I largely agree with those points.

I think The Last Jedi is the best sequel movie. It sucks but at least it tries to do something interesting.

Probably a lukewarm take that it's relatively better than Empire when compared to the preceding movie, but I think it's a fair point.

I agree that it has some interesting ideas, but it just does them badly. For example, the jaded Luke is definitely a better idea that I first gave it credit for, but I still can't get past him wanting to murder his nephew when his whole character arc in the OT was about redeeming his father.

Yeah, Bad Dream -> Kill Nephew is terrible for any character but especially for Luke Skywalker, the guy who redeemed Darth friggin Vader by being the only person who believed there could be good in him.

In Rian's defense, TFA left him with New Empire is back blowing up planets with even stronger deathstars and Luke is on some island having abandoned everyone. I think he went in the best possible direction from this setup, then just faceplanted.

I disagree somewhat here. I think TFA has to be a safe movie, especially after the prequals. The MO would have been introduce the new characters, kill off Han (who obv should have died in RotJ) and capture the feeling of Star Wars - and it did all of those things. Okay, it captured the feeling of Star Wars by remaking Star Wars and therefore is a fairly uninteresting movie.

However, at the end of the movie I have an interesting villain, three new characters I like and Ray has just handed Luke his father's lightsaber. There are more than enough directions you can go from here, especially given the acting chops of Boyega, Driver and Issac.

But why is Luke on some island not GAF as New Empire blows up planets?

Yeah that's always been my take, I give RJ zero credit for "trying to do" interesting things when they all fall completely flat. Luke's downfall is just the worst example of a half-baked idea with a "tell me don't show me" explanation and a 5-second flashback that's supposed to satisfy the audience. It's silly.

Which brings up one of the big issues with these movies and how they handled the original cast, there's just no way you're going to both make them main characters in the story and also satisfyingly fill everyone in on what the hell they've been doing for 30 years, especially when a ton has changed. Which they deal with by handwaving it away with little explanation ("So yeah Leia was running the republic and some stuff happened and now she's in some splinter group called the resistance. Han decided to go back to smuggling for some reason I dunno why. Anyway let's move on there's a lot of movie we gotta get done").

Looking back, there would have been maybe two ways to properly incorporate those characters:

--Do the unthinkable and just re-cast the big three with younger actors, and set the movies a much more reasonable 5-10 years after ROTJ.

--Put all three in predictable positions that don't require much explanation (Luke is training young Jedi, Leia is a senator, Han is a New Republic general running covert missions or something) and give them minor roles, with the new characters interacting with them for a scene or two here or there as the plot unfolds. At some point during the trilogy, give them each their shining moment where they do something crucial to the plot that satisfies the fans (Han could still die in Ep 7 as Ford no doubt insisted on), but overall give them relatively little screen time. Basically use the characters but make it clear the torch is being passed to the new ones.

Pretty nice, and ewok-free

Should restore Sebastian Shaw as Anakin's force ghost, but we all know that will never happen (oh, spoiler alert).

That is a nice poster.

The Mandalorian went off a cliff fast. Basically a whole season of filler while they figure out what to do with the characters.

Definitely been the weakest season of Mando to date. I haven't hated it, but the whole thing seems awfully directionless and button-mashy by creators who have always seemed really thoughtful and sharp.

Hopefully the final arc of the season ties it together in a way that the season as a whole doesn't seem quite so rough.

Yeah, I haven't hated it but it feels more and ore like the ideas are coming from the board room rather than Filoni & Favreau.

So, the Grogu arc was resolved in the best way possible, butnah the character is too popular with the 5-11 year old demographic, so we have to undo the season 2 finale.





Hopefully they can somehow tie it all together and set up season 4, but I'm not optimistic.

Somehow both Mando and Grogu have become passengers in their own shows this season. They’ve just been doing a bunch of side quests the whole time with little purpose or direction. The whole season kind of feels like watching a kid smash their action figures together except live action.

Apparently Rey is getting her own movie now. And there’s the Ashoka show. There’s going to be either a show or movie about the first ever Jedi thousands of years ago. And Filoni is getting his own movie.

At this point I’m just a grumpy old man yelling at cloud who wishes they’d stop with all this or at least take a long, long break.

But keep making Andor, please.

Very much looking forward to Ahsoka. She's a great character.

And I'm withholding judgment about the apparent forthcoming movies, but I did basically like the timelines they plopped the three movies into. It's good that they're making stuff that lands outside of the Skywalker Saga and gives them a much more flexible place to work from. Though the sequel trilogy feels like a failure (primarily because The Rise of Skywalker; if that thing hadn't been so incredibly ****ing atrocious, I wouldn't have such a dim view of the trilogy as a whole), I never thought Rey was a bad character at all, so in the right creative hands it's possible that could be really good.

I thought it was very fitting that Jim Ignatowski was in the last episode since it culminated with Din's Aristotlean use of the transitive property of darksaber acquisition and the rest of the Night Owls were like, "...okey doke."

That said, I haven't hated this season, but I don't see how there is going to be any meaningful resolution of the big-picture story in two episodes.

IMO they kind of have the golden opportunity to flip flop on Rey’s origin again and have her not be a Palpatine or anything, which would be the funniest thing in the entire ridiculous SW lore.

Perhaps the thing that has bothered me the most in the Mando season is that they’re going to sink resources into trying to rehab the sequel trilogy, as most strongly shown by randomly handing almost an entire episode over to Pershing. Just let that trilogy be memory-holed, and yes, let Rey just never acknowledge the Palpatine **** again, starting with this new Rey movie whenever it happens.

Funnily enough, the Pershing episode was by far my favorite of this season simply because it focused on actual people with feelings and motivations who do things for reasons. That’s how low currently the bar is for enjoying Star Wars for me personally at the moment.

A lot of these new projects have very talented teams behind them, so I'm excited. I might be alone on this, but I welcome almost any and all Star Wars media we get. And tbh, I've been lukewarm on a lot of the stuff we got (Obi was terrible, Boba mediocre, sequel trilogy sucked obv), but I'll still be there to watch each and every new episode the day it comes out.

This used to be me. I sat in a virtually empty multiplex at lunchtime to watch the first screening of the prequal and sequel trilogies.

I'd just wait for new Star Wars films on streaming, and the new Mandalorian season is so meh I (and my partner) have gone a week or two before catching up with the new content.

I'll also probably go out of my way to not watch the new Rey movies. I doubt they will be aimed at a bitter old bastard like me anyway, so I will have to get that warm, fuzzy feeling I used to get from Star Wars by review bombing it on IMDB.

This is mostly me as well; I definitely don't feel like anything is being lost when they put out a lot of content, as a person is free to pick and choose what they bother with. I've watched it all, but Skeleton Crew seems like it REALLY might not be for me (though I'm sure I'll be looking in on it right at first to confirm whether my suspicions are right). Will happily be in for everything else unless they really sour me along the way.

So the ending of the Mando season wasn't terrible I guess, but as a whole the season really comes across as an aimless mess. Has to be my least favorite season of any SW live action to date.

I'm still hoping on Ahsoka being really good, but this season really didn't do it any favors as a lead-in just in terms of building enthusiasm about the state of the franchise.

This is messed up.

And hilarious.

Luke, Did I Ever Tell You About Ahsoka Tano?

Well it’s the former anyway.

And she was a good friend ☠️

I bet that is better than the whole Ashoka series btw, which looks even more cheaply made than Obi Wan, if that’s even possible.