Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker*

SW was made into a cash cow by Lucas for Return Of The Jedi. And we ate it up, didn't we? And he cashed-in again with the (awful) prequels.

And when Disney purchased LucasFilm, we've gotten pretty much what most of us expected: Visually-Stunning Blockbusters Featuring Some Sci-Fi & Fantasy Content (or, VSBFSSFFC).

For what it's worth, I've enjoyed Ep. VII, Solo, and a few parts of Ep. VIII more than Lucas' prequels, and more than the Ewoks sequence .

 

Very true....Return Of The Jedi was a total sell out......I have very little respect for Lucas other than getting the first film made. It didn't even bother me that everything about Star Wars was stolen from somewhere else. When the Star Wars fans started treating him like a messiah is when I became irritated.....and worse yet when he started believing that himself....hence his total control over those godawful prequels ....I guess what I was trying to say in my original post was that he let others direct Empire and Return.

 

Did/do you like Empire? Just curious .

 

I’m not sure how I’d feel if episode 9 starts out like it was all a dream and Luke is not dead like Bobby with the shower scene in Dallas.

 

Supposedly everything’s on hold now after the way the last couple movies have trended so it might be a while before we see any new Star Wars.

 

Nope. That's not correct.

'Multiple films' still in 'Star Wars' pipeline, sources say
Rumor: Mos Eisley Spaceport film postponed, Obi-Wan and Fett live?

 

Yep, as it turns out, Lucasfilm is denying the rumors that the standalone films are on hold.

 

There's no shampoo in space!

 

Black man, black woman, black baby
White man, white woman, white baby
White man, black woman, black baby
Black man, white woman, black baby

Couldn't resist. It was the the first thing that sprung to mind, lol.

Just received word yesterday of some party offering to remake The Last Jedi. All the overblown hate toward this movie has gone way too far and it's just exhausting reading all the comments sections online, especially on YouTube. I'd rather the prequels get remade over this. Talk about a waste of freakin' time! Funnily enough though, Seth Rogen and even Rian Johnson himself reacted to this as well.

No doubt I will like Episode IX as much as I liked the predecessors, but the spin-off movies?! That's another story.

 

Yeah but you didn’t read the fine print...it says “waterless shampoo” perfect for space travel.

 

Empire is the masterpiece of all Star Wars....Lucas had the sense (then) to let someone else direct and the results were damn near perfect....

 

How was Jedi a sell out...? It wasn't just George Lucas behind that film, it was also Larry Kasdan and director Richard Marquand. If you disagree with the creative choices, all well and good, but if you've read the story behind the making of that film - JW Rinzler's The Making of Return of the Jedi book is the definitive word on that film's development and making - you'll understand better why they made the choices they made... I don't agree with all of them myself, but I can still enjoy that film as a flawed-but-worthy conclusion to the saga.

Return of the Jedi is where I depart the Star Wars train; the prequels could have been magnificent, or really good at the very least, but turned out bloody awful (for the most part), and not one of the Disney films to date has convinced me there's any substantial story left to be told in that universe... the Star Wars trilogy/saga (if you count the prequels as canon, which I do not) is essentially the story of the Skywalker family just as The Godfather trilogy is the story of the Corleone family, and both stories ended with their respective threequels... story over, book closed, move on, 'nuff said.

 

I remember how psyched I was in 1983 for Return of the Jedi. Then when it came out....I was highly unimpressed. They blow up the Death Star again ? Teddy Bears save the day ? I call it a sell-out because Lucas chose not to take chances and advance the story in a darker direction as per Empire. And that mindset holds true to today....the great universe that was created takes a back seat to all the Jedi crap. And yes, the Jedi suck....they were always a watered down version of Dune's Bene Gesserit and really not very interesting, yet Lucas centered the entire rest of Star Wars on the Jedi..

 

I didn't think that Return Of The Jedi was bad. For me, it was an good ending to the story.

I think the problem with The Jedi was pointed out in the audio book version of The Revenge Of The Sith: The Jedi were basically stagnant and hadn't significantly advanced in centuries. The Sith had advanced and that is the reason they defeated The Jedi.

When The Sith and The Jedi fought before The Jedi didn't really defeat The Sith. Instead The Sith fought with each as much as with The Jedi. It ended up being a clean up operation for The Jedi. That was the reason for The Sith's "Rule Of Two," to prevent infighting and to allow them to focus on their enemy, The Jedi.

Although I've enjoyed the original Star Wars Trilogy, I've been less interested and somewhat disappointed in the other movies in the series. I was so turned off by Attack Of The Clones that I got the audio book of Revenge Of The Sith long before seeing the movie because I didn't care about it being spoiled for me.

