Poll: Who should own the Falcon at the end of Episode 9?

I wholeheartedly agree. But for every "Jar Jar" type element you have something that is quite the opposite, such as Darth Maul, Windu, Qui-Gon, etc. Also, the prequels contain my favourite lightsaber fights.

The Anakin-Padme romance is the worst part of the prequels for me (even more so than Jar Jar, who is only really prevalent in Episode I). The scenes between the two of them in Episodes II & III are nauseatingly bad. We all remember the "I don't like sand" bit.

 

Yeah the prequels light saber fights were awesome, I do feel that the originals missed out on them a bit. I would actually pay a decent amount just to watch the lightsaber fights. However hands down the coolest lightsaber fights I have seen are the ones in the 2003 clone wars trilogy, seeing some stuff Grievous pulleys was awesome

Sucks that the new stuff really does not capture them as well, especially lacking all the acrobatics.

 

Agreed. That is largely due to when they were filmed. Action sequences have gotten much better over the years. However, all is not lost...

We haven't had a decent lightsaber fight in the sequel trilogy. The best lightsaber moment we've gotten in the Disney era was Vader slaughtering the rebels at the end of Rogue One... which was admittedly very cool. Everything else has been pretty sub par.

 

Now that remake of the original: that is what I call awesome. Remakes of the originals have so much potential to be like that one sequence. Thanks for showing that!

As for Vader massacring rebels: yeah that sequence was pretty cool, and probably one of the better parts of the prequels. Although it may have been improved as I doubt Vader could block EVERY shot

 

That doesn’t mean there aren’t still quality Lightsaber duels being officially released, as long as you know where to look...

 

Don’t you mean stank? Pretty sure ‘stunk’ isn’t a word . 'Skunk' is a word, and probably an acceptable substitute anyway, but I think 'stank' is the correct past-tense version of 'stink'.

Indeed - OK there was politics in the Prequels, but that was Star Wars politics... not Earth politics, and it also helped to cleverly tell the story of the rise of one of the greatest film villains ever. The ST politics is just there for the sake of it.

Glad you agree with me here

Probably because it was predominantly themed around the Sequel Trilogy - if it was themed around the Prequels or Originals (or both), it might well have had far better attendance.

Have to agree here as well - the disappointment at Episode VIII certainly got more people boycotting Solo than there would have been otherwise. I imagine there would have been some who would have boycotted it anyway, but the divisiveness of Episode VIII added a lot of fuel to that fire.

Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. The Star Wars figures were much better in the Lucas era than they are now (apart from the 3.75” Black Series and Vintage Collection, but they’re generally difficult to find in Britain), probably because Lucas' Lucasfilm pressured Hasbro to put more effort into it. When the Disney takeover exerted its full force upon the Star Wars franchise in 2014, the quality of merchandise crashed.

Plus, heaps of toys were released during the OT era to get the youngsters excited, as in those days there were no games consoles or stuff like that - children had to use their imagination a lot more in those days, so what better way to get their support than help fuel those imaginations with Star Wars toys, so that they could be Obi-Wan or Han Solo in their mind's eye?

However, even with this toymaking frenzy back in the day, I found a video recently that talks about some toys that George Lucas, the very man that you accuse of tailoring the franchise to sell toys, didn't like and tried to stop the sale of:

These make even the Disney stuff look great.

Honestly to me Rogue One was the most faithful to Star Wars and strayed away the least. The Sequel Trilogy looks like a cheap knockoff (principally because they botched the idea of evolving the Star Wars galaxy properly over 30 years), while Rogue One helped to tie the Prequels and Originals together and plug that one plot-hole that has plagued Star Wars since Episode IV was first released.

I agree, there has to be change in Star Wars, but obviously they didn't agree at Disney because we got the Farce Awakens - the biggest rehash of the lot.

Indeed - what would you rather have as bad guys? Rolling droids that have blaster machine guns on each arm and shield generators making them impervious to small-arms fire, or more cannon-fodder Stormtroopers in slightly different armour?

To be honest Episode VII already tarnished the ST by simply being a rehash that promoted extremist feminism and all manner of other stuff and took all the soul out of the franchise. OK, it did sell even more than Episode I, the previous record holder, but that was because it heavily rode on the hype of it being the first Star Wars film after 10 years (just as Episode I rode the hype of being the first Star Wars film after 17 years) and also because it relied on trying to recreate the 'magic' of OT 'nostalgia'.

On subsequent viewings, opinions have largely soured - the majority of people don't say 'Episode VII was good and VIII was awful', they say 'the Sequel Trilogy is awful'. If Episode VII was as good as people said on first viewing, it would have withstood the hate that arose after Episode VIII and the majority would have kept Episode VII out of the hate zone. Instead it has joined Episode VIII in that zone and both films are hated.

You're right - that's probably the one good thing about the ST. OT fanatics have realised what a really bad Star Wars film is.

 

The Throne Room fight was a fight between two characters with Lightsabers and eight with weapons that could parry Lightsabers but are not actually Lightsabers. Calling that a Lightsaber fight would be akin to calling the fight between Obi-Wan, Anakin and Grievous' Magnaguards a Lightsaber fight.

The fight in Episode VII was a Lightsaber fight, that's true, but it's pretty lax and basic compared to the fights in Episodes I-III. Even the fights in Episodes V and VI have more gusto and emotion. Also the fight in VII has the most ridiculously stupid ending, even though the fight between Kylo and Finn ended pretty much as it should do.

