Time for... *sigh* Star Wars Rise of Skywalker talk (Spoilers)

Kelsea wrote:

Theres two kinds of expectations generally when people say that that is why people didn't enjoy a film... Expectations on quality and expectation on plot points. And for some reason it always comes out as if the audience are to blame for having expectations that were too high or too unreasonable...

Regarding the first one (quality)... Disney and any film producer that does reboots/remakes/reimaginings of old films/books/comics, do so *because* the franchises are popular and thus everyones expectations are high enough to be exploited for money. If people didn't expect the films to be good *most* of the time, they won't go see the film and then they wouldn't make their money. Its not like Disney brought Star Wars without realizing that people really like them old movies and so they might have high expectations of future movies... They preyed on that fact for money.

Regarding expectations on plot points... In my case, I have to make a distinction between a plot expectation and a plot prediction. A prediction is something that I thought might happen but didn't actually mind if something else happened instead... An expectation was something that I felt *had* to happen otherwise I would be unsatisfied.

Taking Rey's parentage in the last jedi for example... My personal prediction was that Rey would be related to a force user we hadn't seen before, one that was trained by Luke and subsequently killed by Kylo Ren. However I didn't mind if she instead turned out to be a Skywalker or Kenobi etc.. My personal expectation however, was that Rey's parentage would be discovered to be meaningful. I had this expectation because it was hinted that Rey's parents were important to Rey and the story in the Force Awakens. Rian Johnson even played on them expectations in the first half of the Last Jedi, teasing a revelation of Rey's parents and so building on the expectation. The ironic thing is that before I saw the Force Awakens, I predicted that Finn would be the force user and that his parentage wouldn't be important... I thought he'd just have the force awaken within him without any strong jedi family links. It was solely the way the story was crafted that built up a certain plot point expectation...

Similar could be said for all of the other plot expectations I had that were skillfully subverted... The story writer decided to shroud things in mystery to such a degree that it seemed certain that answers and awesome revelations were on the way, but they weren't... Everything that seemed important turned out to be meaningless

I wasn't angry cause Snoke didn't turn out to be Darth Plaegus... I was angry cause the character was meaningless...
I wasn't angry cause Rey wasn't related to a Skywalker... I was angry cause Rey's use of the force wasn't carefully crafted hints to her backstory, it was just: Rey is powerful "cause..."

Obviously JJ Abrams kinda fixed thoses plot expectations in the Rise of Skywalker... But its too late and he was scrambling, the damage had been done.

TLDR: These films aren't bad because they failed to meet our expectations...  These films were just bad fullstop and made poor storyline decisions... As a direct result, they failed to meet expectations that they themselves ensured were there in the first place

I personally think it is never the fault of the fans, it is always the fault of the directors and producers who fail to pick up fandom and act as a guy or a girl with a vision they want to hammer through because they say so. The last jedi was the lowlight of any star wars movie I have ever watched, including episode 1 and Solo(whihch is actually not so bad but totally uncalled for) because it is weak on the heroic, logical, storytelling, setting and emotional side. Llike Predator Upgrade ist to the Predator series, and Prometheus is to the Alien series.

Regarding the preying on expectations, that already backfired on Disney:
SW 7: Over 2 billion dollar paid for cinema tickets only - Nr 4 in most commercially succesful movies ever. Very good, but the movie filed to please many people.
SW 8: 1.33 billion dollar paid, Nr 14 in most commercially successful movies - a steep decline of 700 million dollar. Still very good though.
SW 9: 986 million dollar, Nr 46. Is only out for 24 days right now and will break the billion border, but opened with only half the opening of SW8. Very unlikely that it will reach SW8, but still not a catsastrophic fail like Terminator 5.

But I am prett sure that Disney is NOT happy with thier numbers. Maybe ok, but certainly not happy.

Prequel Trilogy is better than the New Trilogy.

Prequel was at least original, and not just rehashing the exact same old plot elements over and over and over again. JJ had zero new ideas for this franchise and just wanted to be lazy and remake the original films, and the only thing new that Rian Johnson put in was social commentary and space horses.

Prequel trilogy also had a clear vision planned across three films. It's about the origins of Darth Vader, the planning and rise of The Emperor and how he manipulated everyone, it was about the fall of the Jedi Order, showing how they had become arrogant, ignorant, corrupted, and, at the end of things, were no better than the Sith. It retroactively showed that Anakin DID bring balance to the force, both by destroying The Emperor, and also by destroying The Jedi.

The new trilogy has NO vision. Everything exists either to rip off the old trilogy, or to just be useless filler.

Snoke? Entirely pointless.

Rey's parentage? Made a big deal, amounted to nothing, then retconned into a massive ass pull.

Kylo Ren started out as nothing but a Vader wannabe, and in the end, his story was nothing more than a complete rip off of Vaders, except he got to turn on his master one movie early, then do it a second time.

Po goes from being an ace pilot and Han Solo ripoff, to being a dangerous lunatic who commits mutiny because the movie wants to send a "Men need to put women in charge" type of message (which it botched badly btw) to being back to being a han solo ripoff.

Finn is the most useless character in all 9 films. By far. His existence is pointless, he contributes nothing to the plot, he drags everything down by extension.

Rian Johnson also answered too many questions in his film, wrapped up too many plots, leaving less for the third movie to do except to create a bunch of "new" stuff to deal with, so that also didn't help, which is partly why the third movie takes time out to shit all over the second one.

