How My Friends Rank Star Wars

  Due to a combination of boredom and insanity, I decided to reach out to a bunch of different people I know and ask them to each rank all live-action, theatrically-released Star Wars films (yes, all eleven of them).

Out of all twenty-five people part of this experiment, only five were women, and the rest were all men. Furthermore, four people here are Zoomers born after mid 1995, while seven are Gen-X’ers who are old enough to remember the original trilogy when it was new, and the remaining fourteen are all Millennials born in the early 90’s. Through my findings, I have found that Zoomers seem to favor the prequel trilogy, and women seem to favor the sequel trilogy (or at least think highly of it).

I changed most of the names here to “protect” identities, and at the bottom of this post I did some analysis/ number-crunching (so feel free to just skip to that part, if you want)…

Welp, here you go!:

TROY

1.Star Wars, 2.Solo, 3.The Empire Strikes Back, 4.Return of the Jedi, 5.The Phantom Menace, 6.The Last Jedi, 7.Attack of the Clones, 8.Revenge of the Sith, 9.The Rise of Skywalker, 10.The Force Awakens, 11.Rogue One

LYDIA

1.Return of the Jedi, 2.Star Wars, 3.The Empire Strikes Back, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.The Last Jedi, 6.The Rise of Skywalker, 7.Rogue One, 8.Solo, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.Revenge of the Sith, 11.Attack of the Clones

MANNY

1.Rogue One, 2.Star Wars, 3.The Empire Strikes Back, 4.Return of the Jedi, 5.Revenge of the Sith, 6.Attack of the Clones, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.The Last Jedi, 9.The Force Awakens, 10.The Rise of Skywalker, 11.Solo

SAL

1.Revenge of the Sith, 2.Attack of the Clones, 3.The Phantom Menace, 4.The Empire Strikes Back, 5.Star Wars, 6.Return of the Jedi, 7.Rogue One, 8.Solo, 9.The Last Jedi, 10.The Force Awakens, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

DAN

1.The Rise of Skywalker, 2.Return of the Jedi, 3.The Phantom Menace, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.Star Wars, 6.Revenge of the Sith, 7.The Last Jedi, 8.Attack of the Clones, 9.The Empire Strikes Back, 10.Rogue One, 11.Solo

KEVIN

1.Star Wars, 2.The Empire Strikes Back, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.Solo, 5.Rogue One, 6.The Force Awakens, 7.Revenge of the Sith, 8.The Rise of Skywalker, 9.The Last Jedi, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.The Phantom Menace

RONALD

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.The Last Jedi, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.Return of the Jedi, 6.Solo, 7.Rogue One, 8.Attack of the Clones, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.Revenge of the Sith, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

DANTE

1.Revenge of the Sith, 2.Attack of the Clones, 3.The Phantom Menace, 4.Return of the Jedi, 5.The Empire Strikes Back, 6.Star Wars, 7.Solo, 8.The Rise of Skywalker, 9.The Force Awakens, 10.Rogue One, 11.The Last Jedi

ROY

1.Star Wars, 2.Rogue One, 3.Solo, 4.The Empire Strikes Back, 5.Return of the Jedi, 6.The Force Awakens, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.The Rise of Skywalker, 9.The Last Jedi, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.Revenge of the Sith

CARLA

1.Star Wars, 2.The Empire Strikes Back, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.The Rise of Skywalker, 6.The Last Jedi, 7.Rogue One, 8.Solo, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.Revenge of the Sith

RYAN

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.Revenge of the Sith, 5.Rogue One, 6.The Force Awakens, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.Solo, 9.The Last Jedi, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

JOHN

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Rogue One, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.Star Wars, 5.Solo, 6.Revenge of the Sith, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.Attack of the Clones, 9.The Rise of Skywalker, 10.The Last Jedi, 11.The Force Awakens

WILL

1.Return of the Jedi, 2.Revenge of the Sith, 3.Attack of the Clones, 4.The Phantom Menace, 5.Rogue One, 6.The Empire Strikes Back, 7.Star Wars, 8.Solo, 9.The Rise of Skywalker, 10.The Last Jedi, 11.The Force Awakens

CHRISTOPHER

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.Rogue One, 5.The Force Awakens, 6.Revenge of the Sith, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.Attack of the Clones, 9.Solo, 10.The Rise of Skywalker, 11.The Last Jedi

