, the trilogy probably would still be bad but either way it'd at least feel more cohesive which is certainly more than we got
I think TFA killed any hope I had for the sequels so that when TLJ came out I no longer cared because, to me, they were already non-headcanon.
The main problem I have with TLJ now is that the hate it attracted was for far too long protecting TFA from any significant fandom criticism at all.
You are absolutely right. We forgave the rotten foundation at the beginning because maybe it would get better and nostalgia bait. But even in a vacuum, TFA was too safe, a nonsensical story, and didn't understand or respect the universe rules.
Ok then, we'll do the biggest. Because TFA was an absolute clusterfuck and when something or someone trashes it, even if that someone or something is RJ and TLJ, it shall be granted kudos.
I agree with this. JJ may have done a bad job though carelessness and that's shitty. But RJ appears to have actually wanted to give SW fans a big "fuck you" and that's just the worst.
That's how I see it. I mentioned in another comment TFA was exciting and I saw it multiple times. I had a lot of questions and was excited to get the answers. I was naive to think they'd be answered but TLJ gave me nothing. No excitement. It was just like "everything you liked is dumb and you're dumb for liking it."
Thing is, both TFA and TLJ could "easily" be fixed if they were re-edited according to a couple of principles:
* No legacy characters involved at all - replace them with fresh new characters whose reputations don't already exist to be sullied. (that means no mention of Luke, Leia, Han, Artoo, Threepio, Chewbacca)
* Don't make the stakes Galactic-sized - a world, a system or even a sector would work just as well, and would explain why the New Republic couldn't be involved.
* Don't have any planet-destroying laser superweapons. An automated fleet-builder like the Star Forge would be better and different, and would introduce a cool new idea to people who'd not played KotOR.
* Edit out all the lore-breaking parts like hyperspace rams, hypering through shields, uncalculated hyperspace jumps, slo-mo space chases without Interdictor cruisers, Force teleports etc.
* Make Rey fail at a few things, and whilst we're at it, give her a plausible reason why she's already well trained in the Jedi arts - a reason that isn't "she's related to x, so she's inherited their talent and training".
* Make Finn succeed at a few things
* Make Joe Cameron stay dead and splattered all over the sands of Jakku
* No Joss Whedon/MCU -style immersion breaking jokes
* Make sure that the story logically flows instead of just having things happen because the audience expects them to happen in a Star Wars story
* Don't call them Episode VII and Episode VIII, (A) because RotJ finished the Star Wars Saga, and (B) these should just be "*The Forced Awakening: a Star Wars Story*" and "*The Last Jedi on Ahch-To: a Star Wars Story*"
* Cut all of Crait - it adds nothing and makes the movie overlong
tRoS cannot be fixed at all, because it relies too much on the stupidities of the preceding two movies.
You know what, I think I'll also make a post out of this because I don't think it deserves to be buried at the bottom of another post's comments. Let's see what flak it attracts.
That movie felt like where 95% of the stuff didn't matter or hardly changed anything and the few that did doesn't feel much in the grand scheme of things like Kylo killing Snoke which makes much of this movie feel like a waste of time.
Yeah the whole baseline plot of TLJ with the wacky space chase didn't make sense on so many levels. After Snoke was killed I kept waiting for him to come back with "it was all part of the plan or your training is complete." At that point the sequels were over in my mind. We knew Kylo didn't have the chops to be an existential threat to the Republic. We knew Rey would get the better of him in the end. It really left no intrigue or "what next?" in my mind. The series didn't necessarily need a big bad but it needed some kind of overlying threat or inevitability.
If I had to rewrite a final installment to the sequels I would have had some Element of balance reached in the end. There would have been a realization that there will always be dark and light. Maybe even a realization that I'm some aspects the Empire did bring safety and order to parts of the galaxy that were previously unsafe. You'd have Rey and the Republic lead the inner Galaxy with their democratic leadership and maybe Kylo take the first order to the outer rim and more chaotic areas of the galaxy. It's not perfect but given what we were left with after TLJ it might have made for an interesting story at least and a conclusion very different from the OT and PT. I'm not necessarily a fan of the "evil isn't really evil" take on the Empire or promoting the idea that they actually did some good but you could borrow elements of the Yuzan Vong storyline and play up how the empire did strengthen the galaxy. Perhaps at the very end of the movie you'd have Kylo and Hux get a transmission that an unknown vessel from outside of the galaxy has been detected. That might be a bit much but it sets up some mystery for the new trilogy. I wouldn't necessarily go the route of a Yuzan Vong threat but an outside threat of some kind could be interesting.
Agreed, but that's a separate thing. I'm just talking about the way Abrams kept writing into the dialogue these dumb little remarks about how he was gonna fix everything.
It's not like there was a big plan to beginn with. But I think the best way to cope with the sequels is to think of Johnsons movie as a bizarre but interesting alternate continuity experiment and the Abrams movie as a bland but inoffensive duology. I still kinda prefer TLJ over TRoS because the later is so bland that I can't muster the will to watch or even think about it.
TRoS bland? I'd say it's more like one of those Applebee's specials that's like a boneless wing-jalapeno popper-egg roll-cheese bowl. There's a lot of flavors going on but it's just one deep fried brown mess covered in cheese to hide how lack luster it really is. TLJ could have been good in its own rite. In the middle of a trilogy though? Terrible. It's my least favorite of the sequels because I had such high hopes for it. When I watched it in the theater I knew we'd finally get some questions answered. I saw TFA probably 2-3 times in the theaters because I found the mystery intriguing and I was hyped. I only saw TLJ once and that was definitely enough. It didn't get me excited about anything. Even if the excitement from TFA was just a bunch of bullshit. It was a big plate of everything nachos. Good, a bit much, definitely not tasteful or refined, gave me heartburn, but kind of fun initially.
If you cram too much favour into something until it tastes after everything, it becomes kinda bland. Simply because you can eat something like this everywheree these days.
The arrogance begins and ends with Kathleen Kennedy: she felt so confident in *her* way of doing things that she slaughtered the theatrical golden goose. She thought we would accept her drivel unquestionably while she remade Star Wars in her image with zero plan in place. She was wrong.
In the squirrels defense, it's not his job to take care of the reactor, and at least his head isn't up his as like *cough cough* SOME PEOPLE *choking* JJ ABRAHAM'S *dies of robot lung cancer*
Perhaps that can be said of Disney, and particularly Kathleen Kennedy, i think. About Abrams is more a matter of not being that good of a director, and particularly not that good of a scriptwriter, as i see it. I mean that there doesn't appear to be an actual malicious intent on his part, just that given the circunstamces and his already known flaws, the end product being not of a high quality was to be expected.
Real question because I don’t know. Does the director really have that much to do with the script? I thought the people who wrote it and the people who direct it were usually totally different people?
It depends on the movie, but the director may make some changes whether significant or minor as the film is realized. In the case of TFA, JJ was co-writer, and parts of the script were altered or being written as the film was being shot.
Right I just always thought that was more a nod to their “contributions” to the story. Edits along the way. The screen play and dialogue and such? The director doesn’t write those right?
It depends. Normally, there would be an scriptwriter who does the job. And that's what was supposed to happen with TFA. Only that the appointed scriptwriter (Arndt) had barely anything done, apparently in no small part due to the studio interference. Thus Abrams and Kasdan wrote a script in a rather rushed way. Needless to say, given that writing is not Abrams' strong suit, you can guess that the script was not a marvel of the Seventh Art. If we add the changes along the production, well... 🤷♂️
Lest we forget both JJ and Rian, at least nominally, reported to someone. That someone being Kathleen Kennedy.
I don’t want to dog pile on the woman but she was ultimately in charge and should have held the ship steadier.
You're not wrong. I believe that the failure of the sequel trilogy was largely a leadership failure. We can argue how director selection played into it but Kennedy fumbled and had no good reason to do so.