This trilogy is bad.


Now just for the fuck of it, here's my ranking of the overall films:

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Return of the Jedi
3. The Revenge of the Sith
4. Rogue One
5. A New Hope
6. The Force Awakens
7. The Phantom Menace
8. The Rise of Skywalker
9. The Last Jedi
10. Solo
11. Attack of The Clones

I am actually a fan of Palpatine and liked to have him in a role again. Not necessarily THAT role, but something. In the original and prequel trilogy, his intriques are coherent most of the time, his plan actually brilliant, his methods sensical and variable.

Hux was a traitor. I don´t know who guessd it when Kelsea made the last review thread, but hats off to you good sir or madam. Thst actually took me by surprise.

I fully agree with Tai in everything else. Except for the movie list of course :

1. A new hope. Lightsabers, iconinc bombing run, death star brand new.
2. The empire strikes back. "I am your father, Luke!"
3. Revenge of the Sith. "YOU WERE MY BROTHER".
4. Return of the Jedi. Not much of a fan of the Ewoks to be honest.
5. Attack of the clones. Basically the same as Phantom Menace but more for adults.
6. Phantom Menace. Kickass lightsaber duell, Darth Maul is menacing, good teacher/student connection, battlefield scenes. Everything else is meh or terrible in this movie.
7. Solo. I like the movie in general. But it is completely unnecessary. L3-37 is nervewracking for me. Not for the message itself but for the delivery.
8. The force awakens. Still have trouble finding hope in this movie.
9. Rogue One. An ok movie. Lacks Jedi but makes sense most of the time. Is just not my cup of tea. I liked K-2SO.
10. The Rise of Skywalker. Slightly better, but the damage was already done with the last Jedi so that it could not rise much higher.
11. The last Jedi. Typical Michael Bay lookalike movie with questionable messages. Terrible for the standards of a SW movie, meh for any other blockbuster movie.

My Personal subjective ranking

1. Return of the Jedi - I understand that the Empire Strikes Back is the best film, but I have a personal connection to Return of the Jedi which makes me favour it. I know the ewoks are bad and I know the singing/dance sequence in Jabba's palace is bad.. But my mind over looks that cause I enjoy the film and it gives me a certain feel when ever I watch it.

2. Empire Strikes Back - Don't think I need to say much here. This is objectively the best star wars film

3. A New Hope - a brillant start to the adventure and pathes the way for the future films.

4. Rogue One- This is extremely tight between 4th and 5th place.. The gritty feel was a breath of fresh air and the ending scenes were awesome, but most of the middle of this film I found to be forgetable and the characters felts like they needed more time to grow.. I also felt they needed at least a couple of aliens on their team. K-2SO was awesome though and the idea of Donnie Yen's character was interesting

5. Revenge of the Sith - On another day it could have been 4th and really its pretty much tied in my mind.. Its kinda ridiculous that when you count the number of lightsaber duels (in which opponents are weilding lightsabers and lightsabers actually clash) in this film, it is more than the number of lightsaber duels in the whole of the Disney's era films. There was however a number of things that felt off to me in revenge of the sith.. How easy Anakin goes and stays on the dark side, how "the high ground" was Anakin's undoing, how easy the jedi were taken out. along with some left over clunky dialogue is what lost it some points

6. The Force Awakens - This film was previously in 4th place... Then the last jedi happened and now its struggling not to slip into 7th. I am extremely into mystery, intrigue and playing with theories (which The Force Awakens had in buckets). But the Last Jedi dispelled all of that... Leaving me with nothing but a film that followed the originals a bit too much (I'd hoped that that was just to get people back interested in Star Wars... Not that it would be the theme of the sequel trilogy!)

7. The Phantom Menance - Some really poor dialogue in this one.. A really over crowded ending and an annoying character or two... However duel of fates, Darth Maul, that lightsaber fight yo.. I also enjoyed the pod race where others didn't

8. Attack of the Clones - Alot of REALLY poor dialogue... I tend to find most of the middle of this film forgettable and I struggled to believe the love story which needs to be the main part of this film for us to carry forwards into Anakins actions in Revenge of the Sith. This is the first film on this list that I didn't come out of the cinema hyped after watching it for the first time... I was just uncertain what to feel

9. Rise of Skywalker - I didn't see all of this film and I don't really want to.. I've already said why. First film on this list to make me angry while watching it for the first time... But not the last one on this list to do that... Could anything different have been done with the position the Last Jedi put it in? I think it could have been... I think we could have gotten an moderately decent ending, but not an awesome one...

10. The Last Jedi - Yeah... Did I mention that I hate the Last Jedi? ..This film took The Force Awakens down on my list and put Rise of Skywalker in a position to die easy... along with itself, it kinda ruined 3 films for me for the price of one... and so it truely earned bottom spot on my list




N/A Solo - I still have not watched this film and that is mostly because the Last Jedi put me off... so I guess that's 4 films ruined ¬.¬

Guess I will join in and make a quick list:
1: Empire Strikes Back
2: A New Hope
3: Rogue One
4: Return of the Jedi
5: Revenge of the Sith
6: Solo
7: Attack of the Clones
8: Phantom Menance
9: Force Awakens
10: Rise of Skywalker
11: Last Jedi