JAMES

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Return of the Jedi, 3.Star Wars, 4.Revenge of the Sith, 5.The Force Awakens, 6.The Phantom Menace, 7.Rogue One, 8.Solo, 9.Attack of the Clones, 10.The Last Jedi, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

DARLA

1.The Force Awakens, 2.Solo, 3.Rogue One, 4.Star Wars, 5.The Empire Strikes Back, 6.Return of the Jedi, 7.The Rise of Skywalker, 8.The Last Jedi, 9.Revenge of the Sith, 10.The Phantom Menace, 11.Attack of the Clones

JACOB

1.Solo, 2.The Empire Strikes Back, 3.Star Wars, 4.Return of the Jedi, 5.The Force Awakens, 6.The Last Jedi, 7.Rogue One, 8.Revenge of the Sith, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

JIM

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.The Last Jedi, 5.Rogue One, 6.The Force Awakens, 7.The Phantom Menace, 8.Revenge of the Sith, 9.Attack of the Clones, 10.The Rise of Skywalker, 11.Solo

FRANK

1.Return of the Jedi, 2.The Empire Strikes Back, 3.Star Wars, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.Rogue One, 6.Solo, 7.Revenge of the Sith, 8.The Phantom Menace, 9.Attack of the Clones, 10.The Rise of Skywalker, 11.The Last Jedi

EVELYN

1.The Last Jedi, 2.The Empire Strikes Back, 3.Star Wars, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.Return of the Jedi, 6.Solo, 7.Rogue One, 8.Revenge of the Sith, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.The Rise of Skywalker

OCTOBER

1.The Last Jedi, 2.The Force Awakens, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.The Empire Strikes Back, 5.Star Wars, 6.Solo, 7.The Rise of Skywalker, 8.Rogue One, 9.Revenge of the Sith, 10.Attack of the Clones, 11.The Phantom Menace

LOUIS

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.The Force Awakens, 5.The Last Jedi, 6.Rogue One, 7.Revenge of the Sith, 8.Attack of the Clones, 9.The Phantom Menace, 10.The Rise of Skywalker, 11.Solo

HANK

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Star Wars, 3.Return of the Jedi, 4.The Last Jedi, 5.The Force Awakens, 6.Rogue One, 7.Solo, 8.Revenge of the Sith, 9.The Rise of Skywalker, 10.The Phantom Menace, 11.Attack of the Clones

EVAN

1.The Phantom Menace, 2.Attack of the Clones, 3.Revenge of the Sith, 4.The Empire Strikes Back, 5.Rogue One, 6.Star Wars, 7.Return of the Jedi, 8.The Last Jedi, 9.The Rise of Skywalker, 10.The Force Awakens, 11.Solo

KEITH

1.The Empire Strikes Back, 2.Rogue One, 3.The Last Jedi, 4.Star Wars, 5.The Force Awakens, 6.The Rise of Skywalker, 7.Return of the Jedi, 8.Solo, 9.Revenge of the Sith, 10.The Phantom Menace, 11.Attack of the Clones

And with that, let’s do some analysis:

FAVORITES

The Empire Strikes Back: 9

Star Wars: 4

Return of the Jedi: 3

Revenge of the Sith, The Last Jedi: 2

Attack of the Clones: 0

Everything else: 1

LEAST-FAVORITES

The Rise of Skywalker: 6

Solo: 5

Attack of the Clones: 4

The Last Jedi: 3

The Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens: 2

Rogue One: 1

Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi: 0

DIFFERENTIALS

The Empire Strikes Back: 9

Star Wars: 4

Return of the Jedi: 3

Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One: 0

The Phantom Menace, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi: -1

Attack of the Clones, Solo: -4

The Rise of Skywalker: -5

So there you have it! As you can see, the original trilogy is still beloved far more than everything else, in general. Though as I said at the top of this post, some of that might have to do with demographics. Nevertheless, it’s cool to see a whole bunch of different opinions! Thanks again to everyone who willingly participated in this. And for what it’s worth: No, I won’t be doing this again when the new movies are finally released, whenever that’ll be… If ever…

Peace!

