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Basically what was more cringey? to me episode 8 was more in the sense that Resistance fleet was so pathetic in comparison to size of the Star Wars galaxy

Episode was horrible in a lot of ways.. from the Star Destroyers all have a huge phallic like planet cracking mega-laser attached to them all, to Palpatine somehow still being alive, to Snoke being utterly worthless as an actual character.

The only saving grace to episode 8 was the scene where Rey and Kylo Ren fight Snoke and his royal guard

I Wanna say eight, yeah. There’s defying expectations, but it gets dumb when you just take every plot hook that was left for you and do the opposite of what people expect for every one and clip them all off.

I do feel because its Star Wars some people are way too quick to come up with some ridiculous thing to plug the plot holes, but then some people are way too critical saying it wasnt entertaining or atleast "cinematic"

How about all 3, they all are recycled ep 4-6, exact same story, different looks.

 AduroT wrote:
I Wanna say eight, yeah. There’s defying expectations, but it gets dumb when you just take every plot hook that was left for you and do the opposite of what people expect for every one and clip them all off.

Yeah the issue wasn't doing the opposite. The issue was then also tying them into neat little bows that can't go anywhere. I remember when I came out of the theater for episode 8, while my opinion was still forming I said to my wife "I enjoyed watching that movie, but I have no idea where the franchise is supposed to go from here."

I think 9 is the cringiest. I was fully engaged while watching episode 8 and the movie fell apart for me afterward when I tried to discuss and analyze what happened and predict what was next. Episode 9 never engaged me in the first place, and we were engaging in a live episode of Rifftrax/MST3K while we watched.

Episode 8 is bad but I think 9 possibly surpasses it for cringeyness. Just in the first 30-40 minutes we have the pointless fan service of the Emperor, Leia and Lando all showing up (TBF, Leia at least serves a purpose in the plot). Then there's the whole thing with 3P0 that makes no sense, combined with a desperate attempt to give Poe some edgy back story. Also, there are two "mystery" plot points in the middle of the movie involving who the FO spy is and whether Chewie died when Rey zapped the shuttle and both seem to initially be played as straight-up cliffhanger moments only to be resolved really quickly. Then there's the sudden appearance of the Resistance fleet at the end and the cavalry charge from Finn and...some other character who is so instantly forgettable I can't even remember if they were male or female.

So Episode 8 makes no real difference to the franchise if it exists or not because it doesn't really tie to the film before it or after it in a meaningful way but Episode 9 probably has more cringe overall.

But there's only 6, next you'll be trying to tell us there's 4 Indy films

Episode 8 just makes a farce of the “resistance” and doesn’t really help set out the hazard of the first order. The original trilogy had a galactic empire, and a well organised rebellion from multiple planets with commensurate equipment provided. The resistance seems to be a bunch of guys that like camping with their pick up spaceships.

Empire strikes Back has the best sci-fi war scene ever put to screen for it’s depiction of a substantial and dug in defending force trying to hold just long enough for everyone else to escape. Episode 8 is just a bit crap by comparison. But the dust plumes look pretty I guess.

It is a hard call. On the plus side there are a lot more jokes that can be made about episode 9 (I like the one where the star destroyer they are standing on rotates 90 degrees and everyone falls off).

The royal guard fight scene in 8 was atrocious. There are bits when the extras actually manage to kill Rey so they removed the light sabre from the guards hands suddenly. Nothing like the fights in the previous set of bad but not as bad films.

I think arguing which worse is hard when even now I thankfully have forgotten much of them. I never figured out why the sides existed, how they existed and what else was going on in the galaxy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:

Empire strikes Back has the best sci-fi war scene ever put to screen for it’s depiction of a substantial and dug in defending force trying to hold just long enough for everyone else to escape. Episode 8 is just a bit crap by comparison. But the dust plumes look pretty I guess.

I love Rogue One when they depict what happens when a raiding guerrilla force (the rebel fleet doing a hit and run on scarif) gets caught by an organised military force (the imperial Navy warps in and catches them in the act). I.e. massacred.

Something I dislike the mandalorian series for is the baddies being totally incompetent. There is zero peril. Disney doesn't seem to realise the baddies have to have some level of competence or whats the point?

None of the examples cited so far hold a candle to the sheer cringe factor of people who, without prompting, bring up these same tired arguments at the drop of a hat.

