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Rank the Star Wars Movies (so far).

Really liked both teasers. The music, the visuals... I think it looks promissing and can't wait to see the movie.
Good trailers don't make good movies, but I'm hopefull about this one. Eslecially knowing how great RO turned out to be.
 
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In case you've being living on a rock (or a galaxy far, far away) and missed it, here is the Solo trailer:


Looks pretty good I think. Me likey.
Gonna be a busy month at the flicks in May - Avengers, Deadpool 2 and this. Reckon at least one of 'em will be half decent. Maybe...

Sooooo.... while I'm here, I may as well share my thoughts on The Last Jedi, yes? Cos I just know you're all dying to know how I ranked it, what with my opinion on Star Wars being so well respected round here n'all.
Seeing as it's been out for a good 6 weeks now, I'm not gonna be hiding any spoilers in this discussion. If you haven't seen it yet, well... what the hell are you even doing here??
Here goes then: I didn't like it very much. Seen it twice now and although it isn't the worst SW film ever made, it definitely belongs towards the bottom end of the scale.
There are a couple of stand-out sequences, and one or two interesting character moments but on the whole I found the entire story arc to be deeply unsatisfying, lacking substance and well, just a bit boring, to the point of undoing much of the groundwork laid down in Ep7.
Take Luke for example; now, in The Force Awakens, the premise of the whole plot hinged on one thing: Finding Luke Skywalker. When they find Luke, he and the rebellion soldiers can then go and kick some First Order ass, yes?
TFA ended (brilliantly, I thought) with Rey handing Luke his lightsaber atop a panoramic, mountain-top vista. In TLJ, to then have Luke play the reluctant, grumpy old git, reminiscent of the John Candy character in Cool Runnings (but without the charm) just felt so disappointing. Anticlimactic, even. And when Luke does finally come out of retirement to face down the evil First Order, all he actually does is have a fake, telepathic scuffle with Kylo Ren and then dies. Just... dies, for no apparent reason.
What the hell?? They spent an entire movie looking for Luke so he could save the day, and that's all he could come up with? So let me get this straight; Leia can survive being blown up, sucked out into the freezing vacuum of space and then float back to the spaceship like Mary f***ing Poppins and come out of it unscathed, but a tiny bit of astral projection and Luke snuffs it? WTF?
What a piss poor waste of time that was.

And another thing, how come when Luke's body vanished, his metal hand didn't get left behind??

Now then, that Leia bit. You know, 'that' bit. What on earth were they thinking? Alongside Vader's 'Nooooooooooo' in Revenge of the Sith, possibly the most pathetic and laughable moment in the entire saga. Truly, truly awful.

Rey: I like Rey as a character, I like Daisy Ridley as an actor and I enjoyed the 'journey' she went on in TFA, and to be fair she's pretty good in this one too, but her 'relationship', for want of a better word, with Kylo Ren is badly written, clunky and totally unconvincing. Some of their dialogue was downright cringeworthy, bickering like some old married couple; "Can we not do this right now?" and "Can you put a cloak on or something?" Oh purr-lease. I just refuse to believe that Rey would want anything to do him. He's f**k ugly for a start, but he's also petulant, childish and a bit of a dick. Crucially, he's not very scary either, which is kind of important when it comes to franchise villains. Nah, shoulda killed him off instead of Snoke.
There's another thing - killing off Snoke. Snoke was cool, man. I dug Snoke, wanted to see more of Snoke, know more about him, who he was, where he came from but no, none of that matters now cos he's dead. See, that's what I mean about TLJ undoing all the groundwork laid down by J.J Abrams in TFA. It's the same with the arc about Rey's parents - we were intrigued to find out where she came from, who her parents were, where she got her Force capabilities from, but according to Rian Johnson they were nobodies, scavengers, who were both long dead. Wait... what? That can't be right, surely? Ok, so that fact may ultimately turn out to be false, one of Kylo Ren's lies, but that doesn't matter, it still added to the 'anticlimactic' feel of the movie in general.
And then there's Finn. Good guy, we like him, but here he just feels sidelined and unnecessary.
Captain Phasma: Potentially interesting, but underused and again, killed off too soon.
Laura Dern's Admiral Blue Rinse? Apart from her heroic sacrifice at the end (which, to be fair, gives the film one its more spectacular moments), her character was slightly pointless and a bit annoying.

