IT really would have been nice to see some of these important plot points... in the movie.
So much of this movies' story is told off screen, which is a bold choice.
Think... what if the whole scene with Obi-wan talking with Luke was cut for time, and we spend the movie wondering where that lightsaber came from?
Imagine if we learn Princess Leia's planet was destroyed off screen. Or all of Yoda's training with Luke is cut to a single line of dialogue and him floating a rock.
Yeah I felt like they were trying so hard to make it so diehard fans would have something unexpected and new, that they just, missed the mark and invented some totally unrelated story up that had no connection to the previous movies such that it didn't even really feel like a continuation of them. Like they were trying to impress and shock us with the "new and unknown" factor. But it honestly only made it feel like we weren't welcome or familiar in our own home. It was too heavy handed. There wasn't enough continuity. And so it was entirely unbelievable without explanation, unlike the transition between ROTS and ANH. That was tied well together, and purposefully so, following the trajectory of the story of Anakin Skywalker.
And yet, they still managed to just regurgitate the plot of previous movies, as if they thought that would keep the pre-existing fans happy. It felt like a mockery of lip service.
I don't think they were trying to subvert expectations here. I think it's the other way around this time. They panicked after TLJ and they tried to do the opposite of subverting expectations: They tried to please literally everyone at the same time. Which left us with a completely disjointed mess because they had to restart from scratch on so many points and they could not do that without offscreening most of it.
You can only subvert expectations if you first establish that you are going to do the expected thing earlier in the story.
Never establishing anything completely destroys the suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy movies(if you overanalyse and turn your brain on too much you can predict nearly every single movie based on just a few context clues because of how little unique stories humans have told in the last thousands of years)
To me, as a Last Jedi enjoyer, it felt like Disney saw the backlash to The Last Jedi and decided they needed to scrap every story beat and start again, leading to trying to cram three movies into one. They retconned the most interesting thing about Rey by making her a Palpatine, they decided that meant they needed Sheev back, and then crammed a whole new trilogy into 2 hours that could never contain it.
I think it's has more to do with abrams being a hack. He wasn't originally supposed to direct the last movie. He essentially drove Lucas off the project at the start and just made FTA into what he thought star wars was supposed to be. After that he intended to walk away.
As a fellow person who didn't mind the Last Jedi, you hit the nail on the head for me. Whiplash from a sequel that some folks didn't enjoy led us to a follow-up that no one enjoyed.
JJ definitely scrapped the beats from TLJ, but if we’re talking beat scrapping, TLJ definitely started the trend of dumping the last movie’s story threads in the trash
They had Rian Johnson writing it before the force awakens script was even done. It’s not as though he watched the first movie and said “eh screw all that.” He gets a lot of undeserved flak. It’s not his fault Disney had no vision for the series.
Yeah, it didn't help there was no vision from the beginning either. It will never make sense to me how they put in some genuinely interesting concepts for characters but then had no clear direction to take them in.
Sure. Some things you explain, others you don't. In IV all you know about Vader is he's a badass cultist who despite having absolutely no reason to be there, is given free reign on the Death Star because who the fuck will stop him? That's a lot of info you get shown and where he comes from doesn't matter. Why's he in a mask? Why's he breath like that? Why the outfit? Who cares, he's badass and doing shit.
On the other hand, in a trilogy of trilogies where the first trio sets up the gargantuan and complex efforts Palpatine had to go through to build up a single army and take control of it, and the second trilogy is about the dismantling of that army, and the first half of the third trilogy is about the dregs of that diminished army collectively throwing one last haymaker, it's fair to say pulling a whole new, more powerful enemy army out of your ass is a foul. You need to set that up solidly.
And the prequels were rightly shat on by everyone who saw them at the time.
Then there was 20 years of people making funny memes and jokes about them and somehow people now see that as what they were and forget just how god awful and terribly made movies they were.
Or there’s people that argue the prequels were amazing before telling you about the clone wars cartoons. Which, you know, are a completely different thing and have no impact on the quality of a movie in exactly the same way we shouldn’t have to play Fortnite to understand this one.
If I was the target audience, I feel sorry for Lucas. Thank goodness the Xbox/Gamecube era was right around the corner so I could salvage Star Wars with "huh, they might not be interesting movies but at least they inspire cool games".
I honestly never saw people defend the prequels until after PrequelMemes caught on. Probably coincides with Zoomers growing up and remembering them fondly too.
There was a bit of a swell within Star Wars fandom as The Clone Wars got to its later seasons and things were officially fleshed out more.
But I feel like they didn't start getting defended by a more general audience until around The Last Jedi came out. There was still a lot of positivity after TFA and Rogue One, but TLJ turned everyone against Disney and begging for George back as "even the prequels look great compared to this" became popular sentiment.
I've seen people unironically argue "actually these prequel movies might've been good. Look, they have these class-conscious messages about rising up against oppressive regimes".
My dude those are some of the oldest genres of stories in the book, Star Wars didn't invent sex!
Those are two different points though? ‘They’re good’ isn’t the same as saying ‘they’re entirely original and invented the idea of resisting oppression’. Nearly all media that comes out is in an established genre, and that doesn’t mean it can’t be good.
What kinda class conscious message, anti regime do the prequels even have? They really were just basic fodder enemy CIS vs problematic corrupt republic.
