Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (spoilers obviously)

The short of it tends to be that they keep trying to ride the Star Wars concept rather than work with it, particularly in the main line. Marvel essentially takes characters and concepts that the general audience is not especially familiar with and reintroduces them in ways the writers need to ensure the audience accept, and while they have a habit of being safe and repetitive (less so nowadays), the stories are their own and there's a lot effort put into ensuring each movie is distinctive experience who explores new regions of the universe, with the crossovers then bringing all those threads together. It ties together as a plot. This ensures there's a product for every audience who might be interested in experiencing it, and allows it to sell itself as a household series.

With Star Wars, the team there responded to a series that everyone knows by attempting to give more of the same, presumably with the assumption that that was the safe option. Each film in the ST is marred by constantly centering themselves around triggering what people already know, and responding directly to audience reaction. This to a degree resulted in a mild problem of it being perceived as a trilogy for fans specifically, which ironically hurt their one attempt to branch out (Solo, though there were other factors), but also means the story is weaker because the focus isn't on the story itself but on that repackaging.

In short, the ST era of Star Wars has constantly been defined by broad assumptions of what the fans will react to, rather than in making their own story. But since they effectively just keep going through a checklist rather than commit to their story, they keep misfiring when those checklists don't line up well - especially in this one because it tries to "fix" everything while also concluding everything while also putting in a hip new twist to put butts in seats. I've long gotten the impression that for the main line of stories, the general ideology was "it's Star Wars, just do 'the Star Wars stuff' and people will eat it up."

And the fanbase isn't helping in, like, the slightest.

Meanwhile, all the best stuff has been outside the main line, outside that stigma to deliver what's expected. Rogue One (which stands out especially as it's ironically a far more successful run of "lets make an original story with OT theming," vs TFA), Solo, Fallen Order, Mandalorian, etc.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 19th 2020 at 10:29:50 AM

There's also the fact that almost all the Marvel movies are standalones. They may reference previous movies, and there may be a stinger that sets up future ones, but with only a couple exceptions, each MCU film establishes its own plot that's resolved before the end credits role.

The new Star Wars movies have either been trying to tell a huge, three part story (despite having no real plan or creative vision for the trilogy) or telling stories that are as much about providing backstory for other movies than with simply telling their own tale.

The worst Marvel movies do tend to be the ones that have to do setup duty for other movies, like Iron Man 2

I've felt that Rogue One was so well received because it was riding the TFA high audiences had, but was emblematic of the problems that plagued the sequel trilogy in that it was recycling more original trilogy story and imagery with no clear idea of what the story is or who the characters are (especially bad in that most of the main cast aren't actual members of the Alliance). Of all the movies, Solo tries a little harder by actually committing to the western genre, which meant it didn't have the same character and story bloat of Rogue One and the sequels.

Edited by KJMackley on Jan 19th 2020 at 10:55:48 AM

Honestly, I do think Phantom Menace is somewhat better than Rise of Skywalker. It's sloppier in its worst parts, but it at least basically knows what it's doing and sticks to landing better.

As a film, I'd rank Rise as the second-worst main Star Wars film after Attack of the Clones. However, I think Rise bad in a worse way than Clones was, in the sense that Clones was mostly just bad as a movie unto itself, without it really contaminating the rest of the series — Rise, by contrast, is bad in a way that retroactively makes Awakens and Last Jedi worse than they were originally.

It's like how people have said they find the early seasons of Game of Thrones difficult to enjoy after knowing how bad the finale ended up being. Knowing what they're leading up to makes it very difficult for me to appreciate either Force Awakens or Last Jedi, because Rise is such a sloppy finale that renders the previous movies pointless.

Best part of Phantom Menace is the big battle between the droids and the Gungans,that alone is what makes the film worth watching in my opinion

It has to be said again that TPM started off in the upper 60's RT score, only to drop after new reviews and re-releases.

All the prequels are more aware of the story and how it all fits together. Some fan edits have done some interesting things in tightening up some of the editing (remove most of the romance subplot from AOTC and it would be a nicely lean movie). I can't see a different edit of any sequel movie that would fix their basic story problems.

Also trade disputes.

See, I felt that was one of the oddities that mark it as different from the rest of the ST era, especially TFA.

TFA was a movie that was technically in an original era with an original set of characters, but was bogged down in trying to repeat and recapture the beats and elements - not just on a setting and aesthetic level, but on a plot and a character level - of the OT and so comes off as highly derivative.

