In fairness, the prequels were utterly pointless at launch!

Do yourself a favour Anduril. Leave your preconceptions at home and go have a blast in an original Star Wars movie. It's a rare enough experience.

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The Vinyamars on Stage! This time at Bag End

Di, those crystal foxes are now my favorite fantastic beast of all times.

One of the reasons I enjoyed this movie, and TFA, so much more than the first six is that those are very pointedly made for young males. Here, we had adult women in position of power, exerting this power with quiet dignity and courage. We DON'T have inane banter and posturing, but we do have characters genuinely devoted to each other. Rey fits with the recent crop of "strong = violent" heroines, but Rose is a step up, capable of using force when necessary, but that's not her main point. I even liked Solo in TFA, when he only irritated me in the original series.

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‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’
Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

Or just admit that Star Wars were always dumb, silly little movies and if you're not interested in these new ones then you've probably grown past the whole goofy thing.

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everything happens so much

Rare? There's going to be one every year, quite possibly for the rest of our lives. Why did we ever need more than three Star Wars movies? It's hard not to get burnout when the marketing, hype, and even backlash are on an endless short cycle. Even the prequels at least were spaced out over a decade so we got some break from it.


As Anduril said, "forced" is probably too strong a word. But it is not common for people in film to openly criticize a project they worked on and not outlandish to think he might walk it back primarily to keep good relations in the industry. Maybe he's also come to accept Luke's role more with time too though - it could be a mix of both.

Anyway, I don't think the Ars Technica article really addresses the movie's fundamental narrative issues. I don't even mean "plot holes" per se (though some are pretty big) so much as an incredibly messy and unfocused structure. There's a major subplot that goes nowhere and the "fifth act" on the salt planet really wasn't necessary - Luke could have shown up earlier and to have things go on so long after Laura Dern's sacrifice kind of dilutes its effect. Also it basically resets the Star Wars universe to rebels vs. empire while talking a big game about letting go of the past. It's a pity, because I do think there's a potential for a good or great movie mostly around Rey and Kylo with some more trimming and revision on the script.

The originals certainly have their faults and I'm not as attached to them as I used to be, though I'll still put ESB down as one of the great blockbusters. But I don't think they're the same in kind as the problems with the prequels and this movie (no, I'm not saying TLJ is as bad as the prequels). Most Marvel movies have tighter plotting, and I don't even like Marvel all that much.

Maybe going forward, but so far there's been 9 movies in 40 years and six of those were in the first 38 years

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The Vinyamars on Stage! This time at Bag End

I know Ford is embarrassed by the early SW movies. I remember a quote from an interview he did a long time ago, when the interviewer said he liked the movies, and wanted to know why Ford didn't. He said something about "that's not your 20 year old face up there on the screen!"

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When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.

"The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart." -- Gandalf