Related: List Repository

Fixing Act One of Rogue One (Revised)

 NOTE: An earlier version of the following post was originally published in December 2021. I took the post down after noticing too many errors with it, and have since decided to revise it.

So a few days ago marked the fifth anniversary of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first ever live-action theatrical spinoff in the Star Wars franchise.

Because of this, I was thinking about the movie again recently, particularly the common complaint audiences had about the first handful of scenes feeling too “frantic,” and I realized something… The beginning of the movie is actually not that hard to fix. As a matter of fact, anyone can do it, as long as they have the right editing tools at home…

Oh, don’t get me wrong! Rogue One has a ton of issues. Way more issues than what any simple fan edit could fix. All I’m proposing here is that the first chunk of the movie (let’s call it “Act One,” for the sake of simplicity) can be turned into something much more effective than what it currently is with just a simple rearrangement of the scenes.

With that all being said, let’s break down, one scene at a time, how I would fix the beginning of Rogue One:

1.Delete the blue milk zoom-in

Minor nitpick, I know, but fan-service moments like these are fucking stupid and should not have been in the movie. Fuck this shit!

2.Add “Thirteen Years Later” after the title is shown

As you may recall, the film starts with a “prologue” sequence that shows Jyn as a little girl, watching her mother Lyra being killed and her father Galen being taken away. We then see the title of the film, complete with cheesy Star Wars font and all, before cutting to a shot of Jyn, now an adult, sitting in a prison cell, her mother’s necklace still around her neck. The necklace and Felicity Jones’s striking resemblance to the little girl from the prologue are enough to visually communicate to us that a significant amount of time has passed since the pre-title sequence. That said, I plan to move this scene to later in the story now. Again, the objective with this “fix” is to make it so that we stay on certain characters for longer. Therefore, the scene where we first meet adult Jyn should be moved to later, right before she gets rescued by the rebels. Because of this, we need something else to communicate to the audience right after the title reveal that time has passed now since the prologue. A simple “Thirteen Years Later” text would get the job done. And in case you’re wondering; yes, I did some research and made sure that was the exact number of years between the prologue and the rest of the story.

3.Delete Cassian’s introduction scene

I know what you’re thinking; “What’s wrong with you, dude?! The characters in Rogue One are already too flat as is!! You wanna make them even flatter?!” Hear me out… The biggest issue with the beginning of the movie is that it jumps around between too many locations and characters, in too short an amount of time. Therefore, if there are any scenes that can be cut out in order to “diminish this effect,” as franchise creator George Lucas himself once worded it, then they should be cut. This scene wasn’t even originally part of the movie anyways. It was written and shot entirely during the reshoot phase, and it shows. The guy Cassian talks to here is a horrible actor, and you can just tell the whole scene was shot in a day, on a super-tight schedule. Besides, everything we learn here is repeated to us a few scenes later, when Jyn meets the rebels. The only thing we’d really lose is the cool moment where Cassian is forced to kill his buddy in order to escape. That alone told us everything we need to know about his character arc. That said, we get a similar character beat a few scenes later anyways, when the douchey general guy tells Cassian to kill Galen as soon as he sees him, and Cassian nods in a reluctant but obedient way. Is this as compelling as him being forced to kill his friend? No, but it gets the job done of telling us what this character is all about, and sometimes less is more.

4.Cut to Bodhi arriving on Jedha

So after the prologue and the title and the “Thirteen Years Later” text, we cut to Bodhi arriving on Jedha, specifically the scene where he’s being walked through the desert by Saw’s henchmen. Bodhi’s actions are what kick off the whole story, so after the prologue, I think it makes the most sense to have him be the character we meet first.

5.Cut to Bodhi meeting Saw

In the real movie, after we meet Bodhi, we are shown a bunch of scenes with other characters before finally cutting back to him later, so that we can finally see him meeting Saw. Like I said earlier, the objective of this hypothetical edit would be to stay on certain characters for longer, to try to diminish the frantic “feel” of the movie as much as possible. Therefore, after seeing Bodhi being walked through the desert by the henchmen, I think the movie should hard-cut to the shot of Saw’s robot legs walking through the dark hallway while he shouts “Lies! Deceptions!” or whatever it is he pointlessly screams there.

