Star Wars Franchise

Don't know if it is a controversial take, but I actually think the score of the prequels is better than the original trilogy, overall.

The sequel trilogy felt like he was really phoning it in though.

Rogue Squadron removed from Disneys release schedule.

Thought I'd add to my Star Wars comic collection today and just ordered these 2 omnibus. I'm more familiar with the current Marvel canon stuff so I'm looking forward to reading these Legends stories.

I expect to find out that he spent his off hours scamming people around the galaxy at darts using his force powers

Inspired by Andor and Fallen Order I started my SW movie rewatch today. I’m going in timeline order so started with Phantom Menace.

My go-to opinion was always that it better than people usually say and that its basically a live action cartoon. That all the movies its the most overt in trying to target kids as its main audience. I still think thats all broadly true but what I’ve learnt today is that its also surprisingly long and slow. Maybe Marvel have ruined my attention span for this sort of thing but I remember it zipping from set piece to set piece, in actuality every scene is about 20 minutes long and the action is very staid.

I don’t know if the D+ version is any kind of remaster or upscale but the special effects held up better than I was expecting. Only big minuses there are any external green screen shot looks incredibly phoney and the grassland that the battle takes place on is entirely feature- and textureless so it looks like they’re on the old Windows XP desktop.

It did make me revisit this though which is a treat

My default opinion going into this rewatch is that Attack of the Clones was my least favourite of all the numbered main series entries. It has been a long time since I’ve watched it though.

Phantom is easily the best of the prequels. Clones is by far the worst of all of them, being nearly unwatchable in places. Revenge is ok, but suffers the most from the poor decisions that lead up to it and doubling down them (in particular, not having Obi Wan and Anakin spend more than a few seconds in the same room together).

Phantom's biggest issue is Jar Jar, as well as just the general set up of a trade blockade not being the most exciting (they could have gotten away with it if they acknowledge that this is what the greatest warriors in the galaxy are now spending their time doing, whilst ignoring what is really going on). It is mostly fine though and the action sequences are easily the best of the prequels.

Yeah Phantom is the only one I can actually make it through. The other two are completely devoid of any redeeming qualities.

The John Williams score, though TPM is still the better one.

Watched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith today.

AOTCs is obviously the weaker of the two, its basically filler based upon a single throwaway line in ANH. ROTS has narrative drive on its side in a way neither of the other prequels did.

On AOTCs, positives are mainly in Obi Wan’s story in the first half of the film. The mystery of the bounty hunters, assassins and clones. Anakin’s romance plot as he tries to Licorice Pizza Padme is bad, the dialogue is bad, the acting is bad, the vibe is never believable. Once things move to Genosha it descends into Hobbit levels of green screen and cgi mess. The big battle is pretty cool and looks like a video game cutscene, the arena stuff looks terrible and all the Jedi look like totally chumps.

ROTSs biggest strength is probably that it never stops, it starts in a battle and then its nonstop galaxy in crisis and action from there. George Lucas might not be able to write or direct human emotions but he’s got a sense for swashbuckling adventure. Visually things have tightened up too, rarely is the green screen stuff jarringly false looking like in the previous films and the move toward synchronising the visual design of everything with the original trilogy means things are satisfyingly chunky and grubby looking. It also has everyone’s real favourite thing about SW in it too, spotting Trooper variants.

Not giving any pause to question why anyone is doing what they’re doing helps cover any narrative cracks in ROTS as well. Although by this point all the bad decisions have been made and their impact on the overall timeline set - the Empire only being 20 years old being probably the biggest.

The ultimate reveal of Darth Vader is also iconically terrible.

I don’t think rewatching the prequels has changed my opinion of them at all. Beyond the first two being longer and slower than I remembered everything is pretty much as anticipated.

Next up - Solo. Which I saw on release but have basically no memory of.

Solo, I can see why I didn’t really remember much about that. Its more grounded and realistic than all the colourful space wizard adventures but also lost in endless murky greys and browns. The characters don’t really pop off the screen either. The plot is pretty lacklustre too.

The return to real locations and sets after Lucas’s green screen obsession is nice to see though. Whatever their other qualities the Disney era products do at least have practical effects back in their arsenal.

I’m not sure it was dull enough to be the franchise killer its became. D+ picking up the expanded universe has been a good decision whatever the reason.

Does the reveal of

It just occurred to me for some reason. That scene in New Hope where Luke says he wants to go to the academy. So was he going to become an Imperial Pilot or something like that?

Solo was a perfectly acceptable movie in my opinion. It was exciting, it looked good, the story was perfectly acceptable.

Not the most amazing film ever but certainly not the franchise killer it was made out to be. Bit of an over reaction that I think. Waiting on the re-evaluation of it in coming years.

I also love the design of Enfys Nest in particular. Looking at pics now I see the 'Two Tubes' guy from Rogue One hanging around as well. Cool.

I think with Andor, this will tie in to the story of the beginning of the rebellion better.

I liked that too.