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I just realized something about the Sequel Trilogy

They're essentially the 90's Batman movies.

Batman / The Force Awakens - The basics of a story you love repackaged for the modern day. Could be thematically denser, but a satisfying popcorn movie. Mega-blockbuster.

Batman Returns / The Last Jedi - Nobody can agree on this fucking thing. Some say it's the best of them (Me!) with a more complex story and characters, others say it's a try-hard mess and are not fans of the angular pacing or tonal whiplash of contemplative darkness one second, then extremely cartoonish antics the next.

Batman Forever / The Rise Of Skywalker - Almost unanimously agreed as a mess. Production was a shitshow (Staff got shafted mid-production, studio tried to course correct back to a safer direction after BR/TLJ's reception). However, a longer and perhaps more realized cut exists, somewhere...

Batman & Robin / ??? - Don't even think about it LucasFilm.
 
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pel1300

Member
Kids actually liked Returns as it was enjoyable at the time. TLJ was simply not made for kids. Only adults who were hardcore SW geeks since childhood who were in denial claimed to love TLJ.

Now almost everyone hates TLJ. ROS performed terribly outside North America and the UK(and a few other counties that grew up with the OT) thanks to TLJ.
 
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pel1300

Member
Wow at how poorly this ST was handled...and BO receipts demonstrate how it basically rode off nostalgia in certain Western countries and did poorly elsewhere outside of Japan....even the detractors predicted around 1.4 billion since it was the final "Skywalker Saga" episode). Even the critics average is 52% along with 6.7 IMDB score. A couple years ago who would have guessed that an R rated stand alone Joker movie would outperform it so much outside North America (738 million vs 558 internationally). Not just that but worldwide mediocre blockbuster movies like Captain Marvel, Aquaman, Fate of the Furious, Jurassic World FK, and Venom far out grossed it, RoS not even in the top 30 of all time. Crazy times.

As for the film itself - more entertaining than TLJ definitely but one of the messiest plot in the saga. Knights of Ren were so wasted. What a waste of such cool character designs. Lando's rescue part should have been at the end of TLJ. Clearly they just brought him back because Carrie Fisher passed away. Don't get me started on the pacing in the first act and the macguffin hunts lol.

New rankings:

ESB
ANH
ROTJ
ROTS
TFA (Before TLJ I ranked it tied with ROTJ)
RO
Solo
TPM (Duel of the Fates scene alone puts it above AOTC and RoS)
AOTC / RoS tie
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
TLJ still by far the last.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Staff got shafted mid-production, studio tried to course correct back to a safer direction after BR/TLJ's reception)
TLJ wasn't going in any direction tho. it brought nothing besides cynicism to the table. all the "great ideas" from a mythical third Rian movie are him and his stans projecting. it's still a bad guy force user fighting the rebels at the end of the movie. even the Jedi order is intact with Rey carrying the books. there never was a grand vision of where to go, this is why he turned down directing the final movie. if he had a great idea we would have heard something. it never existed.

i don't really think ROS was meant as a course correction. the plan was to mine nostalgia all along, and even Rian's movie does so, relentlessly. it's just that TLJ stans convinced themselves that movie didn't and their was this amazing mythical new direction bc they bought Rian's hype.
 
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Neil Young

Member
Batman Returns was pretty bad. Penguins with rocket launchers? If you haven't listened to these "Kevin Smith commentary" on YouTube , they are pretty fun to have going on the background while watching...or, if you're familiar enough with the movie, to watch by themselves.
 
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To think people would dedicate a whole account to hit a movie they didn't like LOL.

But if we're doing rankings:

- Empire Strikes Back
- The Last Jedi
- Revenge Of The Sith
- A New Hope
- Rogue One
- The Force Awakens
- Return Of The Jedi
- Attack Of The Clones
- Solo
- The Rise Of Skywalker
- The Phantom Menace

________

- The Dark Knight
- Batman Returns
- Batman '89
- Batman Begins
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Batman Forever
- Batman Vs. Superman
- Batman & Robin
 
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