Like, seriously OP, what are you trying to dredge up here?

Anyway, as always, which movie it is depends on your priorities. TLJ gets a lot of criticism for 'subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations' which was the common critique of the hatemongering youtubers after its release, but it's pretty clear now most of those cited elements were in service of setting up a third movie that they ultimately didn't make. As such, it introduces a lot of surprise contradictions in the lore that Rise ended up frantically backpedaling on.

This wouldn't be as galling if not for the fact that TLJ is by and large the tightest actual movie of the sequel trilogy, and people resort to playing scenes in super slow-motion in order to point out technical issues - not something you need to do to see the many technical issues of the Prequel Trilogy.

Inversely, Rise is just awkward from start to finish. The whole movie is a long series of expo-dumps to justify shifting the narrative away from what TLJ had meant to be paid off in the Duel of the Fates treatment and towards the things that the loudest and most obnoxious fan groups were fixated on. So Kylo Ren goes from being a cruel, manipulative piece of gak who killed billions of people to a missunderstood wee puppy, the First Order goes from being an interstellar shadow-government to a bunch of yelping kids impressed by the idea of having a whole fleet when all supporting material says they already have several, and control the galaxy's main ship construction hubs, and just everybody in general loses all sense of agency and identity in favor of bowing and scraping before the older generation.

And you don't even need to play it at slow motion to see how dumb any of that is.

Still doesn't compare to Attack of the Clones, though. Yeesh!

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I never figured out why the sides existed, how they existed and what else was going on in the galaxy.

Neither did the directors.

 Flinty wrote:
Episode 8 just makes a farce of the “resistance” and doesn’t really help set out the hazard of the first order. The original trilogy had a galactic empire, and a well organised rebellion from multiple planets with commensurate equipment provided. The resistance seems to be a bunch of guys that like camping with their pick up spaceships.

My favourite thing about Episode 8 is the realisation that at the end, despite the hopeful scene with the little kid in the stables, the entirety of the Resistance now fits inside the Millennium Falcon. And that's precisely because they don't build them up to be anything other than this random bunch of guys.

Slipspace wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Episode 8 just makes a farce of the “resistance” and doesn’t really help set out the hazard of the first order. The original trilogy had a galactic empire, and a well organised rebellion from multiple planets with commensurate equipment provided. The resistance seems to be a bunch of guys that like camping with their pick up spaceships.

My favourite thing about Episode 8 is the realisation that at the end, despite the hopeful scene with the little kid in the stables, the entirety of the Resistance now fits inside the Millennium Falcon. And that's precisely because they don't build them up to be anything other than this random bunch of guys.

What's even better is they end back in the situation they were in the start of the movie (except with even fewer resources). The enemy fleet is in orbit of the planet they're on, and they still have to escape.
They killed a lot of their own people, but they achieved... nothing at all.

Neither was particular 'cringe,' just poor filmmaking. 8 had the additional burden of being pointless.

EP 8 for me, because it was so bad it broke me of any new SW material. I saw it free and regret the time wasted. I won't give Disney any more money for SW.

I actually like 8. It's way way too long and would be well served by having some indulgences trimmed, but it has some of my favorite scenes in the franchise in a place where it could explore some new ground. I would have loved a real sequel to it that saw Kylo as the villain with a focus on the people fighting for themselves.

9 is just.... awful. I don't think anyone likes it. It's just boring, both rushed and too long, super cliche and fails to capitalize on anything interesting about the characters. I think 2 still sits at the bottom for the franchise, but 9 actually gives it a run for its money.

Episode 9.

8 had some mis steps in it's pacing but 8 theme wise was a shot in the arm that starwars sorely needed in that it was breaking away from the traditional 1 or 2 blood lines of super jedi.

The idea that Rey was nobody, that the hero could be anybody. It was powerful and could be moved on to tell any number of other stories across the entire galaxy.

Instead, episode 9 placed us right back onto starwars street. Everyone knows and/or is related to everyone. The galaxy is as small as it ever was. And it was so ham fisted in it's doing of it.

Great.

Id agree with a lot of the opinions here, while 8 infuraited a lot of people (myself included) its not a badly made film, it just completely ran the series into a dead end storywise.

9 on the other hand is a horrible mess of bad dialogue, underwritten characters and a plot that well..im not sure if it has a plot at all really because theres so much going on so quickly I tuned out about 20mins into the film.