6.Tarkin introduction

So after we see Saw order his henchmen to take Bodhi to the squid monster, we should cut to the scene where we first meet Tarkin in the movie. I’m pretty sure this is how it plays out in the actual movie anyways, so I won’t comment any further on this.

7.Cut to black, with Galen’s voice saying “Stardust”

As soon as Tarkin’s intro scene ends, I want to cut to the scene where we meet adult Jyn in the prison cell. That said, cutting straight from Tarkin to adult Jyn’s intro would be a little too “sudden,” so to ease the audience into it, I would cut to black first, and add a quick soundbite of Galen’s voice saying “Stardust,” as I feel this would act as a good setup for when we see adult Jyn waking up in the prison cell immediately after.

8.Cut to adult Jyn introduction

And finally, this is where I would put the quick scene of adult Jyn in the prison cell, waking up from a nightmare and looking at her mother’s necklace.

9.Delete intro shot of the planet Wobani

In the real movie, right before we see K2SO rescuing Jyn from the tank, we get a quick establishing shot of a purple planet with some text saying something like “Wobani: Prison World.” But because we are now moving adult Jyn’s intro and her rescue right next to each other, this shot is no longer necessary, so I’m getting rid of it. Not that it matters, by the way, but in case you haven’t noticed, Wobani is an anagram for Obi-Wan.

10.Cut to K2SO rescuing Jyn

Immediately after adult Jyn’s intro scene in the prison, we cut to the sequence where she’s rescued, starting with the shot of the tank moving across the muddy terrain, and concluding with her “surrendering” to K2SO, just like in the actual movie.

11.Add the flashback montage right after the U-Wing departure

In the actual movie, after Tarkin’s intro scene, we get a flashback montage dream sequence, where we see two different points in Jyn’s childhood intercut with one another. I like this sequence, and want to keep it, but since we moved the Tarkin intro up a bit, this scene no longer fits there. So instead, I would just fade to black and cut to this little dream sequence right after we see the U-Wing with Jyn, Galen and K2 leave Yavin 4. The next scene we see is Jyn waking up right as they arrive on Jedha anyways, so it still fits just fine.

12.Delete the “You just watch yourself” shit

The rest of the movie plays out the same, with the one exception being that I would delete the “You just watch yourself” callback. Like the blue milk zoom-in, it’s just stupid fan-service, and the fact that it was ever even thought of for this movie makes me cringe…

And that’s pretty much it! Like I said in the beginning of this post, I still have plenty of other issues with Rogue One beyond the stuff mentioned here. That said, none of those other issues can really be fixed with simple fan-editing, as they’re all far too “baked” into the story. Again, the purpose of this post was just to propose how the beginning of the movie could have played out in a much smoother way, with the key being that it should have held on certain characters for longer.

One last thing I would like to say here is that, while I don’t necessarily hate this movie either, I have a feeling I would have liked the original cut much more, before they did all the reshoots. The middle section on the rainy planet is my favorite part of the movie, and from what I’ve heard, it’s basically the only section that wasn’t changed in reshoots, and it shows…

That said, it also sounds like the original cut had a much “bleaker” tone, which doesn’t necessarily fit with Star Wars (even the darkest corners of it). It sounds like the original deaths of all the characters in the final act were much more “random,” which was meant to highlight how, during war, good people often die in random, meaningless ways when they’re out on the battlefield. Word on the street is that Disney felt this was too bleak, so Tony Gilroy was brought in to give all the characters “meaningful” deaths, which basically changed the whole theme of the movie to being about “the importance of sacrifice.” While I admire the effort, all of their deaths and reasons behind them felt a bit convoluted to me. Part of me wishes the studio would’ve just let original director Gareth Edwards do his own thing. I think the fact that he hasn’t been active in the industry at all since this movie came out says a lot…

Despite all this, there are still moments in Rogue One that I enjoy here and there, so happy fifth birthday to the movie…

Peace!

PS: Oh yeah, I would also get rid of all the planet name tags from the movie. That stuff wasn’t needed…

2024 UPDATE: I like the real movie as is much more now! It has really grown on me!

The Good & The Bad: Star Wars (Disney Era 1)

 DISCLAIMER: For better context, click here for Part 1.

So, as promised last time, today I will be covering everything Disney has done with Star Wars (films and shows, that is) up until 2020. That being said, I will NOT cover the sequel trilogy films here, as I realize now that I have a lot to say about those, so I’ll cover them in a separate post dedicated specifically to that trilogy instead. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s not waste any more time and just dive right in!

