Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
Say what you want about George Lucas, but the man knows how to world-build. Despite this, lot of folks criticized this movie as unnecessary, because you could start with Attack of the Clones and still get Anakin’s necessary character arc. The prequel Star Wars movies were about how the Republic became the Empire, just as much as how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. I think those folks might’ve not liked the Naboo versus the Republic versus the Trade Federation storyline; it felt too political for Star Wars, which was a break from the original trilogy.
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
Say what you want about George Lucas, but the man knows how to write a bad forbidden romance arc. I didn’t like it for perhaps different reasons than other critics, because the idea is completely implausible: having an ascetic, late-teen male space wizard-in-training spend a long length of time with a rich 10/10 unmarried female politician is an abysmally poor leadership decision by Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council in general. Anakin’s raging hormones aren’t going to drive him to play chess with her. Despite all of that, this was still fun because of the clones: millions upon millions of laboratory-created women, bred specifically to be obedient and follow the orders of the mostly-male Jedi superiors for the purposes of sexual slavery. Just kidding! The clones are actually all male and instead of sexual slavery, they merely get their bodies blown apart by the horrors of war. The Jay Test just exploded.
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Say what you want about George Lucas, but the man knows how to depict a space battle. The movie starts out with a great “that escalated quickly” scene, where a seemingly peaceful space flight turns the corner into an all out war in a matter of seconds. I read somewhere that the Battle of Coruscant was supposed to be utter chaos, and you can tell in this scene, as there’s no rhyme or reason with the strategy. It’s just ships everywhere, as the Confederacy and their threw so much stuff at the Republic here, and the Republic had to fight back in kind. Later on, everyone finds out the whole prequel trilogy’s mastermind was Chancellor Palpatine, who played both sides of the conflict. Palpatine is one of the more famous of my fellow INTJs, and I’ve had a few folks say to me, “Oh, so you’re like the Emperor” when we talk about our enneagrams, and after they find out I am a sociopathic murderer. INTJs make great shadow masterminds, because they are easily secretive, formulate effective strategies by themselves, have great long-term planning skills to work towards a grand vision, and are soulless husks appearing as sane humans. Not all of them. Just Emperor Palpatine and myself. Thanos is also an INTJ, but we won’t mention him because he made half the universe’s population vanish to save resources, when all he could’ve done was double the resources.
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
Say what you want about George Lucas, but the man sure knows how to create a quintessential pulp, good vs. evil space-opera. The story was simple enough, but it doesn’t need to be complicated when you have groundbreaking special effects (for the time, obviously), that were made for the big screen. The professor in a sociology class I took used all of the Star Wars characters to demonstrate all of the Jungian archetypes. I remember this because he kept pronouncing “Chewbacca” as “Chewbaccwah.” If “okay, boomer” was in parlance at the time, I would’ve said in my head (INTJs like to say things in their head).
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
Say what you want about George Lucas, but the man sure knows–okay, I’ll stop. This one makes plenty of top 100 movies of all time lists, and sometimes even top 10. It’s Star Wars but more mature, and with a different director tackling the story. When I was younger I thought it dragged, but being older and slower now, I “get it” a bit more. Luke’s arc in Star Wars was mostly predictable, but here it’s a lot more nuanced, despite expecting him to win against Darth Vader in their duel at the climax of the second act. Vader could’ve easily killed him, but Vader was a) testing Luke’s limits to see how powerful he was, so that b) he could possibly come over to the dark side if he was passed. Luke passed the test, since Vader made the offer, so he won in that regard, but he also won by rejecting Vader. In the practical sense, he got his ass handed to him, and it cost him a hand and a lightsaber, but he won both a personal and moral victory. And there’s plenty of moral dilemmas that ask for a little more mature thinking than saving the princess and destroying the castle. Should Han stay with the rebellion and help lead, or see to his personal safety and make sure Jabba isn’t always on his tail? Should Leia convince him to stay or let him pursue his own safety? Should Luke distrust Yoda’s wisdom and leave training early to save his friends, or suffer possible regret if they die and he neglected to help them? These are the quandaries that make good stories great.
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
I was lucky enough to see this in theaters. Jabba gave me a few nightmares but I eventually learned to imagine trying to chase and being too fat to move, and it turned out more silly than scary. This was a mixed bag, two of the three battle fronts worked well: Luke and Vader and the Emperor; along with Han, Chewie and the rebel force attack on Death Star 2. The Endor moon campaign stretched credulity past the breaking point with the Ewoks. They were cute, but there’s no way they would’ve beaten the Empire’s forces with sticks and slingshots. Lucas had originally wrote Wookies in place of Ewoks, which is far more believable, given their size and strength, but it wouldn’t work because of technology issues or some such.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (The Final Season)
I’m glad Disney did this, since Ahsoka Tano is an interesting character. I thought her story wrapped up nicely at the end of season 6, so I’m thinking this final afterthought of a season was really so The Bad Batch could be introduced before their own series started. Either way, this was a nice send-off, with a Revenge of the Sith tie-in where shows how Tano survives and deals with Order 66. One scene I thought could’ve been done better was in one of the last episodes, where Tano and Captain Rex are escaping the Venator as it’s crashing. She seems to be struggling with getting back into Rex’s ship, but why? Just Force Push/Pull yourself in there, sweetheart. It didn’t matter anyways, since a previous episode showed Tano doing similar bonkers freefall acrobatics in episode 9, when she arrives on Mandalore. There wasn’t anything at stake. I would’ve done this: have Tano get knocked out in freefall by some Venator debris. She can’t do anything unconscious. Then have Rex open his ship’s hatch and made a move to pull her in, putting himself at risk. That would give the scene some stakes, and show Rex devotion to Tano, although that was already shown by the time this happened. Oh well.
The Mandalorian, Season 1
A western in space, rather well done. I read a review a long time ago that this was basically the adventures of a single dad trying to figure life out. I was glad Grogu wasn’t quite a typical baby figure; there weren’t any gross puke scenes or tons of crying, but plenty of precociousness. There was some criticism that the series dragged a bit, but…come on. Series are a great way to let characters and exposition breathe. We don’t need nonstop plot developments all the time. One bit of dialogue that stuck with me that I didn’t like was when someone tried to convince Din Djarin to hand over his weapon, and he responds with “I can’t. Weapons are a part of my religion.” Uh, no. That’s not how true believers talk. He should show how it’s part of his religion: “I don’t think so. This is a sacred object in my care,” or some such. That one line took me completely out of the story.
The Mandalorian, Season 2
The writers were smart to wait until season two to bring in any recognizable legacy Star Wars characters, to let the story stand on its own for a bit. And boy, there were some big reveals there.
2 Comments
I still can’t shake the sense that the Star Wars saga started off really cool, and got progressively weaker with each new release. I started losing interest after the second release. The final story about the Emperor playing both sides was sort of the last insult to my attention, since it was so obviously contrived by someone desperately trying to make it seem deep.
I didn’t mind the Palpatine part of it. I would’ve done it differently, in my amateurish way, which is something I wrote about before and feel the need to get into details at some point. It’s ultimately of no consequence, but that’s where I am.
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