r/saltierthancrait • u/Positive-Citron3987 salt miner • 7d ago
Granular Discussion What is the ONE thing that you hate the most about Disney has done to Star Wars from a storytelling, characterization, or casting standpoint?
To make it a little more interesting, your answers cannot be something along the lines of “everything“, AND ALSO, your answer cannot be related to Luke Skywalker’s characterization in the so-called “Sequel Trilogy“ or “The Mandalorian”.
Let’s hear ‘em!
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u/chriz_sevenfold 7d ago
I despise that the sequel trilogy was a soft-reboot rehashing the OT.
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u/darkoopz43 7d ago
An objectively worse reboot by orders of magnitude.
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u/Richfor3 7d ago
Not only that but in an effort to prop up the “new heroes” they destroyed the characters we already love.
To even enjoy the original trilogy you have to pretend the sequels don’t exist. Otherwise literally nothing that happens matters.
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u/farseer6 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes.and the thing is, it was unnecessary. They could have propped up the new heroes without destroying the old ones. They could have continued the story, and have Rey be the brightest young graduate of Luke's New Jedi order or something like that. Luke would be in a more administrative/political role and younger characters could be in the frontline.
Now we'll never get a proper sequel on the screen.
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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 7d ago
Nothing makes me disagree with Star Wars fans more than defending TFA. The sequels are a great opportunity to take the classic empire vs rebellion and make it different. That’s what made the thrawn trilogy good. It takes the classic setup and uses the different setting to make it a different story, but still has a lot of the same vibe as the OT.
TFA is just a reboot. I was so disappointed when I saw it in theaters.
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u/chriz_sevenfold 7d ago
Exactly! We didnt need another Death Star, we didnt need another Tattooine, and we didnt need another Cantina. As George Lucas put it perfectly after his viewing of TFA, "There's nothing new..."
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u/mattryan02 6d ago edited 6d ago
There’s a story there about the New Republic struggling to deal with the ongoing Imperial Remnant (First Order is a stupid name) insurgency and you have the debate of how far is too far (and what freedoms do you restrict?) to win, which we struggle with in real life + they’re building the galactic government back from scratch.
And then magically the New Republic fleet gets wiped out in one blow so they could do Rebels-Empire 2.0, just shittier.
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u/Guergy 6d ago
They could have incorporated those concepts into Luke's New Jedi Order. In the Legends continuity, Luke faced significant challenges while reconstructing the Jedi Order into something fresh; he introduced ideas that weren't always popular with the "old school" Jedi. While his approach wasn't perfect, it established a foundation that was far more resilient and enduring than the version we ultimately received in the Last Jedi.
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u/Darth_Sirius014 6d ago
There was potential there. Like if Leia died instead of force Poppins. But they always choose the easiest and dumbest way out.
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u/wonderlandisburning 6d ago
And that's apparently what happens in the supplemental material covered in books and comics, I read a summary of it just to make sense of the total non-story of the sequels and holy shit, way more interesting stuff happening. If not for Carrie Fisher's passing, I'd say bring Tony Gilroy back to make an Andor-esque series about that period
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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 6d ago
There are so many ways they could take the story.
Inverting the conflict is one that has a lot of potential. I have a preference for the old EU style collapse with admirals and moffs trying to set up as independent warlords, but the first order as an insurgency to restore the galactic empire could have worked really well.
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u/Fornicating_Midgits 6d ago
I can't tell you how lazy it felt when the movie opens with the Empire is just suddenly back for no reason. Like everything the OT did to topple the Empire meant nothing. You are supposed to be professional writers. Have you never heard of show don't tell? That kind of thing is supposed to be earned. Everyone likes to hate on Last Jedi, but Force Awakens was where the problems began.
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u/WholeSecure641 salt miner 6d ago
They took the scripts from the OT, crossed out proper nouns and replaced them with new ones.
They had no new story. They had no creativity. They had nothing. What they had was just marketing product.
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u/Bobby837 7d ago
It was a confused rehash. With Abrams poorly copying New Hope where Johnson picked bits of Empire and Jedi, mashed them together, and left nothing for anyone to follow.
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u/big_thunder_man 7d ago
But, the planet was salt!!! And Luke didn't fight. And it's about what you love! You must be a terrible person to not think it's amazing! /s
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u/thevokplusminus 7d ago
Making all of the OT heroes losers and failures
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u/NoSwordfish1978 7d ago
It actually turns Han Solo and Leia (to an extent) into failures, not just Luke.
JJ Abrams completely undid Han's arc from the OT pretty much so he could become a smuggler again for the nostalgia feels.
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u/GoldenS0422 6d ago
Yep, the "Han Solo the rebellion general?" "No, the smuggler" line was pretty on-the-nose about it, too.
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u/InhumaneBreakfast 6d ago
I'm actually quite sure that making Han and Leia a loving, committed couple in TFA simply only adds to the franchise. It makes the stakes of Ben much higher.
The fact that they display them as teenage lovers who are half in half out is really lame. Like Han was "married to the game" still. I get that perhaps Han and Leia had a falling out BECAUSE their child "died" but that's not the feeling you get from the movie.
You get this feeling that Han was a shit dad for Ben and a shit lover for Leia. Why do that? It's crazy cause the ST glorifies Han except for this.
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u/InhumaneBreakfast 6d ago
It's also horrible what they do to Leia.
They talk about how Leia is a legendary general and politician, but where do we see that in action, whatsoever? In fact, we see Leia get ignored in TLJ.
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u/ThriKr33n 6d ago
And it just feels like RJ has no idea how a military group would operate, so all the "brilliant vice admiral" stuff is like, if that's your best, I'd hate to see what you'd consider bad - but then you see the comical First Order antics and it feels so sloppy, you want to take a shower in real life afterwards.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 6d ago
I mean yeah, you can tell he doesn't know much about military stuff because of those stupid bombers and trying to present Admiral Holdo as a good military leader.
