Mine is they shouldn’t have made the sequel series without George as a consultant.
The prequels should have started with the Clone Wars, covering more of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship, with an occasional flashback to the earlier Anakin to fill in his past. Being a fan from the early years, I didn’t like the prequels that much initially, but the story grew on me after watching them a few more times later along with fan commentary over the years. What I do still think they suffer from is making Anakin’s fall too sudden, and if we got a better sense of how much he and Obi-Wan were brothers in spirit, the eventual fall would mean more. There would also be more room to develop the friction he observes with the Jedi Council, maybe even take things to a new level in why they don’t let him progress. I guess I basically see TPM as a wasted first part to better establish his character.
Watching the animated Clone Wars series makes the gap between 2 and 3 more palatable. You see Anakin grow in the force, but also see the darkness simmering. It also shows the cracks in the Jedi order and lays the groundwork for doubt in their unimpeachable wisdom.
Like, if you just watch the movies, Yoda is basically Muppet Jesus. Anakin seems like a petulant child refusing to eat his vegetables and jumps right to murdering children. If you watch the series, it colors in all the shades of gray.
The only good thing that came out of the prequels was the pod racing game on the Nintendo 64.
Now THIS is podracing!
they shouldn’t have made the sequel series without George as a consultant.
That is a lukewarm take at best.
My lukewarm take is that the original Star Wars should have been a one and done movie. Perhaps, a longer movie with some elements from Empire Strikes Back to wrap some storylines, but not more.
I never found the original trilogy to be that great or influential as it is made out to be. In my opinion, it does not fully deserve the level of reverence and importance it receives.
They should have had a trilogy story arc planned out before making the new movies made the directors play within that.
For episode 7 it looked like they had a plan and the made a huge turn and all the beats from the first movie just fizzled
How do you know “somehow Palpatine returned” wasn’t the plan from the beginning?
Because JJ Abrams never knows how he wants to end anything at the beginning.
My hot take, is that star wars pieces of media are only considered “good” if the viewer was too young to perceive the politics in the work when they first saw it. There are exceptions like rogue one/andor, but I think it mostly holds.
If you only like three of the movies, you’re not a fan of the franchise, you’re just a fan of three movies.
Three movies and(or) a TV show.
This is kinda where I was going in my reply.
I am not a Star Wars fan. I have a nostalgic fondness for the very first few movies and even then; I haven’t watched any of them in ages and don’t plan to. A Star Wars label on a piece of media, all things being equal, makes me less likely to interact with it these days.
I’d flip that around to say people shouldn’t seek to be a fan of a “franchise”. To be a fan of a franchise in general is to put a big sign on your back saying “I’m a sucker for whatever company owns the rights and I will spend money if you vaguely make it themed along the lines of the franchise”.
The shouldn’t have made a sequel trilogy without coming out with a plan
That is the ice-coldest of takes lmao
Selling to Disnep was a huge mistake. Putting all the fabulous work of the expanded universe in the back for “creative freedom” and labeling it “fan fiction” basically killed Star Wars for me. Why make movies about Yuuzhan Vong, a novel and incredibly fascinating and creatively written species as the new menace, not detectable by the force, if you can just recycle the old movies?
The Obi Wan show should’ve had more seasons and every single finale should’ve been him beating the shit out of Darth Vader every single time.
I’d watch 12 seasons of that.
I’d also watch 12 seasons of OP dudes walking down hallways while they slaughter mooks.
99% of the salt involved with Star Wars comes from taking it way too seriously and treating it as way more important than it actually is.
I might be the only person on the planet who enjoyed watching all 9 films (with Rogue One being add-on favourite)
I enjoyed 7/9 of them (Rise of Skywalker and Phantom Menace commit the only sin that I think is unforgivable in a movie: They are uninteresting)
But that’s the thing right.
They’re
Enjoyable films
… And that’s it. If one of them sucks, it doesn’t change much in the world at large. And even if you’re the type of person for whom a bad entry ruins a series, it’s not like it’s such a massive loss in the case of Star Wars?
To tell any other story in the Star Wars universe, you must first retcon the Original Trilogy.
See, the Original Trilogy established that the “dark side” was a temptation for every Jedi. Like cocaine or meth for modern humans: addictive poison that gives a temporary rush of power.
That’s great for the whole spiritual, mystic, two-wolves-within-you conflict Luke went through. His victory was overcoming his shortcomings in the form of fear and anger.
But it’s actually terrible for any story made afterwards.
On the one hand, you can’t now make a story where, “maybe the Jedi were excessively stoic.” without also inadvertently making the argument that Luke was maybe… wrong?.. to conquer his emotions? It undermines Luke’s conflict.
On the other hand, you also can’t make the Dark Side totally evil without flattening Vader’s character. When Luke loses himself to fear in Episode 5 and to anger in Episode 6, he proves that the Dark Side doesn’t sink its teeth into you and control you permanently after a single moment of weakness. Even after losing yourself to the Dark Side, you can still observe how it is hurting your loved ones and then choose to pull yourself out of it, conquering your fear and anger in order to protect them. Exactly as Luke does for Vader, and exactly as Vader does immediately after for Luke.
