I’ve probably already talked about this, and the preamble is going to be a bit long because it’s probably more interesting than the grumble, but I noted something this week following on from my post last week.
Other than my traditional Christmas post, I used to have a few “traditions” from my Christmas vacation. However, almost all of them had faded away and so I wasn’t really doing most of them. But, recently, some of them starting creeping back in. This year, I’m going to have more vacation than normal and had decided even before then to reinsert some of them because I’d have the time and they seemed like a good way to pass that time. So I had already planned to re-watch Babylon 5 over break. I’d also decided to take a day — I was thinking New Year’s Eve day — and re-watch all of the Lord of the Rings movies (excluding The Hobbit, which I had never bought because I didn’t really enjoy the book and, in fact, didn’t finish it).
And I also decided to re-watch all of the Star Wars movies.
So, as is my wont when I’m wandering around and such, I started planning a lot of it out, including things like days and the like. I decided that I wanted to, at some point, go for a walk and buy some lunch, and so started planning out when I’d start watching the movies and then go out so that I’d be at the place after it opened, which also required thinking about days and the like, and, well, going on like that. I decided that, for me, I’d watch to the end of “Attack of the Clones”, go out, and then watch the last four movies, which should get things done in plenty of time for me to, well, fall asleep.
It took me a while to realize that I’d left something out of the calculation.
Yep, none of the new movies were on the list. Now, at first blush there’s a simple explanation for this: I was following my original schedule and that’s all that there were then, so I just left them out. But then I started musing that even after being reminded of their existence and despite having the time to watch them, I had no interest in watching the new movies again. I then remembered and mused about adding “Rogue One” to the list … but then had to admit that I didn’t care enough about that movie to watch it then either. I could have, but didn’t really feel it necessary or desirable.
So, no interest in watching the newer movies. And yet … I kept the prequels in. I’m not as fond of them either, but certainly would rather watch them than the ones in the new trilogy. Why is that?
Now, someone could muse that the issue is that I’m getting old, and falling into the time-honoured tradition of thinking that what was old was good and what’s new is crap, mostly out of nostalgia blinders. The issue with this is that I’ve been watching a mix of new and old shows and movies and that’s not holding up. So older shows — like Soap and Charmed — I’ve liked, but I’ve also been disappointed by a few of the ones I grew up with, like Remington Steele and Mork & Mindy. I’ve also liked the first Friday the 13th movie better than some of the new horror movies I’ve watched, but also disliked the second one more and liked Happy Death Day but not the sequel. I’ve liked some old games and some new ones. I’m not really one to be blinded by nostalgia.
The problem is this: I just don’t like the new stuff, probably because it’s just not very good. But for Star Wars, this is a critical failure on their part. Remember, I still watch the prequels despite not being that impressed by them. I also am not reading any of the new canon’s books despite the fact that I own most of the old EU and re-read most of them on a regular basis, even the ones that are weak like “Legacy of the Force”. I was what you’d have to consider a “Warsie”, a huge though not obsessed Star Wars fan, buying almost anything that I came across from Star Wars and consuming most of it. Right now, I’m not consuming a lot of it and am not at all certain when I’ll buy the last one, if I will at all, and what I’ll get of the trilogy that’s supposed to come after that. I don’t buy the comics anymore, and have little interest in doing so.
How did it come to this? How did the Star Wars franchise fall so low that I, a dedicated fan, no longer have any interest in the franchise? It’s not just that it’s different, because I often don’t mind that. It’s also, for me, not that it’s diverse because, well, I’m currently watching the feminist-friendly Charmed and liked — at least at the time — the girlpower oriented original Birds of Prey. So what’s wrong with Star Wars that I don’t care for it anymore?
Maybe … maybe it just sucks. I think I’m gonna hafta go with that one until someone finds an alternative explanation that makes more sense.
The Verbose Stoic 
October 11, 2019 at 10:54 am |
The prequels sucked because they are poorly made films.
The new movies suck because they’re INSULTING and poorly made films.