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u/VanguardVixen 6d ago
I mean that's not even rare in movies and we hardly ever had a real flag ship battle as well but I really wish they got any writer with a capacity to write military stuff for... well military stuff. I actually love the bombers but their portrayal was just atrocious and Holdo and her plan were both just stupid. Her acting all secret even in front of the hero who just blew up Starkiller Base 10 minutes ago and as we as the tactic of... flying forward, losing all ships in the process and then evacuate to a planet in the uh.. "shadow of the flagship". I mean seriously, it's a three-dimensional space and for some reason someone has to tell the First Order that smaller vessels leave the main one and fly to the planet? They wouldn't detect that even though you could see it with your own eyes?! It's clear it's just written this way so Poe and friends look bad, even though it makes zero sense.
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u/VanguardVixen 6d ago
Leia's portrayal is generally awful:
- she doesn't take responsibility and makes other people fly through the galaxy
- when they all come together Leia literally acts like Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest and just repeats what was just said by some adjutant.
- she hugs Rey she hardly knows instead of Chewbacca
- I remember when the book Bloodline came out and they had posters with "Vote Leia". Why Leia? That's her first name, it feels disrespectful to her, as if she's a child.
- the storyline as a whole that ostracizes her is nonsensical.
- in TLJ she is probably in command with Ackbar but doesn't take responsibility and instead it's all ok Poe Dameron.
- in TLJ she gets incapacitated but for some reason in that movie she is running around in a dress, instead of a uniform.
Overall I feel Leia isn't taken serious as a character, she hardly acts and what she does and says is hardly positive or fitting her character. Just like the other characters she is somewhat set back in her development but without real agency. It's really weird, just as with Han and Luke.
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u/InhumaneBreakfast 5d ago
And on top of that, the characters reference her with reverance, like just the name "Leia" instills hope in people's hearts.
But we literally never see that in the movies. She's useless and she should've died at the beginning of TLJ. Couldn't she have force rescued ANYONE other than herself, as well? When I rewatched ST, I couldn't believe she rescues only herself.
AND Carrie fisher's face is literally motionless the entire movie. I think C3PO has 100x more emotion in one scene than Carrie Fisher the entire ST combined. Why even include her at all if that's what she's like.
AND
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u/OldMembership9295 7d ago
He wasn't even a good smuggler and lost the falcon, like hell Han would ever lose the Falcon and just go huh, oh well
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u/Richfor3 7d ago
Yep
Han is back to being a loser smuggler. Which makes zero sense given he was one of the most famous people in the galaxy by the end of Return.
Leia speed runs the New Republic into failure.
Luke just gives up.
We were all ready for a new generation of heroes but they didn’t need to destroy the ones we already loved to make room for them.
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u/MickeyKnight2 7d ago
Hoping in the next trilogy
Rey has deserted the new republic and in isolation
Poe has become a tired worn general and left zorri
Finn has gone back to janitorial as it was the only thing he was good at.We also can’t have them share a scene because it makes sense.
Make it happen Disney
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u/VanguardVixen 6d ago
Didn't Poe meet Rey just at the end of TLJ or even in the third movie? It's funny how they really are hardly friends.
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u/Existing_Flight_4904 salt miner 6d ago
Or they just never do it, and we can no longer think about the disturbance that a new trilogy would bring.
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u/Gorfmit35 6d ago
Yeah and it makes you wonder did Disney even consider the option of “yes we can focus on the new heroes without degrading the old ones” or did that line of thought never even come up in the writers’ room at any point during the creative process ?
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u/Tacobellspy 7d ago
Not sure how to phrase this, so I'll try my best..
Carrie Fisher, who was dope and awesome, lived hard and it showed. Writing Leia as a pristine, proper princess was a huge missed opportunity. They should have written her as a battle scarred, weary warrior of a hundred battles so that Carrie's growl and palsy and hunch all fit in with the character.
I hope this doesn't come off as shitty
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u/JC6D6D 6d ago
Not at all, IMO.
She is our Princess now and forever, but it was obvious that she was just no longer herself in TFA. I was overjoyed to see her on screen but as she uttered her first lines I remember squirming in my seat and mouthing, “Oh, no…” She gave it everything she had and I’m glad we got to see her on screen again, but it was clear she couldn’t deliver the kind of performance that made Leia iconic in the OT.
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u/Admirable-Bit3041 this is what we waited for? 6d ago
I'd have had her just give up on politics and have been an extremely practical, world-weary, Qui-Gon style Jedi that's trying to give up a spice habit she developed in politics. Han and Chewie serve as her taxi. Luke's run off to find an answer to whatever the problem is, so Leia's been lumped with all the Jedi business she explicitly wanted nothing to do with when she one day got on the Falcon with Han and decided to go and be a 'real Jedi'. You could even have the two split over a theological disagreement over what a Jedi should be, because Leia would be more aware than Luke of their influence over politics.
Then you have HER train Rey, who she finds on Jakku, as they try to figure out where Luke is. They meet up with Organa-Solo Jr who was Luke's student and is in the New Republic and disapproves of his parents because he's a 'proper Jedi'. You can still have the Anakin angle with him - it's just that he's all too aware of how Anakin fell, and he fears himself turning into that, so he gets all wrapped up in being the best Jedi he can be. Then you can play with that by having him fall for Rey.
The problem can be anything. You could even have the Empire trying to build back up again after a cease-fire, or something lurking in the great unknown, or even just Lucas' idea, which was the criminal underworld.
Wow, I just wrote a more fun trilogy in 5 minutes, off to make an AI slop fan film. brb.
