A tribute to the former fans of Star Wars

[Penny]

I want to know what scams the naval academies in this universe are running. They can apparently snap their fingers and summon up trained crews of many tens of thousand for Palps fleet with no one noticing. Maybe this diploma mill actually explains the various poor results achieved.

[POOHEAD189]

I liked Star Wars as a kid and even know I like it but not to the same extent as back then. The Star Wars movies were fun and all but it was the various games I played based on the franchise that really got me into the series. I am not ashamed to say that I liked the prequels though I will easily admit there was a lot done wrong in them, especially the Phantom Menace. That said, what the Prequels managed to do was show how the Empire came to power and what the Republic was like before the Empire which was great at establishing lore. Just knowing what the Jedi Council was like and how many there were during that time period was exciting and interesting. Quite a few fun games were made based on the prequels that I had a lot of fun with and I did enjoy the Clone Wars series, even if it was a bit wonky.

Despite all the flaws, the Prequels opened up so much of interest to the fans about the Star Wars Universe, and prequel series like Knights of the Old Republic were fun and amazing, with quite a bit of influence from both the prequels and original sagas. Fans' imaginations soared and tons of role plays and games made the community feel alive. Also there are plenty of games like Jedi Knight that were placed after the original series and based on the Expanded Universe that were quite interesting, unique, and fun.

Then came along Disney with the Sequels and the first thing they do is declare the entire Expanded Universe as non-cannon. Ok, so technically that makes sense as you wouldn't want to be bound the Expanded Universe when trying to make a sequel which is fine, but just the fact that they had to go out of their way to point that out was a bit concerning. It was a red flag for me, though a small one. Still there was a lot of good characters and story lines in the expanded universe, though admittedly I knew mostly just the game stuff but there were definitely a lot of good story lines and characters to mess around with. Also there were a lot of interesting politics that I gleaned from the few books I read about the New Republic and the challenges it faced, the sequels basically just blew it up, literally.

@IceHeart

This is the main reason I like the prequels and dislike the sequels, (among others). Say what you will of the movies or how well they were made, but the prequels opened up so many different concepts and eras of the Star Wars universe. The Sequels not only basically dumped all of it, but from what little inspiration was gleamed, it had subpar extensions on its narrative.

Except for the Mandalorian. Great series. But that's because of Jon Favrue's vision and not a Disney executive one.

[Fabricant451]

If people are unironically praising the prequels then in true Star Wars fashion in twenty years the sequels will be seen as fantastic and the new series the worst thing that shits on the legacy of what came before.

It's like poetry blah blah.

[Crimson Paladin]

The back-and-forth nature of the Sequel Trilogy reminds me a bit of the KOTOR series. It starts out traditional and somewhat formulaic (TFA and KOTOR), gets handed to someone who takes it in a subversive, deconstructive direction (TLJ, KOTOR II), then all of that gets chucked out the window harder than Mace Windu when the previous director/developer gets ahold of it again, the result being pure skub (ROS, SWTOR).

[Fabricant451]

It's funny because Palpatine's plan in ROS was basically also Emperor Vitiate/Valkorion's plan in Knights of the Fallen Empire, like damn near to the letter. Except Valkorion actually pulled it off. Mostly.

[IceHeart]

In the end it comes down to what did the Sagas add to Star Wars?

Prequels established pre-Empire politics, the Jedi Order, the Clone Wars, all sorts of iconic jedi, and showed how the Jedi got completely hoodwinked and scattered to the winds despite their power. A lot of the designs of vehicles and robots were awesome, and it really did get right down to the 'war' part of Star Wars. The amount of cool toys and games to come out of it was astronomical.

Sequels gave us these: New characters, the complete destruction of the Jedi Order[At least in TLJ, don't know about ROS], deaths of most of the original cast, and porgs. Freaken porgs, one of the only things to actually sell well as merchandise. One thing I did like was the upgraded Tie-Fighter, a much needed upgrade to the original for sure.

Prequels just gave so much more for fans to explore and wonder about. The prequels as movies will never outdo the originals but the amount of interesting content it provided, along with the background to how the Empire came to be, still makes them more interesting to me. The sequels just didn't add anything that really caught the imagination, which just made me not care about them at all. As far as I'm concerned, the sequels are just a strange, alternate universe that will never be canon to most of the pre-sequel fans.

The sequels are essentially, Disney's Fan Fiction written by two different authors that hated each others' writing.

Hmmm...I wonder how well Nintendo Land is going to do. :)

[Fabricant451]

The sequels are essentially, Disney's Fan Fiction written by two different authors that hated each others' writing.

@IceHeart

Except it's more like one author collabed with an actual author who was super familiar with Star Wars, then an author who had a singular vision that, love it or hate it, was at least a unique voice, so then the original author decided to collab again only this time with an author who wrote one decent thing and considerably more bad things and together they blamed literally everyone else when their project was roundly jeered up to and including Carrie Fisher.

JJ Abrams is the guy you get to direct the pilot episode of a television show. He only has one storytelling style and that's introducing mysteries but never concluding them. His Star Trek reboot was flashy and loud but his sequel was a mess. Super 8 wanted to be an 80s Spielberg movie but it lacked the heart, and Mission: Impossible 3 is remembered only because of Phillip Seymour Hoffman because the movie doesn't even bother explaining the thing Tom Cruise and Pals are out to protect because mysteries are cooler when you don't have to think about them.

Given how nonsensical TROS turned out it's probably no secret that the reason TFA wasn't more bonkers was because of Lawrence Kasdan (and the more cynical but probably somewhat true thought that the movie had to play it 'safe' given that Star Wars still had the 'stink' of the prequels at the time) being a co-writer.

It's pretty telling that the sequel movie that people still talk about is also the only one where it was clear the director had a vision. It's also no coincidence that the one that uses the most of what Lucas originally intended for a potential sequel was also that same movie.

What I'm saying is the one time the sequels let a director stick to his vision we got the most interesting one.

_{And also the best Star Wars movie they've ever made}

[IceHeart]

_{And also the best Star Wars movie they've ever made}

@Fabricant451

I see you trying to sneak in that subliminal messaging there.

Heavens I hated the Star Trek Reboots, sure they were fun and flashy but they were most certainly not Star Trek. All flash and no substance which is the exactly opposite of what Star Trek is suppose to be. Star Trek is suppose to be about asking hard questions about the possible future and commentary on issues we have today, not blasting the next week's bad guy.

TLJ is probably my least favorite but I do wonder if that will change once I've seen the last one. I'll give them props for trying something new but...I will never get over that terrible Hyperspace kamikaze attack. Also those stupid 'bombers' IN SPACE and the arching cannon shots from the star destroyers, IN SPACE just about killed me. Applying planetary type logic to space battles is just...ugh. If they hadn't messed up such fundamentals I 'might' have been more inclined to give the story a chance. Ok, probably not but at least then I wouldn't have felt almost, insulted by the movie.

[Fabricant451]

I have zero issues with the lightspeed ram (she didn't enter hyperspace! Let's call it a lightspeed ram!) and even fewer issues with magnetized bombs. I think it's weird for people to think there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' way for Star Wars battles when the rules of the universe change on a whim anyway.

Like, just saying, if you think a lightspeed ram is too far just you wait until you find out about hyperspace skimming!

[Crimson Paladin]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the First Order are basically the Spaceballs. They have a ridiculously large flagship, and their leadership consist of a petty, whiny manchild in a goofy black helmet who talks to inanimate objects, a long-suffering officer who has to put up with his antics, and an evil overlord that falls flat as a BBEG. They even have a similar salute.