Saga Rate the Star Wars films, TPM to TFA

As for the other part, you seem to be implying that I am young, and therefore blind to the PTs 'rampant' nostalgia or something. But when looked at in detail, the nostalgia is often subverted, like the inverse structure of AOTC and EBS being used to show the descent of the Republic. And there's so much new stuff, the central plot of ROTS doesn't really map to any previous film, while TFA's is almost word-for-word ANH's.

X-wings and TIE fighters isn't just the visual style though, it's also the kind of story that can be told. With an identical Rebels Vs. Empire conflict, TFA might as well be set during the OT, than 30 years later. The PT, for better or worse, tells different kinds of stories. Time will tell whether TLJ can be something new and interesting, but it still has to work with only what was set up in ANH, because TFA didn't have anything from the other films, or show any progression.

That also hurts one of the central parts of TFA. Rey is literally digging around in the bones of the OT. That's a good image, showing it dead and buried, with Kylo stuck in rut of nostalgia for Vader too. But it doesn't work when both forces are identical to the ships buried at Jakku. That makes the central message of damaging nostalgia hypocritical, and renders TFA's most interesting central theme pointless.

 

Well, you're certainly predictable. You've just rationalised away all the examples with "nope" or an argument that while valid they don't really mean much anyway so "I'll allow it", and then go straight back into over-emphasising the nostalgia in TFA. There's a double standard in waxing poetical about how the Venator is so different, noting all the minutiae details and ascribing thematic and narrative reasons for them, and then calling the Finalizer merely identical without any of the same kind of analysis. Surely you see that?

And yeah, it is not Vader that's nostalgia, it's the fact that it is the exact same armour he would wear 20 years later. Just lying on a shelf apparently. It is the most direct re-use of a design without any changes whatsoever we have seen in any of the films outside of the OT. Except of course C3P0, R2D2, Slave I, and Royal Guard... oh look, we saw all of these in the PT as well! You cannot argue that the TFA is nostalgic for the OT when it modifies the asthetic and then ignore the PT when it re-uses the asthetic or also modifies it. You can't pick and choose.

TFA is not almost word-for-word ANH. You're objectively just wrong on that. The FO are not the Empire and the Resistance is not the Rebel Alliance. The parties aren't identical and the conflict isn't identical. Functionally or thematically.

ROTS may have a different plot than the other movies, but it's mostly because there really isn't one and it's a collection of mostly random scenes (especially in the middle act). While Anakin is conned into going bad, he's not involved in any story (ie, he's not doing anything but being left alone with Mr Evil). The Kenobi subplot has virtually nothing going on either (he's on a hunt, his quarry is at the first place he goes to, he jumps on a dragon and finds him, then kills him just like we knew he would). Most of the meat of the story is all in the last 30 minutes and we knew the outcome of that 30 years ago. The problem with ROTS is that virtually everything that happens is already known and it has very few surprises (the inherent restrictive nature of a prequel I suppose).

As for the general sentiment that X-wings and TIE fighters inherently lead to the same story. I find that short-sighted. We've seen plenty of lightsabres across the 8 movies out there. Does that mean that lightsabre battles are all inherently the same and repetitive?

 

Edit: This seems a better fit for the TFA make the OT pointless thread.

 

Why would Vader have different armour? There's never any implication that Vader had anything other than what he had in the OT.
...
Why are the Resistance using X-wings again and nothing else?

See the disconnect? In one case you're arguing that nothing needs to have changed in 20 years and the other that everything should have changed in 20 years.

 

But the whole point of the birth scene is the creation of Vader. Having a different armour for that scene would rob it of it's impact and the connection between PT and OT. That scene is the PT era finally becoming the OT era.

If you switched the X-wings to new ships, that wouldn't rob TFA of anything. What's the deep thematic resonance of using those ships again?

 

You're trying to set up the rules so that they rationalise your double standard. The end of the ROTS is not the OT era. They're 20 years apart. There's no deep thematic resonance to using the same suit other than that's what people recognise Vader as wearing later. You're position only works if you know that's what Vader wears later, and go 'my god he's becoming armoured Vader!' but if you watch them in chronological order you wouldn't get this. Imagine if you're seeing this for the first time, the suit makes no sense. There's no existing design element it follows. It comes from literally nowhere except the future. Therefore it absolutely is nostalgia (and the marketing for the film demonstrated this very clearly, with Vader everywhere).

 

But it is the start of the OT era. The Empire is in place, and won't be opposed for 20 years, so what we see near the start is what is basically in place in ANH.

I don't know what you mean about the suit 'making sense'. Anakin needs it to survive. Whether or not it's Vader's suit, the scene still makes sense. Anakin has lost his youth, his freedom. He's being encased in a walking iron lung. His face is covered by what's essentially an emotionless skull. Hie vision will only be red from here on out. When he shows up in ANH, it's the same suit, so that the audience knows recognises him.