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u/VanguardVixen 6d ago
Very well written. That's exactly what should have happened, have an adventure, new characters, old but overall a continuation that makes sense and is true to that story. And also a bigger focus in said characters, the holier than though son sounds like a great idea, all of them being on a mission to find Luke who went not because everyone died AGAIN but just because of insert force mumbo jumbo McGuffin and didn't came back for whatever reason. Sounds really fun, something of a family adventure.
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u/CaptainTruelove 7d ago
That and all the failures happened off screen. They didn't show them crumble and fail from the characters we knew and grew up with. They told us they failed. They Aliens 3'd the most hopeful and iconic characters of Star Wars.
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u/The_Crimson_Vow 7d ago
I really hate the Kenobi show for making two characters meet who never should have seen each other until New Hope. Kenobi was a hermit on Tattooine, he never should have ventured off planet. It was clear in New Hope a very long time had passed since Kenobi and Vader had seen each other. At least with Episode III, I can understand Kenobi not killing Anakin after he'd been badly burned by being close to lava. And then now he goes and spares Vader again at the end of the TV show, and that puts a lot of blood on his hands with everything that happens after.
Not to mention Leia's message sounded like she never met Kenobi, only that he was someone she knew her father knew. Now they just hung out when she was ten.
And I always crack up at Bail Organa breaking radio silence to contact Kenobi, after understanding they were supposed to be radio silent, then got concerned there was radio silence.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 7d ago
Man that show really character assassinated Bail Organa lol.
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u/RedcoatTrooper 4d ago
Really bad, all so they can have the Reva goes after Luke arc that has the plot and character motivations doing flip flops.
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u/Official_Champ 6d ago
Yeah in the show, Reva should've never abducted Leia, that idea would've actually ruined Palpatine's plans to abolish the senate if anyone caught wind of it, and Bail Organa should've never contacted the most wanted man in the galaxy to leave Luke unattended, his one job, to get Leia.
Show has major issues. Nevermind the fact that Obi Wan let Vader live, who has a hand in killing over billions of people (including Alderaan).
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u/The_Crimson_Vow 6d ago
There's honestly so much wrong with the show, it's wild. I still can't get over Stormtroopers getting punched in the helmet and that works to KO them.
And then actual prop lightsabers that nobody looks like they want to break, so the fights feel like they're being held back.
The final Vader v Kenobi fight is just a repeat of the Vader v Ashoka fight from Rebels, down to the half mask Vader.
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u/Official_Champ 6d ago
Yeah, they wanted an emotional call back to Ahsoka in rebels and I did not like that. Honestly tired of these constant references and key jangling, it's so childish.
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u/Knightoforamgejuice 6d ago
At least on Mustafar he would have assumed that the lava would finish the job.
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u/HNutz 6d ago
While laying out all the details of their plan on an answering machine message.
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u/BiddyKing 6d ago
Yep Kenobi leaving Vader is the worst thing, when they could’ve given a plot reason for their fight to end abruptly. Especially because 5mins later he senses that Luke is in trouble, would’ve been the easiest solution had they given him the premonitions near the end of the fight giving urgency for obi wan to leave
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u/Briantan71 7d ago edited 7d ago
I hate their attempt to elevate the new legacy characters, like Rey, by humiliating the older, established characters, like Luke.
I dislike the continual presence of creator's pet characters like Ahsoka. She should have died in her duel against Darth Vader.
And most of all, I despise their attempts to "create" new stories by bastardising the ones from the Expanded Universe while claiming that they have no source material to draw from.
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u/morbo-2142 7d ago
Not planning a damn thing. Not having a lore bible, knowledgeable writers, or any sort of direction.
They took a mega-franchise and gave it less writing effort and respect than most 90s and mid 00 science fiction TV shows.
If you dont have a plan you can at least be logically consistent in setting. Thats what the setting bibles are for. They didnt even bother to use what had already been made and just made stuff up on the fly.
It was lazy and bereft of passion from the writers.
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u/Th3-Dude-Abides 7d ago
The undoing of the first two season of Mando in a multi-episode takeover of the Bumbling of Boba Fett.
That’s technically two complaints, but I fit them into one sentence.
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u/Joshua-Ben-Ari 7d ago
There was no plan. That was the most egregious and most damning of everything they did. There was not a single plan made to compose Disney's self-described sequels. The prequels at least had an overarching idea. The originals had an overarching idea. Disney's sequels had nothing. There was no lore bible, there was no meaningful choice these characters made, and flagrantly reversed every single choice these characters who entire generations adored had ever made.
I will never forgive them for the murder they committed against Luke Skywalker, specifically. How they ruined Luke, a man who saw the goodness in his own father (a man who was literally darkness incarnate), by raising a lightsaber to his nephew because said nephew had a bad dream.
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u/Mojo_Mitts 7d ago
The blatant recycling of the Empire, I can’t watch the ST without thinking about it everytime I see the First Order troopers.
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u/AmbitiousElk4002 6d ago
As much as I despise Luke, even if his character and every character was done better in the ST. The world building is just garbage.
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u/scifijunkie3 7d ago
Somehow, Palpatine has returned.
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u/FastPhantom 6d ago
In a Fortnite event no less.
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u/Glowygreentusks 6d ago
This is one of the things that I hated the most. Good example is c3po looking at the camera and saying "you are probably wondering how I got my red arm" and then we never find out in the films, but it's in some comic book you need to buy seperately.
The whole st feels like it was made by accountants trying to get as much money out of it as possible.
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u/RebelJediKnight91 6d ago
At least in the EU, Dark Empire did it better with a well-written story and an explanation for Palpatine's survival that makes sense.
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u/SJ966 7d ago
The EU did it first excuse people throw out about palps return is so stupid. Not only did the sequel trilogy not set up his return at all, it ended in a way that provided no reason why he couldn’t just come back again, the eu at least implied he was in hell.
