A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are fucking incredible. Return Of The Jedi has pacing issues but gets a pass for closing out the trilogy.
The prequels are enjoyable trash. Which was intended… mostly. But even as a kid at the time, some bits were rough. The parts that little idiot baby me enjoyed have not necessarily aged well. The “prequel memes” revisionist appreciation works anyway, because it’s six hours of exactly what George Lucas wanted, and that’s neither a good thing nor a good idea, but it is fascinating.
The sequels… are fanfiction. 7 thinks characters are also fans, so e.g. Finn is impressed by holograms as if you’d be amazed by flatscreen TVs. The Last Jedi is an anarchist critique of Star Wars that somehow got made into an actual Star Wars film. There’s a really great film lost somewhere in the edit. 9 is a toddler telling a story: ‘and then, and then, but nuh uh, and then…’ That’s why lil’ JJ, age 4, keeps repeating the fake-out death trope he just learned.
A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are fucking incredible. Return Of The Jedi has pacing issues but gets a pass for closing out the trilogy.
The prequels are enjoyable trash. Which was intended… mostly. But even as a kid at the time, some bits were rough. The parts that little idiot baby me enjoyed have not necessarily aged well. The “prequel memes” revisionist appreciation works anyway, because it’s six hours of exactly what George Lucas wanted, and that’s neither a good thing nor a good idea, but it is fascinating.
The sequels… are fanfiction. 7 thinks characters are also fans, so e.g. Finn is impressed by holograms as if you’d be amazed by flatscreen TVs. The Last Jedi is an anarchist critique of Star Wars that somehow got made into an actual Star Wars film. There’s a really great film lost somewhere in the edit. 9 is a toddler telling a story: ‘and then, and then, but nuh uh, and then…’ That’s why lil’ JJ, age 4, keeps repeating the fake-out death trope he just learned.
TL;DR:
OT - great, fantastic, good.
PT - C+, C-, B-.
ST - good tone, good script, good god.