Saga Least favorite Star Wars film and Why (Revised)

TROS was just terrible on so many levels. It was worse then I expected it to be despite going into it with incredibly low expectations. It's such a bizarre mix of clunky fan service, nonsensical reveals and poorly conceived pay offs that it kind of blows my mind.

 

TROS.

I was on board with the ST story, because I had hope that TROS could have justified the ST's existence, but TROS flushed all that down the drain.

As a standalone adventure it's fun enough, but as a conclusion to the trilogy (and the saga) it's unfathomably awful and retroactively makes the trilogy/saga worse.

With Palpatine coming back in the opening crawl, it's like they just just waved the white flag and said, "Just try to enjoy this, because TLJ screwed everything up" (which I wholeheartedly disagree with)

 

The rise of sKywalker wasn’t perfect but it had heart and tried to make Star Wars feel like Star Wars it had to deal with the trash that was the last Jedi.

 

Episode VII: The Force Awakens

I didn't like most of the new characters. Finn and Maz Kanata were the only new characters I cared for. Rey was just a Mary Sue, Kylo Ren was an annoying whiny emo, Poe was boring, BB8 was an R2-D2 rip-off, Phasma was nothing special. In addition to mediocre characters, the plot was extremely derivative. Finally, the whole premise seemed to make what our heroes went through in the original trilogy all for naught. Their sacrifices and victory over the empire, and Han and Leia's marriage, was all basically useless. We're basically right back to where we started, only something like 20 years later.

Having said that, my dislike of the Disney sequels means that I still haven't seen Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (shame on me, I know, and I do plan to see it some time in the next few months) so it's possible I may need to re-vote for that one once I've seen it, though I kinda doubt it. I will say that I at least thought that Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was in improvement over TFA.

 

Oh, and I also didn't like Han's death. I didn't think it was well handled.

 

see i think it might be my favorite scene in the whole saga.. funny opinions aren't they?

 

The Last Jedi

I think that somebody forgot to send Rian Johnson the memo that his movie was supposed to be number 8, of 9, and not a standalone vanity piece.

 

The Phantom Menace is my least favorite. I find it boring, and I can't stand Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd, or midichlorians. Even in its small details I find it bad.

 

Thanks to Disney I no longer have to choose one of the original six.

Tough choice, but TLJ is the loser here. For all JJ's flaws, he at least doesn't do nihilistic deconstructions and seems to care about Star Wars in his own way (even if it's just a very shallow view of the OT themes and aesthetics it seems). Much as it pains me to admit it (given JJ is the one who started the destruction of the OT legacy) the trilogy would've flown better with him at the helm of all three entries.

Of the Lucas's six ROTJ is the one where I want to skip through some of the scenes to get to the meat of the story. However, the throne room sequence is my favorite in the OT.

 

It's hard to choose between TFA and TROS. TFA is what started basically everything that's wrong with the sequel trilogy and it's a terrible sequel to ROTJ, but as a movie it's still quite good.

So I would have to say TROS. It's just terrible in every way. It's the only Star Wars movie I genuinely have no interest in seeing ever again.

From the original six movies my least favorite is ANH. It's the most boring Star Wars movie in my opinion (and after TROS the one I least look forward to rewatching). I didn't like many of the aesthetic choices in it or the overlong space battle sequences. The lightsaber battles look quite ridiculous too and I never liked how Obi-Wan's body simply vanished into thin air after his death. Also I didn't particularly like Luke as a main character. He felt like a blank slate in many ways.

 

I agree with @Merrin that Episode 9 (aka the Rise of Retcons) is the only Star Wars movie that I genuinely have no interest in seeing ever again, even over a year later. It just makes choices that utterly baffle me, from resurrecting Palpatine (especially how the message announcing his return was in Fortnite and now the actual movie) to not giving Rey her own lightsaber until the last minute of the film (instead having her repair Anakin's lightsaber with no in-film explanation how while continuing to glorify the weapon used to literally murder children). The movie also just spends too much time trying to undo and retcon The Last Jedi, which alienated me as someone who loved The Last Jedi and made the film feel like it didn't even belong in the same continuity. Not to mention the retconned backstory for Poe, which really did not sit with me well as someone who has been following the Expanded Universe for the last few years. The pacing is awful as well and the end result just comes across feeling like a rough draft instead of a finished project. Episode 9 took my hopes for the sequel trilogy (which I still had at that point) and completely smashed them.

 

There’s a fair argument that other movies have bigger issues plot-wise but The Last Jedi is just so aggressively un-fun that it baffles me it ever got approved for public consumption. There’s like 2 one liners that make up a combined 8 seconds of the film that make me chuckle but there’s not a single actual scene that I enjoy watching, never mind the several that make me actively angry(for contrast I love a great portion of AOTC and it makes sitting through the Anakin/Padmé stuff worth it). You could probably make a similar case for TROS but I don’t quite view it as harshly for 2 main reasons:
1) it was trying to be fun and just did a terrible job in execution, whereas I feel TLJ for the most part wanted to be what it was.
2) I still had hope going into Episode 8 but after what we got my expectations were on the floor for Episode 9. I don’t hold the same grudge against TROS because even if the ideas and execution had been much better than they were there’s no follow up to TLJ that could have been actually “good” so I don’t feel like I missed out on much even though the movie is bad.

