The sequels aren’t bad because they’re woke (are they woke, though?), they’re bad because they’re bad.
For example, I think Daisy Ridley played the part very well, and the character fit in the overarching universe. But the plot was awful and predictable.
And somehow Palpatine returned.
EDIT/ADDITION for emphasis: I loved the acting. Especially Finn. I didn’t find Kylo Ren to be a believable character, but Adam Driver did a great job regardless. Everyone did a great job with Ep VII, except the writers and Disney execs.
These memes always rub me the wrong way. First, they’re making fun of hateful Star Wars fans, which is great. But they’re also ignoring just how bad the sequels were. Make no mistake, they were BAD.
This, heaven forbid a fan who legitimately wanted to like the movies just didn’t like them. No problem with the time skip, the actors, love interests, etc. the plot just sucked, the story was haphazardly thrown together. Disney wanted to cash in on nostalgia and pumped out 3 movies with no prior planning or guiding direction between the films. But if anyone complains they’re being hypercritical, or racist, or sexist, or doesn’t appreciate the spirit of the movies. Fuck that, at least Filoni is slowly fixing it. Stomach literally sank when I learned he wasn’t in charge of the acolyte in some form.
Episode 7 is still good. Is it a rip of episode 4? Sure. But it’s still actually fun to watch, with good pacing, and good characters.
Also, Kylo stopping, and holding, a blaster shot mid shoot is fucking cool!
The biggest problem with episode 7 is that it gives us “Empire vs. Rebels 2” which i hate as the direction for the future that episode 6 set up. The second biggest problem is its a bunch of mystery boxes with no plans to back them up i.e why is Rey important? Who the fuck is the green goggle lady? Why is Luke a hermit? What is the purpose of the map to Luke? Who fucking cares cause JJ sure didn’t
7 is fine, 8 is better imo, 9 is atrocious. If they were able to just make 9 decent the sequels would be acceptable. They really, really needed to have these movies thought out from the start though. You can absolutely tell they have no idea where the story goes from one movie to the next.
It’s so fucking cool… and makes no god damn sense whatsoever. Especially when you realize he’s supposed to be some hotheaded half-trained guy who probably has undiagnosed ADHD. He couldn’t concentrate enough to do that if he was sitting meditating in the most serene place in the galaxy, much less in the middle of a trainwreck that the scene took place in.
It was unimaginably forced with no basis in plot or the established universe.
Which pretty much speaks to the entire direction of the sequels in general. “Ooh, pretty… but super fucking dumb”
Finally! All the complaints about the plot essentially being a redo of ANH are completely valid, but they don’t make it a bad movie. It’s actually fun to watch and the characters have some character, which is not something you can say about a certain crowd favourite around here…
There was some social commentary in that golden casino planet where the rich lived in excess while the poor barely got by (pay no attention to the Jabba behind the curtain)
And, of course, they cast minorities in leading roles!
There was some social commentary in that golden casino planet where the rich lived in excess while the poor barely got by (pay no attention to the Jabba behind the curtain)
Good world building, but it did nothing to move the story forward. The entire casino planet could have been cut and the story would be unchanged without any social or story impacts.
If they were going for social commentary, they could have set it up to find out that rebel weapons like the X-wing fighters and whatever macguffin they needed so save the main plot line were built by slave labor.
Semi-evil procurement character: “Yeah, I understand what you need. I can have it built in a day. Its an extremely toxic manufacturing process and because I’m not set up for that work, 20 or 30 slaves will die but thats no problem. Yeah, I can get it for you in the day you need it.”
They would have had to make a choice between save the slaves or getting the macguffin. They could have still chosen to not come away with the macguffin because they chose to save the slave labor and at least that would have given purpose to the whole distraction of that storyline.
And, of course, they cast minorities in leading roles!
I liked that part. John Boyega, among others, was a great actor. Kelly Marie Tran did as best she could with the bad writing.
Star Wars is about as a woke as it always has been. Some people are mad about strong female roles when the first movie that came out in the 70s and every after it has had strong female roles.
There is a difference between well-written female characters that also happen to be strong vs hollow, soulless, undeveloped charachters whose only defining feature is being a “strong female character”.
See the difference beetween Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Leia, Padme, Rita Vrataski, Gamora, Nebula, Naomi Nagata[1], and so on vs Galadriel (rings of power), Capitan Marvel, Ironhearth (MCU), She-hulk and whatever happened in Star Wars Acolyte (I could go on like this for a long time, but I think that you get what I mean already).
[1] I even included modern examples, to highlight that it’s not old good, new bad
They removed Finn from the poster for the Chinese release. Star Wars is not and has never been “woke”, Disney always just does what makes them the most amount of money.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are not woke. If it maximises their returns, they will definitely do anything they think will get them the woke crowd’s money (see also the shoehorned lesbian kiss in ep9). They will also do their best to get the money of the anti-woke crowd (see also: removing the black man from posters; keeping the lesbian kiss contained to five easily cuttable seconds for certain releases).
It’s more correct to not think of them as woke nor not woke, they are just whoring themselves out to whomever they believe they can get to bring them the largest amounts of money (see the company’s history of political donations).
Yeah my point was they don’t have a political agenda besides what makes them the most amount of money. If trans people become universally socially accepted, they’ll make movies with trans characters. If the US keeps moving to the right, they’ll probably stop having minority characters altogether. All that matters to them is money.
Rainbow capitalism at its finest. My girlfriend showed me a clip from an interview with the writers behind The Acolyte saying it’ll be the gayest star wars ever. The shows not over yet so they might be right but so far they had a lesbian couple and couldn’t manage so much as a peck.
It’s not critical to the plot or anything but it demonstrates that there’s some really simple lines Disney still won’t cross when it comes to LGBT representation.
