Was my memory wiped or was the Star Wars sequel trilogy just that forgettable?
Was my memory wiped or was the Star Wars sequel trilogy just that forgettable?
The Force Awakens and its follow-ups had so few memorable characters, it’s a wonder Disney – and Oscar Isaac – are still talking about potential spin-offs
The sequel trilogy was a shameless cash-grab attempt by Disney. It was unimaginative, unoriginal and boring.
The first one had some good plot hooks to further and grow the franchise beyond what it was. These were immediately dumped by Disney corporate and replaced with slop.
TFA felt like a cheap knockoff of the original a New Hope.
disney ruins everything it touches
just look at family guy :/. A shell of what it used to be. It was already going downhill, but since disney took over, it's essentially not even the same show anymore. Much like simpsons, but that was LONG before Disney.
Huge Fan of The Simpsons, the first 13 seasons are regular background noise in my home. After that it's mostly shitty with a half decent episode by lesser standards here and there, but the half decent episodes were becoming more frequent right up until the acquisition. Now the show is a sad desiccated husk of what it once was.
Very strange to criticise the sequel trilogy for being "nostalgia porn", whilst simultaneously praising Rogue One. Not only was that film completely pointless but it was also filled with deepfakes of dead actors and endless fan service.
Your memory was wiped because you only bought tickets to see the movie, not remember it
New dystopia just dropped.
I'm not one to overthink movies, I really enjoy just watching them do their thing without thinking about it, But there were no twists everything felt so linear and so repeated.
I even liked solo because it was at least different.
I thought Solo was a lot of fun. It was great to watch a Star Wars film that didn't have galactic stakes. It felt more focused.
I personally liked Solo more than Rogue One
Nope. Your memory is fine. There were only two and a half good Star Wars movies of the original nine; A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi right up until the Ewoks arrive.
Beyond that there was some good stuff, like Andor and Rogue one.
The ewoks weren't bad especially given the time period.
Kids loved the ewoks ... I will admit I liked them when I was young. However, they were kind of stupid and pointless. He should have just make them cookies like he planned.
That's a nice opinion. Too bad it's wrong.
One question, were you alive and able to watch the first movie in 1977?
Nope. I hated the Muppets on the Moon when they debuted.
I liked Solo.
Fight me.
It was ok. Certainly better than A Phantom Menace. But I think, aside from a cool sword fight scene and a giant fish The Phantom Menace was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Ahsoka is decent, but it is really just the Star Wars Rebels cartoon live-action version.
Rogue One was the only decent star wars story in recent history. It was within the star wars universe but wasn't a total rehash of the same Jedi story.
If they had done the Solo twins storyline with the Jedi academy they would have had all the YA books to pull ideas from that was original stories instead of the modernized remake.
They trashed everything from the extended universe. I’m super sad about the Skywalker family, especially Mara. I also really liked Jeter’s Boba Fett trilogy.
I legit liked BB-8, Maz Kanata and Babu Frik. Could do with more of them.
As for the films:
Force Awakens - Mostly harmless. Gets a lot of hate for "just being Star Wars again" and that's valid. But they needed to prove they could do Star Wars without Lucas, and they did.
Last Jedi - Looks great, absolutely shits the bed. Johnson needed an average 8 year old to come in and point out all the plot holes. "Here's this tracker, you can use it to find us anywhere in the universe." (Same scene, no cuts, First Order comes out of hyperspace) "HOW DID THEY FIND US! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"
Rise of Skywalker - I feel bad for this one and generally give it a pass. Last Jedi painted them into a corner by killing Snoke, killing Phasma, killing Luke, reducing the size of the Resistance to something that could fit in the Falcon... and then... THEN Carrie Fisher up and dies. I don't know what else they could have done. It was supposed to be Leia's movie. 😟
Rise of Skywalker is the worst, because they couldn't decide between ignoring Last Jedi or retconning it.
Half of the movie is Abrams making a sequel to a middle movie that was never made, and the other half is trying to please upset fans who hated Rose and the idea that Rey could be special without being related to some kind of franchise royalty.