And I haven't even mentioned the Porgs yet. Yes, they were sh*t, but by no means are they the worst thing in this movie. Not by a long shot.

It's like... you know that bit where we pick up where TFA left off, when Rey hands Luke his lightsaber atop the splendid mountain vista, and he just tosses it over his shoulder and walks off in a huff? For me, that's like the perfect metaphor for what Rian Johnson did with the gift that J.J Abrams handed to him. As a 'moment', it was unexpected and slightly amusing, but it wasn't what I paid my money to see (twice) and ultimately it left me feeling a little hollow. Which pretty much sums up my feelings on this whole movie.

My rankings then:

1. Return of the Jedi
2. The Force Awakens
3. A New Hope
4. Rogue One
5. Revenge of the Sith
6. The Phantom Menace
7. The Last Jedi
8. Attack of the Clones
9. Empire Strikes Back
 
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Howie, seeing how low you rank ESB, I guess it is quite logical that you dislike TLJ. They are both stories of the anticlimactic failure of our heroes. I think it is great, as I don't want SW to be only the good guys prevailing and everything going perfectly smooth, or it would feel rather boring.
But don't worry, it is the usual story structure to have exposition in the first act, failure in the second and victorious resolution in the third, so you will very likely enjoy episode IX.

Crucially, he's not very scary either, which is kind of important when it comes to franchise villains.
but is it ? I mean, we already had Vader, do we need another one ? I love the fact that this new trilogy is not as "simple" as the old one. And there is a lot of great stories without a dreadful villain, the new trilogy being one of those in my opinion.
 
'Why I hate ESB' is a whollllllllle other essay, I'll get round to writing it one day.
I've tried dude, believe me I've tried, I've watched it countless times, on its own or as part of a marathon, and I'm just not seeing what everyone else in the world sees. I see a bad movie. Always have done.
 
Also forgot to update my equally well respected ranking after the second sitting:

Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
The Last Jedi
The Force Awakens
Empire Strikes Back
A New Hope
Return of the Jedi
Attack of the Clones
Phantom Menace

Think it actually got better for me on a second watch. Stuff like Leia in space which did throw me a little the first time, didn't really bother me again. Just caused a little chuckle.

Might be the only person in the world who was OK with all the Finn stuff. I think the film would have lacked a bit of the classic Star Wars world/planet building as the only other 2 planets didn't have any civilisation on them.
Him shouting "OH COME ON" in the face of a police ship from the back of a horse when their ship gets blown up was by far the best comedy moment for me. So absurd and such a good reaction.

Throne room scene was Star Wars perfection. Don't care if we don't know about Snoke now or ever. If they need to tell us, they will at some point. If they don't, I won't complain. On the other hand, saying it doesn't matter now just because he's dead is wrong.
The death was so smart. Seen complaints around (not on here yet) that he died like a bitch and should have gone out properly, but that's the point. You couldn't beat someone like that in a straight fight when he chucks everyone around without even looking. You have to play dirty. Mind tricks. Christ that was good. A million times better than the old 'throw them off a balcony' job.

Luke's bit was fine. TFA lot thought they wanted to find him and he'd come back all guns blazing, but why should he also feel that way? Like he said, he didn't want to be found for a reason and he was never the all guns blazing type. As with Obi-wan and Yoda, he went out on his own terms, just in a far more impressive fashion. Also doesn't really end there does it?
 
Guys, don't listen to anything @Howie says about Star Wars, apart from the fact he near enough nailed the bad points of TLJ, his entire credibility washes away with ESB being at the bottom of the list. I'm sure a Porg could come up with a more accurate ranking.

I've watched Rogue One a few more times as well, really like this film.

 
Him shouting "OH COME ON" in the face of a police ship from the back of a horse when their ship gets blown up was by far the best comedy moment for me. So absurd and such a good reaction.