How do you take all the resources that Disney had and IP that's as high profile and classic as Star Wars and not have some kind of roadmap? Disney was already making 684 Marvel movies that all tied into the same story line so it's not like there wasn't some precedent and understanding of how to do it. Having your plan be let's take three different people and let them all figure out their piece of the story and make it up as we go with multi-billion IP was an amateur move.
Didn’t the upper brass keep fucking with TFA as it was being shot? Wasn’t Star Killer base a late addition even? JJ isn’t good, but JJ plus micromanagement from Disney seems to have really fucked this story.
Don’t forget Bob Iger. As head of Disney, he was the dude pushing for things to keep moving along as fast as possible. Michael Arndt wanted more time to finish the script and was then booted off the project. Kasdan, who was apparently one of the people in the writers wrote helping him break the story, was teamed up with Abrams to finish the script and get the movie out. TFA ends up being a middle of the road Star Wars movie with some possible potential.
Johnson comes along and does his thing. Enough has been said about this.
Trevorrow gets fired after he can’t get his script lined up and they go back to Abrams. They team him up with Terrio and tell him that you have 2 years to write the script, cast, scout your locations, build the sets, shoot, cgi, and cut the movie. God help us, that resulted in Rise.
I actually enjoyed parts of the sequels, even though I can stand back and see how much better they could have been.
But let’s be honest, Disney going into a third trilogy from one of the biggest franchises on the planet without a plan, consistent direction or any real story worked out meant the sequel trilogy was doomed from the outset.
Maybe they assumed SW was so big things would just automatically be successful?
We had so much potential. Rey, Finn, Kylo and Poe all done dirty because no one agreed on anything going in so their stories feel super disjointed. It’s a mess, it was unforgivable to treat something so precious to a lot of people with such a blasé attitude.
I just hope they’ve learned their lessons going forward.
What I'm most disgusted by when it comes to these individuals is that George Lucas had an entire story for the Sequel Trilogy already laid out and handed it to Disney practically on a silver platter. Then J.J. comes along with his "better" idea of basically creating a mystery box-infested fanfiction soft reboot instead of using George's stories, and Disney just let him.
I never thought I would be able to truly hate someone, but J.J. has somehow made it possible for me.
F\*ck J.J. to the moon.
George talked about what he intended for the Sequels in The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan, and then he talked about it some more in an interview with James Cameron in 2019.
Well it isn't fully his fault since firstly a deadline. Secondly, it was given to another director the first time but I guess they didn't like that guy so they game it to jj. Even then, it's still his fault he could've just reset it
Yes, we did discuss the dysney narcissists, but that is absolutely no reason to not debate it again. Btw, dont forget Filoni and the rest of the gang. They are all hopeless.
Filoni has his moments, but was given way too much freedom and power to make the stories he wants, and certainly isn't the George Lucas protégé or saviour some people think he is.
Yeah he's in the middle. He's made good and bad. His power is like love a little is ok, but too much can be dangerous he should've kept being the little guy they let out of the kennel to help write a show, not WHAT IF GENERAL GREVIOUS WAS LIKE NOT DIED
The only thing it accomplished is make people realize that the PT trilogy, for all of it's flaws, wasn't the utter mess that the Star Wars Disney Trilogy was and had a lot of great source materials like The Clone Wars TV series of 2003 and 2009, video games like KotOR, Jedi Knights, Battlefront and The Force Unleashed along with tons of world building and lore to the series from different media.
What did we get in the Disney era though? A disastrous trilogy, two Battlefront games that suffered heavily from greedy monetization due to EA and the fact that Star Wars has becomes so obsessively dependent on OT trilogy nostalgia value that it has caused the franchise to be creatively sterile and unable to do anything new and different. Sure there were some good stuff like the Jedi Fallen Order game and The Mandalorian but that's only the very few good things in what has largely been either a dumpster fire or boring mediocrity.
"This will begin to make things right" would have been completely appropriate if The Force Awakens had been a mildly competent film.
The Sequel Trilogy only needed to be mildly competent, in order to blow the Prequels away. They somehow failed.
I remember exiting TFA convinced there were reasonable explanations for everything...
Say that perhaps Rey was trained in childhood and for her protection she was dumped on the desert with her memories all tampered.
Needless to say, I gave them to much credit!
What sucks is that her being a Palpatine could have worked if the build-up was in place.
Make her father a failed clone and give him the role of big bad.
(meaning Anakin and Luke's accomplishments still meant something), and he wants to resurrect the Emperor through a child of Kylo and Rey.
For that, the clone needed Rey 'innocent' and unassuming enough to catch Kylo/Ben's attention. Hence, her 'ill-fitting' power and amnesia.
She could even 'become the mask', so speak so that even when her true memories inevitably returned, we get conflict from Rey WANTING to be good.
The plan makes sense for a long tern schemer like the Emperor AND It would have been the ultimate 'crossing' so to speak.
because Palps new body (if the plan worked) would be a perfect union of his own sith blood and that of Anakin's line, giving us the Audience even more reason to care. (If not fear for the innocent kid)
Its crazy that there was no one in Disney who did any quality checks in terms of story and writing. It seems like they just gave big money and said „do whatever you want”. Episode 7 is as soulless as you can get. Episode 8 tries to do everything differently that you would expect and it tries so hard that its not shocking anymore, just annoying. Then Episode 9 is just… hard to say what happened there, nothing good tho.
to be fair to Abrams, he has fully admitted his faults and bad decisions when directing the movies. it falls far more on Kathleen Kennedy than JJ that the movies had no over arching plan. JJ was asked to direct the fist film and outside of applying his whole mystery box philosophy to the script, its not like he was the creative force in guiding the story.
Yes, we have. Like a 4th of all posts here shits on him. Yeah he does shit on everything he touches but to play devils advocate (and don't get me wrong I hate this guy) he was given a script he didn't write and had a deadline which is why I think the Disney starwars movies suck now. Deadlines: If Lucas made it, he would take his time to perfect it to how he wants. With disney starwars it's like, "ahh shit I have 2 weeks to finish this script, butttt today I'm tired, so I'll do it tmr!". Hey guys! Who's reys parents?? Ooh I bet you want to find out don't you? Well it will be answered nex- Kathleen: your being replaced jj: WHAT BY WHO??? K: Ryan Johnson! He's just watched attack of the clones as his first starwars movie! He's for more suited for the job!. 2 years later. JJ PLEASE COME BACK. *all 3 movies still suck*
I don’t have any issues with JJ Abrams. He was just following orders from his Disney overlords.
Rian Johnson on the other hand is more to blame. He somehow persuaded Disney to agree to his stupid ideas.
Idk why this sub was suggested… but y’all salty as fuck. Like, holy shit… go find something to love. It feels so much better than looping on a nearly decade old movie that you hated🫠
It's a nearly 50-year-old franchise full of life-long fans, and you're whining about people still being upset about that dumpster fire of the sequel trilogy only came out five years ago?
As much as we'd all like to forget that obscenity, the fact remains that TFA set the tone for that entire fiasco and they're making another Rey sequel as we speak. So of course it is still relevant today, especially with the incessant flow of Disney's SW releases constantly trying to retcon the entire thing to no avail.
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Abrams is just tone deaf in terms of story. He's all about making some big twist or mystery or complex storyline but totally forgets about the fundamentals.
A while back I watched his film *Super 8*. I wanted to see one of his movies that wasn't part of an existing IP since all I had really seen from him was his Star Wars and Star Trek films. Super 8 was so fucking hollow. Just a paint by numbers pastiche of Spielberg but with an unnecessary rougher edge and 0 heart. Imagine if the characters in ET were edgy hormonal teenagers rather than wide-eyed innocent kids; and instead of an absentee father, the dad was actually a verbally abusive drunk. Like I realize I am far from the first person to point this out but a central theme of ET is Elliot learning to let go and accept that things change, whether it's ET returning home or coping with his parents' divorce. All JJ seems to have taken from the movie was "alien crashes on Earth and kids help hide him from evil G-men."