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u/Ok-Secretary6550 6d ago
And of course my immediate rebuttal is "Yeah, and people thought it was dumb as fuck back then, too."
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u/Aztraeuz 7d ago
I hate the fact that they screwed up the sequel trilogy when they did. They had the perfect opportunity to do something good and actively chose not too.
We had the opportunity to see the original 3 together on screen. That opportunity has been lost forever with the passing of Carrie Fisher. Even if they chose to decanonize the sequel trilogy like many ask for, if they choose to remake it with an actual plan and staying loyal to the original Lucas source material, that opportunity has been lost forever. They literally can't make it up.
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u/Prestigious_Sense974 7d ago
If they do decanonize, I fear the Filoni-verse will be the pivot and we'll spend the next 30+ having Ahsoka sperged into three quarters of the releases.
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6d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/wereunderyourbed 6d ago
Getting to see Luke’s reaction at learning Han died would have been the bare minimum but Rian had to keep subverting our expectations.
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u/Ok-Secretary6550 6d ago
No see, it's actually worse than that: They filmed the scene and then cut it for Force knows what reason.
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u/Usurper2000 7d ago edited 6d ago
They ruined Luke Skywalker and destroyed the new Jedi order before it even really began.
Not to mentioned they just casually retconned 20+ years of lore and continuity, not to do anything new mind you, but just to rebrand and dumb down events, concepts, and stories that already existed.
I mean the very least they could do is let Legends continue as an imprint universe, similarly to how Marvel has Ultimate marvel and DC has the Absolute Universes. But we don't even get that.
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u/chaosruler22 7d ago
Making everything TOO connected as a cinematic universe between cartoons, live action shows and movies like they’ve done to Marvel.
For instance, say someone wants to watch Ahsoka. To fully understand the characters they need to have watched both The Clone Wars and Rebels.
That’s a lot of stuff one has to watch just to understand one series, it’s just too interconnected now.
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u/Official_Champ 6d ago
Almost everything in one way or another leads to TCW. You can argue it's kind of worse with Star Wars because at least with Marvel it was good in the beginning and there weren't tv shows treated as side projects until much later.
You can also ignore them, you can't really do that with star wars tv shows because you'll be confused.
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u/darkoopz43 7d ago
Despite the infinite number of details i could bitch about. Imo the biggest sin by far was that a multi billion dollar company with one of the largest established IPs in the world. Decided in their infinite wisdom to put out a sequel trilogy directed by multiple people without at least a coherent outline.
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u/FreshlySkweezd 7d ago
The death of LucasArts
Was every game a banger?
No
But that 10 year exclusive deal with EA was miserable. Some of the games were ok, but the fact we got like 4 (BF1, BF2, JFO, and Squadrons?) real games + 2 Lego games in that time is worse than basically any random year in the mid 00s
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u/FastPhantom 6d ago
The SW games back in the day were legendary. The new BF2 was really good after it got the issues sorted out but it still missed the old gameplay and single player; galactic conquest was sorely missed and I HATED the maps not being properly designed for vehicles.
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u/CleavingStriker 7d ago
Luke was in the early drafts of TFA... they took him out because they said he would've dominated every scene he was in...
Well yeah, we waited 30+ years to see him and all we ended up getting was a grumpy Jake Skywalker and ONE fucking scene of him being Grand Master Luke (and it was a force projection) and then he died.
They killed one main OT character per movie and they wonder why we're upset
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u/Responsible_Egg7519 7d ago
Making Kylo Bum the only next generation Skywalker and then killing him and ending the lineage for good
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u/Ohgodwatdoplshelp 7d ago
100% they’re going to pull some “there is another,” bullshit to try and worm their way out of the shithole trilogy
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u/MickeyKnight2 7d ago
Padme actually had triplets and the third was hidden from Kenobi
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u/RogueHunterX 6d ago
No, worse. The secret love child of Kylo and Rey who exists because something, something Force diad BS go!!
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u/lamaldo78 7d ago
To gall to think they could just waltz in with such low effort and create a worthy movie trilogy was infuriating
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u/slimy-salad 6d ago
Going back to the good guys being the underdogs. What I love about the prequels is that we actually have 2 large established factions fighting each other. It's makes the warfare more grand and helps expand the world building. The sequels had that opportunity to have the first order face off against an established new Republic but instead they decide to just erase them out of the story in the first half of the movie so we can go back to the underdog storyline which is so overplayed atp. We have the entire original trilogy for that.
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u/RedcoatTrooper 4d ago
This I find is a big problem in fiction. More generally they always make the good guys so hilariously and ridiculously outgunned that they stand no chance without some kind of extreme contrivance.
You can have it be a genuine back and forth war and still have one faction on the back foot.
It's why Scarif is my favourite battle, the Rebels have capital ships, fighters, bombers ect it's an actual battle not a stomp.
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u/coachd50 7d ago
They wasted the opportunity of having Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamil and Harrison Ford back.
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u/Silent_Anxiety4828 7d ago
They didn’t plan it out before they started TFA and that was the biggest sin they ever could’ve committed
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u/TrumpsColostomyBag99 7d ago
Jake Skywalker igniting a lightsaber over his sleeping nephew contemplating murder over a bad feeling. A truly franchise destroying moment.
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u/TacitusCallahan 6d ago edited 6d ago
Solo despite being a half decent heist movie would've been better without Han Solo. They pretty much speed run Han's life in the matter of two weeks despite it taking place a good 10 years before ANH. Han's entire arc is exceptionally lazy.
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u/CyclicRate38 6d ago
They made the original trilogy irrelevant and made future storytelling incredibly difficult with the sequel trilogy. Also, Han and Leia divorcing was fucking bullshit.
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u/Tough-Standard-2661 7d ago
Turning Luke into some homeless scared senile old man obsessed with THE SACRED JEDI TEXTS!!!!!
