"disney trilogy bad" is a cold take. its not a hot take if every nerd on the planet agrees.
anyways the last jedi is the only good movie in the sequel trilogy. the people who didnt like it would rather watch a correct movie than a good one.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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You want a HOT take on Star Wars?
I love it. All of it. Games, movies, shows. All. Of. It. Sure, I've got some critiques, but even the prequels/sequels are a thrill ride. I love Star Wars and I don't care about some dork on the internet's opinion on it.
This is the only hot take in this whole thread lol
My lukewarm take is that Star Wars has varied so greatly in quality from product-to-product, that any take that categorizes some of it as bad and some of it as good is a lukewarm, standard take.
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Mine is they shouldn't have made the sequel series without ~~George as a consultant~~ a plan
My hot take on the sequels is that the first one was a decent start, and they screwed up the whole plot from there. It had some issues mainly in dropping subplots, probably because what was intended to be followed up wasn't thanks to different plots and directors.
That's not a hot take at all.
It really did seem like they were just making stuff up as they went 😂
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I love the idea Kylo Ren. Unhinged man child who worships Vader for all the wrong reasons. His soldiers are afraid of him and work around him and pity him. I love having such a broken villain.
I loved when Rey's parents were nobodies.
I loved that Luke was a scared and broken. Should have felt crippling pity for that guard he force choked in a Jabba's palace. Still. I loved it.
And while I'm at it. Frozen. I wanted so desperately for Hans to be entirely sympathetic and just not in love will Anna. Movie is mostly the same until Anna gets back and needs the kiss to fix her and he tries and.... Nothing. Then. I dunno. Finish the movie some other way.
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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?
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".
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Before I begin - lightsabers are an awesome fantasy weapon and I would love to have one.
Lightsabers are a big reason that Star Wars is garbage.
Hardly any lightsaber fights in the OT, used by all of three people (4 if you count Han, which I don't). Once the prequel trilogy was made and special effects were cheaper and easier, lightsabers everywhere, and instead of a lightsaber fight being an old fashioned samurai duel where the story and the fight are enhancing each other, now it's just a spectacle. Has it been more than fifteen minutes since we saw a lightsaber? FSSH, vwoom.
Andor is regarded as one of the better pieces of Star Wars media - no lightsabers, no Jedi, just people versus the machine of the Empire.
Mandalorian S1 was straight fire. Then they introduced the Darksaber. Now nobody likes Mando anymore.
I'm not out to yuck anyone's yum. You can like bad movies, or movies that are big tentpole spectacles but aren't ever going to engage with you mentally. I went and saw Episode IX in theaters opening night and it was as entertaining as Hobbs and Shaw. My brain didn't get anything out of it and it was good to see Palpatine again because he was the only one in the movie that felt like a real person with, you know, motivation and stuff. But I left the theater and I don't really think about it (except for times like now) because it didn't engage with me mentally. There was nothing there.
Just lightsabers.
Endless lightsabers.
I'm not crazy about all the callbacks and remember-mes either (looking at you Rogue One, Boba Fett, Solo, etc), but that's a different rant.
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At this point, Star Wars is just a setting. The reason Star Wars shows/movies continue to be so divisive is because people expect the tone/genre of their favorite piece of Star Wars content.
For example, expecting to like Acolyte because you liked Rogue One is ridiculous. They have almost nothing in common. You wouldn’t expect to like Dr Strange because you liked Dunkirk.
Just because it has a Star Wars brand on it doesn’t mean it will be anything like other things with the Star Wars brand. Expecting that will lead to disappointment.
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It wasn't very good and then got way worse. We could be forgiven for not knowing better when we were kids but that was 40 years ago.
Empire has never been beaten as a high point in the franchise and it can't be because SW is taken way too seriously now
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
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They shouldn’t have made the prequels. They were terrible and George fucked the legacy of Star Wars forever
I mean, dangling the concept of a moisture farming teen in front of us, and then dropping that entire cinematic arc in favour of some space wizard bullshit? Like, hello? Know your audience?