What's the problem here?

 

Well, for you. 90% of the performances that truly resonate with me are in the PT. A large chunk of them in Ep3, mostly those with Anakin/Padme & Anakin/Obi-Wan. The others are Shmi's and Anakin's farewell in Ep1, Shmi's death in Ep2 and the rest are dispersed throughout the rest of the movies (shoutout to Vader/Luke scenes in Ep6). All of my least favourite performances are in the OT, but I'll never say that they're atrocious because I know how resonant the same scenes can be for other people with different personalities and life experiences.

 

We're talking about the design here, we've always been talking about the design. After all, your complaint isn't that the Resistance are flying ships and destroying enemy ships, it's that they're specifically flying X-wings and destroying TIE fighters, ergo the design. The problem here is your blatant double standard that you appear to be unwilling to even acknowledge. In one case, you've rationalised as acceptable an identical design that's still being used 20 years later (Vader), then you're heavily criticising an evolution of a design after 20 years with the X-wing/TIE. The only difference is that you like one but don't like the other. Meanwhile, you don't think there's an in-universe reason for the design evolution in TFA (when there is, it's an evolutionary design used by the successors of the original) but then bizarrely use an out-of-universe reason for Vader's design to remain the same (the audience can recognise him). Where's your in-universe rationale for Vader's suit looking the way it does in ROTS? That's what I was getting at, it's a design that only makes sense because that's what he wears later. There's no precedent for the design anywhere in the PT. Where's the proto-Vader? The very first iteration of Vader's iron lung remains exactly the same 20 years later. You don't find that odd? It's only there for nostalgia and to help sell merchandise.

Basically, you can't say that designs can't still be around after 20 years and it's nostalgia to do so, and then ignore all the designs that are still around 20 years in the other direction.

 

Vader as a character needs the suit for recognition. The scene wouldn't work with a 'proto-vader' because then it wouldn't match with the OT in the slightest. When ANH opens up, we'd have a completely different looking character, despite them supposed to be the same. Additionally, Vader is in 2 scenes right at the end of the film. The rest of the film is fundamentally not based on the same visual as ANH, until the very end, where the era of the OT starts. It still isn't identical though, there is a clear difference from something like and ARC fighter and an X-wing, but there's clear change and the new designs can stand apart. Yes there's some nostalgia in the ending, but that's just necessary to tie up the two trilogies.

The X-wings and TIEs are a smaller part of the entirety of TFA trying to recreate ANH's visual. There's no evolution here, and the film could only be enhanced by changing the designs. The 2 factions in TFA are supposed to be different from the OT's. The FO is supposedly a lesser threat, staffed with fanatics and hidden at the edges of the galaxy. But they have everything the old Empire had with fractional changes (they only updated the stormtrooper design in any meaningful way). That actually hurts the narrative of the film. The Jakku segment seems to thematically being about not wallowing in OT nostalgia, that it should be left behind, dead and buried. But the galaxy that Rey leaves out into is drenched in nostalgia, and for no good reason. It's as if nothing changed between then and now, that the whole situation has reset.

Look, if you could change every single ship in TFA into a new design, it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the plot, but would make the film more visually interesting, and would make a central part of the themes of the film work a lot better.. If you change Vader in ROTS, that's 2 scenes at the end that just get more confusing when the other films are taken into account.

 

I'll just quit here, but basically your argument is still just "this nostalgia is fine because I say so".

 

No, my argument was that a small bit of nostalgia right at the end of the movie was not the same as an entire movie stuffed to the gills with it.

 

It isn't odd if you actually think about Vader and the Emperor's relationship during the Galactic Empire's existence. The Emperor exploited the injuries Vader sustained on Mustafar and made it so that he is still one of the deadliest warriors in the galaxy while still giving him a crippling weakness that he could exploit: the respiratory system in his armor. He becomes entirely enslaved by the Emperor to do his every whim because he knows that he can just kill him if he disobeys.

Hell, in the period between TESB and ROTJ (the twilight of the Galactic Empire), you see this relationship spiral out of control once Luke starts to grasp some actual agency with Vader offering an alliance with Luke in order to overthrow the Emperor and the Emperor seeking to find a new enforcer to stand at his right hand.

 

Is there a more up-to-date version of this thread or should the movies be ranked here still?

 

It's pinned to the top of this subforum.

here

 

Those can both be true at the same time
Ranking the movies here makes me less angry for sure.

1. Revenge Of The Sith
2. Return Of The Jedi
3. The Empire Strikes Back
4. Attack Of The Clones
5. The Phantom Menace
6. A New Hope
7. The Force Awakens

 

1 ANH
2 AOTC
3 ROTS
4 ESB
5 TPM
6 ROTJ
7 TFA