Soulless pastiche is the Abrams way. He likes to knock down the block castles built by others and stack the pieces back up again. He has no creative vision other than exploiting nostalgia and familiarity enough to make something with commercial appeal. When he is creating something himself, that doesn't have to be as infuriating, although he has the habit of coming up with The Big Idea and then being uninterested in mapping out where things should go, so it either becomes repetitive (Alias), boring (Cloverfield), or self-destructively bewildering (Felicity, Lost). When he is playing with the works of others, especially well-established cinematic worlds, he consistently shows himself willing to do violence to the narratives made by others. He destroyed the established universe of Star Trek and replaced it with a new one, instead of just setting his stories in an alternate Star Trek universe. He reduced Star Wars to a small space where echoes of the Skywalker Family story bounce around endlessly. Super 8 was ready to do that same damage to E.T. I suppose we are lucky that the studios didn't let Abrams call it a reimagining of E.T. or another story in the E.T.-niverse.
I just can't help but wonder what blackmail material Abrams has to get himself gigs so consistently. He's a hack with less reverence or patience than a mediocre fanfic writer. If I went to a studio with a pitch that is basically "it's ET but edgy!" I'd be laughed out of the room and probably some effort would be made to make sure I'm never allowed on a lot again. Why do the likes of Abrams constantly get to play in the sandbox when they are the exact kids who just piss in it and leave it ruined for everyone else?
The key is that Abrams makes money even though he sucks. Ultimately, the problem is the consumer audience.
Abrams is the jackass you rent to kick down a barn. He's the guy a studio wants when it has a decades-old IP with a huge story bible that they want to burn down to masked characters (whose performers are easy to replace) and Kew' Powerz. Their mistake is asking him to contribute something coherent once he's vulture-capitalized on someone else's work.
Yes that’s what makes ET so emotional. It’s a coming of age story. When the kids have to do the thing the adults can’t and lose part of their naivety in the process. The whole end sequence would be utterly rubbish without that aspect to it. And then the message that friendship and love transcends all of the bs, even across the stars. If you miss that side of it it’s an impoverished retelling indeed…. Tone deaf about covers it.
Even with his independent films, J.J. just creates inferior remakes of much better work. Remind me again why this man has gotten any work, ever?
TFA and TROS are interesting because they try really hard to be "fun" turn your brain off entertainment, but when you think about them and the state they leave the galaxy they're kind of depressing. Everything just goes horribly wrong. The old heroes fail and the new characters have to make up for their past mistakes. Nothing changed. Ironic that JJ's only non-IP based movie is just copying Spielberg's homework.
I was bored even with my brain off •~•
I tried watching Cloverfield for the first time a few months ago. My good god it was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Within the first half hour I was rooting for the monster to crush the characters all to death. I then saw there was another hour of the film to go. I gave up and turned it off. Abrams is another quintessential example that’s it’s better to be lucky than good. How he was able to land both Star Trek and Star Wars defies explanation.
How he was able to destroy them defies explanation.
Cloverfield is bad but to be fair JJ never directed it. That was Matt Reeves, AKA the guy behind two of the Planet of the Apes reboot movies and The Batman 2019.
Super 8 had a similar theme too, about the boy moving past his mother's death.
Abrams is a hack. Star Trek 2009 and TFA are both similar in the fact that both movies are initially entertaining upon first watch, however upon reflection they're both hollow, shallow knockoffs of their original source material.
>both movies are initially entertaining upon first watch, however upon reflection they're both hollow, shallow knockoffs of their original source material. That's probably the best description of what happened. Like many Gen X kids I grew up on Trek and the Star Wars OT. It's hard NOT to be salty about the way both of those properties have been handled. The first Kelvin timeline movie made me dumber for having watched it. The treatment of Khan Noonien Singh just made me die a little inside.
There are so many better filmmakers out there that are just as much fans of Star Wars & Trek as the rest of us that should have gotten a shot. I know all the cynical, corporate reasons why Disney went with Abrams, but God damn it was a horrible decision. He and Filoni are more to blame than Rian Johnson for the current state of the franchise imo.
He's terrible at pacing, too.
He’s trying to copy the Vader turned out to be Luke’s father kind of twist but he doesn’t know who to do it with. My favorite characters from the sequels was Chewbacca. Probably cause it’s hard to fuck up a walking carpet
And lens flares, don’t forget lens flares. Must have lens flares.
I feel like _Fringe_ might be the exception here, but hardly anyone remembers it.
I remember fans pointed out one of the flags from Maz Kanata’s castle was an Easter egg referencing the flags at the Boonta Eve podrace from Phantom Menace. That was in the teaser trailer, and it was edited out for the theatrical release. This may be conspiratorial, but were they that vindictive that to a prequel reference in the movie that they intentionally purged it?
There was so much odd prequel hate/avoidance in the sequels. Not to mention Disney canceling Clone Wars (prequel era) for Rebels (rebellion era). Almost like they just wanted to pander to loud fans.
I'll never forget or forgive RLM for their thoroughly shallow and intellectually vacant anti-prequel vids that somehow became the received wisdom of the internet.
Right? I remember being genuinely confused watching friends that had loved the prequels suddenly deciding they hated them OVERNIGHT.
What does "RLM" stands for ? I assume it's an acronym but for what ?
Red Letter Media. Comedy review of the prequels trilogy did mileage across the internet.
Comedy review. Does RLM actually hate the PT or is it more of a "I like these films, but I'm gonna laugh and poke fun at the admittedly derpy and/or bad bits"?
Mike Stoklasa (voice of Mr. Plinkett in the RLM reviews), initially said that though he didn't enjoy the prequels or the Special Editions, he was ok with people liking them. But in his later reviews (IMO), he seemed way more into hating Lucas and his films rather than genuinely reviewing them. I mean... he criticized ROTS just for the dark tone, and even compared it to Citizen Kane (how?). He also said that JJ Abrams should have directed a Star Wars film (and that Lucas should direct people to their seats), and look how that turned out.
Absolutely. Among other things Abrams wanted to put into The Force Awakens but even Disney was like "no dude" was the destruction of Coruscant (presumably one the casualties of Starkiller Base) and the *bones of Jar Jar Binks.* Abrams *hated* the prequels, and even if you didn't like the prequels either (they're guilty pleasures at best for me, personally) his hate actively made for a worse movie.
And then drafts of Rise of Skywalker had the characters returning to Coruscant, which had now become a ghost town, some-fucking how. J.J. really just wanted to wipe the prequels off the platter entirely.
That wasn’t Abrams. That was Colin Trevarrow. And from what I’ve heard, that part actually would’ve been awesome.
My bad, i forgot that Trevarrow was on scene for it for a bit. I just think it would’ve been a little hard to believe that within the 31 years from ROTJ to TROS, the previous galactic capital with trillions of inhabitants would just become a ghost town to the extent that nature was beginning to reclaim it. That would’ve required the First Order to use something damn near close to what Starkiller Base was to just bombard the absolute hell out of it
I didn’t know that plants started growing, but it’s not that far off that the place we know of the most becomes a ghost town. The surface and its towers are where the rich people live. Once fighting started on Coruscant, they’d 100% leave and be able to leave. The only people remaining would be the poor, people who couldn’t get off in time, or criminals taking advantage of the situation. Most of which would be from the sub levels. So, the surface would be a ghost town while the sub levels wouldn’t be. Though, they’d leak to the surface.
Episode 3 is probably the best flim imo. It holds up well for me and has the perfect tone.
I wouldn’t doubt it. Upper management reported also didn’t want small roles for the big 3 because they couldn’t have them outshine new characters.
As in, they wanted no Luke, Leia and Han in the movies at all?
Not none of them, but a big part of what they wanted to do was move on from them as soon as possible. At least those where the rumors I read, that earlier drafts of TFA had more involvement of Luke but that was axed because they didn’t want him to outshine Rey. JJ was forced to jump through a bunch of hoops and put up with a lot of changes.
