Saga Least favorite Star Wars film and Why (Revised)

The last Jedi was so awful for many reasons (I’ve ranted about it too much already in these forums!) but the biggest flaw was that Rian Johnston wouldn’t listen to Mark Hamil and destroyed Luke’s role, and then killed him off for no good reason. I thought it was disgraceful. The movie has a few redeeming qualities and I commend it for trying to be different, but to me it didn’t work at all and destroyed everything that The Force Awakens set up. I would even go as far as to say that The Rise of Skywalker would’ve been a much better movie if the last Jedi hadn’t messed up the saga.

 

TLJ because I sincerely do not enjoy a single scene in this movie, even after pushing myself really hard to remove any bias against it.
Every single scene expresses something that I either disagree with, I find childish at best, or I straight out despise.
I guess the porgs are cool.

 

I go back and forth between AOTC and ROTS as my least favorite, today was AOTC

 

I still must say I'm surprised how many people quite disliked TROS! I loved it myself, but I thought it would've gone over better with fans, considering many details I will not get into here.

I personally went with TPM. There are several things about the film I enjoy: The lightsaber duel (of course), the opening sequence up to leaving Naboo, the senate hearing, and of course the podrace sequence (IMO one of the most thrilling scenes in the GFFA so far). Also the score is amazing-the trade federation theme, Duel of the Fates and even the end celebration stand up to the rest of the saga IMO.

I'd say overall, it's a great installment in the Skywalker saga, as a way of setting the stage for the state of things and beginning the story. But as a film in it's own right, it suffers from an odd sense of pacing and feels abit awkward in the way it plays out on it's own. I often view this one as "the one I have to get thru, before I can really get into the good stuff of the saga."

 

A toss-up between TFA and TROS, but TFA gets my vote, because my problems with TROS and to a lesser extend the TLJ is that the world-building is so sub-par and the rest of the ST has to play in said world. I groaned when I heard we get the same stuff again like Rebels, Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers. It could've been so much better IMO. I still love TLJ though.

 

The Last Jedi:

Not a bad movie if it were standalone and not part of any saga. But the total emasculation of Luke after 30 plus years.
It was a disservice to Luke's OT character, with all the trials and tribulations he had overcome.

 

Random observation: I think it's hilariously ironic that the Disney films are getting the bulk of the "Least Favorite" votes after they went out of their way to trash some of the previous films.

 

It's always a bit sad to me when a SW movie is received poorly, even when it's justified.

 

Yeah I just rewatched RotS the other day and did not enjoy it as much as I used to. I don’t think it has aged particularly well, and I find it to be a bit overrated. It may even be my second-to-least favorite now (above only AotC). That being said, I still enjoy TPM a lot! I wish that film was appreciated more. It’s easily the best of the PT, imo!

 

TPM. For the longest time I had AOTC at the bottom, with TPM second to last. But I am currently doing my first ever beginning-to-end rewatch from TPM to TROS, and so far I've completed the PT. And much to my surprise, I enjoyed AOTC much more than I recalled. The cringey love story dialogue is still tough to sit through, but Ewan really carries this film, and there are enough interesting ideas to make the film better than I remember. TPM, however, was painful to sit through. I don't think I'll ever watch it start-to-finish ever again. And though there remain hurdles to come (the harmless but pointless Solo, and the is-there-a-point nature of the ST), at the end of the day I anticipate TPM will be my least enjoyable SW film.

 

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, because it's just a warm-up for the best that TCW has to offer.

And because people constantly forget about it when doing lists

 

Any of the new trilogy. They were each just cheap unimaginative recreations of the first three films. The music and special effects are nice, but JJ abrams wouldn't know creativity if it hit him in the face.

 

Leaving the TCW film out of the equation — I’m sticking to live-action only here — my least favorite is TROS, followed very closely by TLJ.

I didn’t think I could like a main-series film less than TLJ — I found it tonally uneven, bizarrely pompous, and a massive disservice to virtually every character in it (perhaps especially Finn, whose origin story is utterly squandered, and Luke, who is unrecognizable.) I haven’t watched it since it came out and don’t have any desire to. It’s the film that consigned the sequels to in-universe fanfic to me.

TROS, though? I felt like it went being a bad SW film into just being a bad film, period. The movie’s handful of good ideas are marred by frenetic pacing, bizarre narrative choices, and an overall sense of “too little, too late.” I almost left the theater from boredom, which I’ve never had the desire to do before with an SW film. This one will likely never get a rewatch from me, either, which saddens me a bit,since I had a lot of goodwill towards the sequel trilogy when it debuted, and I actually still have a soft spot for Rey, Finn, and Poe as we met them in TFA.

 

For me, it's more or less a toss-up between all of them except TPM and ANH, for different reasons.
I mean, there is SO much in the original six that I still love - I'm especially fond of GL's ingenious ring composition - but as I've explained elsewhere, I can't get past the fact that this beautiful saga is not as timeless as I once thought it was. What was once commonly seen as progressive has grown stale and it's become clear to me that as far as diversity goes, these are very much films of their time. Of a time before theirs, even. As such, they are flawed in ways too important and glaring for me to ignore. Even if I occasionally can lose myself in the moment and just enjoy the beauty of it.
TPM and ANH are the lesser parts of this evil, but they are parts of it. Which episode is the worst offender, though, is impossible for me to say.

