Quote from: Local Trouble on Aug 01, 2023, 11:24:22 PMI was actually pleasantly surprised when the sequels didn't give us a "the gang's all here" reunion with the principal characters of the original trilogy.
Yeah, but it might have helped if the characters weren't drawn from beige paste like Rey, Finn, and Pilot Guy. And with no character arcs. Which is sad, because on the surface, Finn is a great character idea. Former child soldier enslaved by a vicious regime who has a crisis of conscience? Think of all you can do with that. The redemption arc, the PTSD, etc. What did they *
actually* do with Finn? Eh, his conditioning breaks on his first combat mission and he never thinks about it again. Character arc resolved in the first, what, five minutes from the time he appears in the movie? What a waste. And it was hard to take any of The Last Jedi seriously. It's so badly written, from the idiotic premise of a two and a half hour slow "car" chase, to the "yo momma" and cell phone reception jokes. It can't keep a consistent tone either, never knowing when to be serious and when to inject humor. The best example of that is Rey practicing with her lightsaber, getting more and more precise until she begins to realize her power and abilities and slices it in half. Then it rolls down the hill, crushing a fish-nun's cart, who gets all grumbly and Rey looks over the side in Full Derp Face. I mean, think about the parallel scene from Empire Strikes Back. Luke's X-Wing sinks into the swamp, and he fails because he doesn't believe he can do it. So Yoda effortlessly lifts it into the air and sets it down next to Luke, demonstrating that it's all possible if he commits to the training and discipline. Luke, looking at the still-floating X-Wing says "I don't believe it," and Yoda replies "And that is why you fail." And then Yoda drops abruptly, splashing Luke and R2-D2, covering them both in mud, with the scene ending with an angry blerp from R2.
Even Rogue One had better character development than the sequel trilogy, and that was just a Star Wars rehash of old WW2 war adventure movies like The Dirty Dozen or Kelly's Heroes. Even Saving Private Ryan follows that similar format of "Look, we got some people with a mission, we basically understand they are good, and the other guys are bad." It's a time-tested premise, which is why Rogue One works so well and is the only re-watchable Disney Star Wars movie despite appearing to have been edited in a blender, and the final projection choices from The Mouse forcing in Moar Darth Vadur. Which, I'll admit is an exciting scene, though stands in very strange and stark contrast to the start of the original movie where an extremely nonchalant Darth Vader lets the stormtroopers do all the fighting.
Andor though. I agree that Andor is something really special. Like "Wait, how is something this good Star Wars?" But you have to look who put that together. It's got several dozen Oscar and Emmy winners/nominees behind the scenes. The showrunner and lead writer wrote the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton, The Devil's Advocate. The creator of House of Cards wrote the 3 episodes in the prison. The guy who wrote Nightcrawler and The Fall wrote 4-6. One of the guys from The Americans wrote episode 7. You had the Emmy-winning production designer from Chernobyl. A three-time Oscar nominated guy did the music. Directors and cinematographers from The Crown, Succession, and Game of Thrones when it was still good. Tony Gilroy brought an all-star cast with him to make a real show, which is why Andor stands out from the live action cartoons made by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau.