Which means Anakin was just… one-dimensional up until that point. Weak. Too simple to be a protagonist. He wakes up to find he’s killed Padme, and yet still doesn’t turn his life around and learn to fight the temptation of the Dark Side? He hunts down and kills Jedi who had nothing to do with his fall, and yet never looks into their eyes to realize he’s fallen?
No matter how you look at it, it just… doesn’t work.
That’s why the prequels retconned the Jedi into something morally ambiguous. And why the sequels retconned them into a past that needed killing. It’s why the Clone Wars animated series turned the Jedi into a bureaucratically anti-emotion order. And why a lot of video games added lore where the Jedi actually committed genocide against the Sith. It’s also why pretty much none of these other media talk about the Dark Side in the same tone as the OT.
The second the OT ended, the Dark Side could no be longer a “temptation”. It had to became a faction. An unjustly vilified piece of humanity. An ethnic group.
Because you can’t have a “dark side” and have complicated, nuanced characters and extensive world-building: either A) the world will fall apart, B) the characters will be woefully inconsistent, or C) all of the above.
So every, single time you want to make new Star Wars media, you have to retcon the “Dark Side” essentially out of existence.
The main issue with the Force is that no one ever defined how it and the Dark Side work.
Not that midichlorian bullshit, but an explanation of why the Dark Side is powerful.
There are sort of fan theories as to how it works, but as you pointed out, those are undercut by the lack of consistency.
The original trilogy sort of hints at a workable mechanism.
First is the Light Side. You are borrowing power from the universe to do things. It’s not fast, but it is powerful.
Then the Dark Side, you are not asking. You’re demanding. You’re pulling more power faster than the universe can support. This is why hatred and fear lead to the Dark, because if your emotions are heightened you’re less likely to ask.
The Dark Side should also be corrosive to your own body.
Vader’s line that he was more machine than man. It should not have been a single injury on a lava planet, but a slow decay as he literally pulled the life out of his own body to fuel his power.
Palpatine should have been slowly decaying. Not one fight with reflected lightning.
But that’s the prequel problem. People can’t leave shit alone and have to explain every little detail, even if years are meant to go by between the prequel and the original.
My hot take is based on this idea.
The franchise should say to hell with canon and redo the prequels.
Anakin’s fall into the dark side should have mirrored Luke’s journey. Instead of a maudlin love story causing his fall, he is slowly corrupted by greed and power. Do it well, and it becomes an allegory for modern class struggle and the greed of the few as they gain power. The clone wars are between ordinary people about the legality of cloning as a technology. The Jedi are not generals and there are like 20, not 1,000s. Part way through Anakin’s training, Obi-Wan and him leave to enlist as pilots - Obi-Wan offering to continue his teaching in the space Navy against the Jedi’s wishes. Every time Anakin wins a battle, he’s ashamed of how good it feels to kill. Every time Anakin gets promoted on the space Navy for winning, he is ashamed of the feel of power. Obi-Wan isn’t blind to Anakin’s slide to darkness, but has too much pride himself to ask for help - failing as a teacher because he can’t tattle on his friend.
Ep 2 should be about Anakin coming to grips with his non-jedi like desires and accepting his fate as something not-jedi. Escaping from the Jedi order and running away ashamed and afraid like a fugitive. The Jedi hunting him down across the galaxy. A whole movie about this acceptance, instead of a 1 minute scene in Palp’s office. It would be an allegory for the tyranny of the majority, and accepting ones flaws. Ep 2 ends with Anakin finding Sideous stuck in hiding and starting his dark training (a la Yoda in Ep5)
Ep 3 opens to a reluctant Anakin and Palps nearly killing each other while doing dark side training (embracing death and power). They are interrupted by a Jedi on a mission to kill Anakin. The Jedi is killed off by Anakin at great physical cost to Anakin (starting his Darth Vader injuries). Anakin gets mad that the Jedi won’t leave him alone and finally commits to being a sith. This starts Anakin’s long quest to hunt down each Jedi individually. Each battle with the Jedi injures him further, requiring cybernetic replacements from each painful injury. The hunt consumes him and he is finally Darth Vader.
I’ve had this bouncing in my head for 25 years.
My idea for the prequels is this.
Expand the clone wars into an actual thing. Not that they were fighting with Clone armies. That’s sort of stupid.
No, the clones were of actual people, and the Jedi were the main way to tell if someone was a clone or not. I’m talking full on pod people situation here.
So, Episode 1 can be the initial discovery of the clones, and Jedi starting to hunt them. Introduce Obiwan who is a newly minted Jedi master. He finds Anakin who is a slave, but not a child. A young adult.
Obiwan then starts training Anakin.
Episode 2 would find that Anakin had been cloned. Obiwan or Padame or someone convinces people to accept the clone, and Obiwan ends up training them both. The original and the clone. Maybe the surviving clones are somewhat accepted into society, after the factory and controllers are destroyed.
