We have the complete opposite conception of ESB and Jedi - I find the Joseph Campbell shtick pretentious and tired and love the roguish pilots doing Cool Things w/ The Falcon. The asteroid field chase/cave/Star Destroyer stowaway set pieces are my favorite parts of Empire and the final run into the Death Star power generator (with all the pipes and low clearance) is my favorite part of Jedi.
For me it’s hard to get in Luke’s shoes because he’s grating in disobeying Yoda and then weirdly stoic until Vader is baiting him in the throne room. Han Solo and Lando-as-Han-Solo in Jedi were way cooler dudes to aspire to as a child and their parts are more fun in recent revisits.
(Rogue Squadron II is absolutely my favorite Star Wars game for this reason.)
I am with Doolittle. The shot of a zillion tie fighters flying straight at the camera in Jedi is probably the coolest shot in the whole series in terms of being both “holy shit space!” and “holy shit this battle is gonna go poorly!” I also love the POV shots in Star Wars when they’re entering/flying down the death star trenches. If the whole series had that level of visual dynamism I would probably be more eager to forgive all the horrible horrible humor.
But to get back a little to the OP I do think Abrams will be abandoning a lot of that prequel stuff. From what I’ve heard he shot the movie on a combination of 35mm and 70mm rather than using digital, and spent a lot of time to make as many of the effects as practical as he could. Given that some ridiculous number like 95% of the shots in the prequels were digitally augmented and Lucas was enormously proud of the fact that he was shooting the movies on digital instead of film, these bits feel like playing into the audience narrative that the prequels “destroyed my childhood” and Abrams is bringing it back to when the series was Good.
Sounds like the rights are with Lucasfilm/Disney after Factor 5 filed for bankruptcy.
Julian Eggebrecht formerly of Factor 5 talks a little about how they didn’t bring a Rogue Squadron game to release last generation here. (Linked on the Wikipedia page.)
I will quote here the only thing of value I ever typed about a War of Stars.
Ewoks bait traps with ripped-open monkey corpses. When they catch a couple giant pink monsters and an even gianter ambulatory fur carpet, they make to cook them for supper.
I grew up pretty anti-ewok, but since I’ve seen the light: their cuddly, toy-friendly design only makes their casual viciousness all the more entertaining.
If it wasn’t for the ewoks’ reverence for one fey golden robutt and a quick parlor trick, the Jedi’s return would have been the conclusion of its passage through some teddy bear digestive tracts.
Force Awakens will probably be a slick piece of fan service. The hack it’s directed by will probably (and to all extant evidence has) let his actors actually act instead of directing them into an uncanny stiffness beyond droid so if nothing else it has that on the prequels. When I see Boyega grinning at the controls of that Millenium Falcon gun it gets to me more than I would have imagined. D:
I’ll see it whenever the folks want to get together and see it, so probably not for a week or two. (None of us have even the slightest desire to be near the superfan crowds for it.) Maybe after Christmas.
i think i’m gonna just try to rewatch everything in that “machete” order {4, 5, 2, 3, 6) before seeing the new one. i never saw that genndy tartakovsky clone wars cartoon, but i just watched that and it definitely helped with wanting to include the prequels in the rewatch, though maybe i’ll just try to find one of those “‘proper’ prequel edits” that people made where they just cut it into one movie, a la Topher Grace edit.
it’s interesting how much “artistic digital manipulation after the fact” is needed to take into account your “proper enjoyment” of these movies
just got back! Not actually interested in posting any big spoilers here, because in addition to seriously ruining the movie, those things are fun to talk about than just mention for no reason. This will still have mild tone spoilers and general things so don’t read if you’re super serious.
tonally, they definitely nail a lot of stuff from the OT, and the acting and dialogue writing are the best in the whole series. there are definitely some clunky exposition scenes with weird made up nonsense, but it wouldn’t exactly be star wars without it.
was sort of disappointed at how many unanswered questions there are at the end of the movie, would be happier if anticipation for the sequel was mostly in the form of “what will happen next?” rather than “which one of these major questions will we actually get answers to in the next episode” but it is JJ Abrams so not that surprising. There is no “stinger” after the credits, but the last scene of the movie is basically that, only before the credits.
I was also mildly disappointed that there weren’t more direct references to things from the prequels, and hope the whole sequel trilogy doesn’t just pretend they don’t exist. On that note there are some details of the current political situation post RotJ that just don’t make any sense. This may be a more serious spoiler but functionally speaking the conflict seems exactly the same as that in a new hope: The “First Order” (empire) is big, evil and powerful, and the “Resistance” (rebels) are scrappy and good and outmatched. A lot of stuff about the prequels was bad, sure, but you can’t deny that they feel like they are taking place in a different era than the OT, I was hoping there would be the same sense of development here too.
But other than that the movie is big and cool and awesome and fun. It succeeds way more as a fast-moving adventure film than it does as the next epic chapter in the star wars saga or whatever. The most dramatic action and development is in terms of the characters themselves, not the world around them, and that’s fine and probably makes for a better movie than extended discussion of galactic political turmoil would have.
