Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I would've been fine with a flashback. but in this particular point, it's more of a criticism of the approach of the sequels than TLJ specifically.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I'm a big TLJ defender, and I think it's the best of the sequel trilogy, but with Andor, Tony Gilroy made the best of the new wave of Star Wars movies and shows.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

TLJ might be (and is) the "best of the sequel trilogy", but that's a really low bar. TFA was a watered-down remake of ANH, and TROS was utter swill. IMO Rogue One was better, and you could argue Solo being equally good or even better.

Kathleen Kennedy was charged with exploiting Star Wars as content. They immediately set out to produce a film a year, which was ambitious and altogether short-sighted. Plus all the shows, which were (with the exception of Andor [amazing] and the first two seasons of Mandolorian [great fun]) absolute hot garbage. They had fan favorite characters like Obi-Wan and Boba Fett and dropped them into absolutely lousy shows.

Not having a plan or a Kevin Feige-like "creative visionary" steering the ship was a massive mistake. They were just interested in cranking out product to generate immediate returns on the billions they spent on the property.

And it shows. You can't just slap STAR WARS!!! on something and expected the four-quadrant hordes to come stampeding. Sure TFA made $2 Billion but come on, that was the first SW movie in a decade, the first to feature the original trilogy main characters (never shown together) in 32 years, and that kind of excitement and build-up is going to make mega bank no matter what. But it was diminishing returns after that. Adjusted for inflation, Rogue One outgrossed Rise of Skywalker.

Solo was a box office flop. Which had never happened in the nine films that came before it (and the one that came afterward). And then there's Indiana Jones monstrosity, which was not only the first Indiana Jones to bomb, it bombed hard. Its $384M global gross was less than that of Black Adam's, at twice the budget (or more, as has been rumored).

I just don't see how anyone could characterize the Kathleen Kennedy reign over Lucasfilm as any kind of success or even innovative spirit. She simply was not able to capitalize on the momentum generated by TFA, nor (with exceptions of Andor, Rogue One, or two seasons of Mandolorian) deliver or sustain anything compelling to the table.

As I mentioned earlier, Star Wars remained best as a fun trilogy from the 70s/80s with fun heroes, villains, droids, and aliens, and should have just stayed there.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

This. This right here is a huge reason Kennedy wasn’t right for the job. How you manage to bring back the core three characters from the original trilogy to your movie and then DON’T reunite them, is complete negligence.

There are missteps and stumbles along every film franchise but to have Luke, Han, and Leia back I for the first time in decades and not bring them together on screen is inexcusable!

Of course, a lot of the mistakes in the sequel trilogy could have been avoided if they had just taken the simple step of creating an outline for the ST. I don’t know, that seems like Film Producing 101 to me. How you’re handed a multi-BILLION dollar franchise and don’t map out a story arc spanning three films you already know you’re going to make, is simply staggering!

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Hot take: If Han, Luke, and Leia were reunited, it'd be decried as a nostalgia bait wankfest.

Look at Jurassic World: Dominion and how that turned out. We can pitch a billion different things they "should have" done, but it all comes down to execution. Every Jurassic World movie has built upon previous installments, The Hobbit Trilogy was planned out, The Matrix and Pirates sequels were planned out. They weren't received well. So acting like there's some silver bullet that would fix all these problems you have is just tiring. I would argue that modern filmmaking is simply at odds with how Star Wars is done and what it's about.

Andor is probably as lauded as it is because Gilroy got a little more freedom and TV is a bigger deal now, so the production team could get a lot of workers with experience in prestige television, as well as an audience that is by and large more receptive to that storytelling medium.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

People still make that complaint about TFA (see: this thread) and I have no doubt they were aware it would be called that, so in my view they should have doubled down and made sure the big three got at least one scene together.

And to completely ignore the decades of novels, comics and games and starting the story over from scratch was foolish and lazy. Put together a creative team to do a deep dive into the lore and come up with a half dozen concepts pulled from all the old stories that could be adapted into movies. They didn't have to stick to the books without change, like they would dare make a Star Wars movie without Chewbacca, but to just not use any of them was utterly stupid.

Part of the reason I have a fondness for The Rise of Skywalker is that it very plainly lifted from the Dark Empire comics which has been one of my favorite stories for decades now.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

That's one complaint I hear that I didn't really have a problem with.

The Sequel Trilogy needed to be about the next generation of Skywalkers, the offspring of Leia/Han and Luke/???. As much as everyone wanted to the core trio (or quartet if we include Lando) to feature prominently in it, the story needed to be about the next generation of characters and not the old guard. Not to say that they shouldn't appear, but it needed to be done organically... Luke leads the new Jedi Order, Leia is president/chacellor of the New Republic, Lando is a businessman, Han is... I dunno.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Count me in. The Dark Empire series I have loved since first reading it.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

But…that’s what it is. TFA is one giant fan wank. If they didn’t want it to be, they wouldn’t have brought back the big three, or Chewbacca, or C-3P0, or R2-D2, or the Skywalkers in general.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

..and taken the entire plot from the first ("fourth") film.

