Disney buying LucasFilm, Releasing Star Wars episode 7 in 2015

Nobody. At least not for people who only watch the live action shows. I assume that's the majority of casual Star Wars fans.

The main villain in Andor is the system. Thrawn in Ahsoka and Cad Bane in BoBF are irrelevant to anyone who doesn't watch the animated shows. Reva in Obi-Wan Kenobi is an antagonist but not really a villain. So it's Moff Gideon by default.

I suppose I at least made it through all of the prequels so this would likely be an improvement.

I mean, it's a "be careful what you wish for" situation. I remember that if Lucas had done the sequel trilogy, he said he would have leaned heavily into the microscopic world of the "Whills" that actually channel and control the force or whatever. If he were still in charge, we probably would have gotten three movies that were equally as head-scratchingly bad but just in a totally different way.

I can't see how Lucas vision would have been as bad as the Disney sequels, that really have no redeeming features. The one thing that probably separates the prequals from the sequels is the level of world building. Disney have based nearly all their streaming content on Clone War era stuff - because it has the most interesting characters and ideas, perhaps even moreso than the OT.

Compare that with the sequels, and what do we get? Super-weapons, Sand planets, Ice planets, Star Destroyers, AT-ATs, etc. In other words, absolutely no threads you can make further content out of. The only really interesting thread/character was Finn, and Disney would really have to get their chequebook out to get John Boyega back.

So, at least with George we might have got a few more interesting ideas, although I agree I'm not the least bit confident that the films would have been any better from a storytelling POV (albeit it would be difficult to make them worse).

Nope, I get it. For sure the movies would have been full of interesting ideas, even if we all walked out saying "Well that was ****ing weird, George really went off the deep end". Not much different than the prequels really, which I do appreciate the ambitiousness and coherence of (much more so now that I've seen the alternative) even if I don't think they're very entertaining movies and really never rewatch them.

as bad as the prequels were

they were fun to watch

I've rewatched them all quite a few times

there's good action, just enough of a coherent plot to let you go along for the ride

and the stupid stuff is mostly concentrated in the dialogue

they have a lot of warts for sure, by no means are they good films, but they are fun to watch - even if the plot that delivers that the race/battle/duel is a bit dumb and drags a bit, lucas really understood compelling action sequences

even if you don't like the films as a whole, each has lengthy sections which are quite enjoyable to watch even as a standalone youtube clip

i can't say that for any of the sequels whatsoever - even the parts which should be cool end up being stupid - they couldn't just have action for action's sake, there needed to be an underlying message behind it

i actually can't really think of any standout scenes, IIRC it wasn't even so much dedicated action sequences either but they were often cut scenes, there's some people inside trying to figure out their next moves, and then we'll cut to scenes of the battle happening outside - the battle isn't a battle there but instead a tool to drive urgency over a plot point we never cared about without or without that urgency

like exegol, they have this massive armada that's impossibly large (nevermind the economics of building and manning all those ships, entirely in secret, in the remote and fringe part of the galaxy...) and then we don't get the big battle but rather just a few cut scenes or snippets of it

like when they ran to that planet that had an old rebel base on it - everything about the battle was just stupid, they are in a fortified bunker and decide that they need more time to stall the impending troops so send out speeders in a sort - that seems reasonable, but... for some wild reason someone had this ridiculous image in their mind of a ski speeder (that's what they are literally called)

sure it's an interesting image, but then having a speeder ski doesn't make any sense if speeder technology doesn't require skis to begin with as they hover above the ground, perhaps if it were an ice planet and some vehicles got around on uniskis because they could save money without needing to build in hover engines as well... that could make sense
but they don't go that route, they clearly show how these speeders already hover as is, they then show there being turbulence and that lowering the ski would resolve that - which is just the stupidest thing in the world, the literal equivalent of a jet fighter dragging an anchor on the ground as it flies around

so that's why it's stupid, someone had a visual idea, and then they came up with whatever idiotic pathway required to justify it - the disney exec pats herself on the back, look at us everyone, we made ski speeders and ignore that nobody asked for ski speeders and the way they built them made it just a terrible thing to watch

and then don't forget that the entire reason why those ski speeders are out there are to slow down the incoming forces, they are out there purely to sacrifice themselves to give the people in the bunker more time to die

and then that stupid annoying girl is like omg the guy i like is going to get hurt so she crashes into him to prevent him from doing what they went out there to do in the first place - so they may as well have not even gone out there in the first place - but they wanted to have a scene about the annoying girl talking about love means more than anything so they do it, nevermind that the entire premise they built up for it was just stupid

then you get the luke skywalker thing where he dies simply because he projected himself as a hologram, again, for what, to give the others what, 3 minutes? again some exec saying "wouldn't it be cool if luke showed up, but then we reveal it was a trick, and best part is we can solve the problem we have of not having the first clue about what to do with his character and have him die when he does this"

and then on top of all that, ok they found a way out of the bunker, but that was just stupid, they chose to go in the bunker earlier, they could have easily left the bunker without using the secret path out - and taking the back door out of the bunker still left them with the same problem as before, they were on a planet surrounded by an enemy fleet...