 

Not real extremism in a general sense, but extremist feminism, yes.

Feminism specifically promotes the empowerment of women (it's called 'feminism', not equalitism or something like that, for a reason). In cases where women's rights are simply brought up to become level with those of men, feminism can cover the same tenets as equality, but when women are empowered over men or men are underpowered to favour women, it becomes what I call extreme feminism. There are extremists in most movements, and feminism is no exception. In the sequel trilogy, Rey is empowered to be superior in lightsaber combat and in general personality to male characters in the film (she's portrayed as more intelligent than Finn or Poe and can beat Kylo without any formal training). Of course this could be just down to bad writing (poor development of Finn and Poe and poor dramatisation of the lightsaber fight), but the uber-feminist actions of a certain head of Lucasfilm make me think it's more extreme feminist propaganda than anything else.

That's fair. Didn't realise you categorised these as lightsaber fights as well.

I'd say calling the OT style 'more realistic' is pretty debatable - Lightsabers in general are very different from swords from Earth as the blades themselves have no (or very little) mass or substance, because they are mostly energy, while Earth swords have always been made of some sort of metal, so their blades give a much greater contribution to weight, especially Medieval broadswords which have such massive blades that they required several weeks of training just to be able to lift them effectively. Considering then that the hilts of these weapons would be around the same weight (a Lightsaber would probably be a little more as it has a larger hilt, but certainly not much more as to justify the lost weight from the blade), a Lightsaber would certainly be much lighter to wield and easier to use to perform the acrobatic duels in Episodes I-III.

However, I can understand certain cases in the OT where the Lightsaber duels are slow:

• Vader is inhibited by the mechanical limbs of his suit.
• Obi-Wan is much older by the time of his fight in IV, and hasn't had much practice, except against Darth Maul if you believe the stuff in Rebels.
• In V, Luke is still quite inexperienced, and Vader wants to keep him alive in the fight as he realises Luke is his son and also wants to take him alive to Palpatine.
• In VI, it is the reverse most of the time - Luke wants to bring his father back to the light and tries to keep him alive. Maybe Vader is also trying to avoid killing Luke as well, although it's less clear in VI as he is also desperate to remain in Palpatine's favour.

The third case also applies to Rey and Finn (i.e. they are inexperienced), but none of them apply to Kylo, yet he still fights like an old man.

So if Kylo is visibly better, why does Rey win? Of course there is the idea that he is injured and has just fought and defeated one opponent, but considering that opponent wasn't even Force sensitive and that Kylo has the Force sensitivity of both Anakin and Leia in him, surely Kylo would have found Rey easy, especially as in most of that fight he was beating her? How come Rey then completely turns the tables just by hearing a few notes from the Force theme?

 

Feminism is the empowerment of women to reach the same levels of men; describing it as anything else is a misuse of the term. As @Aginor said, the exact same “oh, women are presented as better than men” dates back to the OT - when Leia joined in on the rescue, she made Han and Luke seem lacking in comparison. Also, Finn’s whole ‘learning to be more confident in your abilities’ and Poe’s ‘learning to be less overconfident’ are just as common character arcs as Rey’s “learning to be at one with her abilities”. They may not have been written amazingly, but the gender of the characters doesn’t play a part in it I don’t think. Also, I’m intrigued as to what this “über feminism” is that Kathleen Kennedy has displayed - so far I see “the Force is female” and a few films with female leads instead of male ones. Not exactly extremism.

I’m afraid you underestimate the power of John Williams!

EDIT: Also, I like how much our conversation has to do with who should own the Falcon!

 

Rest assured, I have seen all of those. It doesn't change the fact that we haven't seen a decent lightsaber vs. lightsaber fight in the movies. The Clone Wars is obviously a great show and Rebels is pretty good too. However, that doesn't exonerate the ST. How come fans on YouTube can produce better fights than big budget Disney owned Lucasfilm?

 

This reminds me of....

There is absolutely nothing wrong with in-story politics. I have no issue with politics for the sake so story, but in the case of Disney SW, we're being fed political propaganda.

That's my guess as well.

Episode VII could have been good if VIII made good use of the characters and story lines it introduced. The problem (at least one of the problems) with the ST is that it is completely disjointed. There is no cohesive story because there is no pre-planning. Each director just goes in their own random direction. Obviously VII is a complete rehash of of IV, which does hurt it, but it did introduce potentially very interesting characters... which VIII did very little with.

 

Definitely not the same thing! Nobody had an issue with that stuff. Those instances passed the "smell test", but the Disney stuff does not. Having a strong female character is a great thing, but the intent and execution matters.

Exactly!!! Thank you, this saves me the effort of having to clarify all of this.

I consider a lightsaber fight to be a lightsaber vs. lightsaber fight. In the same way that a gun fight would entail both sides having a gun(s).

While all your points are valid, the real reason comes down to when the films were made. Fight sequences have become significantly better over the years. Disney has no excuses as they have the money, technology and technical expertise to do better. Maybe borrow a few of the Marvel staff!

That is not an accurate representation of how feminism operates in 2019. That is what they tell you, but not how they choose to act or behave. Most people can see this clear as day, which is why most women don't identify as feminists (according to actual surveys, not personal opinions or feelings).

 

I think that stops working when one person is trained to harness and use the force while the other, although potentially very gifted, is a compete noob.

But which fights were more entertaining? The prequels have the best lightsaber fights.