 

AOTC is a proper turkey. Portman looks as baffled as the audience whilst she’s being subjected to Anakin’s bizarre mood swings. It’s the least convincing movie romance since Splash. Mcgregor tries his best but he can’t mask his boredom. He wanders around Kamino like a dead eyed junkie. Christ, Renton had more life in him. And then there’s Hayden...And the late great Christopher Lee whom both deliver their lines like they’re still in rehearsal.

it’s a soulless green screen cr*p fest. Who wants to watch actors waving lightsabers at thin air? Or see them walking around empty sound stages draped in green cloth? It’s the least Star Warsy film ever. It’s a digital abomination.

At least we got to see Yoda’s frog on a hotplate fighting style. Thanks George.

 

The Force Awakens

I’m really not a fan of the sequels at all. To the point where when I do rewatches I consider episode 1-6 clone wars, rebels, solo and rogue one the true saga.

With that said, TFA is the worst of the three for me. It was close between that and TROS. I just find it so incredibly unimaginative and boring. At the time I was quite excited about the many possibilities it opened up, but every time I’ve watched it since I just don’t see any redeeming qualities and it’s of course a complete rehash of ANH.

Unimaginitive and boring

 

Before TROS I’d have said TFA because of its utter mediocrity, but TROS is an actual bad movie.

 

Just gonna repost my rant from when TROS released:

"So, here goes. I don’t normally go in for the “omg this breaks lore therefore it sux” arguments, but the inconsistencies in this film were so egregious that it’s hard to see the 9 films as something resembling a coherent saga anymore.

The core of my problem with this film is how JJ’s obsessive reverence for past films (epitomised by his emphasis on the lightsabers as holy relics, which Rey piously lays to rest in the final scene) is made even stranger by his apparent misunderstanding of them.

Centrally, the primary tension of Revenge of the Sith, in which Anakin’s obsession with learning how to save Padme from death tragically leads to him killing her, is ignored in the Rise of Skywalker. Instead of learning to accept the death of loved ones (and their union with the Force) in the natural cycle, Rey and Ben/Kylo use their healing/resurrection powers apparently for unqualified good with no adverse moral consequences (obviously Ben dies but he’s redeemed at the same time). It’s a huge and puzzling disconnect. Mostly the films have avoided this kind of contradiction by not really saying too much. TROS instead wades blindly into the nature of the Force and with this comes a host of major inconsistencies as Abrams attempts to force his own confused vision of Star Wars into the saga in one fell swoop. And then there was Rey and Palpatine’s Last Airbender-esque embodiment of the entirety of the Jedi and Sith, living and dead. This is something that could potentially work if there was some justification or explanation of it - but we’re left bewildered at how such a thing has never even been hinted at at any point in previous films and how little it was explained in this one. Not to mention that the balance problem seems to have been utterly ignored. It seems like Rey and Ben simply did what Vader and Luke did... but better. And we’ll never get satisfying answers to the how and why.

Rey’s identity is also incredibly contrived and again betrays Abrams’s obsession with lineage. Yes, family was a central theme of the first two trilogies, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have an effective Star Wars story where the central character doesn’t have a blood relation to another major character. But for J.J., this was such an essential theme that he felt compelled to, out of nowhere, conjure Rey’s connection to the Emperor. It ultimately has very little narrative impact - Rey doesn’t need to be the granddaughter of Sidious to struggle with the Dark Side, surely. If nothing else, this will make the sequels really... weird to watch in sequence.

There’s other more minor stuff like Rey just Force healing people like it’s a basic, instinctive ability (would’ve been pretty handy at several other points in the saga!), and being able to just use Sith lightning, which to my understanding was an arcane Sith ability requiring mastery of the Dark Side.

The film has many issues as a piece of cinema that go well beyond its incongruity with the 8 films before it. But it’s the latter that, for the first time in any Star Wars film, left me feeling despondent as the credits rolled. I hadn’t enjoyed the film, and that’s the biggest tragedy for me.

I was going to say the film had no ethical content, but that’s not strictly true. Ben’s redemption through his love for his family, and Rey’s decision to refuse the call of the Dark Side and heal him (whatever other problems I have with that) was honestly pretty good. It’s a shame it was a single 10 minute stretch of the film. The rest of it was insipid statements about the power of friendship. Utterly uninspiring, unadventurous, and ultimately entirely unaffecting. Did J.J. want me to feel something when Lando told us that Luke, Leia and Han succeeded because they weren’t quitters or something else copied off a motivational calendar? I don’t remember that being the point of the original trilogy, or the reason why they were deeply emotional films. The film is full of attempts to manufacture emotion, perhaps painfully aware of its complete lack of the essential energy and pathos of the first six films in particular.

Because of the lack of any real emotional undercurrent, the already mediocre action scenes are reduced to boring slogs.

I have more on my mind but this post is already long enough and dangerously approaching rant territory so I’ll stop there. The bottom line is that this is the only Star Wars film that I don’t like, and that leaves me with a very heavy heart."

 

A very good post. I don’t like it when the sequels are just labeled as being rubbish without a valid reason and you’ve listed many.

The main thing I agree with was about how you felt despondent. I watch the first 6 films and rogue one and feel completely emotionally invested in the characters and the storyline. But the higgledy piggledy mess of continuity and contradictions that were served up only go to make me feel despondent towards the films

 

Attack of the clones all day long

 

The Rise of Skywalker. It is a disservice to all the characters involved, and does permanent damage to the eight previous movies. It’s as shallow as storytelling can get. Abomination!