Recent Viewing Part IV

I'm with Steven on this one.

I've seen Rogue One twice and have no need to ever watch it again. The Force Awakens on the other hand I've seen dozens and dozens of times and still love it to death!

-Erik-

Kylo is far from boring. There's a lot going on with his character that I can't wait for them to explore in The Last Jedi.

Rogue One was a mess of a movie. When the only character I cared about is a robot, then they done fucked something up!

-Erik-

You are now banned from this place! Be gone heathen.

-Erik-

GET! OUT!!!!

-Erik-

Me too!!

Compared to that retro Newest Hope thingi The Force Awakens, the Prequels were a festival of ambitious world building and general creativity.

There are flaws, no doubt. But in my opinion ultimately the films hold together well.

I'm with you there.

Sure the dialogue sometimes is bad, the acting worse, but each film has its strengths too (though AOTC doesn't have too many, it does have an okay beginning and end).

I don't understand that films like this could be called awful by certain fans of the franchise. Certainly they haven't watched a really awful movie, like I've seen. Those that make no sense in storytelling, have crap visual effects, characters that fall completely flat, zero vision by the director, visually uninteresting and actors that phone in their performances. None of these aspects are found in any of the prequels IMO.

Revenge Of the Sith is actually fine.
Phantom Menace and Attack Of The Clones could have been bundled into a ten minute summary preceding it, without anyone missing anything of value.

Red Letter Media (the Mr. Plinkett reviews) nail these films to the wall. Anyone who doesn't understand why people hate these films should watch those reviews.

Not really, if only because in Star Wars the effects were literally state of the art (they had to actually invent computers, cameras and lenses to film the movie!) , while in The Phantom Menace they were one in a million. but moreover, because NONE of the main characters in the prequel trilogy (with the exception of Anakin in Revenge Of The Sith) is an archetype...thereby miserably failing the "myth" test that made the original so iconic!

Of course they are flawed. Perfection is an unrealsitic state in all things.
But I'm not talking mere 'story lines' here, I'm talking proper, archetypical myth building.
With the exception of the 'hero falling from grace' of Anakin in Sith, there is no such development in any of the prequel stories. But there IS -quite dominantly and hardly subtly- in the original trilogy.
Which really is the main reason why the prequel trilogy disappointed overall.

I do not have high hopes that any of the new stories will have as much of a cultural/'art of storytelling' impact, but at least in feel and style they're harkening back to the 'golly gee whiz' Flash Gordon serials of the forties that were Star Wars' main inspiration.

I suppose some of it would apply, but the general thesis is these films lack what made the originals so special, and every other sin is multiplied because of it. Lucas failed to understand what made them so popular, even if he was trying to create something new.

Guardians of the Galaxy 1 (2014)

I love this film. Swashbuckling, funny space opera. The evil ones are evil because ... they are evil. The others are good because they are not evil. Cool spaceships, cool weapons, cool villains and heroes. Fun!

Volker

Loved it as well. An overtly fun film, lots of laughs, characters you can't take seriously and an entertaining score to boot. Have hopes the second is just as ... entertaining. The only reason I haven't seen it yet in the theater is because it's just becoming just too damn costly, even at just regular 2D (nearly 13 $ per person). Don't know what the ticket prices are in the US?