Admittedly it has one GREAT scene i will admit (Han/Kylo) which was very well handled, but the whole thing with chewie being resolved immediately in the next scene robs the moment of any form of impact at all. Similarly with Hux, in the Force Awakens, i kinda liked the idea that Hux and Kylo had a hate/hate relationship and vied for snokes attention, but last jedi turned Hux into a snivelling joke, and then 9 comes along and could have given us a great character momment for him, but the reveal is done in such a pathetic way that again, it loses any impact.

Thats my overall thoughts on 9, coulda been great, but everything was so rushed and muddled that nothing particularly stands out. Very possibly the most "5 out of 10" film I have ever seen, compared with The Last Jedi, which while I didnt like how it made me feel, at least managed to make me feel something about it.

 Lance845 wrote:
Episode 9.

8 had some mis steps in it's pacing but 8 theme wise was a shot in the arm that starwars sorely needed in that it was breaking away from the traditional 1 or 2 blood lines of super jedi.

The idea that Rey was nobody, that the hero could be anybody. It was powerful and could be moved on to tell any number of other stories across the entire galaxy.

Instead, episode 9 placed us right back onto starwars street. Everyone knows and/or is related to everyone. The galaxy is as small as it ever was. And it was so ham fisted in it's doing of it.

Great.

Yes. Its as if a big galaxy was too much. I await the revelation that Boba fett is Luke's cousins, mothers, tennis partner.

Rogue 1 was the last decent Star Wars movie made.
Episode 8 was so cringe worthy I didn’t even bother with 9.
Disney has taken the movie franchise and covered it in crap. The Mandalorian is SWs last saving grace, and even then, while it’s not great, it’s an acceptable Star Wars series.

I didn’t bother watching ep 9 after seeing 8, as I felt there was really no where to take the series, and rebooting the first two movies into worse versions was a terrible idea. So I can only speak about 8. But it was bad enough that I stopped watching all Star Wars movies that came after.

Prince GW rings up a great point.

TLJ may have made me feel angry or disappointed. TROS made me feel nothing at all. Well, contempt.

Definitely 9. 8 is bad, but "reasonably bad", I mean it's an average modern SW episode. To be fair I think 2,3,7,8 and 9 are basically all on the same level, with the last episode that was probably the worst so far. Ep1 was slightly better, but only because of Darth Maul.

But honestly I think anything SW related that was released after Return of the Jedi is cringey to some degree.

The Mandalorian in nice to watch but I think it's extremely overrated. Yes, compared to all SW stuff that was released in the last 35 years it's amazing, but there's a ton of sci-fi tv series that are vastly superior.

I would have actually really loved 8 if it had just ended with Rey and Kylo joining forces to try and use the resources of the empire for the good of the galaxy.

The fact that they wussed out at just that exact critical moment, but kept in all the subverting of the expected Star Wars moments destroyed any hope for the franchise. Ep 9 was just a shuffling around of the ashes.

Ep 8 would have been interesting if they'd actually stuck the landing. The themes were there - that in attempting to repress any possible negative emotion (fear, grief, anger) the old jedi order believed that they were enlightened but were instead incapable of understanding the natural, justified emotions Anakin had that then lead to his embracing the easy simplistic answers offered by palpatine. And that Luke and the Rebellion can't build a functioning, real society simply by attempting to destroy all of the vast military and civilian resources that had been claimed by the empire.

The moral of episode 8 could have been that to truly win, the good guys had to accept that they couldn't treat everything the empire had ever claimed or built as an irredeemable evil that needed to be destroyed, and they couldn't cede every feeling that could possibly lead to evil to the black and white 'dark side/light side' interpretation.

People ask 'where can you go from "rey's parents were nobodies who abandoned her for no higher purpose at all, just money because they needed to eat" and I'm just like...what do you mean, where do you go from that? That's the exact kind of morality that Star Wars has NEVER explored, NEVER stepped into.

Anakin happened because of the philosophy of the "Light Side" of the force, not because of the philosophy of the cartoonish evil of the Dark Side. He happened because the Light Side rejected strength and therefore the old republic allowed societies like Tatooine with child slavery to exist despite the Jedi knowing full well about it. He happened because the Light Side told Anakin he had to completely leave behind his old life and reject any kind of righteous anger he might feel about being born into fething chattel slavery, and then told him he had to reject the grief of his mother's death, and push down the fear that he might lose his only other loved one.