The best part of that scene was that if you look closely in the split second before the ship blows up, you can see its windshield/canopy is completely plastered with parking tickets.
 
He is right though, don't you think ? :emoji_laughing:

Jokes aside, the more I rewatch Rogue One, the more I understand how brilliant it is. But in the mean time, I'm starting to get why it is not a movie for everyone.
Most American movies center on individual characters and the story of the movie deals with individuality defining moments in these characters lives. This is so well established that the story of a movie is commonly defined as how the plot influences the individual characters. Every SW episodes follow this pattern very closely, but RO completely turns it on its head.

First, the main character of RO, from the perspective of the overarching SW saga, is the rebellion : It is the only one that lives through and beyond it, and which evolution as a character matters for the remainder of the saga. Thus, it is not an individual but a collective, and all the individuals in RO are therefore relegated to supporting roles in the grand scheme of SW things.
But, that is just the first layer, as RO is a stand alone film, for which Jyn and Cassian are arguably part of the main cast. The second layer of the story is centered on their individual character arcs, but instead of being regular stories of blooming individualities, is is a questioning of the actual relevance of individuality versus a cause.

Rebellion's arc :
The rebellion story arc tackles a persistent problem with (left wing) political activism : the impossible communication and agreement between people with very different social and cultural backgrounds and varying agendas. First of, between Saw's revolutionary guerrilla and the much tamer Alliance. Then within the Alliance, between reformists wanting to use the senate to fight the empire from inside, and sympathizers to a more revolutionary approach who consider violence to be inevitable. The whole plot of the movie is about establishing communication (First act on Jedha and third act on Scarif) or failing at it (the second act on Eadu). The bold conclusion being that Saw and the revolutionaries were right from the beginning, violence being the way to go in such a desperate situation, as ANH will confirm with the end of the senate. At the end of the film, the rebellion is finally unified, and openly at war with the Empire. It is at last what it has to be to fight the empire.

Jyn's arc :
Jyn's arc is about her own acceptance that her individuality doesn't matter. To the rebellion and the story, she is just a cog : nothing special about her, important only because she is in the right place at the right time.That is brilliantly implied by the movie as they purposefully didn't show her life, they show her link to Saw and Galen, aka her position, then completely skip her personal life and tell us briefly who she is instead of showing us. That could be misinterpreted as a storytelling mistake (show, don't tell) but is actually very effective : it shows us that we don't care. She is the only one, during the entire movie, that cares about her own personal life. The alliance don't care, Saw and Cassian don't care, not even the camera cares about it. Because she isn't special, she isn't individually important. And at the key moment where she is finally reunited with her father, not a word is exchanged about her : her own father only asks her to help blow up the DS. It's not that she doesn't matter to him, but the cause is just so much more important. Through meeting Cassian, the two guards, Saw and her father, she gradually understands this fact and by the end of the movie, willingly sacrifice herself (or rather her self) to the cause. Actively negating her own individuality. It is interesting to see that it is also at this time that Cassian starts to be protective of her, now that she accepted her place as a cog and is an active part of the rebellion. She basically goes from vain teenager to adult to nothing in this movie, except the becoming adult part isn't the becoming special stuff they serve in most movies, it is the becoming useful.

Cassian's arc :
Cassian starts the movie as a pawn for the Alliance, his individuality is so well repressed he has little issues murdering a friend for the sake of the cause. His clash with Jyn's make him travel in the other direction than her, but only slightly. Because of the massive f****-up that is Eadu, he realizes that the cause (beating the Empire) and the organization (the Alliance) are not always perfectly in tune, and instead of being an alliance pawn, he must sometime make individual decisions against the alliance to better serve the cause. In the process, he fully realizes how terrible his life had been and how empty it would be if all ended because the alliance's failure to act, and go rogue for a final desperate move.
In the meantime, there is in Cassian's story a nice nod to the idea that individual actions might not matter, and what should happen will happen no matter who is doing it, when he decides not to kill Galen but it doesn't matter as another rebel kills him anyway. An idea that ends up being invalidated as his last individual action matters a big lot.

