• theneverfox
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    5 months ago

    No, the writing was just bad.

    I strongly prefer strong female leads (and my tastes only get more LGBT when it comes to novels), but those movies were terrible. Just horrendous. I still can’t bring myself to watch episode 9, or anything star wars since then

    I’m not even that big a star wars fan. I love sci-fi and fantasy, because I love the new ideas they contain - star wars was never special to me, it was just good

    I’ll never forget leaving the theater after episode 7, my whole department took off to see it on release. I just remember everyone being relatively satisfied, even the extreme star wars nerds, but I just looked at my team lead who I shared an office with. .

    We used to talk about Star wars all the time, especially the extended universe, but we looked at each other and I saw pain in his expression, and I knew I shared the same look. I don’t think we ever spoke about Star wars again

    And after episode 8, I now just feel dread when I see a blaster.

    It wasn’t that nostalgic for me, it wasn’t that my standards were unreachable - they were just bad movies.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      It also felt unoriginal

      The prequels go well with the sequels. Star wars is a story about collapse followed by heros saving the day and it all makes sense. It comes from both a hero’s journey and tragic plays. The problem with the new stuff is that they abandoned the old way of story telling. Not only did they fail to come up with a plot more complex than big weapon destroys planet they completely failed to tell it in a way that made me care. It felt cheap despite having a much bigger budget than the original A new hope.

      • pachrist@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I remember sitting in the theater for Episode VII. I had a sense of excitement because it could be anything. It wasn’t an adaption of a book I’d already read, like Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a remake, like the Disney live action stuff. It was a reboot, but in a totally new direction since they threw out all the EU stuff.

        It was retreaded garbage.

        The only movie I’ve ever been more disappointed in while sitting in the theater was Cowboys and Aliens, because I was so excited for it to be xenomorphs. So sad. But it did cement that I will never trust a movie with old Harrison Ford in it.

    • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      After I saw 7, I thought, okay the story is super derivative, but I’m actually connecting with the characters like I used to in the original trilogy. Watching the prequels I was never fooled at any point into thinking these were actual humans on screen, but this time I felt something. So leaving the theater, I thought, well, at worst 8 and 9 will be a lot of fun, if you don’t focus on the plot.

      It turned out that a portion of 8 was like that for me (I thought the scenes between Rey and Kylo were very cool) and the rest was stuff I never wanted to see again. And then 9’s plot was nonsensical to the point that I don’t think I’ll ever want to subject myself to it again.

      I’ll never ever understand why even the most cynical studio in the world would want 7, 8, and 9 to be made without even a skeleton of a plot drawn out for the whole trilogy before starting on the first movie. It’s absolutely insane to me.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      For me the issue is not only the bad writing, but the over saturation of content as well.

      There are just too many spinoffs and sequels now, ever since Disney bought the rights. I got bored of The Mandalorian halfway into season 1. Same goes for Obi Wan. Rogue One was great, but I didn’t bother with Solo or even Episode IX. Stopped paying attention after that.

      The only Star Wars content I’m looking forward to is the remake of Knights of the Old Republic, and only because the original was among the best RPGs I’ve ever played. Couldn’t care less about anything else. Disney killed off my enthusiasm for the franchise. Maybe I just wasn’t as much of a fan as I thought I was…

      • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Solo was pretty alright - worth seeing once. And Andor was fantastic.

        Seriously, if you like star wars but find everything you’ve seen under the Disney release umbrella to be underwhelming at best, watch Andor. It is incredible. The worst thing about it is it is proof that good Star Wars content can be made today, and instead all the make is garbage.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      “I bypassed the compressor!”

      Still sucks that some audience minds associate character to actor a bit too much. Rei’s actor didn’t do anything wrong, and she deserves future chances.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Star wars, star trek, loads of other shows have suffered the same problem here.

      I don’t mind female leads or LGBT, or Latin / Asian / African or whatever typenof actors, none of it is a problem, ehy should it be?

      I mind when the writing is cringe worthy bad, but I’m supposed to like the show because of reasons like

      “the main actor is black, … AND A WOMAN, gasp!”

      or

      “But 30 percent of the characters are gay, it MUST be good now, RIGHT?”

      or

      “That widely know character with a rich and very well defined backstory is now a stone cold murderer AND lesbian, this show rocks!”

      I’m tired of existing shoes being ruined this way. You want to make a show where all characters are black transgender women? Go ahead, make a NEW show, leave existing stories alone. If the writing is good, I’ll watch it, I don’t need a brave gay black Winnie Pooh.

      But that won’t happen, because they’ll take an existing show, shoehorn in a whole bunch of check boxes, black check, gay check, ooohhh bisexual check! And that’s it. Writing? Oh yeah, sure, we’ll have someone throw up over paper and we’ll use that because we have all the checkboxes, we gon be great!

      And another show lies ruined.

    • mossy_@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Watched any good movies with strong female leads lately? I just watched Birds of Prey and thought it was the best live action DC movie in a long time

      • theneverfox
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        5 months ago

        I’m intrigued, I’m not a big fan of DC movies but I’m willing to give them another chance. Could you give me a quick synopsis?

        • mossy_@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Hmm. Harley Quinn breaks up with Joker, meaning all of the people she’s pissed off are no longer afraid to go after her. Along the way she meets the ensemble cast of heroines who also want to fight criminals and they team up for some grand finale where they all fight bad guys together.

          Very basic fare, so if you don’t like superhero movies (it’s a saturated market, I don’t blame anyone who does) then skip it. But it does feature Ewan McGregor playing a guy who likes peeling people’s faces off which was a funny tone shift.

    • beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The less said about the sequel trilogy, the better, but do yourself a favour and don’t miss out on watching Andor just because of the movies. That show is just really good and also incidentally Star Wars.

      • theneverfox
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        5 months ago

        The bad batch is apparently also great, along with the latest clone war seasons (according to my friend at least)

        I’m just not ready… Seeing Star wars just fills me with negative feelings. I hope I’ll get there one day - I loved the EU and the more they accept back into cannon the more I want to get back into it… But I just can’t give it another chance yet

        • Gestrid@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          I’m just not ready…

          I’m almost the same way. I’m not really feeling negative about it, though. I just feel nothing towards it, which is almost worse. Like you said, though… maybe some day. The interest is still there somewhat, just not nearly enough for me to act on it.

        • beebarfbadger@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The thing is that, depending on your tastes, there’s a good chance at least some of the new content will appeal to people, but I do absolutely understand getting that bad aftertaste every time you remember that it all leads canonically into those three movies and … nyeeeerrrrgghhh.

          By the way, it seems that even a good portion of the producers seem to at least partially share that feeling, which makes it doubly sad that disney is making almost everyone shoehorn in some hint of retroactively created foreshadowing with the goal of explaining that no, palps returning that way isn’t the ass-pull it obviously was at all, nuh-uh!

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The dialog was always mediocre to bad, but otherwise the writing was pretty good. Characters had growth arcs, acted in understandable ways given their characterization.