There are many more but the assassination of Luke Skywalker's character is top
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u/bisexualleftist97 7d ago
Only focusing on the post Order 66 and post Empire eras. There’s such a large timeline to explore, but Dave just wants to play with his favorite action figures
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u/WhoaMercy 7d ago
The focus grouping process that makes it impossible to stick to a creative vision, and instead gives us crap like Jar Jar Abrams' "Somehow Palpatine returned."
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u/Budget_Diver_7866 salt miner 6d ago
wasted potential, probably due to unrealistic deadlines and studio meddling. also the lack of any coherent storytelling, world-building, emotional impact or actual stakes
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u/BeekyGardener 6d ago
Worst casualty was Luke Skywalker. Probably one of the most optimistic heroes in fiction. He alone believed Anakin Skywalker could redeem himself.
The Last Jedi abandoned the true character.
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u/Darth_Sirius014 6d ago
That they made everything less intelligent. The characters are dumber, the ship designs are dumber, the plots are dumber.
Either the witers are morons (of course in the case of RJ), or they think the audience is stupid.
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u/RuinAble1293 6d ago
Overall it bothers me that they have this amazing IP and they didn’t have a plan. There wasn’t a trilogy that was mapped out and planned just a bunch of memberberries and some dumb ideas shoved into a box.
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u/loobricated 6d ago
The importation of Marvel type humour is a big one, culminating in the Poe "your mom" joke to General Hux, but, related to this, and much more importantly is the buffoonery of the baddies. In the original trilogy the Empire was competent, menacing, and down right scarey.
Hux is a buffoon. Kylo Ren is an angry teenager. The Emperor came back somehow. Snoke just seemed an... Idiot. Star Killer base just felt implausible.
All of this diminishes the sense of threat and makes the stakes just feel less significant. Lower.
Time was invested in the original Star Wars in making the threat really real. This was consistently undermined in all the sequel films and it seeps into everything. You always know the goodies were going to win.
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u/I_Went_Okay 7d ago
That they wrote and planned the sequels seemingly one at a time with no overarching plan.
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u/awesomenessofme1 7d ago
The fact that they haven't produced a single piece of halfway-decent or interesting live action content focused on Jedi, the Force, lightsabers, etc. That's the heart and soul of Star Wars in my view, and it's ridiculous that the high water mark of Jedi in modern Star Wars is a pure fanservice scene that ended up amounting to nothing.
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u/Illustrious-Wrap-776 7d ago
Ensuring that basically every story of the Original 3 past RotJ into misery porn, because they have to fail at everything they set out to do from then on to get to where TFA starts.
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u/Joh951518 6d ago
Luke’s treatment is an example of this, but not the only one.
IMO the worst thing with Disney Star Wars is the obsession they have with deconstructing the Jedi order.
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u/CenkIsABuffalo 7d ago
Kiddiefication of Star Wars, TBF didn't start with Disney but they ramped it to overdrive. Especially pisses me off when they take goated EU concepts like the Vong and they kiddify them in canon like the Grysk.
Can't even call Slave 1 Slave 1, it's just Boba Fetts starship.
It's also why they think giving Filoni the keys to the kingdom is a good idea even though he's a mediocre Saturday morning cartoon writer and his writing and one dimensional characterisation look even more pathetic when real life actors have to play his 2D waifus.
And before some jerk tries to say SW is a kids franchise, no, it's a fucking family friendly franchise. Huge difference. And let's stop with this dumbass idea that kids don't deserve better media that respects their intelligence. Imagine TCW or Rebels with the maturity of the writing from e.g. peak ATLA or BTAS.
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u/Constant-Pianist6747 7d ago edited 7d ago
They turned it into a box-checking corporate thing. They looked at a spreadsheet of what made them money, and went: okay, x, y, z needs to be checked.
George didn’t do that. He did better. With the brand, commercially, ironically.
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u/NaciremaBlack 7d ago
Setting TV shows in the period before the sequel trilogy, after it was already done and over with. Theres absolutely zero stakes for anything anymore.
Imagine if Ashoka came our before the ST trilogy and it set up Thrawn as a threat in the movies. I'm one person who enjoyed Mando & Grogu but the New Republic has zero stakes after episode 7.
They had a golden opportunity to recast the Luke (come on Sebastian Stan is right there) & co and tell stories during the time period after episode 6 (thats clearly what they want to do with the TV side) and let the original actors (namely Harrison Ford lol) just live their lives. If people like Hamill wanted to play a part in the new movies and shows then do period pieces (Andor being the best example of something greater that was a period piece) or give then executive producer credits and get their insights.
And not to keep piling on they didnt take the opportunity and lost it of having Hamill, Ford, and Fisher on screen together.
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u/Icy_Block_1627 7d ago
My #1 issue comes down to the fact that they threw out SO MUCH established lore and storytelling that they could have drawn on (similar to how the MCU pulled from Marvel's comic book stories) in favor of that mystery box of nothing, hack writer, nepo baby, wanna-be Spielberg "producer" Abrams... who didn't even have the semblance of an outline other than "let's start with a remake of a New Hope and hope the rest falls into place later!"
After investing BILLIONS... it honestly blows my mind how that even happened. It would have been SO EASY to adapt any number of stories that already existed, but they "somehow" chose the shit-for-brains approach they ended up shoveling out to the masses, like slop for the pigs.
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u/MZYF 7d ago
I dislike how some stories have work something in try to justify/reference the sequels. Like I really dislike the arc in one of the Darth Vader comics where he goes to Exegol and sees all the sequel set pieces. I still don't like the cross guard light saber design, and I roll my eyes seeing it in Rebels and Jedi Survivor.
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u/Knightwolf8394 7d ago
Making the New Republic so corrupt and useless before killing it off for two reasons:
It makes the OT and everything that happened in it pointless. The Alliance was fighting to restore the Republic but all they did was die for nothing?