Rebels (2014-2018)

THE GOOD: Some people may hate me for saying this, but I actually think that, in some ways, this show handles the whole theme of “family” even better than the movies do. That being said, it’s weird how Ezra and Sabine act like siblings sometimes and then like love interests at other times. Despite this, however, you can really feel the family-like “bond” all these characters share by the end of the show, and it really helps me to like all of them more. I also like how the show has a solid “all ages tone” (for the most part, at least). Furthermore, as much as I enjoy the anthology structure of The Clone Wars, the linear storytelling is refreshing here, as it allows us to grow more with these specific characters. You get to see Ezra grow closer to the wildlife of the galaxy, you get to see Kanan become more confident as a mentor, you get to see his romance with Hera blossom more, you get to see “bitter” characters like Sabine, Zeb and Chopper all lighten up a bit more, and so on. I would also say that the first two seasons are, overall, thematically solid (the “pulpy” feel that makes Star Wars great is still there). The only thing I found off here was how “fire” was used to symbolize both the heroes and the villains. This actually pops up in other Star Wars projects as well, but Rebels especially makes an effort to highlight it. I guess the idea is supposed to be “fight fire with fire,” which is fine, I suppose. I’ll also say that Season 4 is pretty interesting, when viewed as one big, self-contained story. I thought bringing the heroes back to Lothal for that final season created a cool “full circle” effect, and the whole thing with the loth-wolves (and the hyperspace whales coming back) ended up being pretty fascinating, in my opinion!

THE BAD: Season 3 feels very out of place. I’m actually surprised that more people don’t seem to be saying this. Seasons 1 and 2 were super pulpy and fun and episodic. The Season 1 finale was a little more dramatic, but understandably so, and then all of a sudden the Season 2 finale flips everything on it’s head. Why does Star Wars always seem to make this mistake? The original trilogy did it, Rebels did it, and now The Mandalorian seems to be doing it too. I get that’s what people have come to expect out of Star Wars, but doesn't anyone else feel that this creates a very jarring tonal shift? Season 3 feels like a completely different show, and not in a good way! The mood becomes so dreary, and suddenly now there’s an awkward emphasis on boring bloodline drama (particularly with Sabine). I like the “surrogate family” thing, but not the literal family thing, cause it starts to dominate the story too much. Haven’t we learned by now that this doesn't work longterm? “Jaded” Ezra from this season also took some getting used to. Like with Ahsoka, I get the point, but something about the way it was executed felt weird. In addition, most of the antagonists suck. We get not one, but two turncoats, as well as two different Imperial Commander women who feel like the same character. There’s also some overpowered alien assassin who works for Thrawn and has zero charisma (I don’t care that he’s from the books or whatever). And let’s not forget about the Inquisitors, with their helicopter lightsabers and all. I get that this is supposed to be for kids, but I’m pretty sure even a kid would ask “Why don’t the Inquisitors just activate the helicopter mode when fighting the heroes?” Maybe all the Inquisitors see that as cheating? But my biggest gripe of all with this show is The World Between Worlds. What’s that, you may ask? It’s a time machine! Yup, that’s right! Time travel exists in Star Wars now. I get that Dave Filoni wanted to use it to save Ahsoka, as well as tempt Ezra to jump into alternate timelines, but come on! In my opinion, he should’ve saved Ahsoka another way, and created other things to tempt Ezra with. The way I see it, time travel shouldn’t be introduced unless it’s at the core of the story, and even then it can sometimes be stupid.

Rogue One (2016)

THE GOOD: The second and third acts of the story are pretty solid, as is the world-building throughout the entire film (particularly on the planet Jedah). I also enjoy all of the technical aspects of the movie (as in the music, cinematography, planet designs, etc.). The family stuff between Jyn and Galen was nice, as was the moment when Baze calls Jyn his “little sister.” I can tolerate family stuff like that as long as it doesn’t hijack the story too much (like it did with the original trilogy and onward). I’ll also give this film credit for having the ambition to try different things (prologue instead of an opening crawl, everyone dying at the end, etc.).