I was genuinely shocked to see how good an actor Hayden Christensen was when he wasn’t in a Star Wars movie.
Obligatory “just watch Andor” comment.
Seriously. Go and watch Andor. It proves that good Star Wars content can be made. It has a diverse cast. You just need good writing and a vision. That’s what’s missing from the new content.
But I don’t want quality content when I open up a Star Wars series. I want the same old Republic vs Empire setting, some easygoing action with light sabers, bit of humor, a couple of furry characters and plot holes I can drive a truck through.
Edit: make that a barge. I want to drive a barge through not a truck.
I’m good thanks. I’m not subscribing to s streaming service where the business model is pumping out content faster than the competition
of course the movie franchise about killing space nazis famously had no woke agenda whatsoever until they gave a woman a laser sword
The new show isn’t great for reasons other than Disney being woke.
I feel like a lot of “woke” shows are not great, but they get a cult of defenders and haters boosting it’s popularity because of some perceived culture war. When it’s really just execs trying to make their milk toast milquetoast slop shamelessly appeal to a wider audience.
No one complains about Spiderverse (after it came out) because it was good
Bigots aside, I’m convinced most people are 100% fine with queer and gender non-conforming characters so long as they’re well written.
People like characters that act like actual people – not pandering, one dimensional, rainbow capitalistic tokens.
Like how Marvel writers lately keep saying they’re getting hate for writing strong female leads, when really they’re getting hate for writing idiotic Mary Sue’s.
Exactly. You’re not supposed to mention what they “identify” as. Or any other gender nonsense. Unless it is the focal point of the story to be told, then don’t mention it. That’s how you normalize something. By not drawing attention to it.
My favorite example is a character on Agents of Shield. He was a scientist that had a drinking problem. We knew about it from the start but didn’t find out why until later in the season. Years prior, he was drinking and driving while his husband was in the passenger seat. Got into a wreck, and his husband died. It wasn’t until that moment that we knew he was gay. Why? Because it was irrelevant. Spoiler alert, no one cared. He was a well written character, who was easy to sympathize with, who coincidentally happened to be gay.
milquetoast btw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milquetoast
confusing isn’t it?
while not movie media, the same can be said with games. BG3 is blatently woke, hell the emperor blatently hits on the player regardless of gender and other elements. Elden Rings mythos is basically full of woke elements (Marika creating Radagon, who is basically herself, but in Male form to get into a romance with Renalla. just on this element alone, it is either considered trans (Marika having a clone who changed genders) or lesbian (if you choose to believe Marika is always female and trans not being a thing) as the relationship with renalla happened.)
while there will be people who will complain about it, if the contents good, people will overlook it.
I’m pretty sure the defenders are 99% bots.
I saw someone saying the little girl who played princes Leia is a “national treasure” on reddit. I don’t think a normal person goes around talking like that.
That’s great and fine but you can apply this meme to every new show 🤭
There’s a pattern.
My entry point into Star Wars was KotOR so I’ve always been pretty critical of the average Star Wars media. I really enjoyed Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian S1&2, and Clone Wars S7. Star Wars can deliver sometimes.
With a budget of $180M I was hopeful that Acolyte could be great, and it hasn’t delivered yet.
For as schlocky of an adventure the OT and Prequels were, they still drew on real world inspirations. The OT pulls inspiration from WW2 and the Vietnam War as the backdrop, a small rag Tage group of guerilla style freedom fighters fighting off the highly militarized empire with weapons that can destroy entire jungles I mean planets in its path.
The Prequels, for as bad as the dialoge was (because Lucas was surrounded by Yes Men instead of people who actually knew how to cover his weaknesses), was about the decadence of the 80s and the exploitation of the labor of 3rd world countries (see the disparity between Anakin being a slave on Tatooine and Padme being a queen of/senator for Naboo), in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
And this isn’t really some reading between the lines speculation, George Lucas has said that these real world conflicts served as inspiration for the movies. Could it be post hoc rationalization? Yeah it could be, but it’s kinda hard to make those justifications even years after the movies have been released.
The sequels just aren’t pulling from any relevant sources. It was all nostalgia bait without any substance the first order is literally just Hugo boss wearing good stepping nazis 2.0, aka The Empire Again, the New Republic narratively exists only to be blown up by The Empire 2.0, everything is “Look its just like the Original Trilogy!” and it all lacks a cohesive vision and an actual hero’s journey for someone to go through. Like everyone has great setups, a rogue stormtrooper, an ace pilot for the rebellion and a girl who survived childhood gathering scrap from dangerous derelict. And they just all get sidelined for all the nostalgia bait.
in phandom menace, which quickly shifted focus to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and how republics, like the Roman Republic, and Weimar Republic became the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, and how America was following the same path.
Sir, The Phantom Menace was released in 1999
America has been on the path for a while though, with the John Birch Society and the like working from the background. They’ve been around since the 1958, and lots of their literature and networks fostered the turn. Others like Bill Cooper, Alex Jones, etc, were active in the 90s and affected by JBS. Waco also had already ocurred.
OKC has some influences from Cooper, and the JBS and other right wing people initially thought OKC was a huge setback for inroads with general audiences, and kept working to change how people feel. Tea party was a huge comeback for them, as people who knew of the JBS warned the Tea Party was just a resurgence.
I don’t know if Lucas or other writers knew at the time, so you might be right. However, there were people warning about it back then, just not really heard or paid much attention to.
The entire paragraph is is about the Prequels, I said phantom menace was about 1980s decadence and the Prequels theme suddenly shifted to post 9/11 and the transition of republics to empires.
And honestly I think it’s part of why people leave Phantom Menace off of their watch lists because thematically it doesn’t really fit thematically with the other 2 prequel movies.