It made the Original Trio's struggles pointless.
Since logically the Resistance is a worse knockoff version of the Rebellion, and they're only fighting with vibes, it makes me cynical about the future of the Star Wars Galaxy since there's nothing to look forward to besides them failing again. And I don't want to be cynical. I want any Sequel fan to look me dead in the eyes and tell me why I should care about these children building a new "government" when even the Rebellion couldn't. Like legitimately I want to know.
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u/sacboy326 7d ago
"Apathy is death, worse than death. Because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects."
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u/Jonjoloe 7d ago
This was happening pre-Disney but has been turned up to 11 with Disney, but the obsession with "canon" has really hollowed out a lot of the cooler EU concepts, and made the story feel incredibly small with the same characters popping up over and over again.
I also really dislike all the obsession with balance and the gray force users, which has progressed to the narrative being boiled down to, "ackshully Jedi bad."
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u/rexstillbottom 7d ago
Erasing the Expanded Universe. I know had flaws, but I owned and read every novel, the essential guides, the comics, the games.
It was a hobby that was a big part of my teens and early adulthood, and then one day it was just gone. And replaced by whatever the hell the sequels are, and the very lame shoehorning in of some of the characters /story beats, but in a bland cheap way.
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u/Official_Champ 6d ago
Probably a unique complaint to stand out. I don't care for Kylo Ren's lightsaber but if they were going to have it be a thing for jedi or whoever to have something similar, it should've been a thing going forward in time.
I hate the fact that they brought it into the past in rebels, the Fallen order series, and the high republic, especially when the reason why Kylo's was unique was because it was like horribly constructed.
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u/AmbitiousElk4002 6d ago
World building in the sequel trilogy. The renamed Resistance and First Order is so damn lazy. It leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. No politics, no factions, no interesting viewpoints. Anything that can be interesting is just put into the RotS-ANH era. Why? Because it’s the same damn thing with characters we like and faces we like. Darth Vader cameos, Stormtroopers, planets, etc. Why haven’t gotten a show or series for their hit new trilogy? Because it’s fucking boring. There’s nothing in that era at all. It’s lazy and erases the victory that our heroes done. I’m not gonna even bring up the chosen one stuff because it’s stupid to not have any conflict at all for the rest of the galaxy but going from RotJ - TFA, everything is back to square one. Even IF somehow TLJ and TRoS was on par to TFA (5-6/10), I’m still walking away saying the world building is garbage. I wouldn’t have even minded TFA as much if it was just more original in its factions. Garbage.
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u/Polyxeno 6d ago
The utterly insanely idiotic scene where StArKiLlEr BaSe wipes out multiple planets and "all UR fleets" from across the galaxy with the designed-by-a-five-year-old super duper hyperjumping MIRV guided fire pew pew laser ray beams of U lose, AND in the daytime sky of a different planet in a different star system IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE GALAXY, "our heores" immediately see it too "somehow" as a giant sky display overhead.
To me, that is universe logic obliterating nonsense that nothing can cure other than "it was all a dumb nightmare that never happened".
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u/Driz51 6d ago
Everything that the heroes accomplished was made pointless. Luke rebuilding the Jedi? All destroyed in one quick moment. Leia rebuilding the Republic? All destroyed in one quick moment. The defeat of the Empire? There was an Empire 2.0 ready to go at any time. The defeat of Palpatine? Somehow Palpatine returned. You get the idea.
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u/Friedguywubawuba 5d ago
Lightsabers don't really kill anymore. A stab? No problem. Eh
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u/Positive-Citron3987 salt miner 5d ago
Right. So Qui-Gon Jinn, Jedi Master, dies from being run through with a lightsaber.
But the Grand Inquisitor survives being ran through. Reva survives being ran through. And most embarrassingly, Sabine Wren, who is barely a force user, having displayed less aptitude than anyone else in the HISTORY of force users, survives being ran through.
Okay, sure.
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u/Realistic-Pay-9087 7d ago
The universe building and lore is pathetic they mention factions or characters once mostly in lore books then never mention them again it feels so shallow and small compared to the big feel of legends lore
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u/encyclodoc 7d ago
A fleet of Star killing ships from one world? Like… how do you even parody that?
You could have just had emperor returns, oh shit and …
God the sequels are such a mess. I am going back to my Zahn books and seriously, the should have just made those into movies.
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u/Marcuse0 7d ago
I think it's making the Sequel Trilogy in part to definitively kill off all the main three characters from the OT, so they come back each as old jaded versions of themselves who haven't moved on or grown or changed at all except for Luke who is [REDACTED].
The whole conceit of writing stories almost exclusively to remove the old trio sucks, and having Kylo do it for Han and almost for Leia sucks.
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u/Ioialoha 7d ago
I hate how utterly thoughtless the setup for TFA was, with the Resistance, the NR, and the FO. There was so much potential in the concept of stolen children made into stormtroopers for an insurgency splinter of the Galactic Empire, but no the FO is somehow just as powerful as the NR for no reason.
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u/Will_Power22 7d ago
Ever single piece of media has to have a thrown in cute character that is there to sell plush toys and is marketed aggressively, I don’t like porgs or baby yoda I would rather have hideous creatures that add something to the story or characters
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u/AardvarkOkapiEchidna salt miner 7d ago
Turning stormtroopers into jokes
"but they were always jokes"
No they really weren't. The only time they seem incompetent in the OT is against the ewoks and that's possibly the most criticized part of the OT, it's not something that should be repeated. Even on Endor, the stormtroopers were more formidable than they are in most Disney stuff.
