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What did you think of The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker

The Last Jedi was good. The Rise of Skywalker was awful.
2
11%
The Last Jedi was awful. The Rise of Skywalker was good.
1
5%
Both were awful.
7
37%
Both were good.
No votes
0%
Seagulls, mmm! Stop it now!
9
47%
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By Boffo97 (Dave Hines)
 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Retired Moderator
#553149
It's still May the Fourth here as I type this, so this seemed appropriate to ask: What is your opinion on The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker specifically?

I'm most interested in seeing if most people fit into the category of liking one and disliking the other considering how The Last Jedi seemed to discard most of the questions and plotlines raised by The Force Awakens and then The Rise of Skywalker seemed to do everything it could in turn to negate The Last Jedi.
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By SudenKapala (Suden Käpälä)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#553169
All 3 new films were horrible in their own right! :( I've written enough about that in the forums to vent most (but not all, it seems) of
my anger as a Wars fan that nobody stopped this FUBAR trilogy from being as bad as it is;
my frustration as a film fan that such rubbish ever gets made; and
my feeling personally insulted both as a fan (no! I don't just dig this because it's Wars!) and as an amateur writer of 25 years, that the writers and producers were this lazy.
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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
 -  
Community Contributor
#553196
WeyounsLastClone wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 10:18 am Probably in the minority, but I highly enjoyed The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but was (a bit) let down by The Rise of Skywalker.
I just go in to SW movies expecting Space Wizards with Laser Swords. They generally meet that expectation.
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First Edition Rules Master
 - First Edition Rules Master
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
Community Contributor
#553199
I preferred Last Jedi, because I thought it was a better plot closure to the overarching trilogy: (4-6: Empire dark evil bad; 1-3: Oh, the Republic and Jedi were kinda dicks and had it coming; 7-9: Here we go again, now what?)

But the problem is that it's not really a trilogy, because clearly Disney didn't plot out the overall arch here, so you have multiple writers stepping on each other to jerk the story in their desired direction.

But Seagulls was an option, and that's clearly superior to both of those movies so I voted for that. :D
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By Armus (Brian Sykes)
 - The Center of the Galaxy
 -  
Regent
Community Contributor
#553201
I legit wonder what this conversation would look like if George Lucas read the thought i had in my head in 1998 and made the Thrawn trilogy as Eps VII-IX.

They were great books, but I know great books may or may not translate to the big screen.

I want to think they would've been a success though, as Thrawn was a compelling villain and at the time the original cast wasn't too old to make a plausible return.
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#553202
edgeofhearing wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:03 am
WeyounsLastClone wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 10:18 am Probably in the minority, but I highly enjoyed The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but was (a bit) let down by The Rise of Skywalker.
I just go in to SW movies expecting Space Wizards with Laser Swords. They generally meet that expectation.
Yup. They were fine. There were great and terrible moments in all three of the sequel series.

-crp
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By grandar
 - Alpha Quadrant
 -  
#553211
AllenGould wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:18 am But the problem is that it's not really a trilogy, because clearly Disney didn't plot out the overall arch here, so you have multiple writers stepping on each other to jerk the story in their desired direction.
100% agree. The story felt darts being thrown at a dart board to see what stuck. As a series of movies on Disney+, featuring all new characters in a familiar universe, they would have been pretty good. As a sequel trilogy to the originals, they were "meh".

IMO, of the new stuff, Rogue One and The Mandalorian were better than all three.
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 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#553216
The entire 7-9 was complete garbage. This might sound weird, but I would have liked to see what Rian Johnson could have done if he had the entire trilogy instead of Jar Jar Abrams ruining everything he touches.

The last jedi was the closest to good of the three and it was still an entire galaxy off the mark but I think it could have been good if Rian had control over the lead in and follow up to it.
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By SudenKapala (Suden Käpälä)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
#553218
Armus wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:22 am I legit wonder what this conversation would look like if George Lucas read the thought i had in my head in 1998 and made the Thrawn trilogy as Eps VII-IX.
The thought you had? :lol: I read the novels when they came out from 1991 onwards, and everybody was talking about that. All of my local fellow Wars fans, and all the buzz that was created about them, too. :shock:

But from the get-go, it was clear (to me) that Zahn's narratives were much too complex -- and would demand way too much exposition -- to be adapted into a silver screen trilogy. Each novel would require either 2 films, or a 3.5h film, or be cut down to size as a very superficial installment each.

We saw exactly that last MO be employed with Dark Horse's comic series that adapted the trilogy. Those comics -- however awesome -- left out a great many details. Come to think of it, it mostly did a great job at that -- except for the Delta Source storyline. That particular sub-plot was resolved (IIRC) in a single panel without the "correct" (i.e., the novel's) explanation; I believe it implied that robots were the source of the data leak...? (I cannot at the moment access my library of Wars TPBs, or I'd look it up. :neutral: ) They weren't, and the actual culprit was much more satisfying.
(But the panel does also support the "actual" theory -- if you know the novels' explanation, you can read that into that same panel. That was well done! But it was an example of how much of the rich backgrounds the comics writers had to forego.)
Anyway, that was just one element that was dropped to cram the whole intricate story into 18 comics or 3x 160 pages (TPBs). I remember vividly thinking how they would not be great films, because they'd be too complex, too elaborate, for Wars films.

The Jedi Academy trilogy, OTOH, might make better Wars films. They are simpler, much more visually oriented (instead of plot-oriented). However, they are far inferior novels, from a literary and quality POV. But that's what you get -- a thin, simple novel will make a good film. Anything more in the way of density and elaboration, needs more films. (Or, like TLOTR -- which officially is 1 novel -- needs three 3.5 h films that still omit many smaller plotlines.)

So. I never thought (or opined) seriously that the last 3 films of Lucas' epic would be based on Zahn's books. They were simply too well-crafted for that film genre. :twocents:
Last edited by SudenKapala on Wed May 12, 2021 6:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Second Edition Art Manager
By edgeofhearing (Lucas Thompson)
 - Second Edition Art Manager
 -  
Community Contributor
#553220
Hoss-Drone wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 1:07 pm The entire 7-9 was complete garbage. This might sound weird, but I would have liked to see what Rian Johnson could have done if he had the entire trilogy instead of Jar Jar Abrams ruining everything he touches.

The last jedi was the closest to good of the three and it was still an entire galaxy off the mark but I think it could have been good if Rian had control over the lead in and follow up to it.
Knives Out was fantastic; I liked it more than anything I've seen that JJ Abrams has made (though I also enjoy the murder mystery genre a lot). I'd also be inclined to put more of my trust in Rian than JJ too.
Last edited by edgeofhearing on Wed May 05, 2021 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Director of First Edition
By MidnightLich (Charlie Plaine)
 - Director of First Edition
 -  
Prophet
#553226
At this point, JJ Abrams has proven that he loves the "mystery box" style of story, but never intends to pay that off. Alias, LOST, Fringe, and Ep. 7 all did it, and most of the ones that paid things off did so when other people finished the series. I'm honestly shocked Star Trek (2009) didn't do it.

-crp
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 - Gamma Quadrant
 -  
Continuing Committee Member - Retired
#553235
MidnightLich wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 2:02 pm At this point, JJ Abrams has proven that he loves the "mystery box" style of story, but never intends to pay that off. Alias, LOST, Fringe, and Ep. 7 all did it, and most of the ones that paid things off did so when other people finished the series. I'm honestly shocked Star Trek (2009) didn't do it.

-crp
Bc he was too busy making it his "plz let me do Star wars" resume.
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