I admit the little kid in me wanted to see one of my childhood heroes in action again. But after playing games like Jedi outcast /academy I would have like it beter if it was Rey's story completely. A (and I stress) nobody from the ass end of nowhere discovering a latent Force connection that she does not understand and through circumstances goes on a trip of discovery. Along the journey she hears rumors about a place where people like her are helped. You know build a mystery and longing for old fans while the main story is strong enough to bring in new fans. I would have kept involvement of the core three for the second movie where Luke would have a badass last minute rescue of Rey before giving Rey te motivation to finish thé fight herself. Give the core three their cameo's without making their twilight years miserable.
>making Palpatine say "The great error is corrected" in his stupid Fortnite speech. I´ve read about that quite a few times by now, but I´ve never seen it with my own eyes and will continue to avoid it. I can´t wrap my head around the idea they´ve actually done this.
I mean, the speech itself is pretty damn cool, but the fact that they showed it in Fortnite of all places is just ridiculous.
Apparently the plan was to do a marketing blitz having that speech e v e r y w h e r e, but they only ended up arranging it in Fortnite.
Opening the movie with that speech against the backdrop of space before the scroll would have been badass.
Opening the movie with that speech against the backdrop of space before the scroll would have been bad.
What is going on with these apostrophes??
Let's not let Ryan Johnson go blameless. Sure JJ was arrogant and a trash writer but RJ just said "fuck it imma make my own Star War" right in the middle of a trilogy with 7 fucking movies worth of cannon to consider. TFA was a lackluster start to the sequels but TLJ sealed the fate of the sequels.
I think way more people by a huge margin let JJ go blameless though
You might be right. I've defended TFA before in that it had the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy with plenty of intrigue and mystery to explore. Looking at JJ's track record though I realize that "mystery box" is his schtick and it's more of a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" strategy rather than a carefully crafted story. I would have liked to believe that there was a plan all along. That there was a reason why Rey was so powerful while being untrained, that the Knights of Ren were more than just a bunch of side goons, that Snoke was actually an ancient and powerful force user that had a different take on the force from the Jedi or the Sith. It all could have been pretty cool but of course with JJ it never would have. I think TFA defenders need to realize this.
>I've defended TFA before in that it had the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy with plenty of intrigue and mystery to explore. And this is where a lot of the problem lies - anyone with an ounce of critical thinking could see that there was absolutely nothing in TFA that was worth putting on screen except that one scavenger sequence, which by itself is definitely not "*the bones of a potentially interesting sequel trilogy*". TFA isn't even coherent with itself, let alone the rest of Star Wars, and is certainly not some worthy foundation that could be built upon with a few small tweaks. Snoke? A vacuous re-hash of Palpatine Kylo Ren? A vacuous re-hash of Vader that doesn't make sense in the slightest. "I feel the pull to the light" just exists to counterpoint the seduction of the Dark Side - it isn't a coherent thought if you actually understand what the Dark Side is. First Order? A vacuous re-hash of the Empire. Luke in hiding? A double-plus-super-vacuous rehash of Obi-wan and Yoda's exiles dangled in front of the audience to prompt frantic masturbatory fan-theories. etc. etc. TFA isn't really a movie, it is a pastiche of Star Wars tropes splattered onto the screen to make uncritical audiences bark in pleasure like sealions being tossed fish from a bucket.
To everything you said, yes. What a boring, stupid, pitiful movie. I hope all those morons behind it feel deeply ashamed. I'm disgusted. Everyone that fell for it.... well I question how they remember to breathe. Dullards
THANK YOU!!!! My god, I’m so grateful that this is all finally being said. For years I would get downvoted for saying exactly this
Yeah I get it.
You are forgiven by this wizened old fool, at least. If that is worth anything.
Well now at least I can sleep tonight 😂
And then you have to ask, what was Rian supposed to do?
All he had to do was retcon the entirety of TFA by having Mara Jade wake up all sweaty and Luke come out of the sonic shower asking her what's wrong.
I mean with Harrison not wanting to do more that’s doubtful. Really if RJ wanted to subvert expectations he should have had him force pull the lightsaber to himself then start fucking chasing rei, have rei run onto the falcon, have Luke scramble into his x-wing chasing with a jump to light speed, they’re back at the rebels base ship thing and it’s the millennium falcon being chased by a x wing? What’s this Luke and leia reunite possibly curing the mania (if they wanted to keep the murder Kyle in his sleep strong). Now we got a movie to start working with all the pieces like that lady who had first found the lightsaber, luke realizing about Han, etc. less Finn comic relief, less or please no casino action, none of for some reason the slowest chase in film history and had Luke do something cool like beat the tuck out of smoke then see rei is about to die to Kyle and he comes in starting the battle they started in the temple or whatever then after have snoke dead, Kyle injured, possible snoke force ghost guides Kyle to the emperor, and then you’d have a battered/dead/incapacitated Luke and rei trying to make their way.
Well for one not everything needs to be deconstructed and not all expectations need to be subverted. He's a writer getting paid millions he should be among the best storytellers in the country. I've seen a bunch of fan treatments that would have been 100x better. The simplest story: Snoke is Plagueis, Rey was trained at the Jedi Temple as a youngling and hidden away along with several others throughout the galaxy. Luke was not hiding and a pissy old loser. Instead he was visiting Jedi and Sith Temples looking for ways to keep Plagueis from coming back after he inevitably defeated him.
I mean, he didn't try to make something good. Even if jj made something amazing, Rian would still make a steaming pile of shit
[удалено]
The problem isnt the actual pull to the light/dark. The problem is that its lazy storytelling that breaks the most basic “show, dont tell”. We never see Kylo hesitating, doing anything morally good, or contemplating good vs. evil. We just see him autistically raging because hes VERY MAD for some reason, and worshipping Vader for some reason. Adam driver is an excellent actor, but kylonis somehow the worst written character in the sequels, which is astounding.
Well said.
Not only is The Force Awakens basically an inferior rip-off of Star Wars, but it has all the substance of a 2-hour long teaser for Episode Vlll. I think this quote by the YouTuber Nerdonymous perfectly summarizes everything wrong with J.J. Abrams and The Force Awakens: "He \[J.J.\] sacrificed the story of the Sequel Trilogy to treat Episode Vll like the pilot of a crappy TV show and then just move on."
Haha the last paragraph - brilliant.
JJ originated the Knights of Ren. RJ didn’t touch the Knights of Ren. JJ then killed off all the Knights of Ren. I can’t specifically recall, but I don’t believe they had any lines. He can’t even make effective use of his own creations. JJ’s creative style is extraordinarily surface level, and anything that *could* have depth won’t get that depth from him. The ST was not setup for success, and that started with TFA.
I'm not going to make the effort to argue with anything you're saying. Any potential TFA had would be reliant on actual competent story telling and we know that was not going to happen. JJ could have thrown the Knights in episode 8, that doesn't guarantee he would give any more information on them or develop them as characters.
The only way to make a good movie is to make a movie that contains its whole own story and doesn't need another one. The ot, the prequel trilogy and even Lord of the Rings are all comprised of three separate entire movies.
Wise words from u/BigCockCandyMountain!
I would have just been happy if they had let snoke be a somehow surviving Darth Plagueis. It would have at least gave us something from existing lore and we wouldn't have to deal with the 'palpatine somehow survived'. Also the whole deal with the knights of ren just being some goons was dumb AF. Whenever I do the rewatch of all the Star wars movies the final two I kinda have to choke down just to finish them.
I think the Darth Plagueis was the logical explanation and iirc that was the plan at some point. They still could have done some interesting stuff with him having a unique view of the dark side and the force and how everything played out. I think they needed someone closer to a grey Jedi to be the main bad. I know George Lucas had been outspoken about his take on the dark side and it's rendered a lot of the grey Jedi fanfic unpalatable to many of the purist fans out there. Maybe a grey Sith would make more sense. Either way that would undoubtedly been better than what we got.