just so dumb on so many levels

like that bombing run wasn't a scene to show cool action - but instead was done to give the worst and most annoying character in the history of star wars (that's not easy to do either) a dead sister and lame boring leader something to complain about - oh no we lost lives in the war

all the rey and kylo stuff was more about their personal relationship than their actual battles, can you imagine if when obiwan fought darth maul, they had them pacing around exchanging dialogue where obi wan talked about his feelings over seeing his master die?

battle vs praetorian guards was fine - basically the one action sequence that was decent

Just don't ever try to watch it again, because once you spot the sloppy mistakes you'll hate that too.

Solid post, you'd be right at home in the /r/SaltierThanCrait subreddit.

Say what you will about the sequels, but the visuals and sound design are phenomenal.

The prequels...it's not that they are terrible and unwatchable, they're not other than some really boring stretches. Not great, and to me lacking in most of the charm, design and simplicity of the originals. You're never going to make a lightsaber cooler that the first time people saw it, same goes for X-Wings or AT-ATs or Yoda, and while not impossible I think it would be tough to cast a group that gel so well.

The sequels though, I don't know to critique them beyond saying I thought they were boring and bad, and a mess overall. The Clone Wars cartoon theater movie and the two Ewok TV movies are the only SW films I can say I'm sure I'll never watch again but these are possibilities.

And I don't know if Lucas could salvage anything at this point either, in part because it took a lot of talent around him to come up with everything that made the originals so great and unique. Darth Vader could have been dumb as hell without the design, the sound, JEV voice. Yoda could have been a Jar Jar Binks had Frank Oz not done a great job. Then you have the music and all the ship designs and all that. Lucas gets his credit but there was so much awesome creative contribution from others that brought it all together, and it's not something you can buy.

The biggest talent being Marcia Lucas. Without her re-editing the entire mess that was A New Hope, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this.

George is a great idea guy, but he really needs a firm hand to rein in his bullshit.

I've heard Marcia's influence was maybe a bit overstated, but I'm sure she had a solid impact.

IIRC she was behind the idea of the DS actually getting ready to fire on Yavin during the final battle in ANH and making it a "now or never" thing, instead of the rebels just randomly attacking it in the middle of nowhere, which massively increases the tension in that scene. It comes off so natural, you don't even realize that this whole aspect of it was added in post, with closeups of display screens and voiceovers, and a few stray unused shots from what I assume was the scene where they blew up Alderaan.

I was reading an interesting reddit thread the other day, a dad was detailing how his kid doesn’t view Luke Skywalker as the main protagonist in Star Wars.

Considering the amount of prequel media that’s been put out, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of younger generations view Anakin or Ashoka as bigger players in the franchise than Luke or Leia. It’s interesting to think about how the timeline has effectively shifted, and how the “main story” doesn’t really revolve around the OT anymore. Kids’ first exposure to Star Wars is now usually Clone Wars stuff or the sequel trilogy, not A New Hope.

Even in my own mind, I definitely view Ewan McGregor as more Obi-Wan than Alec Guinness these days. Considering their respective screen times, this makes sense but it’s still odd to realize. Certainly food for thought.

Vice also did a good feature on this with their Icons Unearthed series:

https://www.vicetv.com/en_us/show/icons-...

Marcia and many others are interviewed.

Pretty sure the Anakin part applies to most people maybe under 40?

If you grew up in a world where the prequel trilogy exists, Star War is the story of Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader.

Lucas of course has said the PT and OT is “the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.” But it’s hard to see him as the actual main character of the OT, considering Vader only has ~30 minutes of screen time.

I thought the story was about the droids?

If you only watched the OT you wouldn't think the story was about Anakin/Vader. But if you grew up with both OT and PT and maybe even watched them in chronological order for the first time it should be hard to feel different?

Vader might not have that much screen time in the OT but he's in the opening scene of ANH which makes it kinda seamless with ROTS.

Or to phrase it differently: Why would you think that Star Wars is about Luke Skywalker if you just watched the prequels and are 10 minutes into ANH?

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The perspective depends heavily on your entry point into Star Wars.

It’s interesting how far the scope has grown beyond the original story. Different generations of fans have different focal points of the same saga.

And as much as George would try to argue otherwise, it has been a very organic spiraling of the story. “The clone wars” was a basic throwaway line, until it wasn’t.

Okay those two episodes were ****

Chewbacca Chewbasics imo.

Shyte in... Shyte out.

Walt knew this implicitly.

Iger, Kennedy and the Harvey Weinstein assistant Headland Do not.

I'm in for one more but I don't know whether its to see if this silly spoiler rumor is true or to see a wookiee jedi

If we can have Jedi whose master of self-discipline and sacrifice doesn't quite extend to doughnuts, why not a wookiee?