Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1049784Maybe another aspect of the problem with sequels, as opposed to pre-quels, is that Star Wars might be sort of a "solved setting." The empire was defeated in the OT, along with one of the most badass villains in film history. Trying to recreate this epic struggle between light and dark will just be a retread, and trying to top the Empire and Darth Vader is like trying to outdo Sauron in an LOTR sequel.

Except that The Empire spanned a galaxy (at the very least), how many worlds would need to be liberated from former Empire forces now claiming them as their personal property? How many spies, traitors, etc would need to be hunted down?

If this trilogy was to be the closing of the Luke saga that's where they should have gone, the republic is rebuilding itself, but many worlds still need to be liberated, Luke has rebuilt the Jedi Temple/Academy and new Jedis are being sent to the worlds.

Done properly they could have introduced several future central characters and then tell their adventures. But it was about killing the past and appealing to the Phantom Audience.

tLJ was pretty much awful in just about every way except for the special effects, which were really nice.
I could write a long post about what I disliked about it, but it's far quicker to just say it was generally a terrible movie.
Terrible plot, terrible woke SJW garbage content and just felt like an insult to the Star Wars franchise.

To be even handed I thought the George Lucas prequels were pretty terrible too, but not as bad a tLJ.
I only watched them once and have no desire to watch again. They weren't really offensive, just boring..  They felt like one long chatlog with occasional action in them.

I quite liked watching "The force awakens" though, although I only watched it once. It felt like a light, throwaway movie that was a tribute to "A new hope". I have no desire to watch it again.
But at least it was better than the George Lucas prequels and WAY better than tLJ.

Of the original movies. I loved "New hope" and "empire strikes back".  "Return of the Jedi" was ok.

I don't really understand why they didn't just exploit the "Expanded Star Wars universe" content, picking and choosing what was good and monetise the hell out of it, making lots of movies and so on. People would have eaten that up.

One thing is for sure, I won't be seeing the finale.  It looks terrible from the trailers and if tLJ is anything to go by it WILL be terrible.

What's awesome about El Cheapo theaters (and streaming) is the price point is really too low to care much about a suckass movie.

Was there some kewl f/x? Was the popcorn fresh and buttery? Did I get a RPG idea out of it?

If two of the three get a YES answer, I'm okay. Lowered expectations is the only way to watch movies these days.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1101742What's awesome about El Cheapo theaters (and streaming) is the price point is really too low to care much about a suckass movie.

Was there some kewl f/x? Was the popcorn fresh and buttery? Did I get a RPG idea out of it?

If two of the three get a YES answer, I'm okay. Lowered expectations is the only way to watch movies these days.

Indeed. I actually saw Jason XX (where he goes to space) in a theatre. I'd be ashamed to have paid a real price for it, but the projector for the movie we paid to see broke mid-film...so, a refund, and when we whined about lost time, the manager offered a movie that was just starting.

Awful, but fairly priced when you've already committed to watching a movie.

Bemusingly I rather liked Jason X. It was just so weird and seemed to be having fun with the whole thing. And it was fairly well made too. Good sets. Not bad acting. The cyperpunk Jason was well done.

If the final Star Wars movie is about Kylo Ren redeeming himself by recognizing where his grandfather Anakin went wrong becoming Darth Vader and turning against the Dark Side, then I can see the Rise of the Skywalker making sense and the trilogy almost redeeming itself.

But expect I'm quite wrong and its just gonna be about Mary Sue being even more magical for no reason and the rest of the cast bumbling about wasting screen time achieving nothing of value to the plot.

All indicators are it may be even worse than that.

Technology in the Star Wars universe is pretty static and is better explained in the Star Wars Technical Commentaries website than by me.

Unfortunately. Since this is Hollywood we are talking about. Lensman Escalation is practically inevitable and was allready creeping into the original trilogy.

The Death Star 2 was, depending on the retcon, twice (or more) larger than the first. And could fire repeatedly in fairly quick succession. The Executor dwarfs regular star destroyers. And so on.

