[SkeuomorphicBee]

> I really dislike the fan mob that it's starting the hate because RTMI is not going to be a throwback and retro-game.

That is the same blow-back that George Lucas caught when he made the Star Wars prequels. When George Lucas made the original Star Wars he set out to make a state-of-art sci-fi movie, and in fact he pushed the state-of-art ahead by a huge leap in that movie. A decade or two later, with the evolution of cinema effects, the original trilogy stopped being seen as state-of-art, but kept its cultural influence now under a new lens, it started being seen as a type of retro-futurism. So when George Lucas set out to make the prequels, he again intended to make state-of-art sci-fi movies*, as is his right, and as he should, but many of the fans instead wanted the new trilogy to match the retro-futurism feel they now assigned to the original ones, hence the many complaints at the time.

Interestingly enough, later when Disney made the sequels they went the other way completely, and bet heavily on the retro-futurism feel (down even to the story arcs), so they got blow-back from the fans that instead wanted a state-of-art sci-fi.

* If he achieved that state-of-art goal is debatable, my personal opinion he did, but just barely, failing to leap forward like the original did on its time, so they do feel a bit like "generic late 90s/early 00s sci-fi".*

[the_af]

The Star Wars prequels simply weren't good for storytelling/plot reasons, not just visuals.

The characters weren't interesting, or even worse, were universally reviled like Jar Jar. The main character (both as a kid and as a teenager) was annoying as hell. The story didn't mesh well with the established Star Wars movies, like that thing with midichlorians that was thankfully played down in subsequent movies. For some reason, Lucas moved The Phantom Menace from "Young Adult" territory (as was the Original Trilogy) to "kid's movie", but halfway and inconsistently, so you get Jar Jar and "yipeee!" but also Trade Federation taxation routes -- what the hell?

To be fair, the visuals were also abused by Lucas. I think there's a legitimate criticism to be made of George Lucas and his "horror of the void": when he didn't have the tech/budget, he had to live with vast empty spaces, and the movies got that "Spaghetti Western" barren look that actually made them better. When CGI became cheaper and easier to use, George Lucas decided to fill every bit of empty screen with some gizmo or cute alien screaming at the screen, and his movies suffered because of this.

[whywhywhywhy]

Also gotta keep in mind if it’s all CGI he can just sit in a chair in the same studio the whole movie directing it from a monitor.

Once you see the behind the scenes you start to see this as one of the main reasons it’s so CGI filled.

[GaylordTuring]

I’m still disappointed that Darth Jar Jar didn’t come to fruition. It would have been perfect. In episode VII, Yoda is introduced as this ridiculous character that turned out to be a Jedi master, with the moral of the story being that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Even with this seed planted in the original tribology, everyone saw Jar Jar as this clown who shouldn’t be taken serious. It would have brilliant to reveal that it was all a charade that no one could see through, not even the viewers who already had seen one such reveal taking place in the past.

I’m bummed.

[whywhywhywhy]

Agree 100%, would have taken resolve to push through the criticism and pull that off but it feels like he became too influenced by the criticism then ended up shipping milquetoast rubbish.

Imagine how fun it would have been watching Ep1 and getting annoyed by Jar Jar once you know he ends up super evil.

[ffhhj]

Lucas planned Jar Jar to be revealed as the Sith Lord in the second movie, that's why the character is unlikeable, but it would have been an interesting plot twist and would have made the first movie rewatchable since he place many little clues. Authors shouldn't be scared to develop their vision, and then create something to please them that will suck anyway.

[the_af]

I think Darth Jar Jar is an amusing fan theory, but fan theory nonetheless. Yes, Ahmed Best (the actor) said it wasn't out of the question, but there's no official confirmation this was even considered. All there is, is fan based theories speculating about circumstantial evdience.

[kemayo]

I'm pretty sure that Darth Jar Jar is only a fan theory, without any commentary from Lucas confirming it. (We can speculate, but I dislike saying it so confidently.)

[babyshake]

The prequels weren't exactly full of shocking plot twists that weren't clearly telegraphed or just shown on the movie poster (young Anakin with the Darth Vader shadow). I don't think Jar Jar was ever going to be evil.

[smudgy]

I'm not sure a major problem with the prequels was the aesthetic.

It never bothered me that it felt more "modern" than the original trilogy, it bothered me (and plenty of others) that the story wasn't good. For something that was in his head for such a long time, it came out half-baked.

[Cthulhu_]

It's the same with the sequels, they're making big jumps in the established lore, and they made the huge mistake of not actually fleshing out the story beforehand (like e.g. the MCU), leading to three disconnected movies full of attempted nostalgia and pushing merchandise; they made fanservice instead of good films.

