IMO the prequel and sequels are about equal in badness. The odd thing was they're bad in almost exactly opposite ways.
The prequels had a story to tell, but they broke down in the minutia. There was a solid core plot, but once we got to how things played out scene by scene the movies broke down. George knew how he wanted the story go, but he seemed to have no idea how to get from plot point a to plot point b.
The sequels were nearly directionless in story, but ever scene in their rudderless plot had good dialog, pacing and tone. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that has a picture of static printed on it. Episode 7 was just a re-hash of 3, 8 had two weak plots glued together pushed forward by contrived urgency and episode 9 was just a mix of one-upsmanship threat level as well as trying to ret-con the previous two movies into a coherent story arc.
The prequels were trash. The only good thing they did was pave the way for more competent writers to expand on the new material, like with the Clone Wars show.
Midichlorians is just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, it ruins the Force/the Jedi, turning them from a religion to basically just X-Men, but that's peanuts compared to changing Jedi from being an esoteric order of warrior monks (remember, Han Solo says he's been all over the galaxy and *never* heard of the Force) to actually being the galaxy's space cops just 20 years ago. That means Han was alive when the Jedi were still venerated. Little slave Ani on Tatooine knew more about the Jedi than Luke did when he was on the cusp of joining the Rebellion; the prequels straight up do not fit in the same universe as the original trilogy without crazy mental gymnastics. Darth Vader was literally mocked to his face for being a religious fruitcake in episode 4, that's how much presence the Force originally had.
I just watch Star Wars for the artistic creativity: words, species, spaceships, clothes, choregraphies, FX, sound design, music ... I except nothing from scenario and acting, because I expect it to be shit.
I've said this before and I think it needs repeating. Filoni is making better stuff than Disney did, and besides, the originals weren't as good as nostalgia thinks they are. Filoni's stuff is on par with the originals and like the originals its a great time for families and kids.
filoni did a great job making the clone wars. i'll say that. i'm currently watching rebels and mandalorian S03 and am quite disappointed, as usual with newer star wars stuff.
the main thing is: they may not have a grand roadmap like i imagine george had. none of the newer stuff is really that coherent. it spends more time inventing new stuff that never gets expanded on instead of tying into the previously established lore.
the originals were never the greatest movies ever made, and that's fine. at least it all made sense. it was all explainable. it was coherent.
i feel lost when watching post-2014 stuff, maybe because the lore isn't established yet, but maybe because it just didn't get thought through.
My biggest gruff with Disney is them declaring the extended universe non canon just to cherry pick details from it while ignoring the most exciting lore and shit.
Like the whole palpatine returning thing happened in the EU but was done in a much better way. Different materials like beskar were more fleshed out.
Disney literally had thousands of stories to draw inspiration from and chose to just come up with bullshit over and over again.
absolutely. never read any of the comics, but most of the really interesting stories seem to happen there. would love a well executed starkiller series. i actually did not know about him until i watched some matpat style videos about star wars.
I kind of love Starkiller's story, including the fact that his actions were so instrumental to forming the Rebel Alliance that they took his family crest as their sigil. That's badass.
Hard disagree. Filoni made Ahsoka, which is trash. He's the executive producer of The Book of Boba Fett, which is trash. He's the executive producer and wrote some episodes of The Mandalorian, which started promising and then turned to trash. So yeah. He fits right in with anything Disney created.
Ehhh almost. The best Disney era stuff has been Mandalorian (S1) and Andor, which had, at best, Filoni consulting. Filoni's stuff is good quality but it's also fairly simplistic and self-referential, to the point of being almost masturbatory. I think Clone Wars is the best he's produced and it's 95% awful kids show with 5% very high quality storytelling mixed in, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt since it was literally intended as a kids show.
Prequels and sequels were pretty terrible for opposite reasons, as another poster has already mentioned. The original trilogy is pretty high quality, I don't think that's even debatable. While New Hope was a pretty bog-standard chosen one/heroic epic story, and maybe/definitely just a rip-off of Hidden Fortress, it gets all the credit for the blend of Eastern and Western themes and concepts. Additionally, for absolutely stunning special effects for the era. Empire is just objectively a good movie, and is definitely when Star Wars peaked. It's got excellent writing, directing, and cinematography, and did a phenomenal job maintaining the strengths of New Hope while doing a ton of work developing all of the characters and the universe. Jedi is... okay tbh. I put it about on par with the prequels although the Emperor is my favorite character.
The biggest problem imo with the Disney products lately is exactly that - they are clearly products intended only to capitalize on an already-successful IP, with nothing really to say nor any story to tell. Filoni doesn't have this problem, but he does have the issues above. If Disney can focus on letting creatives tell the stories they want to tell in the Star Wars Universe instead of just churning out products, I think they'll be okay.