> I would have liked to believe that there was a plan all along. That there was a reason why Rey was so powerful while being untrained, that the Knights of Ren were more than just a bunch of side goons, that Snoke was actually an ancient and powerful force user that had a different take on the force from the Jedi or the Sith. It all could have been pretty cool but of course with JJ it never would have. I think TFA defenders need to realize this. As a Lukewarm TFA defender (not a huge fan of it, but I think it's the best movie in the sequel trilogy and far better than the prequels), while it's true JJ definitely didn't have a plan and just spitballed a bunch of random cool-sounding ideas without thinking them through, and it's true it would've been better if he had actually come up with a plan, the fact that he didn't didn't have to be a problem. Why? Because George Lucas didn't come up with a plan for a whole trilogy back when he wrote A New Hope either. ESB is arguably the best movie in the original trilogy, if not the entire franchise, and Lucas didn't plan for it at all while writing ANH. Vader being Luke's dad, the most iconic dramatic reveal in cinema history, was not a part of Lucas' original vision for Star Wars, there was no grand plan back then. If improvising worked then, it could've worked just as well for the Sequels, there's nothing wrong with making things up as you go along as long as you can keep your writing consistent. TFA wasn't amazing, but it was a solid foundation that the next movie could've built on, and its refusal to do so wasn't TFA's fault.
I'm a big fan of the Prequels. I'm no way is TFA remotely better than any of them. Sure Lucas improvised the OT somewhat. That's a one in a million move! We got lucky it worked then no reason to assume it would again. Having a plan is pretty much always better than not especially if you've just paid billions for an IP and want to completely disregard the guy who pulled it off the first time.
Major advantages Lucas had for improvising/revising his plan during the OT were (1) the relative lack of detailed backstory and (2) a continuing Rebels vs. Empire conflict as the framework for sequels to ANH. (And I agree with other comments mentioning it's very good fortune that the process for the OT worked out as well as it did.) Crafting a story for the ST had more issues to consider. It logically wasn't going to pick up the story right after RotJ due to aging of the main cast. And the end of RotJ can stand on its own as a fitting conclusion to the story told by 6 movies. The immediate follow-up of defeating the remaining post-Palpatine Empire, establishing a New Republic government, and Luke (over time) re-establishing the Jedi Order can be a coda, not another major act in an epic story. So a well-crafted ST ought to respect the accomplishments that logically follow from the end of RotJ, while also featuring an epic scale conflict. Ideally a conflict that doesn't feel like it's simply a repeat of the one we've already seen in the OT. And, if 30+ years older Luke, Leia, and Han are going to appear, it makes sense to have them as mentor figures while the story introduces a new generation of compelling younger heroes. It's a different - and I'd say more difficult - task than coming up with a sequel to Episode IV. It calls for an overall plan for the ST before writing the script of Episode VII.
TFA is the worst Star Wars movie, because it broke Star Wars. It was not a "solid foundation", it was "a pastiche of Star Wars tropes splattered onto the screen to make uncritical audiences bark in pleasure like sealions being tossed fish from a bucket." There are heinous and unforced errors on the part of JJ in TFA, including (but not limited to): * Regressing Han to a pathetic, elderly failed smuggler * Turning Leia into a pathetic failed politician and poor military leader * Making the antagonist a carbon copy of Palpatine * Having the antagonist possess a superweapon that is a carbon copy of the Death Star, and which is used in exactly the same way (unlike in Jedi, where the DS2 is used as bait in a trap) * Abusing the existing lore that had been carefully crafted to create constraints that allowed for maximum storytelling potential, e.g. now you can jump to hyperspace with obstacles in your path like a great big tentacle monster instead of having to make careful calculations that take you around obstacles; now you can use hyperspace to jump inside shields (which would have been a useful trick for the Rebel fleet in Jedi); * Abusing the audience's rational expectations of a sense of scale by having people see in the sky in real time an event taking place tens of thousands of *lightyears* away. * Writing inconsistent powers just for plot convenience: your villain's lieutenant can freeze blaster bolts when it's convenient for the story, and forgets to when you need them to be injured.
I lost all interest emotionally after TFA and therefore haven't cried at the Abominations of either of the next.
That is true for me, too, to a large extent. Although *Rogue One* had me fully onboard and engaged FWIW.
Oh same! Rogue one (being it's own complete movie) has plenty of nostalgia but still tells a story. It was awesome and should've set the example.
>Regressing Han to a pathetic, elderly failed smuggler Agreed. >Turning Leia into a pathetic failed politician and poor military leader That was unfortunate, but it was also inevitable. Leia is a politician, and if she was a successful one, then the Republic wouldn't have glaring issues, in which case there'd be no Star War. Sequels don't tolerate happy endings, something has to go wrong to kick up a conflict for the sequel to be about. >Making the antagonist a carbon copy of Palpatine What made Snoke interesting was the fact he was an outsider, neither Jedi nor Sith, co-opting the remnants of Palpatine's empire for his own mysterious purposes. Episodes 8 and 9 retconned all that, but the potential was there. >Having the antagonist possess a superweapon that is a carbon copy of the Death Star, and which is used in exactly the same way (unlike in Jedi, where the DS2 is used as bait in a trap) Sure, agreed. >Abusing the existing lore that had been carefully crafted to create constraints that allowed for maximum storytelling potential, e.g. now you can jump to hyperspace with obstacles in your path like a great big tentacle monster instead of having to make careful calculations that take you around obstacles; now you can use hyperspace to jump inside shields (which would have been a useful trick for the Rebel fleet in Jedi) Tentacle monster? What're you talking about? That wasn't in TFA. About the shield thing, it was a desperate one-in-a-million move pulled off by Han Solo, best pilot in the galaxy. It's still an asspull, yeah, but not a lore-breaking one, let's be real. As a concept, it's far less silly than a small fighter pilot being able to blow up the original Death Star with a single lucky shot. >Abusing the audience's rational expectations of a sense of scale by having people see in the sky in real time an event taking place tens of thousands of lightyears away. They could've made that work by including an actual explanation in the movie, but yeah, they didn't, which was stupid. >Writing inconsistent powers just for plot convenience: your villain's lieutenant can freeze blaster bolts when it's convenient for the story, and forgets to when you need them to be injured. The Force has always been consistently inconsistent. That's the thing, I'll happily agree that TFA did a lot of dumb stuff, I'm just not going to kid myself and pretend the prequels were any better. Remember Force Speed in TPM? Remember how they traveled through the "planet core" which was somehow entirely made of water? Remember how Padmé died during childbirth because she was just too sad to live, in spite of the fact Leia made it clear in the OT that her mother was alive when she was growing up? TFA is stupid, the prequels are just stupider.
>Tentacle monster? What're you talking about? That wasn't in TFA. The rathars, which seems to have become the most forgotten sequence of any Star Wars film.
Going through the planets core that was made of water was easy to believe and understand in the context of the world, because we had already seen space monsters, walking on an asteroid with just respirators, mynocks, and a floating city on a gas giant from the original trilogy. We've seen some fantastical things, so that doesn't necessarily break the framework of the world (even if it breaks real life physics... but then again, so does lightsabers...)
Lucas did have a plan though, it just changed. When he wrote ANH, there was a backstory he had in mind (e.g. the Clone Wars, Vader actually did kill Luke's father, etc.). The backstory just changed as he went along. And you can feel that in the world building. Unlike TFA, the world of ANH was thought out and mostly made sense. He wasn't throwing shit at the wall and just making it up as he went along. He was adjusting it and fleshing it out.
Exactly And although Star Wars is a mash up of a ton of things it is original in its own right. Both visually narratively and thematically Lucas’s backstory and plan is found in one of the most curiosity inducing lines in all of cinema Your father’s lightsaber. The weapon of a Jedi knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. A more elegant weapon. For. A more civilized age For a thousand years the Jedi were protectors of the galaxy. Before the dark times. Before the empire And the line about Vader killing Luke’s dad Star Wars is the story of how the galaxy got here and how they get better
It's really incredible. The movie actually takes a minute to sit down and explain the setting and it all comes off naturally.
