Star Wars - Skywalker Saga

Note: these are my Discord posts from a recent rewatch. Some of these films also have their own reviews on this blog.

New Hope - The best one. Lots of fun, no fluff.
I'd really like to see a short story about an Imperial officer who is always getting told off for shooting down stuff with no lifeforms on because it's against procedure and wastes laser fuel. At the end of the story he's finally worn down by all the bureaucracy and spitefully lets an escape pod go because it has no life-forms onboard despite it clearly being a stupid decision...

ESB - Loads of great stuff in it, but the main problem is that there's no actual narrative progression for the first 85 minutes out of 120, outside of 'Luke gets some more training'. And even that's pretty much a whiny kid in a swamp learning yoga.

Also, Han and Lando are super-creeps here - I'd never really thought about how many times Leia says no and Han keeps on pawing at her. Then despite her protesting that she goes for nice guys, his persistence wins her over, and once they're together, Lando shows up and is all over her so Han keeps grabbing her hand to show she's his. Then she tells him she loves him when he may well die or at least never see her again and he gives no commitment back and instead says "I know." What a prick! 

ROTJ - This has a similar issue to Empire in that it takes 50 minutes to rescue Han and move onto Deathstar II. And though Jabba is an awesome creation, those 50 minutes are pretty sluggish (no pun intended). This film doesn't even have a bunch of new stuff to show off, it's all the same iconography. It's also the most cartoony of the three. The one plotline that avoids all these issues is the Luke/Vader/Emperor stuff, which is all great - new character, new powers, pulpy rather than childish, and it's pacy. It's still nice to watch these movies for the production design, effects, acting, music etc, though - all the physical matte paintings, model ships, creature design etc are especially great even if there's some ropey compositing in there.

TPM - I think this could be well improved with a bunch of relatively minor cuts - get rid of most of Jar Jar's dialogue and all his pantomime shit, trim down the first Gungan City visit, but keep him around as a cool-looking mostly-silent sidekick; cut Anakin's badly written/delivered lines and I think there's a good sullen kid performance there; cut out fan service like Threepio; probably trim the Neimodian dialogue to the bare essentials; trim the pod-race, if possible make it one exciting lap rather than three which is confusing and dull. I think lots of little stuff like that would help tremendously.

Also, I just realised - Lucas should have made Sidious' hologram match the one from Empire! Not only would that have solved the weird issue where the PT acts like it's a secret that Palps and Sidious are different people, it also fixes an issue with the OT without any need for Special Edition bullshit!

Anyway, the pacing change from Ep IV onwards is so noticeable. Like, when Owen and Beru die we see Luke react for two seconds then it's onto the next scene - character beats are treated like narrative beats: 'Ben rescues Luke, Owen and Beru are killed, Luke is sad, Luke can now leave the planet, Luke and Ben go to Mos Eisley' etc. 

Visually it feels the right amount of distance from the OT - some shared iconography like the Jedi, protocol droids, Tatooine etc, but a lot of stuff is a bit different, a bit shinier because it's pre-Empire. And there's still a fair amount of practical stuff going on, even amongst all the CG.

I think the tone and pacing is really what makes it feel odd. For one thing, it's got the childish ROTJ stuff set to maximum - instead of Ewoks we've got actual children all over the place, plus Jar Jar constantly treading in shit and smelling farts. And yet simultaneously it's stately, and concerned with lore and characterisation instead of archetypes being propelled through pulpy action. The difference between Ben Kenobi and Qui Gon reflects the difference between the OT and this - charming and mystical versus distant and scientific. I don't mind the concept of the midi-chlorians either (they're separate to the Force, they don't diminish the idea of it), it's just unexplored and irrelevant here yet so much narrative energy is wasted on it. OT was 'this cave is strong in the dark side', PT is 'let me run a blood test'.

And honestly I wouldn't mind it feeling so different to OT - I think it's a cool idea, as this trilogy is set in a more enlightened age, to make it more Nolan-y - if only Lucas had committed to it and done it well. But instead the tone is really uneven, and frankly he's not that good at being Nolan-y.

A nitpick - when Amidala goes before the senate and the Federation deny her claims, why can't Qui Gon be in her booth like 'yep, I'm a Jedi and I confirm they invaded'? Is Jedi involvement in political stuff so secret? They meet Velorum in public, and no one seems to bat an eye when they head up the clone army for the Republic...

I think one section where it doesn't feel like Star Wars visually is the Gungans vs droids battle at the end. It's completely CG, set in a lush green valley with big fantasy-looking glowing shields, and there's no OT imagery, so it feels a bit odd. 

Also, it doesn't feel like an insurgent force against a huge enemy which is the SW standard, it feels more like a battle scene between two armies.

AOTC - I always thought of TPM as the worst PT movie, but wow the dialogue and acting in AOTC is bad.
I wish Lucas had given Jango a voice disguiser instead of redubbing Boba.

Okay, I actually still prefer AOTC because it really picks up in the second half, once Obi-wan gets to Kamino and Anakin gets to Tatooine - basically once we're past the excruciating Obi-wan/Anakin and Anakin/Padme writing and it switches to pulpy fun. It takes 40 minutes to get there and it's still a long bloody movie, though, plus it's still pretty clumsy with a lot of stuff (for example, Obi-wan's 'detective' storyline is just baddies lying to him and him not believing them, and the whole Threepio head-swap thing is just weird padding). Again, a fan-edit that cuts a bunch of Anakin's dialogue so he's more a brooding Heathcliff type (Wuthering Heights, not the cat) would really help here. Really, they should have just made these films the Palpatine Saga.

ROTS - has the least amount of bad stuff of the PT films, I guess, and a fair amount of cool stuff. But it doesn't really feel much like a story, just a steady walk towards getting everything lined up to New Hope. It does have the most Palpatine, so it wins there...

TFA - and my opinion remains unchanged - lots of cool stuff, lots of bad stuff, overall too much stuff. It's a massive relief to be back to a SW film with proper acting and writing and sets and tangible anything, and there are loads of cool moments and gorgeous design and stuff. But also there are too many characters, locations, storylines - it feels like they tried to match or one-up Jedi rather than go back to New Hope complexity-wise and it's just too much. There's 4 baddies, the 'searching for Luke' sub-plot that doesn't do anything except for set up the next movie, introducing a set of new characters and re-introducing old ones, the Republic and the New Order and the Rebellion, so many different planets. The humour feels a bit modern in places, but they stay away from that with the older characters so I can buy that as a 'new generation' thing. I don't mind the repeated storybeats, but the '(bigger) deathstar, with an X-Wing run at it for the finale' for the third time is a step too far for me, I find that dull. The Republic's role is frustratingly vague/stupid - like, I know that galactic republics try to stay away from having armies, but the fucking Empire has come back and is building an even worse deathstar, if you're not going to do anything about that except silently approve of a small resistance force then you deserve to get blown up, frankly. 

It's pretty much ESB level for me - lots of cool watchable stuff but some big narrative issues.

TLJ - again my opinion hasn't really changed. Still boring and messy. It looks great and the Luke/Rey/Ren stuff is cool, but everything else is dull and frustrating and tacky ad thematically overloaded and it's so goddamn long.

ROS - that movie is so sweaty. When Carrie Fisher died they should have stripped out most of Leia's stuff from TLJ and repurposed it for this movie, reworked them both. That way TLJ would be leaner and Fisher would get a proper send-off in RoS rather than this bodge job made up of 30 seconds of leftover footage. I know it would be a massive undertaking but they did have a whole year, and it might have pinned Abrams (whom I like more than a lot of people do!) down a bit so he wouldn't have gone so mad with stuff in this one.