 

TFA: I blame it for pretty much every problem I have with the ST. Resetting the universe to ANH, returning to the boring old Empire vs Rebel dynamic as if ROTJ didn't even happen. Putting Luke out of the action completely on an unknown world, another planet destroying super weapon, completely ignoring the PT and using basically no aliens from the rest of the saga.

There are so many new and cool things they could have done with the ST: Rebuild the New Republic, a New Jedi Order with Luke at the head, add to the universe we were left with in ROTJ and create a new antagonist that contributes to the overarching arc of the Star Wars galaxy. Maybe have them come into conflict with the Hutts and have to deal with corruption and slavery as was hinted at in the background of the rest of the saga? We saw democracy grow old and fade into dictatorship, and the New trilogy could have been about restoring the Republic to its height, so it could be better than it once was.

Instead we just got the galaxy running in circles, more Empire more Rebels, more destroyed planets and nothing changed.
I can't blame TROS and TLJ for that because they inherited it from TFA, and that remains my biggest grief with the ST as a whole.
It felt as if they were trying to apologize for the PT by hitting the reset button as hard as possible, and that leaves it feeling so unbelievably disconnected from the rest of the saga. Since 1-3 are my favorite films, that leaves me feeling especially dissatisfied.

 

Absolutely agree. I see TFA especially as the big middle finger to the PT and its fans. It's the perfect culmination of how anti-PT internet culture affected Disney's approach to SW. And for that, it will never feel canon to me. At least not to George's I-III.

 

I originally voted TPM as my least favorite, mostly driven by the film's odd and somewhat slow pacing and Jar Jar's slapstick antics kind of was the icing on the cake for that decision.

However...

I have now changed my vote. I must admit-even though I didn't want this to happen-that TLJ is now my least favorite SW film. I don't hate it, and there are still some fun moments, like the dreadnaught opening battle, force ghost Yoda, the whole sequence on Crait, etc. But honestly for me, instead of getting better with subsequent views, I've actually grown to enjoy it less over time. And now it's just become one of those parts in a franchise that I have to just "get thru," similar to Chamber of Secrets, X-Men: Apocalypse, Star Trek: Insurrection or Thor The Dark World-to get to the ones I really want to see.

TPM now holds the second to lowest spot for me, since despite the issues I have with it, there are still some wonderful things about it that serve as somewhat redeeming factors.

 

Dark Phoenix is worse than Apocalypse. While not a great movie, I liked that Apocalypse set up Jean as the most powerful mutant, which has always been hinted at throughout the X-Men movies. Dark Phoenix completely dropped the ball and was absolute trash.

 

See on my side, although not close to my favorite, I would actually say that Dark Phoenix kind of brought back the feeling the original X-Men films had, with a more linear plot and less easter-eggy, fan-servicey elements. Apocalypse to me felt like the real missed opportunity-mainly with the villain. Not to mention the completely unnecessary Stryker attack on Xavier's School shoehorned in there, just for the obligatory Wolverine cameo and to have one more Quicksilver time compression sequence (though I do enjoy those). It could have been SO epic-perhaps even spanning two films, but to me it just felt...rushed and underwhelming.

Agree to disagree I guess.

 

rise of skywalker was worse than I could have possibly imagined even knowing literally everything about its synopsis and plot before walking into the theater. it is such an atrocious piece of **** and I will never comprehend the magnitude of the failure, though it's easy to see how and why it happened.

I like to pretend it doesn't exist. broom boy is the ending of the saga. it's fine.

 

I agree with most of what you posted here. I think both were bad. Just that Apocalypse was less bad than Dark Phoenix.

 

TROS I'm afraid.

I enjoy it as a goofy, turn your brain off popcorn movie that I can turn on as background noise. However as a finale to the grand Star Wars saga story, it was a poor showing IMO.

 

TLJ. Jake Skywalker, Luke's death, Rey's continued Sue-ness, Reylo, Holdo, the whole subvert expectations/ "Let the past die'' vibe... not to mention that nothing much happens in this movie, aside from Luke and Snoke dying, two characters who were shrouded in mystery and not really involved in anything anyway. When you look at the ST's whole story, they're both pretty much filler.

If I bothered to watch TROS, it would probably be my second least favorite -- but I can at least somewhat appreciate that it tries to ease some of the burn left by TLJ, even if it makes the ST and saga all the more messy and inconsistent, and adds its own unique mess to the pile.

 

This would be correct. Its a mucking fess. Part of it feels like a classic video game: Do this, power up, advance to next level. Then, you have the hopelessly strange Reylo interactions which were pretty good in Last Jedi only to..... what the hell actually happened? A DYAD? A what? Oh, one of those. And then the Palpatine stuff. Where does one even begin with that pile of pooh? Is he actually dead this time or not? On another thread someone had a great post about how nonsensical that entire thing was. His battle at the end with Rey was like.... ummmm... huh? Lightning power stuff, the Sith crowd cheers(did they buy tickets for that? lol), Rey has all the jedi inside here, Palpatine has all the Sith in him, lightning, blinking lights... make it stop. And then the most forced kiss in cinematic history. Ya'll think Padme and Anakins interactions were dicey at times. Oh my. Barf. And then, another pointless, forced, stupid and scene with the "Rey Skywalker" garbage. OMG. Just no.

 

TLJ for me as it destroys Luke's character that was built up in the OT (and TFA). It also completely breaks continuity with TFA which was broken again by RoS.

All of the sequel trilogy movies are at the bottom for me though.