The one exception to the above was the CGI Clone Wars movie and subsequent TV series (what I've seen of it). I thought it was better that any of the Prequel and Sequel movies, and Asoka Tano was a much more interesting character than any character introduced in the Sequels. Plus, Anakin Skywalker was a much more interesting character in the series.

Mentioning Dune's Bene Gesserit (I'm not very familiar with them, having only seen the movie once), related is a series that puts Star Wars to shame when it comes to sword fighting is the anime series Bleach. While the light saber fights are okay to me they kind of dull for the most part. On the other hand, the sword fights in Bleach are much more impressive and the special abilities of their swords are make it a true challenge between two opponents, and often the fights are unpredictable.

 

I always really liked Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars. It blew the other Clone Wars out of the water.

 

Mentioning Dune's Bene Gesserit (I'm not very familiar with them, having only seen the movie once), related is a series that puts Star Wars to shame when it comes to sword fighting is the anime series Bleach. While the light saber fights are okay to me they kind of dull for the most part. On the other hand, the sword fights in Bleach are much more impressive and the special abilities of their swords are make it a true challenge between two opponents, and often the fights are unpredictable.

The Lightsaber was stolen from Larry Niven's Ringworld series that began in the sixties.......Niven being a hardcore author, described it so that it would actually function...the lightsabers in Star Wars could never possibly work as shown.....Don't know anything about Bleach, sorry.

 

In Bleach, the main characters are soul reapers (basically a version of the Grim Reaper) whose job is to guide souls to the afterlife and kill hollows (souls that have been corrupted and attack other souls and the living). Each soul reaper has a zanpakuto (a sword that is their main weapon) that is tied to them, like it is a part of them. Each soul reaper has a level of power based on their spirit energy (one is so powerful that he fights with a massive power limiter just so that he doesn't instantly kill his opponents which would end his fun far too quickly). Many zanpakutos have advanced forms and have special abilities (as an example, one has the ability to double the weight of anything with each cut, while another inflicts both paralysis and agonizing pain when stabbed with it).

An example (this one of the early fights in the series but it is one of my favorites):

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Could never get into the Japanese animation....Im sure its good. I did like Star Blazers and the Yamamoto stuff though.

 

I love Return Of The Jedi and like you say a great ending to the trilogy. I personally believe the back story wasn’t strong enough for three more films (prequels) Also no need for 8,9,10 either. I will always watch IV, V & VI though.

 

I'm no fan of prequels - as I've said here before, they're both regressive and redundant by their very nature, with maybe one or two notable exceptions - but the Star Wars backstory was so rich in it's potential that it could have been something genuinely special had George Lucas approached it differently; the story of the galaxy's slide into war, turmoil, and darkness, reflected in the character of Anakin Skywalker, had so many areas of sweeping visual grandeur balanced by heartbreaking emotional intimacy that could have been mined to epic effect, a more mature and nuanced SW trilogy that was a counterweight to the morally black-and-white ethos of the OT... but Lucas decided that aiming them squarely at kids instead of a more universal appeal, writing them on the fly instead of carefully and concisely mapping them out in advance, along with writing and directing them himself when he knew both were his weakest creative points, and pushing digital technology to the forefront at the cost of onscreen realism instead of judiciously utilizing that technology to create a tactile, tangible, believable universe in the same way he so successfully did in the OT was the best way to make those films... and the results spoke for themselves, 'nuff said!

Perhaps Gary Kurtz was right when he said the trouble with prequels is you're essentially going over old ground, you're boxed in by what has already been established, and it ends up being an exercise in ticking boxes and joining dots to connect it to the original storyline, and that the prequel story simply cannot unfold in it's own natural way because the destination (and certain plot and character points en route) has already been predetermined in advance... maybe he's right, but the core ideas of the Star Wars backstory made to their fullest potential is still such an exciting prospect to me, there's just so much potential in it, not that we'll ever see it realized now, alas...

 

Certainly I agree it could have had much deeper backstory, I don't think Lucas had it in him. Maybe he could have bowed to his ego and let someone else write it, I find the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn excellent and he for sure could have been involved. I guess we’ll never know now.

 

The proposed Boba Fett solo movie may be shifted as an exclusive to Disney's coming streaming service.

 

The best handling of a prequel was The Godfather: Part II. It wisely did not stand alone.

 

Star Blazers was on for one summer in my city and I woke up early each morning during my summer vacation just to catch each episode (this was before VCRs so you had to watch it live).

 

Keri Russell has been cast.