And, arguably, that's what it needed to be at that time - the Prequels were/are not received well, so the Sequels deliberately went back to basics (but modern!) and leant hard on the same nostalgia factor that the Prequels deliberately courted, but - arguably - squandered.

Han met Leia, didn't he? So it's only hermit (as noted, echoing Yoda and Obi Wan) Luke who doesn't get to be reunited because a) he's solo and b) he was the cliffhanger to bring people back for VIII. If Harrison Ford had been amenable to sticking around a little longer in-film, maybe they'd have been reunited. If Carrie Fisher hadn't died in reality, maybe the Sequels could have hung together better. (Or if they'd killed Poe or... whatever.)

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I think there's a big difference between reuniting the characters on screen and building an entire movie around them. It didn't really fit with the story that they told, but I know I was kind of bummed that we never got to see Han and Luke interact at all. Or Han and Lando for that matter.

Otherwise I was fairly satisfied with the use of the legacy characters in the sequel trilogy. I didn't care for some of the stuff with Leia, but other than her flying through space in TLJ (which I hated), most of my problems were unavoidable given Fisher's passing. The Chewbacca fake out was also dumb, but I can't even remember which movie that was in, so it must not have been that big of a deal.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

It’s hard to say what could have been if Fisher hadn’t passed away. Based on what we saw though, I’m not sure they had much of a plan with her alive. And if they did have to drastically alter their plans for the Rise of Skywalker, well, maybe they shouldn’t have had their billion dollar franchise hinge on an aging coke head’s health.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

As much as I enjoyed the ST (still more than the PT), it's hard to argue they screwed the pooch not reuniting the OT characters one last time, especially knowing they were killing off Han in the first film. Having one scene would have been plenty to tide over most OT fans without being a "wankfest." We waited 30+ years to see our favorite characters again and they just killed them off one by one. It was a big "fuck you" to fans. I get wanting to move on to the next generation, but they absolutely did all three characters (and actors) a huge disservice.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

There was no need to have to reunite the main three. There wasn't a reason to have the separated in the first place. Shitty writing said that Han and Leia had to be split up and Luke was away pouting while everything they faught for fell apart.

Myself and millions of other kids probably had better continuations playing with our action figures after 1983 than the shit we got from Disney.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

https://i.redd.it/xuha0s0i9qva1.jpg

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I think I see what you're getting at, but first impressions of that image in a Star Wars thread, for me ,was along these lines:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/dvdtalk...a7b973d768.gif


But yes, season 3 of Picard gave fans the TNG reunion they wanted, although it should be noted that it took them until the 3rd season to do that, with many finding the first two seasons of Picard... lacking.

Also Picard could afford to become a TNG reunion, because Paramount had several other Star Trek shows that were taking the franchise in new and different directions. And it's telling that season 3 was the end of the show Picard, not a new beginning.

For the Star Wars sequels, they followed the template for "legacy sequel/soft reboot" that so many other film franchises have done, even the Star Trek film franchise. The point is to "pass the torch" to a new, younger cast of character that can keep the series going for a long while. If Eps 7-9 had done unconditionally well, I have no doubt Disney/Lucasfilm would've kept on and done another trilogy with 10-12, then maybe 13-15, etc. They only stopped because they whiffed the sequels so badly, and the Solo standalone got them scared about the spinoff films idea.

Patrick Willems has a few video essays on the Legacy Sequel that breaks down how they work, the rise of them, and how we might've reached "peak" Legacy Sequel, with so many coming out.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Nothing "stays there" anymore.

It's been 21 years since Serenity came out. I figure a Firefly reboot is due within the next five years.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I've never understood how (or why) Luke would take it on himself to singlehandedly restore a millennias-old galaxy spanning order of mystic space knights. But it's been a constant since the Legends era in the 90's.

Same with Han and Leia getting married and having kids. Simplistic "and they lived happily ever after" thinking.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Ki-Adi-Mundi . . . Rogue . . .

Greef Karga . . . ???

Bill Murray . . . Professor X . . . and don't know her, but I'd like to . . .


Worst Jedi Council movie casting ever?

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Middle row left is Kunta Kinte.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Bob Wheeler.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

I need this on a T-shirt.

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

This is the closest I could find.

https://www.galleryserpentine.com/cd...834&width=1445

https://www.galleryserpentine.com/pr...usion-meme-tee

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

Re: The General Star Wars Discussion Thread
 

It doesn't seem like a really compelling release, but I guess they want something out there to combat the bootlegs. People seem to search for the trilogy sets instead of just getting the individual releases:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bluray/comm...gy_on_blu_ray/

Interestingly, Disney released essentially the same set, with the same cover, in the UK in 2022:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-...lu-ray/313117/

Edit: Actually, the UK edition included commentary tracks and a disc of bonuses for each film, so the US release looks to be a stripped-down bare-bones version.