THE BAD: The first act of this film is all over the place! It gets better on repeat viewings, of course, but man was that first viewing headache-inducing! The third act also feels like a completely different film (but a better one, to be fair). The characters (minus K2SO, of course) are all flat, especially Baze! It took me forever to even remember what his name was! Saw sucked too. Furthermore, the fan service in this movie is pure cringe. The overrated Vader scene, the CGI’d Tarkin and Leia, the recycled Star Wars 1977 footage of the pilots, the awkward R2 & 3PO cameo, the even more awkward cameo from the cantina guys, the zoom-in on the blue milk… You get the idea. My biggest gripe here, however, is the fact that this shouldn’t even really be a movie. In Star Wars 1977, they explain why it’s so easy to blow up the Death Star. The Rebel general says “the empire doesn’t see their exhaust port as a potential weakness.” The Death Star was vulnerable because the imperials were arrogant and naive. They didn’t expect someone strong in the Force like Luke to come along. It’s that simple! There doesn't need to be an entire movie explaining that there was some big internal conspiracy behind it the whole time, and it causes continuity issues with the series anyway (whatever happened to those bugs in Attack that supposedly designed the Death Star?). Not only shouldn't this have been a movie, but it especially shouldn't have been a movie made in between Awakens and Jedi. All that did was confuse people (same with the release placement of Solo). From a business perspective, I get why Disney wanted to introduce people to the idea of “Star Wars movie spinoffs” as early as possible, but I feel doing so (as well as crunching the sequel trilogy down to a four-year schedule instead of the usual six years), was a big mistake, in hindsight. At least now we’re moving into a new era where all of Star Wars seems to be anthological, for the time being.

Solo (2018)

THE GOOD: The thing I love the most about this movie is that it doesn’t try too hard (for the most part), like most Star Wars projects eventually do. Aside from that one cameo at the end (oh, we’ll get there!) this movie basically just tells it’s story, and then fucks off before getting too full of itself. I can respect it for that, and wish other projects (especially Star Wars projects!) would do the same. I also enjoyed all the characters, and felt they were all well-acted. Alden Ehrenreich in particular surprised me! He made Han his own, rather than trying to just do a Harrison Ford impression (as most would). Considering that Han is supposed to be 10-13 years younger here, I thought this worked really well. I also felt this film didn't really conflict with Star Wars 1977 at all. Han’s arc makes sense here, and leads perfectly into his arc in 1977. Here, he becomes emotionally distant and jaded, and then in 1977, he learns to open himself back up to people and ideals. It works. I also really like how this movie actually gave me things I wanted to see! Han meeting Chewy, meeting Lando and getting the Falcon from him, the Jabba set-up… None of it felt too “fan servicey” in the way Rogue One did because those are all the things you'd expect from a Han origin movie anyways. I also thought this movie surprisingly had a lot of imagination. The different world and ship designs were all pretty unique (including the yacht and the “younger” Falcon), and stuff like the train heist and the Kessel Run ended up being way more imaginative than I had expected them to be!

THE BAD: I have to admit that this movie feels less like a movie you'd actually expect to be released in theaters, and more like a 90’s TV movie or something. That’s not a bad thing for me, but I can see it pissing other people off. One thing that caught me off guard at first was that Lando’s personality in this film, like Han’s, is slightly different than in the original trilogy. This grew on me over time, however, as I reminded myself that the character is younger here, so it would make sense for him to be a little different than the Lando we’re familiar with. Also, the messy production of this film seems to have screwed up the lighting. As much as I like this movie, its so dimly-lit that sometimes I can’t even see what the fuck is happening on screen! I’m like 99% sure that all the rushed reshoots had something to do with that. I also thought the three-year gap between the first and second acts was a little too much. I’m pretty sure Han would’ve gotten over Kira, by then. Two years I can see. But three? Nah… But my biggest gripe of all, by far, was that Maul cameo at the end… Like, what the fuck?! Would it have been that hard to just have Kira turn evil on her own accord? That would’ve made her a more interesting character anyways! Maybe she’ll appear that way in a future project? Like Lando or something? Eh, even so, it still wouldn’t fix the way this movie ended. Oh well…

Resistance (2018-2020)