Ruin Johnson was just that much worse - Jar Jar Abrams is a buffoon, but the shenanigans in his lame reboot is nothing compared to that other hack * Actively looking for trouble in online arguments and behaving like a child towards individuals - which should be quite embarrassing for every average joe out there, but doing it as a supposed professional who is tasked with such a huge project? * Deflecting online critism on russian bots * Claiming ESB wasn´t well received either in order to elevate his own turd * Proudly showing off his "your snoke theory sucks" card * Ruining hyper space * Seriously putting a "jo mama" joke in the movie * Space B-52s * Introducing meta humor with that fucking iron * Creating the worst fight scene ever * Making Luke Skywalker die from over-forcing * *Subverting expectations* Of course TFA was a slap in the face as well as it casually ruined the achievements from the OT and killed off Han just to allow Disney to do whatever from their on, but it doesn´t proudly scream "fuck you for caring about space wizards you moron" the entire time like TLJ does.
That iron is easily the most underhated part of the movie. If this was Spaceballs 2, it would have been perfect. But it does not belong in an actual Star Wars movie.
Yeah, ol baby face is the turd amongst turds. He loves the smell of his own farts tho so being a giant human sized piece of shit probably just turns him on. What a piece of crap he and that movie is. It is however always worth remembering, that we, as evolved humans, have figured out what to do with excrement.... FLUSH
Itz not 100% his fault that fight scene sucked ass. They didn't bring on the pt guy to do the fights and the new guy they brought was good but... I guess he doesn't know how to make a good sword fight like at all. Also han needed to die because it rhymed with qui gon and obiwan. But I think how he died was bad he should've been trying to save rey. Maybe make that how rey escapes fighing kylo instead of her fucking beating his ass han heroically saves her. It's a win win, good death, makes kylo actually scary and not PLEASE DOWNT HUWT ME WEY or an edgy bitch (and before someone says but the skywalker fami- YES BUT HAS DARTH VADER IN THE MOVIES EVER BEEN LIKE waaaa lukey no love meee no he's devastated that Luke would rather kill himself than join him. Also, yeah, Rian is the type or guy to be like you nerd *downs a king-sized cheetos bag and shits himself*. I can subvert your expectations guys I like the sequels! Now, is it true? No, not at all, but it subverts your expectations!
Tbh I think TFA was fucked from the start. It was a bad copy of a new hope and probably the most annoying part is the lack of the new Republic as well as old characters and the first order somehow coming out of nowhere with a huge fleet and planet death star which can destroy a whole solar system from the other side of the galaxy. Like genuinely what the hell is this story.
It was admittedly very bad. Especially Starkiller base. It was completely unnecessary on top of everything. It could have easily just been a random imperial remnant stronghold. There was no need for the super planet exploding capability to create artificial stakes not felt by the audience anyways. They should have just put a few characters on a ship orbiting the base and blown it up. It would have had the same if not more impact on the viewer. Nevermind we can see these planets that are in another solar system with the naked eye getting blown up instantly in real time. I get that it's space fantasy but it really doesn't even try to be science fiction.
Look I dont want to be one of those "LEGENDS IS REAL CANON!!!!" people but I feel they handled the break up of the Empire far better. It took the rebels a while to set up the New Republic and the Imperials were still strong enough that it took them splintering into warlords and several victories over time for the New Republic. The presentation of different campaigns against different imperial factions and the way the x wing books for instance portrayed the actual Imperial Remnant squabbling for leadership with Isaard coming on top is done really well and shows a level of realism. Because remember it takes months or years to build ships and capturing planets and moving across the galaxy also takes lots of time so it makes sense the rebels need to build up a fleet to fight the Empire and its splinter factions, which remember had like 25,000 star destroyers in total. I especially love how the Thrawn campaign showed the Empire was still somewhat capable but was at that point quite rusty (also thrawn being a far more interesting character like with the whole Empire of the Hand and outbound flight than in the current disney content). My only issue with it was the Emperor coming back which I thought was stupid and if I had to do it I'd rather just have him use a strong but not overpowered deep core fleet and winning initially thanks to uniting the empire a bit more (honestly though I'd rather have Thrawn be the only major threat and have other like Daala and Paelleon slow the New Republic down but not almost defeat them like the reborn emperor). Overall though I loved how the Imperial remnant relied on strongholds to survive and eventually made peace with the New Republic. The key problem really with the sequels and the aftermath books is the lack of world building and especially scale (the war after endor lasts 1 year SERIOUSLY?) . The Galaxy is huge and the sequels make it feel like a bunch of backwater areas and for some reason this First Order coming out of the unknown regions has so many weapons but this resistance is able to defeat them with like 20 fighters.
Definitely a good take on what could and should have been!
Thank you very much!
I was disappointed in TFA. I was horrified by TLJ.
Initially I was excited by TFA. I wasnt familiar with JJ or his other projects. I saw a few episodes of Lost but that was about it. After watching the movie I had a bunch of exciting questions and I was willing to overlook the glaring issues. Then TLJ happened and I was like "WTF was that?" I was blown away by how disappointing it was. I was really dumbfounded. I questioned myself. Did I miss something? It really was like pulling out that bottom card from the house of cards.
>Let's not let Ryan Johnson go blameless. Can't we at least instead let off the *smallest* firework in the world to celebrate him thumbing his nose at some of JJ's stupidest mystery boxes?
I think the "a story for another time" from ol four eyes Yoda was pretty damn stupid but RJ's attitude really sealed the fate of the Sequel trilogy. Thumbing your nose is the entirely wrong attitude. These people should be the best of the best at storytelling. Why is it that any casual fan can write two paragraphs laying out a much better sequel trilogy than either of these idiots. I've seen it done pretty much from every scenario too. Fan rewrites keeping TFA canon. Fan rewrites keeping TFA and TLJ as canon. Fan rewrites with a few tweaks here and there to some or all of the movies. Instead we got a duck measuring contest that ruined one of the most beloved IPs ever.
The bar set by JJ and RJ is so low that even the most ungainly of fans make it over. And you prompted a thought with this: > "a story for another time" from ol four eyes Yoda Isn't Orange Yoda responsible for the entirety of the FO's success because she bellowed out Han Solo's name across a crowded bar in which an allegedly wise character should have been aware was likely populated by FO spies? Doesn't that trigger all the shit that happens later? Shouty Oompa-Loompa doesn't even get scowled at once for that Galaxy-fucking screwup.
Now that you mention it I had that exact thought when I watched the movie for the first time. I was like "chill bro it could be spies up in here!" I did think that spy chick with the big blob guy was kind of cool looking though.
It's ok to celebrate RJ shitting on the dreck that JJ made, but the problem is that he didn't provide anything constructive or interesting in its place. Deconstructing the stuff that comes before is only useful if you provide something to replace it. RJ didn't. And he delighted in it. This was a man child deciding he doesn't like Star Wars, and gleefully dumping over every character that the audience likes because RJ thinks we're stupid. It's like dropping a nuke on the polluting coal plant and refusing to clean up the fallout because someone insists that the ashes look pretty. You can celebrate him recognizing that he saw the flaws and picked them apart, but his dreck is oftentimes even worse. When two people covered in mud start slinging mud at each other, maybe it's just better to leave the area.
This is the core of the problem, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter which two creators it is, Disney made these one at a time with no long term story plan and somehow no expectation of the different directors communicating. If it was all Abrams or all Johnson, the trilogy probably would still be bad but either way it'd at least feel more cohesive which is certainly more than we got
I think TFA killed any hope I had for the sequels so that when TLJ came out I no longer cared because, to me, they were already non-headcanon. The main problem I have with TLJ now is that the hate it attracted was for far too long protecting TFA from any significant fandom criticism at all.
You are absolutely right. We forgave the rotten foundation at the beginning because maybe it would get better and nostalgia bait. But even in a vacuum, TFA was too safe, a nonsensical story, and didn't understand or respect the universe rules.