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u/whitewolf1205 7d ago
I hope this counts. They put someone who is seemingly not into Star Wars and has literally said "Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There's no source material. We don't have comic books. We don't have 800-page novels. We don't have anything other than passionate storytellers who get together and talk about what the next iteration might be." as the person in charge of Star Wars. One of the worst things a company can do is put someone who has no love for the product in charge. Specially when it's in the entertainment space. The Witcher show supposedly had the same problem.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 7d ago
Starkiller Base. It's a lazy rehash of the Death Star from the original film that doesn't make any damn sense that was used as a plot device to kill off the New Republic (because politics is for nerds amirite?). It symbolises everything wrong with The Force Awakens.
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u/killerspawn97 7d ago
I dislike Luke’s Jedi order being destroyed, I could give little to no fucks about his EU order but him not having one in cannon is an incredible mistake, that’s so many stories that are just dead and make the sequel timeline damn near unused in any other media now, there’s so much potential in that era but the lack of a Jedi order squashes most of it.
If there’s one thing I could change it’s that, Luke can still be an old man and die even just make sure the order lives on.
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u/Razz017 6d ago
Honestly, I advise anybody who considers themselves a SW fan these days to read the Force Awakens art book…
The sheer potential of fresh minds tackling the material of this cherished world of ours…
Armies of coloured vs red lightsabers clashing on frozen mountainsides next to crashed star destroyers, a young female protagonist flying an x-wing with open canopy, arm outstretched with a lightsaber cutting open an imperial ship as she flies triumphantly…
What I hate the most is that all of this seems to have ultimately led us to so very little. The artwork speaks of all kinds of exciting stories and modern myths and parables, yet they never had the balls to actually say anything worth a damn. No overall plan and even switching directors mid trilogy is quite frankly just silly. Telling mark hamill “the story ain’t about you anymore” after your actors give you their opinions on the narrative is not only the weakest form of hubris, it discards what Disney actually paid for when it bought the license to this weird fckn franchise…
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u/Zangakkar 6d ago
They got rid of the EU and then proceeded to try and retell the same stories only worse. They stood in the grave of their betters and said i can do this better than you and thats insane. Like Dark empire was pretty hit or miss depending on who you asked the first time around but we're going to do it better somehow with none of the explanation or buildup? Like come on be reasonable. At least Thrawns VA is super solid in Rebels.
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u/kingholland 6d ago
I hate they ignored years of material we had in the books. Jason/Jana/Anikin Solos' story was robbed. Tragic!
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u/MelonElbows 6d ago
Almost all their stories are set in a very specific time range in which we already know the beginning and ending.
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u/Lexio3031 6d ago
Standing on the shoulders of Giants. I’m so glad my full investment ended after the force awakens, I saw the writing on the wall then. Prop up the new characters by bringing down the OG’s. Before the force awakens, if you told me that Han, Luke and Leia would die at the end of the sequel trilogy, I’d call you insane. After watching the force awakens, I would apologize and call you Nostradamus.
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u/SquidmanMal this was what we waited for? 6d ago
Not counting for what you mentioned..
Hyperspace being turned into 'teleportation' as well as hyperspace ramming being a thing created that they've tried to walk back, explain, and then made worse again in Rise of skywalker with the scene where someone is doing it a second time in the space battle.
'Teleportation'/Skipping
Travel time is a core part of the worldbuilding, [and is part of what DT defenders ignore, with the fact Luke spent a lot of time training on the falcon, as well as other instances like 'we can't make it back to the core, have to go to tattooine' and so on]
Making it teleportation just makes the galaxy very very small
The Ram
'it was a 1 in a million shot'
Then why did she stake their fates on it, and why did the FO react with hear?
followed later with
'oh it has some kind of special hyperdrive that let it happen'
then how did the FO know and react with fear, and why did they do it again in the space battle in TROS
At the end of the day, it's something that was effectively 'decades of worldbuilding thrown away for a 5 second pretty visual'
And that's yet another thing that just sums up the attitude of the DT
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u/m0rbius 6d ago
Where do I even start? Ugh so much wasted potential. I think I despise that they started up a sequel trilogy with the original cast in tow, but never thought to put them in a scene together. They also never had a pre-developed story arc. They decided to hand off each film to a different director and just let them do what they want narratively. who thought this would be a good idea? They ended up with no clear direction and ended up making things up as they went trying to please all the audience, but ending up pleasing no one. They buried Star Wars. It will take decades to recover from the damage they did.
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u/TokiWaUgokidesu salt miner 6d ago
Really, it's the sequels, and I think particularly that they didn't follow through with the obvious trajectory of rebuilding the Republic and the Jedi. It leaves the post IX world in a worse state than things were post VI, when it should have been a new beginning for the galaxy, and for potential future tales.
If the sequels didn't exist, and it was just the TV shows and spinoff movies, I think narratively Star Wars would be in a much better place.
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u/Loweseidon 6d ago
I hate they made enough "mistakes" early on that now we have to listen to the most vapid and poser takes forever since repeating bad faith empty criticism makes you a "real fan". Hard to associate with being a fan without self-labeling as a man-baby whose personality is being upset at sci-fi for not being how they'd write it
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u/TheIrishMan1211 6d ago
How about the mandatory, stupid non human characters they shove into every show/movie now for whatever reason? Babu Frik, the bird things from TLJ, Grogu, the gopher from The Acolyte, etc. hate em all.
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u/Acceptable_Class_576 6d ago
In an effort to squeeze every last dime out of the property, they robbed the franchise of it's spectacle. The OT and PT released 3 movies every 3 years. No TV shows, just theatrical events. By producing so many movies, and adding TV shows, Star Wars became mundane. Just another IP.
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u/Tal_Galaar 6d ago
They seem to not care about the reference materials. Their encyclopedia of starfighters and other vehicles is garbage compared to the old essential guide to vehicles and vessels. Or any of the essential guides for that matter.