In the end, they had an aimless film with no story direction that flipped between a confusing mess and some kinda fanfic hate letter to Johnson.
RoS was so bad it makes any negatives of episode 8 pale in comparison.
Oh no, Chewy is dead! Wait he’s alive.
Can’t access the sith language [for some reason].
The dagger is a map! But only if you stand in this one exact spot and even then it just kinda points in a general direction to a place on a crashed ship.
Just nonsense.
They had an aimless film because Johnson ratfucked them and Fisher died. Like I say, they were in an impossible position.
It would have helped if they went into the thing with a unified vision 1-2-3, but they didn't even do that and they still would have been screwed by Fishers death unless they thought ahead and managed to film all her scenes at once.
TL;DR: Agree on TFA. Disagree on TLJ; it is the best sequel. TRoS is almost unforgiveable.
I will stick up for The Last Jedi til the end of time. JJ dealt Rian Johnson a bum hand with Luke. The only options are shame-based self-exile, or something that would be concealed by a story of shame-based self-exile. There was also clearly a mandate not to make the legacy heroes the ones who solve the problems of the plots. That's to say nothing of JJ resetting the political board in the least helpful way possible.
Given the constraints, I think RJ did a great job making a more character-driven piece that actually tried to play in the sandbox JJ created. It added notes of ambiguity and, yes, subverted certain expectations, but not so many as it's accused of and still ultimately settled on the legend and the hope being worth fighting for. Poe's arc was good. Luke's arc was good. Rey's arc was a bit confused but ultimately effective. Kylo being set up as the primary antagonist of Ep9 because he was too deeply damaged to (immediately) redeem was probably the single best direction they could have gone. Then, as you say it looked great. It was also the only sequel to directly embrace the prequels at all, and it included two of the most beautiful "Lucasian" tone poems of the entire series with the Luke-Yoda scenes and Rose's sister.
Now, could certain things have been better? Yeah, definitely. Finn's arc was only an incremental move from the one in TFA, and one that might plausibly been implied from it. A bit of a time jump would have given the characters room to breathe and not have rubbed the more resistant fans' noses in Luke's resistance to training Rey. The your-mom joke had a narrative purpose, but it simply didn't land and therefore made the character beat less impactful. Rian should have understood that a non-negligible percentage of Star Wars fans want sci-fi consistency when they can get it and should have tied hyperspace tracking to the Holdo maneuver to make both of them too rare to be common either in the past or going forward. The set piece on Canto Bight could have been a little more Star Wars-y, which I think would have blunted accusations that it was boring.
For me, TRoS does NOT get a pass because it was such a blunt and heavy-handed reaction. It didn't need to have Rose specifically refuse the call to action because some fans didn't like her Leia gave her homework. Even if "Big Bad" wasn't JJ's preferred direction, it didn't need to immediately place Kylo Ren back in a subordinate enforcer role. It didn't need to half-assedly use outtakes of Carrie Fisher when it could have "Ben Kenobi'd" Luke to have a much more engaging training sequence. It didn't need to literally lift the conflict from some of the worst Expanded Universe stories or the climax from Avengers Endgame. It definitely didn't need to put half-baked fan theories about Rey's origins into a hat and then pick one randomly. Everything about it was petty and lazy and so much worse than it needed to be, even if you chafed at TLJ's choices.
I will die on the hill that while flawed in a lot of ways, TLJ was trying to do something interesting.
I saw the leaked plot of TRoS and refused to watch it.
Finn's arc for me is irredeemable. By killing Phasma in the middle part of the trilogy they were left with no place to go in the 3rd one for Finn.
I really wanted Phasma back with one burned eye to give Finns story a proper send off and we didn't even get that.
"Nope! Snoke's dead! Phasma's dead! Luke's dead! Resistance is mostly dead! Good luck with Episode 3 suckers!"