THE GOOD: When I first saw the trailers for this show, I thought I would hate it. Thankfully, the show itself ended up growing on me a lot! It was weird at first how it all took place almost entirely on this one station, The Colossus, but over time, I realized that this was actually part of the show’s charm, as The Colossus eventually started to feel like a character itself (much like how The Falcon feels like a character in the movies). All the different real characters of this show also grew on me, after a while. Additionally, I like how Season 1 is set on a water world. I usually love water worlds (except for the terrible movie Waterworld, of course!). It’s also neat how some of the characters are air pilots that act as “guards” for their world, but also have sky races for fun. That was all something sorta new that I appreciated, and the show itself eventually acknowledged the uniqueness of this when a First Order character tells the Colossus leader “you need real guards, not aces!” (yeah, sure they do!). Another cool thing about this show that shouldn't be overlooked is its unique animation style.

THE BAD: Unfortunately, the first handful of episodes are a bit of a drag (the show’s pacing gets better with time, though). Some aspects of the initial plot also just don’t make much sense. Why hire a pilot to pose as a mechanic? Shouldn't they have hired, gee I don't know, an actual mechanic?! Did I miss something there?! Also, BB-8 is absolutely annoying in this! All of his beeps are recycled from the movies, and when you compare the context of the beeps here to the context of those same beeps in the films, you start to realize that what BB-8 is saying doesn't actually make any sense. I feel like even a kid would pick up on that, after a while. The sound-mixing on BB-8 is also shit. His rolling sounds are so loud that sometimes you can’t even hear what the other characters are saying as they’re walking with him. To be fair, this may have been intentional, cause they almost get caught by some baddies once because of this, but nevertheless, it’s still annoying. The worst thing about BB-8 on this show though is that he eclipses another droid named Bucket. It feels like Bucket was supposed to be “the droid of the show,” and then Disney forced the showrunners to squeeze BB-8 in at the last minute (I wouldn’t be surprised if this is really what happened, actually). Sometimes BB-8 and Bucket have some cute bickering, but it’s not enough to distract from the weirdness of it all. What makes this even weirder is that BB-8 eventually gets switched out for a similar droid named CB-23… So why not just have CB there in the first place? Also, like with Rebels, some of the antagonists here feel like copies of each other. There’s Commander Pyre, who’s basically just a gold Captain Phasma, and there’s also Major Vonreg, who’s just a red Captain Phasma. Lastly, the stakes during most of the first season are pretty low, because it takes place before Awakens, meaning it’s set in a mostly “peaceful” time. I understand why it needed to be this way, but it still sucks out a lot of the tension nonetheless.

The Mandalorian Seasons 1 & 2 (2019, 2020)

THE GOOD: Season 1 was perfectly paced! So was Season 2 (until the finale). I also love the emphasis on the spaghetti western influence, as it helped to make this show feel very “fresh” (that influence seems to be fading from the show now, unfortunately). The Volume (the real-time, scene-projecting dome that was invented specifically for this show) was also a great advancement for filmmaking of all kinds! I also found all of the characters to be terrific, except for one who I can’t mention by name because of spoilers (Season 2 just wrapped up a few weeks ago, at the time of this writing). The show (again, up until the recent finale) was also thematically in-line with Star Wars 1977, in that it felt very pulpy and episodic and fun!

THE BAD: In case it wasn’t obvious yet, I thought the Season 2 finale sucked (read this if you want to know why, but beware of spoilers!). Also, this isn't a complaint against the show itself necessarily, but I absolutely hate how toxic fans have been using the series itself as “ammo” in online conversations, and I feel the show itself has recently started to cave-in to that, and rewarding all the fandom toxicity (again, I can’t say why exactly, because of spoilers). I think it’s also weird how now the show seems to be abandoning it’s episodic/western influences, in favor of a more “trendy” approach (co-creator Dave Filoni himself confirmed that the show will likely become a lot more like Game of Thrones now). There’s also some continuity errors, mainly involving Bo-Katan and the darksaber. I’d say the biggest issue, however (aside from that overrated finale, of course) is that the directing “levels” in Season 1 felt pretty inconsistent. Filoni, who directed two episodes that season, was new to directing live action at the time, and believe me, you could very well tell which episodes were his! Thankfully, however, he’s improved a ton since then, and his episode from Season 2 actually ended up being one of my favorites!

Let’s stop there again for now.

Peace!

Click here for Part 3.