Star Trek vs. Star Wars (and a collection of memes)

I really dig McQuarrie's art for the movies.

 

It’s not so much the hero’s journey itself that’s bad, it’s the fact that it pretty much repeats Luke’s journey in every single way, plus has some especially stupid moments (Rey beating Kylo with no training at all is just batshit) and moments that are direct carbon-copies of Episode IV (the trench run in VII made me cringe because it was so similar to IV), that really makes The Force Awakens bad for me. In my opinion at least it’s the absolute worst Star Wars film ever made (except the Thanksgiving Special but that’s a TV movie that nobody likes anyway, so that doesn’t count). To me the Sequel Trilogy was damned from the start because of such cringeworthy repetition in the setup film.

I still maintain that it was because of this that Rian Johnson decided to change things so much in Episode VIII - to avoid the Last Jedi becoming an almost exact repeat of Empire Strikes Back, just like VII was for A New Hope. I can get behind this motive, but... it was what he did to make this motive reality that made VIII pretty much as bad. Superman Leia was just plain stupid and killing off Snoke before we could hear anything about his backstory also threw away great potential (especially as he was the only villain that was actually any threat to the heroes).

Episode IX was pretty meh and sometimes downright awful (Hux’s part in that film was diabolical), but the Exegol sequences were great, and the whole plot about uncovering the mystery of the Sith dagger was also good. The problem with those was that they occurred two films too late. The Sith dagger story would have been a great plot for Episode VII that would have done something really different, and would have been a great setup for some sort of Dark Side cult that isn’t tied to the Sith or Empire, with Snoke as it’s head, that could have been a great opposition to the New Republic without repeating much from either the Prequels or Originals.

So yes, the Sequel Trilogy could have had such potential, but it was literally wasted by Kathleen Kennedy and all her little left-wing wizards.

 

Um... I feel like I should know who this is, but for some reason I see this and think "Star Wars meets Pippi Longstocking..."

 

Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)

 

I'll push back on the "easily" part. While the EU definitely has quite few duds, it also provides us with some of the very best stories and characters in Star Wars. Nothing that Disney lead Lucasfilm has produced (including Rogue One, Clone Wars or The Mandalorian) comes even close to the very best of the EU.

That said, it could have been possible to best the EU, but it would have had to have been a monumental effort. I would love to see what the likes of a James Cameron could do with a Star Wars film.