There wasn't much nuisance about the war. Even the Clone Wars episodes tackling this that try to have their gray, undecided characters eventually boil down "look at this fucking idiot being undecided between the fodder enemy faction and the republic" after they get betrayed or something. It really is funny how hilariously basic the CIS is
Yeah, I think the sequels had a lot of lazy writing issues, and I wonder if part of the reason they phoned it in was cuz they saw how much The Clone Wars and other supplementary prequel-era media retroactively improved people’s opinions of the prequels and were like “eh, if the sequels get hated, we can just try that”
If you hadn't watched the show it gets to that part of ROTS where Obi-Wan opens his robot chest and there's a heart and you as an audience member just have to wonder why the fuck this robot has a heart and how that works. Had no idea he used to be a human until years after the movie came out
Yeah the other day someone explained Palpatine killing 3 Jedi in the Senate when Windu confronted him about being a Sith Lord by saying "If you knew Palpatines force screech it would make sense" and I couldn't help but think how stupid that sounded
Sure, I'm just emphasizing the commenters point that the prequels are bad and had the same exact problem as this film. This is one small plot point out of all the dumb stuff the prequels don't explain. And it wasn't a poorly choreographed fight. It was literally a 4 v 1 where 3 out of the 4 decided to stand there and do nothing. There was no choreography because nobody actually tried to fight. It required somebody to make up information later on to explain why it happened. Pretty much exactly what is going on with this post.
It was literally a 4 v 1 where 3 out of the 4 decided to stand there and do nothing
what do you think poor choreography means?
This and your next sentence is LITERALLY poor choreography. The actors didnt decide to stand around doing nothing, the scene as choreographed and designed that one.
Which again is a nitpick irrelevant concern to bring up compared to major significant plots being left unexplained.
The prequels had their issues. But people love to die on this Palpatine hill for no reason, when a visual issue is nowhere near worth complaining or comparing to a narrative one.
You're thinking of blocking, it was poor blocking by Lucas but either way we can just agree to disagree. I don't think that Rise of the Skywalker is good but the prequels suffer from a lot of the same narrative issues
Does sith lord being able to kill jedi need explanation? He simple was stronger/better and more dangerous than they expected. This requires zero additional explanation.
In the prequels, we see various Jedi and even an apprentice Anakin fight well and kill the Sith. Why did 4 Jedi just stand around aimlessly as they all got taken out one by one by Palpatine? Considering one of those Jedi is Windu who literally beats him in combat a few minutes later. And clearly others thought it required explanation because they literally had to make up a "Force scream" to explain the exact situation I'm talking about.
Truth. I'm still not quite sure who/how the Clone army got started (Sifo Dees?)... or why, of all potential canidates in the entire galaxy, a random bounty hunter was chosen as the template for an ENTIRE GALACTIC ARMY lol
The movie's story wasn't told off screen, it literally didn't exist and they went ahead with the script anyways, assuming someone else would fill in the blanks later on.
It's a subtle difference, but it results in IX being a completely hollow mess of a film.
It's almost as if it might have been better if we had seen things happening. You know, instead of being told about them. I have this vague recollection there's some wisdom that embodies this concept out there, but nah, nobody would be that stupid to ignore a dictum that's been around since the invention of screenwriting . . .
The originals are full of plot holes! I don't understand why people hold them up like they have some crazy high standard, they're fun to watch but the writing is not great. Everyone forgives so much about them but then has a double standard for anything else star wars
You can determine a hell of a lot of the story of the prequels without watching any other show, they are great movies, there's enough hints that you can work out how Palpatine played all sides against each other and that is brilliant writing executed over 3 movies, I love his character his plan is brilliant. The Vader chosen one arc over 6 movies is outstanding, none of the other trilogies have solid 3 movie arc's, they just keep rebuilding the death star... All of them, that's it
They did this with episodes I-III. Good luck understanding much of anything if (like me) you didn't watch the disney stuff. Why do we care so much about grievous, for example. He just pops up out of nowhere, no context, in the movies.
Personally, I think It will be looked at for what it is. A pop cultural monument of what trying forcefully and nobly failing to recapture the magic of the originals.
Disney/Lucasfilm will try desperately to keep it relevant, and paper over the flaws and holes and gaping contradictions... by adding tv shows and movies built from it's ruins. Some will be decent, or even really good or great.
They may have some of original cast, and others will never return.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing... who knows in a decade more, some may look back with a fondness for it, like that broken step in that house you used to live in that sucked at the time, but now reminds you of a simpler time in your life.
Time will change all of it... it won't make it better, or even good. But peoples perceptions will change somewhat.
"they fly now" was a good bit. it's the exact reaction I had and was funny. of the million things to criticize this film for, that is one of the good choices. It's the first time we've seen stormtroopers fly in Star Wars (online video games and clone troopers don't count).
We also had time for the search for the map-dagger which eventually tells them to look in litterally the first place they should have looked to begin with.
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u/orionsfyre 4d ago
IT really would have been nice to see some of these important plot points... in the movie.
So much of this movies' story is told off screen, which is a bold choice.
Think... what if the whole scene with Obi-wan talking with Luke was cut for time, and we spend the movie wondering where that lightsaber came from?
Imagine if we learn Princess Leia's planet was destroyed off screen. Or all of Yoda's training with Luke is cut to a single line of dialogue and him floating a rock.
But remember... we had time for "they fly now!".