But its a standard practice in Hollywood to make the movie adaption of v2 of something as much as 10x larger than the last. The Enterprise in Abrams Trek is huge. When we were drawn into talks of a remake of Starlost the would-be producers wanted to make it 10x as big. The new US Godzilla is also huge compared to prior iterations. And so on. Hell even that junky Punisher movie did it. Now instead of just Frank's wife and kid killed. It is his whole damn immediate family! Parents, aunts, uncles, sisters whatever.

I figure by the time they get around to remaking Star Wars in a few years the Millineum Falcon will be enormous and the Death Star will be an actual star.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1101521I quite liked watching "The force awakens" though, although I only watched it once. It felt like a light, throwaway movie that was a tribute to "A new hope". I have no desire to watch it again.
But at least it was better than the George Lucas prequels and WAY better than tLJ.

I thought TFA laid the groundwork for TLJ's sucking.
TFA was a hollowed out shell of A New Hope's story, with boring characters, that copied the plot beats of ANH without understanding how or why it was successful.
For example, I still have no idea who the Resistance or First Order are, or why they're fighting. Going into ROS, there's no established stakes or tension. I really don't care who wins, and most importantly I don't care about the characters.
This led to TLJ being so meandering. There's nothing to do with the characters, and the plot only had trope subversion going for it.

ROS will be a glorious trainwreck, because no one knew what they were doing with the story, and there's no place for them to go. Anything the come up with will feel contrived.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106796I thought TFA laid the groundwork for TLJ's sucking.

Oh I agree with this statement and the following comments you made.
But cinematically, tFA  was fun to watch.
Possibly as it had been so long since there'd been a Star Wars movie and I was still remaining open minded that SWs could be ok.

I did go see tLJ when it came out in the cinemas, but mostly through morbid curiosity. I do regret seeing it though, it was awful.
I think my retinas threatened to detach from my eye rolling!  

I will not be seeing any future SWs movies, including this one coming up that wraps up the current trilogy. I'm just not engaged in it at all.

Rise of Skywalker final trailer.

[video=youtube;oCgvGErYQUE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCgvGErYQUE[/youtube]



So, did the new films suck so bad they had to dig up the Emperor and the old Star Destroyers to try and distract everyone from the fact that they have no goddamn story going into the final film?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1111465So, did the new films suck so bad they had to dig up the Emperor and the old Star Destroyers to try and distract everyone from the fact that they have no goddamn story going into the final film?

Yes, they did suck that bad. Was this the only question on this quiz?

Trailer looks interesting at least and some of the ship buffs pointed out all the different ships in one of the shots, including the ship from Rebels apparently.

Not too keen on the Emperor returning. But. Could be hes a force ghost, clone, or even just a failsafe recording. Sadly odds are it wont be so interesting as any of those.

Bet its something as mundane as "he used his force powers to save himself from the fall. Then escaped in a shuttle during all the chaos." I mean if Luke and Maul can do it. Why not Palpatine? Hell. Maul survived being cut in half!

Quote from: Omega;1111514Trailer looks interesting at least and some of the ship buffs pointed out all the different ships in one of the shots, including the ship from Rebels apparently.

Not too keen on the Emperor returning. But. Could be hes a force ghost, clone, or even just a failsafe recording. Sadly odds are it wont be so interesting as any of those.

Bet its something as mundane as "he used his force powers to save himself from the fall. Then escaped in a shuttle during all the chaos." I mean if Luke and Maul can do it. Why not Palpatine? Hell. Maul survived being cut in half!

It's not that the Emperor couldn't be brought back with some creative explaining, it's that bringing him back is the height of pointlessness. The original trilogy wrapped it's story up with the death of the Emperor and the fall of his Empire. One thing TLJ got right, is that it's time to move on. Ironically, TLJ couldn't even do that, returning to the status quo by the end of the film.

Also, he's being dropped into the sequel trilogy at the last moment. There has been no hint or clue that the Emperor was any kind of factor in the sequels up until now. Now the trailers are building this up as some big thing that everything's been leading up to, but nothing has led up to this.

God, at least fan-fiction tends to accidentally get some story telling correct out of sheer mimicry. At this point, I feel justified saying the sequel trilogy is worse than fan-fiction.