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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Star Wars Episode 8 is the one that lives in my head ever since it was released.
Play by play of the opening sequence battle:
First Order ambushes the Resistance base as it is evacuating
First Order summons a ship described as a "Fleet Destroyer".
First Order only has enough time to charge one shot, but has 2 targets: The Resistance base full of intel and equipment that can't move or the Escape Fleet with all the escape ships and evacuated people.
So, who do they shoot?
The base full of intel on the ground...
Oh man, the Disney Star Wars Trilogy is full of these.
I get that Star Wars movies are effectively a fantasy adventure series in Sci-Fi clothing, I'm not expecting perfect logical sense out of everything, but internal consistency has absolutely not been Disney Wars's strong suit.
And 8 was the better movie. 7 was janky but hopeful and 9 was a plot faucet.
They're all fanfiction. But they're all distinct kinds of fanfiction.
7 is written like the characters are also fans of the movies: Finn is shocked by hologram technology he'd see every day, people parrot lines that were once clever, the camera lingers on a broken astromech droid, et very cetera. The returning characters are living legends famed for their transformative effect on the whole galaxy but also haven't changed one iota since we last saw them.
8 is an anarchist deconstruction of Star Wars that somehow got turned into an actual Star Wars movie: a rebel soldier becomes disillusioned after her sister died for nothing, the good guy and bad guy agree the current conflict is a pointless sham, and details throughout scream that no mere organization could ever own the magic that belongs to all living beings. And then a surprise fourth act goes "whoops nevermind."
9 is a toddler telling a story: "and then... and then... but no he didn't?... and then..." It's like a child learned about fakeout deaths yesterday and expects it to be equally shocking every single time. Then the big battle needed to involve every toy in the toybox, especially the horses, because spaceships can't look up. At least in the end we got the Rey x Kylo connection it all built toward, and their kids are gonna be the most powerful nevermind.
Nah, 8 is by far the worst of the bunch. 9 is a response to the problems created by 8 and 7 is a relatively good movie outside of reverting the setting.
8 is bad plot mixed with character assassination and intentionally fucks up the flow of a trilogy because Johnson has an ego problem.
Dude literally had them change aspects of 7 so he could make Luke suck in 8, then refused to leave storylines open for J.J to finish the trilogy, even when requested.
Oh nooo he crushed one of seven thousand mystery boxes, all of which had disappointing contents anyway.
JJ's not even smart enough know Palpatine would be scarier staying dead. An immortal Force ghost whispering to people anywhere in the galaxy is a proper villain. A zombie who did all the bad stuff by himself is a cartoon. Especially if all the bad stuff unhappens if you poke him with a laser-sword. And people have the nerve to wish that was two movies! The silliest defense of 9 is that it would've been better if it was longer.
If 8 had been "Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off," like Rebel Moon, it would have fucking incredible. A royal-led uprising that beat space fascists and then utterly failed to stop them forming again is now on its last legs, and even the decisive battle is a low-speed chase toward inevitable failure. The protagonist, an idealistic young soldier, loses someone close and stops a deserter "or they died for nothing." Those two risk some hail-Mary espionage that shows war profiteers win either way. Disillusioned in the cause, she gets an unsubtle scene freeing their animals. That plot ends with her ditching precious materiel to stop him from repeating her sister's sacrifice, and should end with both of them deserting together. But "whoops nevermind."
Meanwhile: the assumed hero finds an old space-wizard veteran for training, and he bluntly tells her to quit. Wars (do) not make one great. So she goes straight to the dysfunctional bad guys, whose hate-based leadership structure turns out to have issues, and the suddenly-in-charge guy tells her that her mysterious ancestry doesn't fucking matter. Nobody hands you a destiny. You make your own choices. As illustration of this, he offers to make her empress of the galaxy, and also as illustration of this, she tells him to go fuck himself.
Meanwhile: the good guys' hope-based leadership system also has issues, and 'just trust me bro' nearly gets them killed faster than how they're obviously about to get killed anyway. They find a corner to back themselves into by deleting the bad guys' flagship with the coolest moment in all of Star Wars that completely does not work within the logic of Star Wars.
And what should have happened is, the hero arrives to find the battle over. The bad guys have been through and there is no sign of survivors. But what happened is, some nameless rando saw the crystal foxes casually weave through boulders, and learned to use the Force in a fucking hurry. Because again: it is is in all living things. That's the message the wizened veteran literally smacked into the hero, passed onto him by a sassy frog on planet ketamine.
What happens instead is that of course the hero shows up and does it for them. Fuck themes, right? Not like the movie opens and closes with untrained Force use. Including that shot of a slave child looking to the stars. Subtle as a brick through a window, but god damn, does it work. Shame it's in the movie we got.