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I loved everything about the force awakens, but I will never forget the emptiness and depression I felt leaving theater after seeing the last Jedi. I know its from a place of privilege that I can feel this way, but I never had another piece of fiction hurt me so badly. I grew up deep into the EU and games and it was my way to escape the existentialism of my daily life, and I was looking forward to see my fictional hero at as a full power Jedi master on the big screen. Now all I feel is apathy when It comes to start wars.
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I know it's not a hot take but I'll rant.
who the hell had to make Rey a Palpatine and Palpatine not die. that wasn't epic, that was dumb af.
Darth jar jar would have been wayyy more compelling, funny, etc.
sometimes dead is bettah.
they could have gone a different route with snoke. he was the only compelling new guy and they made him the old guy. bahhh
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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?
Star Wars is just a formulaic fantasy story with a sci-fi coat of paint on it. The original trilogy was groundbreaking because of the special effects, and the story was entertaining enough to not distract from that. The other six films in the main storyline bring nothing new to the table, and are thus boring cashgrabs.
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The whole turning off the lightsaber in combat being seen as dishonorable by the sith. The sith lie, cheat, steal, torture, and murder people to get what they want but somehow this is where they draw the line?
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Rogue One has the best score. It drives the movie like a madman. It's amazing that it's only one NOT done by John Williams. But I think they took what he created and built a masterpiece.
Rogue One and Andor are the only watchable things that have come out in the last few years.
Star wars is better without jedi or sith as main characters. The universe is far more interesting when it's regular people and the force users are rare or very weak. I liked rogue one so much more than the other movies. Jedi and sith and such are over powered bullshit and should be reserved for the rare deus ex machina. They are boring. Except Obi Wan because I have a huge crush on Ewan McGregor.
The original trilogy was awesome because George Lucas did not have full creative control. The editors (Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew) prevented a new hope from being a complete dumpster fire. The prequels had too much George Lucas, and the sequels had too much ... I dunno? Decisions by managers or something?
Anyway it seems The Mandalorian was awesome because it was a passion project by true OT fans. The franchise needs to wait for that type of project instead of just green lighting half hearted crap by folks trying to extract value out of star wars.
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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.
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There are no hot takes. Everything has been analyzed and discussed a thousand times. Everyone has their own opinion, but none of them are hot anymore.
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The shouldn't have made a sequel trilogy without coming out with a plan
That is the ice-coldest of takes lmao
They should leave a bit more of the technical stuff up to the imagination.
Take ESB. I have no idea how the AT-AT walkers got to Hoth. It makes the reveal of the giant machines more intense. I have no idea how hyperspace works
I don't need the tech behind kyber crystals I like laser swords. I don't need medichlorians, I like mystical space monks.
I think star wars learned the wrong lessons of a decade of hyper realistic film making.
The Star Wars universe is not interesting enough for all the TV show and movies being made. George Lucas is not Tolkien and the world building was fine enough for the original trilogy, but it’s simply too boring for more content. Tolkiens work gets more interesting as you learn more about the details. Star Wars is the opposite. The more information you get the less interesting it is.
Also the Jedis are just cops/soldiers. They are not inherently good.
That's more or less my take too. The world of the Star Wars universe feels huge and expansive, but in reality by the end of the original trilogy they had basically told all the interesting stories that were to be had about it. And even then, they were starting to run out of material for Return of the Jedi. They tried with the prequels, but as you say it mostly fell flat and ended up boring. The sequels started off more or less rehashing the original trilogy so they were at least entertaining, but that wasn't enough for three movies and it turned into an absolute mess by the end.
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Judging from the replies, people don't like Star Wars, they like space opera as a genre. Wonder what would have happened if George Lucas adapted H.P. Beam's "Space Viking" instead.
I want to explore the universe that has been created; I am so sick of space wizards and good vs evil
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