October 11, 2019 at 11:21 am |
I have a bit of a soft spot for “The Phantom Menace”, because Lucas actually put a few hints as to there being a decoy for Amidala that you can catch on a re-watch, but the podracing scene is indeed too long and the contortions to make Anakin younger — which I felt were unnecessary — hurt it a bit. “Attack of the Clones” is marred by terrible romantic dialogue and a mediocre plot. People tend to like “Revenge of the Sith” the best, but I don’t care for it that much. It’s all spoiled by Anakin being more “whiny brat” than “fallen paladin”.
On the sequel trilogy, though, “The Force Awakens” is spoiled by the fact that the more I think about it the more problems I find in it, both in itself and when linked to “The Last Jedi”, and “The Last Jedi” only works at all for me because you can pretty much take it however you want and find something that appeals to me, which doesn’t make me want to re-watch it. And my biggest comments about “Rogue One” were that I liked Jyn Erso’s hair and that the fleet battle scene contradicts the opening crawl of ANH (losing your entire fleet doesn’t usually count as a victory), which doesn’t make me want to re-watch it either.
October 11, 2019 at 3:18 pm |
I think that there are two main differences between the prequel and sequel trilogies. One is that, whilst the prequels weren’t as good as the original movies, they were at least telling a new stories, whereas the sequels are just an inferior rehash of the original trilogy. The other is that, because the sequels are copying the original films so much, they end up basically rendering the originals pointless. We saw three movies watching the Rebels fighting against heroic odds to overthrow the Empire, seeing Han mature from a self-interested smuggler to a hero fighting for a bigger cause, watching his blossoming romance with Leia… Then by Episode VII, we find that Han has split up with Leia and is once again living as a smuggler, and the struggle is, essentially, the tiny and outgunned Rebellion fighting the large and powerful Empire once again. Yes there’s apparently a New Republic kicking around, but they never really appear in the movie, and anyway get destroyed off-screen sometime between the seventh and eighth movies. Basically, nothing seems to change in the Rebellion vs. Empire struggle, rendering it extremely difficult to care about anything related to it.
October 11, 2019 at 5:18 pm |
I think this is a reasonable point, and one that I’ve mused on myself, mostly with reference to “Rogue One”: for all their flaws, the prequels do fit in with the OT to make a coherent narrative. You can go from “Revenge of the Sith” to “A New Hope” and feel like it’s part of the same story. The prequels do set up for the events of the OT, leaving little for the OT to have to suddenly explain. “Rogue One” can work for this as well, but as I said losing their entire fleet in their first “victory” causes the gears to grind shifting from “Rogue One” to the opening crawl of “A New Hope”.
But the sequels essentially hit the reset button without explanation. The end of “Return of the Jedi” is an incredible victory that seems to be completely undone in “The Force Awakens”, and no one explains how that happened or, in fact, what the actual state of the galaxy is. We don’t really get a good explanation for why Han returned to the simple smuggler. In “The Last Jedi”, we don’t really get a good explanation for why Luke has abandoned the lessons he learned in the OT, such as that no one is irredeemable. So moving from “Return of the Jedi” to “The Force Awakens” directly would definitely seem puzzling and strange, and since that’s what I’d be deliberately doing that would be hard for me to pull off.
And speaking of things not explained:
From what I’ve heard from people who have read the new material — the “Aftermath” novel is the big one — and took more time to dig into this than me, almost NO time passes between TFA and TLJ, and the entire New Republic fleet was destroyed when Starkiller Base destroyed that one system. This makes little sense and makes TLJ somewhat incoherent in another ways and while the short time difference SHOULD make going from one to the other easier TLJ, at least for me, works better as the culmination of a First Order build-up and huge push than as “And then their massive fleet shows up to mop up!”. How much resources does the First Order have if it can have that massive fleet AND a superweapon? As you said, that’s what the Empire would do, but the First Order isn’t the Empire. If it was, then the New Republic would have already been irrelevant.