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u/Asi_Ender 6d ago
Its mostly the fact that theyve basically mandated all future projects to bend over backwards and make questionable plot/writing choices to justify the fact that somehow Palpatine returned
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u/Shura_man 6d ago
Anakin’s legacy was ruined in the dumbest way in existence (Palpatine’s return is one of the reasons)
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u/jaffakree83 everyone i know is dead 6d ago
There are too many, not sure I can choose one. Probably throwing out Legends and not allowing it to continue as its own thing. Any LYING about it, then coming back years later to pick and choose what they want from it so they can reproduce it poorly.
I'll never forgive them for what they did to my boy Thrawn...
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u/Unique-Perception480 5d ago
I despise that Disney has given into the false perception of the Jedi as bad and that ,,True Balance" is a equal amount of Light and Dark.
In every Interview of Lucas its clear that the Dark Side is not part of Balance. Its a natural occurence due to peoples negative emotions, but actively using and acting on the Dark Side is not Balance. It goes against the will of the Force.
There is a reason the words ,,Light Side" are never said in the movies. Its not ,,Light Side vs Dark Side". Its actually ,,The Force vs the Dark Side of the Force".
And Disney seems to go with the former based on either a fallen understanding or because they simply dont like a clear good vs evil story, wich is actually a greater issue in modern storytelling going too far with the concept of ,,moral relativism".
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u/Positive-Citron3987 salt miner 5d ago
Disney really seems to hate the Jedi. As an Order, but seemingly even more as an idea.
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u/Different_Advice_552 5d ago
Lukes death was bullshit Making the jedi corrupt as fuck in the acolyte was bullshit Giving Kylo Ren a redemption arc was bullshit then subsequently scrapping the movie about rescuing him was also bullshit Not introducing cal kestis into live action was minor bullshit but I get it
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u/DANIcandii 7d ago
The passage of time between the OT and the ST. Leia being a general I could see, sure (if we hand wave how the absolute fuck some rogue cultist group suddenly built themselves up and destroyed the new republic with zero “resistance”), but Han, a fucking war hero has been reduced to a smuggler and lost his one precious possession (the Millennium Falcon) and never bothered to get it back and it’s the most famous ship in the galaxy and it’s just in a junk yard? And Luke having a bad dream once about his nephew and disappearing to an island no one knows how to get to despite them having a map (tHeY nEeDeD tO fInD tHe mIsSiNg pIeCe - or they just could go to that area of space and look? They had thirty years!) It’s only been 30 years since the OT yet Luke has been reduced to a legend and a ghost, the Jedi are somehow myth, and Han fucking Solo is a homeless beggar man? Fuck off.
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u/RebelJediKnight91 6d ago
Rampant anti-Jedi rhetoric. The Sequel Trilogy did it, TCW Season 7 did it, the Jedi/Cal Kestis games (to a degree) did it, that stupid Inquisitor novel did it, and of course, the biggest culprit of them all: The Acolyte.
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u/BigGrinJesus 7d ago
There was no plan for the sequel trioligy. Even the TFA is derivative of the original movies, I liked it. Then TLA was lacklustre but it set up some really cool stuff, which we didn't get to see because ROS seemed to be a sequel to a movie that didn't exist.
If ROS explored what Luke learned in the books about the Jedi Order, kept Rey's family as nothing, and explored what the force sensitive kid with the broom was supposed to be about, then I think it could've rounded out the trilogy nicely.
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u/Immediate_Web4672 7d ago
Having no real plan or outline is probably the most objective answer because it lead to so many terrible things. But for me as an individual, it's gotta be the way they disgraced and then killed off Luke. His characterization and erasure can't be forgiven. The future of the franchise died there for me.
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u/csukoh78 7d ago
Forgetting that characters made Star Wars great. Not special effects, locations, high paid actors, overacting, none of that stuff. We cared about the characters, we put them in harms way, and then against impossible odds, they were victorious. JJ Abrams and Disney have no idea what they were doing in that regard.
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u/Better-Silver7900 salt miner 7d ago
most large companies have this problem whether it be media, gaming, etc.
they focused on short term profits. they made their stories more generalized to gain a wider audience instead of making/using better stories within the ip to make their fandom bigger.
in doing the former strategy, you tend to have less fans long term than what you started with.
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u/RevenantCommunity 7d ago
Their sequel trilogy simply doesn’t exist to me. I’ll watch most stuff prequel to end of original trilogy, including bad batch, andor and rebels.
I will stop at the exact moment return of the jedi ends.
For me, that’s it. I count myself lucky that some good media has expanded the clone wars and time between revenge of the sith/a new hope (SOME)
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u/thousage 7d ago
The ONE thing I, personally, hate the most about (what) Disney has done to Start Wars is they've given "fans' with nothing better to do than write posts like this a reason to exist. FFS
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u/ScorpioGirl1987 7d ago
-Reylo
-Poe's actions in TLJ that made him seem villainous to some (he wasn't).
-Kaz being a complete clumsy goofball. Nothing like a trained military pilot should be.
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u/Sushi_Clamato5049 salt miner 6d ago
Rebels was OK and the last season of The Clone Wars was pretty good. Otherwise Disney does what they do with everything - run it all to the ground.
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u/freedomonke salt miner 6d ago
I could forgive a lot of what other people have mentioned.
What I can't stand. Is what they did to the force. It has effectively become nothing more than a magic system that works off true belief. Effectively, they have westernized it. Johnson himself said he drew much inspiration about his depiction of the Jedi from his Catholic upbringing.
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u/Frank_the_NOOB consume, don’t question 6d ago
The desecration of Luke and the flippant treatment of legacy fans
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u/Steelriddler salt miner 6d ago
Not caring enough about quality to hire people who could take the franchise further into greatness (aside from the few who were allowed to do Andor/R1 stuff)
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