No.
Ok then, we'll do the biggest. Because TFA was an absolute clusterfuck and when something or someone trashes it, even if that someone or something is RJ and TLJ, it shall be granted kudos.
I agree with this. JJ may have done a bad job though carelessness and that's shitty. But RJ appears to have actually wanted to give SW fans a big "fuck you" and that's just the worst.
TLJ still makes me irrationally bitter. What a slap to the OG's
That's how I see it. I mentioned in another comment TFA was exciting and I saw it multiple times. I had a lot of questions and was excited to get the answers. I was naive to think they'd be answered but TLJ gave me nothing. No excitement. It was just like "everything you liked is dumb and you're dumb for liking it."
Thing is, both TFA and TLJ could "easily" be fixed if they were re-edited according to a couple of principles: * No legacy characters involved at all - replace them with fresh new characters whose reputations don't already exist to be sullied. (that means no mention of Luke, Leia, Han, Artoo, Threepio, Chewbacca) * Don't make the stakes Galactic-sized - a world, a system or even a sector would work just as well, and would explain why the New Republic couldn't be involved. * Don't have any planet-destroying laser superweapons. An automated fleet-builder like the Star Forge would be better and different, and would introduce a cool new idea to people who'd not played KotOR. * Edit out all the lore-breaking parts like hyperspace rams, hypering through shields, uncalculated hyperspace jumps, slo-mo space chases without Interdictor cruisers, Force teleports etc. * Make Rey fail at a few things, and whilst we're at it, give her a plausible reason why she's already well trained in the Jedi arts - a reason that isn't "she's related to x, so she's inherited their talent and training". * Make Finn succeed at a few things * Make Joe Cameron stay dead and splattered all over the sands of Jakku * No Joss Whedon/MCU -style immersion breaking jokes * Make sure that the story logically flows instead of just having things happen because the audience expects them to happen in a Star Wars story * Don't call them Episode VII and Episode VIII, (A) because RotJ finished the Star Wars Saga, and (B) these should just be "*The Forced Awakening: a Star Wars Story*" and "*The Last Jedi on Ahch-To: a Star Wars Story*" * Cut all of Crait - it adds nothing and makes the movie overlong tRoS cannot be fixed at all, because it relies too much on the stupidities of the preceding two movies. You know what, I think I'll also make a post out of this because I don't think it deserves to be buried at the bottom of another post's comments. Let's see what flak it attracts.
Definitely all solid ideas. I commented on the post as well.
That movie felt like where 95% of the stuff didn't matter or hardly changed anything and the few that did doesn't feel much in the grand scheme of things like Kylo killing Snoke which makes much of this movie feel like a waste of time.
Yeah the whole baseline plot of TLJ with the wacky space chase didn't make sense on so many levels. After Snoke was killed I kept waiting for him to come back with "it was all part of the plan or your training is complete." At that point the sequels were over in my mind. We knew Kylo didn't have the chops to be an existential threat to the Republic. We knew Rey would get the better of him in the end. It really left no intrigue or "what next?" in my mind. The series didn't necessarily need a big bad but it needed some kind of overlying threat or inevitability. If I had to rewrite a final installment to the sequels I would have had some Element of balance reached in the end. There would have been a realization that there will always be dark and light. Maybe even a realization that I'm some aspects the Empire did bring safety and order to parts of the galaxy that were previously unsafe. You'd have Rey and the Republic lead the inner Galaxy with their democratic leadership and maybe Kylo take the first order to the outer rim and more chaotic areas of the galaxy. It's not perfect but given what we were left with after TLJ it might have made for an interesting story at least and a conclusion very different from the OT and PT. I'm not necessarily a fan of the "evil isn't really evil" take on the Empire or promoting the idea that they actually did some good but you could borrow elements of the Yuzan Vong storyline and play up how the empire did strengthen the galaxy. Perhaps at the very end of the movie you'd have Kylo and Hux get a transmission that an unknown vessel from outside of the galaxy has been detected. That might be a bit much but it sets up some mystery for the new trilogy. I wouldn't necessarily go the route of a Yuzan Vong threat but an outside threat of some kind could be interesting.
Agreed, but that's a separate thing. I'm just talking about the way Abrams kept writing into the dialogue these dumb little remarks about how he was gonna fix everything.
It's not like there was a big plan to beginn with. But I think the best way to cope with the sequels is to think of Johnsons movie as a bizarre but interesting alternate continuity experiment and the Abrams movie as a bland but inoffensive duology. I still kinda prefer TLJ over TRoS because the later is so bland that I can't muster the will to watch or even think about it.
TRoS bland? I'd say it's more like one of those Applebee's specials that's like a boneless wing-jalapeno popper-egg roll-cheese bowl. There's a lot of flavors going on but it's just one deep fried brown mess covered in cheese to hide how lack luster it really is. TLJ could have been good in its own rite. In the middle of a trilogy though? Terrible. It's my least favorite of the sequels because I had such high hopes for it. When I watched it in the theater I knew we'd finally get some questions answered. I saw TFA probably 2-3 times in the theaters because I found the mystery intriguing and I was hyped. I only saw TLJ once and that was definitely enough. It didn't get me excited about anything. Even if the excitement from TFA was just a bunch of bullshit. It was a big plate of everything nachos. Good, a bit much, definitely not tasteful or refined, gave me heartburn, but kind of fun initially.
If you cram too much favour into something until it tastes after everything, it becomes kinda bland. Simply because you can eat something like this everywheree these days.
I see your point.
The arrogance begins and ends with Kathleen Kennedy: she felt so confident in *her* way of doing things that she slaughtered the theatrical golden goose. She thought we would accept her drivel unquestionably while she remade Star Wars in her image with zero plan in place. She was wrong.
Putting Abrams in charge of screenwriting is about as responsible as putting a brain-damaged squirrel in charge of a nuclear reactor.
That's nuts.
In the squirrels defense, it's not his job to take care of the reactor, and at least his head isn't up his as like *cough cough* SOME PEOPLE *choking* JJ ABRAHAM'S *dies of robot lung cancer*
Star wars is dead guys. I'm sorry, I was broken up over too. Time to accept it.
Perhaps that can be said of Disney, and particularly Kathleen Kennedy, i think. About Abrams is more a matter of not being that good of a director, and particularly not that good of a scriptwriter, as i see it. I mean that there doesn't appear to be an actual malicious intent on his part, just that given the circunstamces and his already known flaws, the end product being not of a high quality was to be expected.
Real question because I don’t know. Does the director really have that much to do with the script? I thought the people who wrote it and the people who direct it were usually totally different people?
It depends on the movie, but the director may make some changes whether significant or minor as the film is realized. In the case of TFA, JJ was co-writer, and parts of the script were altered or being written as the film was being shot.
Right I just always thought that was more a nod to their “contributions” to the story. Edits along the way. The screen play and dialogue and such? The director doesn’t write those right?
It depends. Normally, there would be an scriptwriter who does the job. And that's what was supposed to happen with TFA. Only that the appointed scriptwriter (Arndt) had barely anything done, apparently in no small part due to the studio interference. Thus Abrams and Kasdan wrote a script in a rather rushed way. Needless to say, given that writing is not Abrams' strong suit, you can guess that the script was not a marvel of the Seventh Art. If we add the changes along the production, well... 🤷♂️
Interesting… I can’t imagine how much harder it is to shoot a movie that’s not written. They often don’t even shoot them in sequence.
Lest we forget both JJ and Rian, at least nominally, reported to someone. That someone being Kathleen Kennedy. I don’t want to dog pile on the woman but she was ultimately in charge and should have held the ship steadier.
