Star Wars Misc. Catch-All

If you really want to watch Anakin turn into Darth Vader, Clone Wars is essential viewing.

Sorbicol wrote:

The prequels - Phantom Menace (a very mediocre kid’s film that has the greatest lightsabre duel committed to celluloid) Attack of the Clones & Revenge of the Sith are either pretty bad or bang average at best.

The fact that I enjoyed the politics in those movies more than pretty much anything else shows how bad they are.

Star Wars noob asks Star Wars nerds for advice.

93_confirmed wrote:

I'm even more confused than I was before. :lol:

A tale as old as time.

To simplify, start with Star Wars A New Hope. If you like it go to Empire and on to Return.

Watch the first three movies (the ones released in the 70s and 80s). If you like those, keep going. If not, NEVER TELL THE INTERNET!!!

The prequel trilogy isn’t as bad as people say. (Well, not most of it. Phantom Menace has a few redeeming parts but is much better if you watch a no-Anakin, no-Jar Jar edit. And Attack of the Clones should have just deleted the factory sequence which was added late in production and doesn’t add to the story whatsoever.) I particularly enjoy how although it is theoretically about Anakin / Vader, it really tells the story of how a republic fell and was replaced by an empire. Palpatine is just that skilled as a manipulator.

Even if that doesn’t interest you, you must watch the prequel trilogy at least once if you want to be fluent in the 1/4 of the internet’s memes that come from it. For instance:
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I’ll also somewhat defend Machete Order being good for new viewers, although I watched the original trilogy in the ‘80s so may have an irrelevant perspective. Machete Order is great in that after Empire, you see the former power and structure of Jedis and the Jedi Order, so that when Luke appears in Return as a fully fledged Jedi, his development from Empire makes more sense. Also, of course, better drama structure in Machete Order.

The prequel trilogy had a bunch of good ideas that were poorly implemented. Over time, the ideas stick with people while the bad stuff fades away. This is particularly true of the folks who grew up with those films and thus were more forgiving of their flaws.

Jesus you guys.

Stop talking in Star Wars-ese!!!

93_confirmed: I say run! Run away lest you too become infected as the rest of us already are! Save yourself from a future of arguing about film orders, Orders with numbers, show runners, the Palpatine denouement, green screens and their positives/negatives, the economic system of a miniature Care Bear colony on a forested moon, exhaust pipes, and endless, ENDLESS rehashing of logical and physics-based fallacies of a children's show.

Be careful or it'll happen to you!

Instead of all this, just watch Battle Beyond the Stars then just argue with people that they don't know what Star Wars really is.

Spaceballs.

I just rewatched 2 and 3 about a month ago, and they were even worse than I remembered.

Mixolyde wrote:

I just rewatched 2 and 3 about a month ago, and they were even worse than I remembered.

The bad stuff doesn't fade away if you actually watch the darn things...

My AV setup in the basement has hit the point where I can watch stuff on the projector while I tidy the wiring and generally clean up from the install.

So anyway, Rogue One is still a banger.

Although it does flow neatly into the original, the two films didn't actually make for the best double feature. Something about the way they're made and presented doesn't quite gel, though it is interesting to see how they're different.

It's also amazing to me how much better the original film sounds. Rogue One sounds great, but the sound design is standing on the original's shoulders and the music isn't particularly memorable. A New Hope's score does a lot of heavy lifting, and even the sounds that didn't become franchise standards are top-notch.

For mainline Star Wars movies, just watch them in release order, the prequels only make sense in context of the original movies.

Enjoy all of them them, or not, on their own merits and without SW 'fan' opinions in your mind like Wormtongue.

From there the essentials are Rogue One then Andor. (and if you like the revolutionary flavour, listening to the Andor arc of the podcast A More Civilized Age may be fun)

Bad Batch, although this is best if you can get through the other animated show, see my comments below.

generally after that just look at what's there and see what grabs you, for a bit of direction my thoughts are

Not essential and often a difficult if sometimes worthwhile watch are the Filoni animated shows.

Clone wars > Rebels> Bad Batch. Bonus for Clone Wars in you listen to A More Civilized Age while you watch this. But that's deep nerd shit.

But if you get frustrated with Clone Wars, which you will, it's patchy at best, skip to Rebels. If that's too young for you, skip to Bad Batch which is truly excellent.

Mandalorian Season 1 is great, but then it starts to slide as they grow out the setting.

Book of Boba Fett is forgettable, but does have some good Mandalorian stuff which is a bit annoying.

Acolyte is oddly paced but has some interesting ideas, I'm bummed we're not getting a season 2.

Obi Wan Kenobi, *sigh* it has some interesting stuff, but is mostly attempted fan service badly delivered.

Good post, MrDeVil909... and a fantastic excuse for me to bang the drum about The Bad Batch. Season 3 is the most emotionally-mature storytelling in entire Star Wars canon, in my view.

The Bad Batch are introduced in The Clone Wars, and one or two other characters from that show return. However, you can absolutely get by without doing the homework of watching all of it. The core - the heart - of the show are the 6 members of the Batch; how their individual characters, and their relationships with each other, develop.

Vargen wrote:

Rogue One sounds great, but the sound design is standing on the original's shoulders and the music isn't particularly memorable.