There was a way they COULD have fixed it in post because Fisher died before the film came out. If the whole idea was to kill one original cast member per film, and Fisher died IRL, here's what you do:
Hard disagree on the character arcs. Luke's arc was terrible. He is completely different than he was at the end of return, and thats ok if you can show how it happened. But it wasn't really shown just told. The flash back scene with kylo just shows the culmination of this supposed change. We take the guy who would not kill the most evil man when everyone is telling him to because he thinks he can be redeemed, and then go to yeah I had a bad vision I thought we should kill this kid. That's a jarring change.
If they wanted to set kylo up as the bad guy, the character arc needed more work.
I think red letter put it best on the character arcs poes arc was to learn to blindly obey authority. Finns arc was that nothing he did matters at all and that you should not sacrifice yourself in war.
And I think there is an argument to make that the rRse of Skywalker is in part bad because TLJ was badly written as a middle film. It took payoffs that arguably should be in the final film for itself in an attempt to be different and new. It does not really continue the plot for a third film. The whole movie seemed to jump from moment to moment Rian thought would be cool and did not consider really how to get there. That's why there are all these consistency issues in lore/suspension of disbelief, theme, tone. If we are building a staircase and in the middle we take the parts for the end of the staircase to try and now make it a spiral staircase I don't care how pretty it looks or impressive the craftsman ship it does not get me to where I need to go.
I think Rian swung for the fences and I appreciate the attempt but he struck out.
Imagine continuing the trend of brain dead TLJ bitching, and immediately following it up with "I give RoS a pass."
Completely unserious take my dude.
Last Jedi played like the end of a trilogy leaving no room for a 3rd movie, that's absolutely Johnson's fault.
Hey thanks for putting thought into the comment. Agree on most of your points. I like Star Wars and will even rewatch these films even though they aren’t the best.
Between Lost, Star Trek, and Star Wars, I hate J.J. Abrams. The only reason he even has a career is because he sucked up to Spielberg.
he f-uped trek for sure, and kurtzman followed in his footsteps. nutrek is so bad compared to even enterprise. LOWER decks and prodigy is more decent then the 3 series, and they are coming out with another 1-2? they should just give up, because a new trek series isnt going to erase the other nutrek series problems.
It’s because the sequels largely just repeated what the original trilogy did but worse. Don’t believe me? Okay I’ll point out some of the similarities.
The Force Awakens loosely follows A New Hope, desert planet > climatic escape > try to deliver plans/map > goes wrong > rescue mission > eventually deliver plans > blow big death ball up. The only difference between the two is that The Force Awakens swaps rescue mission and eventually deliver plans around.
The Last Jedi just copies what The Empire Strikes Back does but in reverse this time. Cold planet > big battle > escape > spaceship scenes > side quest planet > jedi side quest planet > confrontation with big bad > lightsaber lost > spaceship scene. The Last Jedi pretty much reverses the order with a few other things flipped around but it’s pretty lazy.
The Rise of Skywalker and The Return of the Jedi follow the same broad strokes too but are at least a little different now. Return to previously established planet > bad guy on evil ball #2 > plan goes awry > fight scene > meet with Jedi master for last time > big speech before final battle > super big space battle over evil ball #2 > light vs dark battle in main character > both sith die on evil ball #2 > celebration. Okay okay if you look at this one in more detail, adding in all of tRoS’ side quests, they are definitely different but the same loose structure is still there.
You can talk whatever shit you want on the prequels but at least they tried new things. They didn’t always work but they tried and I think it helps them actually stand out from the original trilogy rather than feel like a retread. They certainly do copy some of the major strokes at times but they do more to alter it.
There is also the problem with Rey in the sequels, we never really see her fail at something. When she tries to use a Jedi mind trick for the first time she gets it to work. When she tries to use a force pull for the first time it works. She never really gets tempted into using the dark side like Luke and Anakin did. When she tries to use force healing it just works for her. She doesn’t get a scene like Luke and Anakin had where they make a mistake and get punished for it. Luke and Anakin both lost a hand because of their mistakes. Luke fails with the training droid in A New Hope, he fails to raise his X-Wing out of the swamp and he fails his Jedi mind trick. Heroes need to have the stakes of failing to actually make their journey engaging and memorable. If they just succeed every time it can get boring and forgettable.