[speeder]

Actually from what I heard they DID flesh out things.

But then they made the serious error of hiring Rian Johnson AND giving him free rein with the direction of the movie.

Rian Johnson already stated himself, he likes making divisive films. He also stated he doens`t like Star Wars...

So he proceeded to ignore the plans that they had, and just do whatever he wanted.

1. He ignored several planned story arcs and just shoved things. 2. He ignored past movies and create a lot of non-sense. 3. He ignored the Extended Universe but in a bad way, Extended Universe books had a look of technical information and whatnot that circulated back into canon, with movies and canon TV series using that information, RJ just ignored that information.

I fully expected Lucasfilm to just give up and not even attempt to make Film 9, that is how bad Film 8 fucked up the plans... But seemly they made an honest attempt to save the franchise in Film 9 by making it fanservice on top of fanservice and hope fans forget all the continuity errors and non-sense the plot became riddled with in Star Wars 8...

[halostatue]

I find Ep 7 to be mostly unwatchable because it’s almost all fan service without a real story to be found. There was no plot for Ep 8 to hang itself on, just a few coathooks widely spread.

Ep 8 had some really interesting character arcs, but also made some basic errors. As a movie, I think that it’s the strongest of the three sequels. Given a lack of plot points to really hang off, Johnson seems to have done something interesting, but left even fewer plot points to hang off than Abrams left him. Let’s be clear: if Lucasfilm had disagreed with his direction, they would have taken him off the project.

Ep 9 was more fan service (who can we throw into this scene?) with an even more inexplicable plot hook (if the Emperor was coming back in any way, there should have been hints of that in Ep 7).

I do not understand the fascination with J J Abrams. He claims to be a fan of various media, but IMO he is the shallowest type of fan out there, appreciating only certain aesthetics without looking any deeper. His Star Trek films are the absolute worst of all the Star Trek films, even worse than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Why are they the worst? Because they have become Generic Action Films with a Star Trek veneer. (This is more or less my complaint with Picard.) I dread the idea of seeing J J Abrams touch any more science fiction properties because he just doesn’t get them and turns them into Michael Bay films (but with lens flares instead of explosions).

[kemayo]

Abrams was an interesting (read: poor) choice for the final film, because he's famous for setting up compelling plots and not sticking the landing. See: Lost. His whole "mystery box" thing is great at pulling in viewers, but he's never been able to come up with something that works when he's forced to finally open the box.

Amusing juxtaposition in critical reception:

Article about his mystery box thing before Rise: https://www.success.com/jj-abrams-and-the-unopened-mystery-b...

Article about his mystery box thing after Rise: https://screenrant.com/star-wars-rise-skywalker-abrams-myste...

[WorldMaker]

Abrams stated in more than one interview that he didn't know Star Trek much beyond Wrath of Khan and wasn't much interested in Star Trek. Star Trek to JJ was always just the audition for Star Wars.

He proved he was great at nailing the aesthetic even if so many other qualities of the franchise like writing and plot take a back seat.

That's basically his Star Wars movies in a nutshell too: he absolutely nails the aesthetic 100% and everything else suffers. I think that's why they feel so much like fan service rather than standalone efforts because of that uncanny valley effect where they feel so much like old Star Wars movies and don't have great ideas but to ape old Star Wars plots, but still aren't "Old Star Wars". A lot of what was new in the films added greatly to the aesthetic of the franchise and pushed that, at least, in new directions.

Honestly, I think "the Emperor has returned somehow" is pure 100% Star Wars aesthetic, too. Weird cloning nonsense: very Star Wars. Evil villains returning at surprise hours after being silently behind the curtain for movies: very Star Wars. Absolutely the writing could have done better of foreshadowing that than by doing it in Fortnite of all places (!), but it's still very Star Wars to just "oh, here's the Emperor now". The new trilogy "rhymes" with the original trilogy: Snoke like Vader is clearly a Lieutenant of someone else (and turning out to be a broken clone of the Emperor, very Star Wars) and then Vader/Snoke are revealed to be less important and we fight the Emperor directly. The only missing is the "I am your father" bit for Snoke, but we all know how corny Rian Johnson thought that was, despite being the exact sort of soap opera (well, pulp serial) plotting that made Star Wars what it was/is.

[kemayo]

I do agree with you that Disney mismanaged the whole trilogy, and the fault lies with them. They very clearly went into it without any sort of plan or even a particular vision, deferring completely to whatever each director wanted to do. With minimal imposition of a plot outline, the whole thing could have gone much better, even while still leaving the individual directors to mostly decide how they got there.