Episode 3 is Anakin’s fall. He grows resentful that of his clone. The Jedi masters sense this and pass him over for some honor or advancement and Anakin starts to think that it’s because he was a slave which fuels the resentment. Padame and the clone grow close, which makes Anakin even more resentful.
At the height of the movie, the surviving clones are ordered to kill anyone near them in a mass suicide attack. Anakin’s clone, who has connected with the Force, does not kill.
Anakin murders his clone, thinking that Padame is dead, and then goes on to kill the jedi, thinking they’re to blame. Obiwan finds Anakin’s lightsaber, (he and the clone switched mid fight) and assumes the clone was activated and that Anakin is dead.
And then stuff wraps up so that Luke is born and placed on Tatoine.
I like it. You got the birth of Luke and Leia in a way I didn’t. I think in my head retcon, Padme doesn’t exist and Anakin sleeps around while killing and conquering (how he doesn’t know about Luke/Leia). That’s not great.
Wanna combine them and pitch Star Wars What If? to Disney?
There’s a massive amount of content created between the OT and the prequels. Most of it was pretty consistent.
Star Wars has been constantly retconning itself, from the beginning.
The first film was not really produced as “Episode IV”, it was “Star Wars”, a standalone film. It was a movie about a farmer orphan who goes on a swashbuckling space adventure with laser swords and space wizards. The good guys are unambiguously good, the bad guys are just bad guys. Everything is pretty much just as it seems, no secretly alive people, no secretly related people. Lucas may have had nebulous plans/hopes for follow ons, but they weren’t baked and the overall concept is standalone.
Then ESB came along and retconned the Skywalker family, and produced cliffhangers knowing there’d be a third film. However, I’m pretty certain that “there is another Skywalker” didn’t specifically have Leia in mind at the time, mainly because of how it’s handled in the follow up.
Then ROTJ came along, and that little tease about ‘there is another Skywalker?’ just a kind of casual “oh yeah, that’s Leia, and she’s your sister, and we are going to do absolutely nothing serious with that, just consider the matter closed even though they were clearly setting up for… something with that”.
A lot of things in the franchise have this feel. Like “Rei’s provenance is mysterious and significant” swinging in the next film to “the parents are nobody, parents don’t matter” and then swinging again in the last of that set of three to “just kidding, her provenance is very significant”.
My take on Star Wars is that it is about as bad as SciFi can get. It is a Grimm fairy tale from someone who has read Dune without understanding it and the skills to pull it through.
The best stories are revan and bane. The bane books and Kotor 1. Thats my take on it anyway
Most everything wrong with Star Wars happened because of the money grab. We could spend all day talking about the all-star cast ruined by awful writing/direction, wooden acting, and awful, ever-present, ridiculous sfx in 1-3. And of course, Jar-jar. They tried to make every film a “blockbuster” at the expense of the actual film in order to rake the cash in from fans.
The straight up cash grab, more awful writing, and bludgeoned fan service in the recent films. They had potential, but meandered as execs made sure to cram in merchandising opportunities and a veritable commercial or two.
The bright spot was Rogue One, which I thought was a fantastic and dark addition to the universe that explained some of the references made in the films. Andor, too, is pretty decent, leading up to Rogue One.
The sequels would’ve fared better if they didn’t have underlying tones of trying to appeal to minorities. They should’ve just been made with the same old flash and flare of the movies and shows before it and nobody would’ve complained as much. The only reason they’ve been shit on is because all of them starred a Mary Sue character and people noticed how woke the movies were trying to be.
Oh and Darth Vader is stupidly overrated. There are Sith who I can argue, who can wipe the floor with him.
The Mary Sue isn’t a problem (well it is, but not a big one), the issue is with them killing off and shitting on previously established characters. Luke suddenly isn’t the chosen one, all he did was kill his dad and a dude that later returns “somehow”. Luke, whose entire deal is that he doesn’t give up on people and sees good in them even when they are lost to the dark side, gives up on a young teenager. Palpatine claims the Skywalker name. Also the lightsaber battles were crap, the actors didn’t learn them as much as the ones in prequels did, they werenn’t as elaborate. It is a lot of decisions that ruin the previous movies, basically discrediting the struggle of their characters.
Regarding the lightsaber battles, it makes sense.
Prequels- full Jedi school teaching people how to fight, battles are big & elaborate.
OG trilogy: Vader was a Jedi, but 68% of him is droid parts so not quite as flashy as he used to be. Luke was taught by an actual Jedi, so he knows some stuff but he never went through school to learn things properly.
Sequels: I found a lightsaber & I’m gonna cosplay a Jedi! The only one with any actual training was Kylo, and he got expelled from school before he learned everything.
The rule is “rule of cool” not “rule of what makes sense”. The lightsaber duels suck, they should’ve polished them a lot better.
One thing about the sequel lightsaber battles is that the lightsabers bounce way too much off eachother. That was clear as day when Rey first fought Kylo Ren in that snowy forest.
Yeah, that too. What pisses me off the most, is Kylo having a crossguard and doing fuckall with it. They had the option of introducing some cool HEMA moves, but they squandered it all and he is fighting the exact same as other jedis without a crossguard.