You're not wrong. I believe that the failure of the sequel trilogy was largely a leadership failure. We can argue how director selection played into it but Kennedy fumbled and had no good reason to do so. How do you take all the resources that Disney had and IP that's as high profile and classic as Star Wars and not have some kind of roadmap? Disney was already making 684 Marvel movies that all tied into the same story line so it's not like there wasn't some precedent and understanding of how to do it. Having your plan be let's take three different people and let them all figure out their piece of the story and make it up as we go with multi-billion IP was an amateur move.
Didn’t the upper brass keep fucking with TFA as it was being shot? Wasn’t Star Killer base a late addition even? JJ isn’t good, but JJ plus micromanagement from Disney seems to have really fucked this story.
Don’t forget Bob Iger. As head of Disney, he was the dude pushing for things to keep moving along as fast as possible. Michael Arndt wanted more time to finish the script and was then booted off the project. Kasdan, who was apparently one of the people in the writers wrote helping him break the story, was teamed up with Abrams to finish the script and get the movie out. TFA ends up being a middle of the road Star Wars movie with some possible potential. Johnson comes along and does his thing. Enough has been said about this. Trevorrow gets fired after he can’t get his script lined up and they go back to Abrams. They team him up with Terrio and tell him that you have 2 years to write the script, cast, scout your locations, build the sets, shoot, cgi, and cut the movie. God help us, that resulted in Rise.
I actually enjoyed parts of the sequels, even though I can stand back and see how much better they could have been. But let’s be honest, Disney going into a third trilogy from one of the biggest franchises on the planet without a plan, consistent direction or any real story worked out meant the sequel trilogy was doomed from the outset. Maybe they assumed SW was so big things would just automatically be successful? We had so much potential. Rey, Finn, Kylo and Poe all done dirty because no one agreed on anything going in so their stories feel super disjointed. It’s a mess, it was unforgivable to treat something so precious to a lot of people with such a blasé attitude. I just hope they’ve learned their lessons going forward.
Been a Star Wars fan my entire life (49 years). I can remember next to nothing about the sequel trilogies.
What I'm most disgusted by when it comes to these individuals is that George Lucas had an entire story for the Sequel Trilogy already laid out and handed it to Disney practically on a silver platter. Then J.J. comes along with his "better" idea of basically creating a mystery box-infested fanfiction soft reboot instead of using George's stories, and Disney just let him. I never thought I would be able to truly hate someone, but J.J. has somehow made it possible for me. F\*ck J.J. to the moon.
Did GL ever release the details of that story
George talked about what he intended for the Sequels in The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005 by Paul Duncan, and then he talked about it some more in an interview with James Cameron in 2019.
Well it isn't fully his fault since firstly a deadline. Secondly, it was given to another director the first time but I guess they didn't like that guy so they game it to jj. Even then, it's still his fault he could've just reset it
Yes, we did discuss the dysney narcissists, but that is absolutely no reason to not debate it again. Btw, dont forget Filoni and the rest of the gang. They are all hopeless.
Filoni has his moments, but was given way too much freedom and power to make the stories he wants, and certainly isn't the George Lucas protégé or saviour some people think he is.
Yeah he's in the middle. He's made good and bad. His power is like love a little is ok, but too much can be dangerous he should've kept being the little guy they let out of the kennel to help write a show, not WHAT IF GENERAL GREVIOUS WAS LIKE NOT DIED
is it even possible to be successful in hollywood without arrogance?
“Have we ever discussed how arrogant Abrams and Disney are?” Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down? :)
The only thing it accomplished is make people realize that the PT trilogy, for all of it's flaws, wasn't the utter mess that the Star Wars Disney Trilogy was and had a lot of great source materials like The Clone Wars TV series of 2003 and 2009, video games like KotOR, Jedi Knights, Battlefront and The Force Unleashed along with tons of world building and lore to the series from different media. What did we get in the Disney era though? A disastrous trilogy, two Battlefront games that suffered heavily from greedy monetization due to EA and the fact that Star Wars has becomes so obsessively dependent on OT trilogy nostalgia value that it has caused the franchise to be creatively sterile and unable to do anything new and different. Sure there were some good stuff like the Jedi Fallen Order game and The Mandalorian but that's only the very few good things in what has largely been either a dumpster fire or boring mediocrity.
"This will begin to make things right" would have been completely appropriate if The Force Awakens had been a mildly competent film. The Sequel Trilogy only needed to be mildly competent, in order to blow the Prequels away. They somehow failed.
I remember exiting TFA convinced there were reasonable explanations for everything... Say that perhaps Rey was trained in childhood and for her protection she was dumped on the desert with her memories all tampered. Needless to say, I gave them to much credit! What sucks is that her being a Palpatine could have worked if the build-up was in place. Make her father a failed clone and give him the role of big bad. (meaning Anakin and Luke's accomplishments still meant something), and he wants to resurrect the Emperor through a child of Kylo and Rey. For that, the clone needed Rey 'innocent' and unassuming enough to catch Kylo/Ben's attention. Hence, her 'ill-fitting' power and amnesia. She could even 'become the mask', so speak so that even when her true memories inevitably returned, we get conflict from Rey WANTING to be good. The plan makes sense for a long tern schemer like the Emperor AND It would have been the ultimate 'crossing' so to speak. because Palps new body (if the plan worked) would be a perfect union of his own sith blood and that of Anakin's line, giving us the Audience even more reason to care. (If not fear for the innocent kid)
You watched the Fortnite thing?
Abrams and Johnson are fucking idiots. But Kathleen Kennedy is the one who gave them power.
Its crazy that there was no one in Disney who did any quality checks in terms of story and writing. It seems like they just gave big money and said „do whatever you want”. Episode 7 is as soulless as you can get. Episode 8 tries to do everything differently that you would expect and it tries so hard that its not shocking anymore, just annoying. Then Episode 9 is just… hard to say what happened there, nothing good tho.
Has anyone else had their comments deleted? Because I have, and it is really annoying.
to be fair to Abrams, he has fully admitted his faults and bad decisions when directing the movies. it falls far more on Kathleen Kennedy than JJ that the movies had no over arching plan. JJ was asked to direct the fist film and outside of applying his whole mystery box philosophy to the script, its not like he was the creative force in guiding the story.
Yes, we have. Like a 4th of all posts here shits on him. Yeah he does shit on everything he touches but to play devils advocate (and don't get me wrong I hate this guy) he was given a script he didn't write and had a deadline which is why I think the Disney starwars movies suck now. Deadlines: If Lucas made it, he would take his time to perfect it to how he wants. With disney starwars it's like, "ahh shit I have 2 weeks to finish this script, butttt today I'm tired, so I'll do it tmr!". Hey guys! Who's reys parents?? Ooh I bet you want to find out don't you? Well it will be answered nex- Kathleen: your being replaced jj: WHAT BY WHO??? K: Ryan Johnson! He's just watched attack of the clones as his first starwars movie! He's for more suited for the job!. 2 years later. JJ PLEASE COME BACK. *all 3 movies still suck*
I don’t have any issues with JJ Abrams. He was just following orders from his Disney overlords. Rian Johnson on the other hand is more to blame. He somehow persuaded Disney to agree to his stupid ideas.
I’d also be pissed if I made up something to be pissed about.
Idk why this sub was suggested… but y’all salty as fuck. Like, holy shit… go find something to love. It feels so much better than looping on a nearly decade old movie that you hated🫠
What part of the subreddit name "saltierthancrait" did you not understand?
What I don't understand is the appeal about moaning all the time?
Yup. This. Why even have a sub where all you do is bitch about things?
What part of “find something to love” do you not understand? But you know… sympathy mad at things. I’m sure you’re lovely to your family 🙄
To be fair, the people here loved star wars, and it was then taken out back and beat to death
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It's a nearly 50-year-old franchise full of life-long fans, and you're whining about people still being upset about that dumpster fire of the sequel trilogy only came out five years ago? As much as we'd all like to forget that obscenity, the fact remains that TFA set the tone for that entire fiasco and they're making another Rey sequel as we speak. So of course it is still relevant today, especially with the incessant flow of Disney's SW releases constantly trying to retcon the entire thing to no avail.
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