The two guards just represent the fact that if you mess with people's homelands, you are going to make yourself some enemies. Something the US seem to have some difficulty to really understand looking back at their recent military history. And Krennic acts as the opposite of Jyn and Cassian, he starts as a pawn but miserably fail to accept it, and gets humilliated, chocked then blown up as a consequence of his petty individual aspirations.

At the end, it is the really interesting take on the interplay between cause, organization and individuals, that manage preasent a very clean but still reasoned opinion on the matter. The issue is, while these themes are widespread in political activism, especially for leftists, they are not as usual in the western pop culture, and probably failed to resonate with most people. The good news is, the movie is well done enough to be enjoyed even without thinking too much about it, so it is not a really big problem, and it gives us a lot of interresting SW stuff besides all that.

After watching Rogue One, I really thought that this would be as deep as SW would ever get. A singular counterpoint to all the classical heroism of the saga that would concentrate most of the reflection Lucasfilm was ready to put into film. I expected SW to go back to being a series of awesome films for 10 to 12 years old kids. TLJ showed me how wrong I was, and the new SW movies continue to be movies for adults, enjoyable by everyone but with some serious thinking involved beyond the grand obvious themes.
 
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Ohhh hi me again. Went to see Solo at Midnight. Went in with no expectations came out thoroughly in love with the film. It probably will become a trilogy. Lando will get a film. Maybe the other character which I'm not spoiling may finally get a stand alone film. Now here's my updated ranking.
1. The Last Jedi
2. Empire Strikes Back
3. The Force Awakens
4. Return Of The Jedi
5. Solo
6. A New Hope
7. Rogue One
8. Revenge Of The Sith
9. Phantom Menace
10. Attack Of The Clones
 
Updated list after seeing Solo:
1. Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Return Of The Jedi
4. The Force Awakens
5. Solo
6. The Last Jedi
7. Rogue One
8. Revenge Of The Sith
9. The Phantom Menace
10. Attack Of The Clones.

Much like jj23w, I had low expectations for Solo but really enjoyed it. Exactly what I wanted from these anthology films - a fun story set in the Star Wars universe without having to tie in with the main saga. I'd happily watch more films with these versions of the characters in. I'm doing a review for the site I write for so will link to that when it's finished.
 
New list for the new release:

1. Rogue One
2. Return of the Jedi
3. Force Awakens
4. Empire Strikes Back
5. Solo
6. A New Hope

7. Last Jedi - this is the middle ground between good and bad Star Wars films for me, I don't really have a strong opinion on it. It's ok. Has things I like, things I don't like, but I disagree with both extreme sides that say it's the best thing since sliced bread or that it killed Star Wars.

8. Phantom Menace
9. Revenge of the Sith
10. Attack of the Clones
 
See it's interesting that most of us are rating Solo quite nicely. But it's something I still didn't expect to be as good as it is.
 
Just seen Solo today (yes yes, very slack of me I know).
Anyway ; wasn't very good was it?

I didn't hate it, but didn't get close to liking it very much. Few funny bits were ok, lots of disposable characters (some quickly disposed of, others not), lots of reasonably spectacular but ultimately meaningless action pieces.
The pointless cameo was very pointless (we are all talking about Warwick Davis aren't we?).
 
Since I haven't ranked them fully in a hot minute:
  1. A New Hope
  2. The Force Awakens
  3. Return of the Jedi
  4. Empire Strikes Back
  5. Rogue One
  6. Revenge of the Sith
  7. The Last Jedi
  8. The Phantom Menace
  9. Attack of the Clones
I've ALWAYS loved the original, very very much so. If I ever have to watch a movie in the whole series cold turkey, it would be A New Hope. I also loved TFA for the origin story arch of it all as well. RotJ is a fantastic finale of course. Empire is Empire. Rogue is fantastic but has a very slow beginning. After that.. it all kinda goes down hill. Sith has a great second half as well but slow build up. TLJ wasn't memorable in any way short of Rey and Kylo battle. And y
 
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