There were prequels? :)
Just as in the original trilogy I don’t think you needed to know the background of all the participants, but perhaps spending 5 minutes explaining what happened in the world over the previous X number of years might have been nice.
And even if Johnson was handed a shit sandwich, all he did was add miracle whip to it.
…you’re alright, Scuzz. For a Boomer, at least.
There were prequels! And at this point I prefer them over VII and VIII.
I liked VII, I am pretty meh about VIII.
I can’t really sit thru any of the prequels. They have their moments, but the bad outweighs the good by just too much.
Pretty good article, but he whiffed on a point that I don’t think I’ve ever seen successfully defended against. The complaint that Rose smashing her skimmer into Finn’s to save him is dumb. Symonds only says that her move makes sense in terms of her story arc, which I agree can be true, but he leaves the issue of whether or not it makes sense to ram into someone at full speed when you don’t know that you have plot armor lying unaddressed. Frankly, I don’t think there is an explanation that makes any sense.
Edit: Also Symonds is wrong that Disney announced putting the spinoff movies on hold. In fact, Disney denied any holds on Star Wars movies.
Thanks for sharing that Film Crit Hulk article. I love his stuff, hadn’t read this one yet.
The poster for the TLJ remake is looking good too.
:) Ok that made me smile. I can see the outcry already.
Rey makes the perfect turkey dinner, on her first try. And her entire life has consisted of just add water ration packs up to this moment.
She is the mary-jane of Thanksgiving meal preps
I loved that Film Critic Hulk article, and I love that poster with Snoke giving a projector explanation of his backstory and plans.
From that excellent article:
But what about Lord Snoke? Who is he? How did he rise to power? Well, does it matter? Don’t forget the original trilogy never really bothered answering those questions with the Emperor and it didn’t matter. (And didn’t the prequels tell us we didn’t really want that kind of answer, anyway?)
I hadn’t thought about that either. Palpatine was scary because he was shadowy and unknown, and also anyone that Vader took orders from would have to be badass. It isn’t a 1to1 because Ren is not Vader, but a wannabe who dresses up in Vader cosplay. But still, I always find it odd when people want everything explained to death, and then when it is all explained to death, they don’t like the explanation.
Here’s the thing, I don’t think it matters, if your heroes are Rey and Finn and Poe. If it’s Luke and Leia and Han? Then it turns into, WTH, this guy defeated our heroes, he turned their victory into a defeat, what do you mean it doesn’t matter?
It’s prologue for Rey. But how Snoke rose to power very much matters from the perspective of “I want to know WTH happened to my heroes”.
Of course my heroes aren’t the heroes of the new series. They’re the previous generation, who failed at what they were trying to do, and their failure isn’t interesting, it’s the new generation fixing their mistakes that matters.
Unfortunately, I don’t really care about the new generation, so…
I don’t know about that. Palpatine’s rise from Republic Senator and secret Sith Lord to Emperor was probably the best thing in the prequels. I’ll take a full movie of that over Anakin’s po-faced mopery.
As for Snoke, I discussed this earlier. I don’t need a full recounting of his life, I just wanted to know how he exists in the saga’s own continuity. Palpatine worked as an enigma because there wasn’t decades of story contradicting his existence. Emperor. Evil space wizard overlord. Got it. Snoke being a super-powerful evil space wizard conflicts with what we know about previous movies.
Then why are you here? If they were going to tell those stories, they should have done the Thrawn trilogy in the late eighties/early nineties.
I think it is hard to grasp, genuinely how huge of a time-gap there is between the old and new trilogy. 30 years. 3-0. We are talking Rey being born a full decade after the Empire fell. And they are supposed to explain that in one movie? Abrams left no time in his movie to explain anything, which left everyone waiting for movie #8 for answers. Which it fully was not about giving answers.
I never understand why anyone cares about that character’s backstory, or any background character’s backstory. Do you want to watch the later seasons of Orange is the New Black? Are you happy with 4 hours explaining the backstory of a funny background character you didn’t really care about? I hate this in TV shows now. Everything has to be fleshed out to death. Everything needs a backstory.
I am going to have to disagree here, as well as I think that arc was done, I find it hard to believe anyone would be talking up the “Senate” as the best parts of that prequel trilogy. Maybe the third film, but the parts in the first and second film? Give me a break. Also, I think the 3rd film really fumbled the stuff with Anakin, and I like the third movie. I guess you have to be powerful dark lord to turn a kid into a child murderer in the course of a few weeks.
I think that trilogy would have been better if they hadn’t entirely end loaded the transition to evil into one movie. I get what you are saying here, as the palpatine senate machinations were well paced throughout the prequel trilogy, but I don’t think people would have been happy with a story like that in the new films anyway, it wouldn’t have been enough, no matter what it was.
I honestly think we have the problem here of, nobody will ever be able to make the Star Wars movie that everyone wants, because everyone wants something different out of Star Wars, because it all means something different to us.
The actual Senate stuff was dreadful and Anakin turning child-murderer in a snap was all sorts of crazypants. You’ll get no argument from me on those points. But Palpatine, more importantly Ian McDiarmid, hamming his way through those scenes? Delightful.
Because I was under the mistaken idea that this trilogy was going to be the farewell song to my heroes, the passing of the torch, I didn’t realize the torch had been dropped and this trilogy was about the new generation picking it up from where the previous one had fumbled it. :D
That was very long but worthwhile. Thank you.
New Coke is great, guys!
Nice one!
I gave up on that hope after I saw TFA. I guess you were more optomistic in that respect.
When it takes a professional film critic around sixteen thousand words to explain why a movie’s script is actually good and perfectly sensible… maybe, just maybe, it isn’t.
It’s starting to feel like Iron Man around here.
He didn’t need to convince some of us.