To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc. If they'd carried on with what 8 was setting up we'd have had ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "resolution"], and instead we were left with ["nostalgia" => "twist" => "ignore that! more nostalgia"]. The former could have worked out and won over those who disliked the Last Jedi twists, the latter just flopped unsatisfyingly. (A second-movie twist was always in the cards, given general fan sentiment about Empire.)

Disclaimer: I personally liked episode 8 the most of that trilogy, and it's the only one I'd bother to go rewatch. It has the best direction by far, along with the most striking visuals of the lot and most of the quotable lines. That said, I think my take on this holds up regardless of which side of the Last Jedi divide you fall on. :D

[dylan-m]

Yep, management sins abound. It made sense to me that some people would be picking at Ryan Johnson's film as defiling the saga or whatever because it was divisive, but obviously if you're trying to tell a good story - and it isn't like Johnson forced Disney to produce his film - you'll find a way to work with that and honour the world you're creating. Instead, they threw fuel on the fire, practically breaking the fourth wall as they do everything they can to reverse the thing with Episode 9. People shouldn't be talking about how the writers disagreed with each other, but here we are; the lasting legacy of the last three Star Wars movies is not the movies themselves, but the story of how they were politicked and focus-grouped into existence. Nobody involved here had even the slightest concept of artistic creation.

And to be fair, I liked Episode 8. Flawed, stupid casino planet bit, the ending was silly. But Star Wars isn't known for its plot and logical consistency anyway; the series is 99% retcons and fan theories. What's important is the atmosphere and the characters, and what the meagre plot means for those characters. And there was actually some genuine effort being made.

[WorldMaker]

> To my mind, letting Abrams double-down on swerving back to his plot in episode 9 was their biggest management sin when it comes to creating a coherent plot arc.

Abrams was an Executive Producer on Ep 8 still and was supposedly in the room for all of the plot development. He personally could have avoided most of that swerve had he been paying attention. Admittedly, he thought at the time it was Trevorrow's problem because Disney didn't fire Trevorrow from Ep 9 until the "last minute", but there's a lot of interesting questions left about what Abrams even thought the "resolution" could possibly be even with Trevorrow at the helm. He was still an Executive Producer in a role that should have been preparing for the trilogy as a whole to succeed.

It takes a village to make a movie and all that, and I'm not personally blaming Abrams, though it sounds like it, I think Disney management should have been more involved too. The whole Trevorrow thing reeks of Disney management failure and bad contract planning. (Between that and the shenanigans with Lord/Miller over Solo…)

I think Abrams made the best movie for Ep 9 that he could have given the time, budget, and resources he had to meet a "set in stone" holiday release date. I think he did the best he could with what Johnson left him, and honestly I don't think anyone could have resolved Johnson's plot twists well and still have felt like Star Wars. He had good ideas in absentia, but they weren't "Star Wars".

(Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics. I also had a big issue with the "Three Billboards problem" of Poe in Ep 8. In my eyes he's unreedemably the villain of the film, and the character is entirely broken beyond repair in Ep 8. But also, admittedly, I haven't liked any of Rian Johnson's films that I've watched [inc. Knives Out; and I especially hated Looper].)

[kemayo]

> Admittedly, I thought Ep 8 was the entire wrong genre for Star Wars: it was a Vietnam War movie in a franchise built around World War 2 metaphors/aesthetics.

Ah, but Star Wars has always been a Vietnam metaphor filtered through WW2 aesthetics. Specifically, with the Rebels being the Viet Cong -- they're a small group using asymmetric warfare tactics against a vast military machine that's exerting cultural hegemony over even the territory it doesn't control. Lucas has actually been pretty explicit about this being his intention in interviews.

[vlunkr]

And Disney could have said "no" to any of his ideas at any point. He's become a scapegoat for bitter fans who can't see that Disney didn't know what to do after the first movie.

[hutzlibu]

My first impression was the same, but later I came to the conclusion that it was just way more deep.

The first star wars was glorifying rebellious david against goliath setting and fun adventures. A young nobody becomes a hero for the good side. People identified with luke skywalker.

The later was way more about politics, intrigues and corruption of power. Not a bad story, but much more heavy (and depressing). A young nobody becomes a dark lord. Identifying with a dark lord? A bit harder.

(And the disney movies try to be simple again, but are too shallow for my taste, but are well shot)

[dleslie]

Episode 1 is a terrible movie.

I tried watching it with my kids as a marathon of Star Wars for May the Fourth, and they became bored with the trade federation and Senate, and were annoyed by Jar Jar. The pod racing was the saving grace, in their eyes, but even it was only mildly amusing.

I turned it off when they left the room when the pod racing finished.