Rey's story being a mirror of Anakin's rather than Luke's would have made for a much, much better story, and the setup of her character - a child born into impossibly harsh circumstances who is handed incredible personal power and strength before they're fully emotionally mature - and then have the outcome reflect the contrast between the old, shortsighted jedi that failed Anakin and the new, more truly wise Jedi that could have been showcased by Luke and the spirit of Yoda.

They could have done all that, but they fethed it up right at the end. Rey could have realized that being the good guy doesn't always have to mean rejecting any kind of strength and allowing evil and injustice to roll over millions of innocent people, and Kylo realizing that strength is not something to be simply worshipped and followed regardless of what evils are done with that strength.

And then...I don't know, whatever, have Palpatine be still alive and trying to manipulate everything at the end and have the big climactic final battle be between Kylo and Rey and the very early stages of a reformed and unified galactic army versus the culmination of all of palpatine's schemes and plots and capital D Destiny.

I mean.... the First Order wiped out an entire star system of planets. That's not something that you just say, "okay, maybe there's two sides to this". I'd say one of the most well done scenes of the new trilogy is the nihilist hate of Hux's speech as they commit mass genocide. Shame the genocide itself is so confusingly depicted that you need to read a book to have it explained.

Personally, I don't think there's been a better opportunity for storytelling than the end of 8. The mystery boxes were never compelling and never the point. No one left 4 wondering who Vader was or who Luke's parents were (in part because Ep4 had answers already).

TLJ ends with an actual conflict. Kylo is a real villain, having accomplished everything he believed he needed to prove himself but ultimately robbed of the victory he most craved. All official organizations opposed to the First Order have been defeated, but the galaxy is still full of heroes, inspired by those who stood against tyranny before.

Honestly, the Treverrow script, while woefully unfinished and still full of problems, really shows how great the final direction for the film could have been. That's not to say it actually would have been great, just that the idea that there was no where to go after a movie that actually established a real conflict seems kind of ridiculous. Stories are not about surprise reveals; particularly of the brand that Star Wars has gotten stuck in.

8 gave it its best shot, but 9 just edges it out.

I mean, 8 had those absolutely ridiculous and incredibly stupid bombers, i'm not even going to start on what was wrong with them.

Also, 8 makes fuel a major issue for the first time. the 8th movie of a triple trilogy is the first one that mentions fuel for ships and it's a major plot point? Luke's fighter effortlessly jumps from star system to star system with nary a thought for how much fuel it has in empire, suddenly a fleet is crippled buy fuel shortage. Waaay too late to bring that into the storyline by then especially since it was never even mentioned once in any of the movies before it.

Also, hyperspace ramming? Why not use it against a death star if it can be done? Again a major plot point that should have been mentioned long ago.

Yeah, 8 had enough stuff in it to cause concussion inducting facepalms, but in 9 ....

Ok, first palpy returns. Ok, i guess if obiwan, yoda and luke can force ghost maybe palpy had a dark side version, like maybe a lich has his phylactery, and maybe only a dark side user would be so adamant about staying on this plane to weidl power over it like, say, Xykon on order of the stick, and yes palpy did mention a sith overcoming death. Still, why not go with a new villain instead of recycling that cackling carrion?

The way the falcon was hyperskipping around. Yeesh, In the first movie solo said it took careful calculations to make a jump, now they're just a skippin' along at random, right into an inhabited planet's atmosphere even. Talk about star trek having consistency issues!

So now star destroyers have planet destroyer weapons. Great, I mean i know tech advances but the smallest planet destroyer we saw was the death star mk 1, now we've got planet killers on star destroyers, that's like what? reducing the size by a factor of 10,000 or so? If they had that why bother with starkiller base in the first sequel, it makes zero sens..oh, star wars. right.

Then hell, for a grand finale' palpy suddenly become full blown comic book uber villain and can immobilize an entire fleet, an armada of vessels ass by his hunched over saggy self with a god level force lightning gakstorm that cripples an entire fleet. Hell, why have a starfleet then? Just a royal yacht carrying 'is omnipotence around to enforce order.