Comparing Rey to Saitama for a second here. The reason why Saitama works and Rey doesn’t is because Saitama struggles with how overpowered he is. He wants a real challenge when every foe he comes up against goes down immediately. Rey doesn’t have a real struggle, whenever she looks to be in a bind she just gets a new power that saves the day. She is the dictionary definition of a Mary Sue and it makes her so forgettable.
Sorry for the wall of text, I have a lot to say on the sequels as a hardcore Star Wars fan
I have this saved on my phone. lol
I remember enjoying The Force Awakens in the cinema, but I probably enjoyed it about as much as I would have enjoyed rewatching A New Hope, because frankly they're the same movie.
I started watching the 2nd one in the new trilogy (don't even remember the name) and got bored. Never watched the 3rd one.
And then there was Rogue One, which I also watched in cinema. I did enjoy it, but it was also an absolute nothing burger of a movie with 0 lasting impact or characters worth remembering.
I found Rogue One a satisfying conclusion to the independent Andor story.
I was the world's biggest Star Wars fan in the '90s. I read all the books and comics, I had the little spaceships. When I left the theater in 1997 after seeing the Star Wars Special Edition, it was like a punch to the gut. So many stupid changes. I hoped for more with Empire, but Luke screamed after his noble sacrifice, which really irritated me. By the time of Jedi, I was already expecting the worst, and boy, they delivered with that awful musical number.
But somewhere deep in my heart I held out hope for Phantom Menace. And that finally killed Star Wars for me. Later I sold or gave away all that stuff. I only kept the original Timothy Zahn trilogy, because I first read those before I even saw the movies.
So by the time we got the sequels I had zero investment. Force Awakens was... fine. A rehash with no original ideas. But I get it. Remind people why they like Star Wars.
I liked Last Jedi a little more than most, despite the clear trilogy pacing screw ups and go-nowhere B plots (casino planet, etc.). I actually really liked Luke's arc. It was something new and unexpected, but many Star Wars fans want the same warmed-over meal instead of something more dynamic. Same goes for the "anyone can be Force sensitive." Same goes for "the sacred texts!" And Luke demonstrated total mastery over the Force, holding to his Jedi beliefs, before he died. It was bold, not the typical corporate safe plots with all sharp edges filed down. It could have led in an interesting direction. Killing Snoke was surprising, but I had to imagine there was a plan there. This was a billion dollar franchise. Surely someone had a conversation before they approved the script.
Well, no. They didn't. I had assumed it was setting up Kylo Ren as the primary antagonist for the next movie. But Rise of Skywalker ended up being one of the worst movies I've seen in my life. Not worst Star Wars movie: worst movie period.
How do you make a good Star Wars 9 after 8? Well you sure don't bring Palpatine back in the 9th inning with zero foreshadowing. And you definitely don't materialize 10 million Star Destroyers out of thin air.
The original trilogy was great. The prequels were flawed and silly, but at least there was a singular flawed and silly creative force behind them trying to say something. The sequels on the whole just sucked.
They could have made it really interesting if Kylo Ren and Rey had joined forces, either for good or bad, and wound up facing off against Poe and Finn. But no.
What I really believed at the time, and thought might be possible with some of the boldness shown in Last Jedi as well as the talk about letting the past die (and the title), was that they were setting up Kylo and Rey to join together and find a "middle way" in the Buddhist sense—not Jedi or Sith, but something new and truly balanced. Like he would become the antagonist, but Rey would bring him back and together they would discover this new approach. That would fulfill the chosen one prophecy more deeply, tying into the prequels, as well as give more meaning to burning "the sacred texts!" It would end the entire series on a hopeful note of breaking the cycle.
Then they could have all the movies and TV shows they wanted after that by setting them 10,000 years in the past or as side stories or whatever.