I find that highly offensive!

Not only is a lot of the music amazing, a side story music of the SW universe, the themes and sounds of Rogue One, including the title motif, are adaptations of musical ideas elsewhere in the prequel and original trilogies. For example anytime a character references the Death Star plans, the “hope” motif plays on flute (piccolo?) just like it does in A New Hope when Leia’s message is playing for Luke. Why can’t I find the music theory video that shows all that?

"Not memorable" wasn't the best choice of words. It is good music. But Rogue One uses the score the same way a lot of good films do. In A New Hope there are entire scenes that are carried by the music. If you mute the sound and watch any of the action scenes in R1, they'll still be exciting action scenes. Try the same thing with the Falcon gun turret scene and the whole thing falls apart. (This is not me saying it's in any way a bad scene.)

Another fascinating comparison between the two is the difference in the space battle sequences. The battles at Scariff and Yavin IV are the two best in the series, but they're very different. In Rogue One they give you a very clear idea of what's happening, what the objectives are, and how well the Rebellion is doing, but the stakes are all about what that means for the characters on the ground. In ANH the structure of the battle is also clear, though it's a lot simpler. The scene succeeds because of the way it focuses on the pilots as characters. It's basically a stand-alone short film in that regard. There's a reason why Wedge and Porkins have a lot of fans. I haven't encountered anything similar about Red 5 or Blue Squadron from R1--not because there's anything wrong with the scene, but because of how they chose to tell the story.

I enjoy the Rogue One space battle a lot more retrospectively now I recognise Ben Daniels (who has played Cirdan, Santiago, and General Bel Riose) as the main blue X Wing pilot.

alright, now I'm checking google and imdb to see who Ben Daniels is...

Keithustus wrote:

alright, now I'm checking google and imdb to see who Ben Daniels is...

His performance as Santiago in Interview with the Vampire was incredible. He really deserves some meaty roles off the back of it.

Kids finally watched IX today. Immediately turned around and watched III.

I remember how much we all laughed at how bad 3 was when it came out.

It is ASTONISHINGLY better than 9.

My memory of the reaction to III was pretty much "if we're grading on the curve set by the previous two, this one is pretty good." Folks thought it wasn't the best, but also that it wasn't that bad. Like, if this one had been the worst prequel instead of the best prequel then we'd have had nothing really to complain about. Heck, I remember reading several reviews that put it ahead of Return of the Jedi, though those were all from folks who actively disliked VI.

Personally, I don't think it's the best executed film but I give Lucas major props for making a big-budget blockbuster Greek tragedy.

I refuse to climb on the hate train for Rise of Skywalker. I've even mellowed on the prequels after enough rewatches.

That's just Stockholm Syndrome.

Nevin73 wrote:

That's just Skywalker Syndrome.

FTFY

I think III is alright, but it suffered from two major problems: Anakin's turn to the Dark Side being way to sudden, and the ridiculous explanation for Padme's death.

Anakin's distrust and resentment of the Jedi had not been adequately demonstrated enough to make it beleivable that he felt justified in siding with Palpatine to kill Mace Windu, and then leading the 501st in exterminating everyone in the Jedi Temple, younglings included. It made him seem capricious rather than implacable. The Clone Wars series did a far better job of documenting Anakin's building resentment and Palpatine's manipulation of him, but it had seasons and seasons to do that with, III just had 140 minutes, and spent far too much of it on other parts of the story to do Anakin's fall the justice it deserved.

Padme's incredibly stupid death not only broke canon (that she lived with Leia on Alderaan and died while Leia was still young, but at least old enough that she was able to remember her), it betrayed Padme's character as well. Padme had demonstrated time and again that she was a certified bad ass, and while it was devastating for her to see how Anakin had fallen and have her lash out in his rage at her calling Obi-wan, she would not have just lost her will to go on and quietly died despite being physically healthy, especially not with two newborn babies she now had to protect from Anakin and Palpatine.

“OB/GYNs Probably Don’t Even Exist in the Star Wars Universe”

“Did Inadequate Women’s Healthcare Destroy Star Wars’ Old Republic?” Sarah Jeong, Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wome...

At the end of Episode III, Anakin gets three limbs chopped off and then falls into hot lava. He lives.
His wife has babies, under medical supervision. She dies.

In order to give an intellectually honest assessment of whether the Star Wars prequels and/or sequels are as bad as I remember and/or which is worse than the other, I would have to watch them again. And I'm under no illusions that my opinion on the matter is so valuable to the world that it's worth inflicting that kind of psychic damage on myself.

"She's lost her will to live..."

My wife last night during the movie: "No brand new mom just loses the will to live because of some guy."

Top_Shelf wrote:

"She's lost her will to live..."

My wife last night during the movie: "No brand new mom just loses the will to live because of some guy."

Such a keen student of human behavior, script writer Lucas. Almost as insightful as the astounding dialogue he writes, which is exactly like things that human people would say!

Wait a tick… is George Lucas a Large Language Model? He sure writes like one.

Aside: I too am in the midst of my periodic Star Wars marathon. Just about to head into the sequels which for me, unlike seemingly everyone on the internet, are the highlight of the experience.

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