Honestly i have to stop now, i;'m actually getting kind of dizzy contemplating the level of grand mal cringe inducing things in TROS, if i even start to bring up how kylo stupidly went to fight palpy after throwing away the only weapon he had or how chewie survived being on the shuttle rey exploded i'm going to lose consciousness and my face is going to fall right onto my keybowejhdpodpq2ddp23r-134q9ewqoe

 Matt Swain wrote:
the 8th movie of a triple trilogy is the first one that mentions fuel for ships and it's a major plot point? Luke's fighter effortlessly jumps from star system to star system with nary a thought for how much fuel it has in empire, suddenly a fleet is crippled buy fuel shortage. Waaay too late to bring that into the storyline by then especially since it was never even mentioned once in any of the movies before it.

After escaping Naboo with two Jedi, why did Queen Amidala's ship stop at Tatooine?

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
the 8th movie of a triple trilogy is the first one that mentions fuel for ships and it's a major plot point? Luke's fighter effortlessly jumps from star system to star system with nary a thought for how much fuel it has in empire, suddenly a fleet is crippled buy fuel shortage. Waaay too late to bring that into the storyline by then especially since it was never even mentioned once in any of the movies before it.

After escaping Naboo with two Jedi, why did Queen Amidala's ship stop at Tatooine?

Their hyperdrive engine was damaged. They needed parts for the engine. not fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_–_The_Phantom_Menace

 Frazzled wrote:
EP 8 for me, because it was so bad it broke me of any new SW material.

Me too. Phantom Menace was close..... but I carried on. 8 destroyed the last remnants of Star Wars love from me.

I have ranted plenty of other places about why that is, so I will leave it at that. I never even bothered watching Ep 9.

I think which you find cringier is less about the films themselves (they're both deeply flawed and unrewarding) but about what you type of flaws you find worse.

TLJ is, in theory at least, a fairly ambitious attempt to tell a different kind of story, and move past the "mystery box" storytelling of ROTF. It did things that we didn't expect, and showed us different sides of characters. OTOH... the main plot reads like fanfiction written by somebody whose only exposure to star wars was reading the plot summaries on wikipedia. It's got big "rough draft" energy. I found parts compelling, but I've had no interest in going back to watch any of them.

ROS was the safest, "play the hits" type of movie that could possibly be made. Palpatine returning seems to basically invalidate the entire original trilogy, and the rest of the plot is pretty much what you'd expect, only louder and brighter. It has big "this was the 45th draft by a dozen writers" energy. By shamelessly playing to nostalgia, there were dopamine hits (lando! realizing the droids are the common thread, palpatine taunting a jedi!) I've likewise had no interest in returning to them.

The fact that Force Awakens isn't on this list, despite also being a too cute, nostalgia ridden rehash, shows that the bar for ROS was low, and it failed to clear it. TLJ, while clearly a failure, at least tried to do something fresh.

For me, ROS being so boring and bad while playing safe is cringier than TLJs dumb plot.

Im really surprised people are comparing the cringe levels of 8 and 9 to 2 and 3.

I don't argue that 2 and 3 were more "entertaining" and "cinematic;" However, from a cringe standpoint 8 and 9 were FAR more cringey. 8 and 9 had some of the biggest plot holes and ridiculous world breaking rules introduced, sure they had good production values, but people are clearly citing all sorts of cringe in this post that came from 8 and 9 without really giving any examples from 2 and 3. No one has even introduced the point in 8 where suddenly now Star-ships can hyper-space ram other vessels, or that the Resistance "leader" had to stay sacrifice herself to do it while if she was important she could have delegated the task to a volunteer or a freaking droid.

I actually really enjoyed Rogue One and Solo, and I feel really let down by Disney that 8 and 9 were just so freaking cringey.

I think TFA being... fine? Pretty good? Some form of decent? Anyway, I think TFA being a competent movie that doesn't make us mad or confuse the hell out of us was seen as a sign that we could sort the star wars movies into three tiers: 4-6, which were great, the new ones, were are decent, and the prequels, which remain trash. Rogue one being legit good really fed into that view.

AS more new movies came out, the simmering embers of love for ROTS mad things muddier, and the complete lack of narrative focus in the sequel trilogy made the prequels, in comparison, seem neatly plotted.

When speaking of prequel cringe, I think it's just assumed. TPM is just a dumpster fire built around a good lightsabre battle and John Williams last great work, but Jar Jar provides all the cringe you could ever want. AOTC makes no sense, but also has "I hate sand," "deathsticks," and the indignity of watching Yoda turn into Sonic the Hedgehog.