Rogue One was actually set in the OT and tells a backup story to an OT movie, but focuses not on riding that OT connection but instead on its story and its message, resulting in even the OT characters that show up simply being supporting to its unique story, and so ironically ultimately ends up far more an original moviegoing experience because it doesn't actually recycle anything.

At the time, I used to joke that Rogue One was a far better run at doing what The Force Awakens tried to do than TFA was.

Solo, likewise, is a movie set in the original trilogy staring OT characters, but focuses less on being "an original trilogy movie" and more on encapsulating its primary idea of being a space western.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 19th 2020 at 11:36:10 AM

Phantom Menace’s main problem is a fraying narrative where there’s like four big plot threads at the end with wildly different moods

Also half baked concepts

But it had a strong core concept

Also Dual of the Fates.

I didn't like The Rise of Skywalker but I wouldn't say it's worse than The Phantom Menace, or Attack of the Clones. At its worst TROS is shallowly entertaining with absurd twists. It never gets boring or poorly acted like the prequels, and it has far fewer racial stereotypes (though not none *ahem* Poe's backstory). Phantom does have a stronger core plot, it's just hard to concentrate on when suddenly Jar-Jar or young Anakin pop up like a splash of cold water.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jan 19th 2020 at 11:46:59 AM

Young Anakin is definitely a writing decision that borked things

I think I'd put TROS lower than TPM, but then minus the occasionally horrible dialogue and the poor application of humor (best exemplified by Jar Jar), it's not too bad a movie. I always describe it as a subpar film with a good film inside constantly trying to get out.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 19th 2020 at 11:56:33 AM

Yeah, Kathleen Kennedy saying that making Star Wars movies is hard now because they got rid of all the EU material is dumb. The entire purpose of the story group that Pablo Hidalgo is head off is to bring stuff from the old canon into the new canon to work into stories.

Plus if you can't think of anything to make movies on without hanging onto the old EU that's a sign of lazy writing, not a problem with the franchise.

I feel bad for her because she has to cover for Abrams’ and the script writers’ dumb asses while being a team player

Edited by Bocaj on Jan 19th 2020 at 3:06:08 PM

I think Tierro recently stated that the reasons they did 9 films rather then 10 which would have paced themselves better is because that was Lucas' vision.....Which they had already thrown out his plans for the story before this

What a tool.

They didn’t really throw his plans away as much as all that

The way the ST unfolds takes a lot of inspiration from Lucas’ outline

Some stuff was tossed, others weren't. Exploring a Death Star ruin came from Lucas's drafts, the First Order wasn't. Rey came from Lucas's drafts, Finn came from Kasdan. Swapping the directors movie by movie came from the OT, but for different reasons.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jan 19th 2020 at 12:26:09 PM

With swapping directors in the OT.They at least didn't let them do whatever the hell they wanted with George at leadt supervising them. So why did that occur here.

Also Luke being a hermit like the his masters before him came from Lucas. And the idea of a scavenger hunt to find him.

Because Lucas was a perfectionist with Star Wars to the extent that it tanked his marriage and ruined his life?

Huh! Wish it hadn't been executed the way it was but interesting to know

Edited by Bocaj on Jan 19th 2020 at 3:43:27 PM

I also learned today that droid rights activism in Solo came from Lucas; apparently he was looking into the idea during the early 2000s.

Phantom's plot has the problem that it's mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The only events of long term importance are the discovery of Anakin by the Jedi and Palpatine being named head of the Senate, and one suspects that if Palpatine wasn't named head of the Senate due to the events of Phantom, he have found some other way to get the position. In particular, the trade federation and Darth Maul both amount to nothing (although the Clone cartoon somewhat remedies that, since it realized that it's a bad idea to kill off the most popular character in the movie.)

Yes, I'm downplaying the Battle of Naboo as not being important in the grand scheme of things. It's clearly less important than the discovery of the clone army in Attack of the Clones and Order 66.

I'd also argue that Phantom makes Attack of the Clones a weaker film, in a way that doesn't work in reverse; in particular getting rid of Phantom means you know longer have the squick of Padme first gaining a connection with Anakin when he's 9 and she's apparently 14 but actually looks like she's 18. (It says something about Phantom Menace, that I didn't actually know that Padme is supposed to be 14 in that movie.)

Kinda sad they played such an interesting idea for laughs. It could be a pretty interesting concept.

L-3 was a fucking joke.