One day I sat down to watch the movie after force awakens (can't even remember the name). About 30 minutes in I had an extreme sense of deja vu. Come to find out I watched that movie in theaters and had completely forgot it. After that I watch ed rise of the Skywalker and definitely will remember that as being the worst stars wars anything I have ever seen... christmas special and babu frik excluded!. I felt bad for the actors on that one.
I think I actually disliked the 2nd one more I think.
It definitely was. The cultural impact of the sequels is much lower than the two other trilogies.
I didn’t even see the third one I was so checked out on it
I skipped through a chinese screen recording bootleg version just to put a dot at the end of that chapter. Was almost a waste of time, but at least it let me for sure know I didn't miss anything.
Watched 30 mins of it and bailed
Did they all feel almost lifeless to you? I couldn’t ever get over how lifeless the first two felt and just figured the third would end up being like that too. Just like it was all just visual fodder for me to stare at for a couple hours and the story was so generic that my brain just said “nah fuck that” and rejected it
TLJ is second only to ESB.
the problem is JJ. he's creatively bankrupt. TFA was too unoriginal, hamstringing the whole trilogy. and the man can't end anything to save his life, and they gave him the conclusion to ALL OF STAR WARS.
TFA was perfect, it had mystery, and mystery, and mystery, and even nostalgia too!
It was only when TLJ explained some of those mysteries that suddenly all the pieces that looked like they weren't from the same puzzle, and some of them weren't puzzle pieces at all, and a few of the pieces were obviously colored with crayons by a confused child... That's when it suddenly fell apart through no fault of anyone other than Rian Johnson.
I'm pretty sure I've never been satisfied by the reveal of a single JJ Abrahms mystery, ever. I don't understand how he has such a career of failing upwards.
It was bad enough that it was a repressed memory. To this day, I still feel that the trailers for The Old Republic video game are 100% better than that whole sequel trilogy combined.
They were forgettable. In order, we had:
Sequel? The force Awakens was just a rehash of A New Hope.
I was a Star Wars fan all my life.
I became a Trekkie somewhere through that trilogy.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I liked the sequel trilogy. I understand why people hate on the sequels, I just don’t feel that way. I liked the characters in it. The only thing I didn’t like was that they made a CGI Carrie Fisher; I thought it was in poor taste. But the rest of it? Liked it quite a bit. 🤷🏻♀️
All of Star Wars is dumb as shit. I don’t know why you guys have such a hate boner for three specific movies or how you even pick them out of the pile.
When they kissed I was 100% over it
I actually do like Force Awaken at first, because despite all its fault it still a pretty fun movie to watch, and i have hope for the second sequel. The Last Jedi then crash that expectation and imploded like a submarine. I did not watch the third one.
I did a rewatch all the way through recently and i thought they weren’t as bad as everyone thinks. 🤷
I've watched every Star Wars movie several times but I have no reason whatsoever to rewatch those wretched cash grabs.
Well the first one certainly was. The other two were rather memorable in how bad they were.
While episode 4 was such a teenie movie, 5 and 6 were, despite being totally overhyped, actually quite radical, and not just in their iconography.
The prequels had potential, but were butchered, mainly by awful CGI.
The sequels weren't bad in my book, just way too similar to the original 4-6.
Yes it was it was just the first two or fourth and fifth all over.
Seems like a lot of the entertainment Disney makes tries to be extremely average. Not edgy, not offending anyone. The end result is almost like AI slop before AI slop existed. Entertainment so mediocre that it doesn’t make you feel anything.
Just enough to maintain their grip on the IP and make some merch sales
Disney movies are theatrical length ads for merch and experiences. The animation style for BB-8 was 100% prioritizing driving merch sales.
my old professor called it "Attraction to Mediocrity" - the idea that over time things move towards the most average as you try to please the most people
Movie by committee.
Entertainment doesn't need to be good anymore.
As we use more and more electronic distractions, we start to leave streaming on all say while we work, play, etc..
This means people aren't really paying attention, so the streams just play and generate cash, with people not noticing that the quality has dropped
Why why pay top dollar to make programs when they can just dribble out pablum to stream.
So we get dumb crap with bad writing and childish titles.
The difference between an artist and someone with money sickness.