Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/03/05/post-mortem-the-new-star-wars-trilogy-wasnt-worth-it.html
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Who would have guessed letting disney write star wars while only caring about money would give a worse product than lucas writing star wars for both money and to tell a neat story.
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Are you saying the prequels are better than the new trilogy? I didn’t care for many of J.J.’s choices but at least he didn’t give us Jar-Jar.
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I believe the standard “you kids get off my lawn” opinion is that all the movies after Return of the Jedi are pointless cash-ins, with the possible exception of Rogue One.
And it’s not wrong, because you kids sure do need to get the hell off my lawn, dammit.
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At this point, I honestly like Jar Jar better than Rey.
They both have about the same level of character development, and they both have about the same level of plot importance.
But you see so much less of Jar Jar, that I think he pulls ahead.
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I rewatched the original trilogy on Disney+. Star Wars left me cold. Empire was still interesting, as was Return. Which leads me to believe that the reason Star Wars was such a big hit, was less about the story, and more about the care that was given to make it look believable. 40 years later, when I see a Star Wars film I get annoyed about how much energy it would take for all the anti-grav equipment to work.
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Yeah, star wars (by which I mean ep 4) isn’t a revolutionary story. It’s by no means the strongest installment.
I’m just saying there’s a difference between lucas and disney.
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I think the best take on the sequel trilogy was that each movie, by itself, was fine, and that it would have been really neat to see the other two movies in the trilogy that that movie was part of.
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Disney’s success with the Marvel approach could have worked a treat here, but they didn’t have someone who genuinely loved the franchise lead the charge. Kevin Feige makes great entertainment in a connected universe because he’s invested in it (edited to add: Feige loves the source material and making gonzo amounts of money, Kennedy only focused on one side of that equation)
If Filoni were in the right place and time to do the job, this retrospective would have been very different.
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My feelings on the new trilogy was that it had more enjoyable moments than the prequels but the complete lack of plot consistence between movies ruins the entire effort and makes it a really frustrating and disappointing set of movies to watch. It had every opportunity to be good and every decision made was the wrong one, meanwhile the people that actually worked behind the scenes and in front of the camera to make the movies did their best to make the best out of what they had. The leadership at Disney and the people helming the movies really let everyone down.
Given the choice i’d be happy not watching either the prequels or the sequels again. Mandalorian thankfully has been a breath of fresh air and i’m currently watching the Clone Wars series for the first time, hoping to get to Rebels later.
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I liked the lightsaber battles.
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Yeah I’m comfortable saying they are actually worse than the prequels.
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True. I rewatched the prequels. I enjoyed the world building. I didn’t enjoy the characters. George Lucas was all about the world building. Which I think is what the latest trilogy missed. They tried to reset the world to Star Wars (Ep4) and expand on the characters. Empire became First Order & the rebels remained the rebels. In the 40 years after Return, the First Order may have emerged, but the rebels should no longer be the rebels.
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Original Trilogy has a coherent storyline, Prequel Trilogy has a coherent storyline.
Rey Trilogy didn’t know if it wanted to be about Rey, about Ren, if it was about Rey going dark, about Ren going light, suddenly Emperor from nowhere…
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Say what you want, at least it’s an ethos!
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I wish I had a lawn to tell kids to get off of.
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Both are the best take on the prequels. The great part of Clone Wars is that its made of mini-arcs of no more than 4 episodes each. So a groaner of a story or Jar Jar centric one can be skipped and nothing is lost. Plus the animators ripped off at least 2 Alfred Hitchcock films in a cute manner.
Rebels starts off slow and silly but improves by the second season. (Plus Tom Baker makes a guest appearance towards the middle). The Mandalorian takes some story beats from Clone Wars and Rebels.
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Comparing Rey to Jar Jar feels like punching down. At least Rey’s main purpose wasn’t to step in space poop and spackle over all of the “ok, this is going to seem dumb even to our 8 year old target audience” bits.
As for which is worse, the prequel trilogy or the sequel trilogy. Well, the sequels had about a million times less old people standing still discussing the minutia of interstellar trade policy centered around hella racist looking aliens. But when the prequels conjured up an entire army out of seeming nowhere they at least tried to make it plausible. The prequels mostly tried to tell a new story, unlike the sequels that borrowed heavily from the original trilogy.
Talking about the gross profits from the movies doesn’t even touch on how Disney is fully committed into turning the franchise into a cash machine. Arguably the best modern Star Wars content is The Mandalorian, which is basically a giant money machine going brrrrrr down in Florida. The number of new D+ subscriptions alone is going to pay for that and more. Not to mention the avalanche of merchandising. Disney is going to cram Star Wars down our throats until we’re as sick of it as we were of Star Trek in the early 2000s.
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Agreed, but we should have known that it was going to be a mess when JJ took the helm. He made the Enterprise, a spaceship not designed for terrestrial flight, emerge from under an ocean and fly into space, all the while saving the Captain. Nonsense.
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I long ago came to the conclusion that I’m not generally the target audience for some of the Star Wars movies. The main target for any Star Wars film is kids with parents who will buy them toys. Star Wars (aka “A New Hope”) and Empire Strikes Back were my Star Wars films. Later kids had Ewoks and the prequels; they weren’t for me; however there were plenty of folk for whom those were their Star Wars Films. I enjoyed “The Last Jedi”; though it was a bit long for my old bladder.
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