Star Wars Franchise

Pinball Yoda was terrible, but I loved the wuxia fights of the human actors.

The fights in the original trilogy were garbage. You're telling me Obi Wan and Darth Vader trained for 30+ years but they still fight like old men fighting for Christmas gifts for their grandchildren?

Alternatively, the fights in the OT and even the Sequels were much better than those in the Prequels. Because they were proper swordfights and not flippy tennis.

They need to be fictionally plausible.

I didn't mind the fights in the prequel trilogy, even if they looked a bit crazy at times. The last fight in Episode 3 is long enough that it gets boring, but the others are fine.

But they went too overboard with the sequel trilogy, those Jedi and Sith have almost been turned into Marvel-style superheroes. Makes you wonder why they even bother still using lightsabers.

You mean the dirt farmer suddenly being the greatest Jedi ever while AAACCTIIIING very hard indeed?

Yes. That scene is the only reason I have a smidgen of a fuck about this franchise left (Rogue One was the best movie since Empire anyway). More harsh, dark stuff please.

I thought it was for flashbacks and scenes set pre-RotS

Yep, that's it


I will actually rein this back a bit, as it's hyperbole and I didn't hate the prequel fights. It's more of a reaction against the idea that the OT fights were shit. They were a different style, which I happen to prefer as I think it works better in the context of Star Wars, which was supposed to be a Samurai style rather than a Wuxia style thing.

I love Wuxia movies, but I wouldn't proclaim the fights in Gladiator to be crap just because he's not doing backflips across the arena. The fact that Neo can do kung fu doesn't suddenly render John McCain's fights rubbish.

My time at university was spent much more wasting time discussing movies on the proto-internet than actually studying, and around 1997 a common thread was discussing which was the best movie sword fight. Which almost always came down to Luke & Vader vs Princess Bride.
Then Lucas watched some kung fu movies and suddenly everyone declared the original sword fights to be rubbish. Twas annoying.

The episode 1 fight is pretty good, though I think the best bit is the bit with the shield corridor. It's good because it has emotion and an arc.. like the Luke/Vader fight.
The later ones are ok, but they aren't so strong in that department.

The sequels obviously came to the same conclusion, given that they've largely dialed back on the kung-fu stuff and gone back to more Samurai style.

But with Filoni seemingly trying to ride the fandom wave and rehabilitate the prequels, I guess they're going to have to try and merge the two together a little better.

The Vader Scene at the end of Rogue One was an awesome scene, though it kinda undermined the entire movie. Your entire movie is about Jyn Erso and whatsisname sacrificing themselves, and then you tack on a badass fight scene?
It's like if the end of Titanic suddenly cut to a badass action scene of Rose dogfighting in WW2.

Or like if you ended an entire series of your show about a father child relationship by having a badass action scene where an unrelated character from a different movie came in and killed all the robots... oh wait..

I like the fan explanation of the old man fight being that they are both so sharp and adept that they immediately cancel each other out and an epic battle can't commence. When in fact it was the 1970s.

HC was terrible as Anakin, but I also have a strong dislike of most of Ewan McGregor's performances. He just is Ewan McGregor in pretty much everything, and I really didn't like his Obi Wan. I'll watch it for sure, but not expecting great things.

Echo the comments about John Favreau and Dave Filoni - just give them the lot, they clearly get what makes Star Wars feel like Star Wars and The Mandalorian is for me easily the best SW since the OT. Rogue One is close behind it.

Without a doubt, I thought he was ok but it was clear he was doing a recreation of a performance that wasn't that great to begin with. HC though was just unequivocally awful on every level.

It’s Kathleen Kennedy who put John Favreau and Dave Filoni together. As much as she’s responsible for totally “fucking up” the Star Wars film franchise (which still bought in approx $5 billion) she’s the one responsibly for Mando and Book of Boba Fett. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a new Star Wars film in the cinema for a very long time though.

Who knows? It’s D23 this weekend so they might announce a load of things that she’ll cancel again.

McGregor’s accent is the worst thing about the prequels. It’s sounds dreadful. Hopefully another couple decades of smoking fags will help in the series

There was no fight scene at the end of Rogue, (my favorite of all Star Wars movies at least half the time). It was just a string of executions and it was freaking awesome and what we should have been seeing by midway in RotS.

I'm kinda surprised he's so keen to go back to it. I think he's a good actor in almost everything, but the Prequels are by far his worst performance in anything.


I wouldn't say that's true. No one delivers a good performance in the Prequels is certainly true.. I mean they have good actors like McGregor, Portman and Jackson, and they all come off as wooden.
The dialogue between Anakin and Obi-wan is obviously supposed to have the same snarky banter as Luke & Han, but it never works.

But Ford, Hamill and Fisher all came off much better in the originals. Part of it might be due to Ford and Fisher banging, but they have really good on-screen chemistry. Hamill and Ford have really good chemistry too.
And Hamill doesn't get enough credit imho. He gives a really good performance, especially as he spends most of the last 2 films acting against a muppet and a devon farmer in a mask.