Star Wars... it's not just a series of movies, it's a cultural phenomena. I'm not a huge fan, but I've seen all of them to be up on pop-culture. And I don't mind them. 4 and 5 were good. 6 diverged as Lucas replaced Kurtz as Producer, took more control, and converted the series from serious adult story into merchandising for kids. Then Lucas ruined 1, 2, 3, and his re-edits of 4 let us know he was trite, shallow, and not good at listening to anyone with better instincts than his own. When Disney took over 7, 8, 9, Lucas criticized them for doing what he'd already done. And while none of them were great, they were better than any Lucas was most involved in (6, 1, 2, 3, or the re-edits of 4). And both Solo and Rogue 1 were the best (most adult) of the Series to me.
| Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (2019)
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Star Wars: episode 9 (or 11 depending on how you count): The Rise of Skywalker. My Mom and I do a movie every year -- it's a way to spend time together without pushing buttons. Like a storm trooper missing a urinal at 2 feet, it wasn’t unexpected. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t exactly 1, 2, or 3 either. It wrapped up the story lines in a somewhat predictable way. And yes, a little Girl Power’y, and a whole lot of failure of being consistent with it’s own canon... but Disney didn’t ruin it — it was ruined with the ewok’s taking on blasters with spears and rocks in Empire strikes back, and Lucas’s various remakes of Han Solo shooting a bounty hunter first, and failing to reveal Jar Jar Binks as the Dark Lord of the Sith. So whatever. If you like Star Wars, it’s not the worst of them. If you hate Star Wars, it isn’t going to change your mind. I think the series is over-rated... but this wasn’t exactly the ending to Game of Thrones bad.
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| Star Wars: I-VI (Links)
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I'm not going to do rehashed reviews that covers the basics: Lucas is a hack that ruined the series after Episode V, and stuff like that. It wasn't THAT bad, it was just a shallow shell of what it could have been, if George was deeper than a kiddie pool. These are just some links to amusing theories, links and info around the movies, instead of staring into them (and reviewing them) directly.
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| Star Wars: Rogue One (2016)
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For me, this was the best movie in the Star Wars franchise. Called Rogue One because Episode 3.5 was a bit awkward. But while I liked it, I was never a super-fan of the genre. It was always a bit campy, inconsistent, and they lost me at the Ewok orgy, and I almost tuned out completely at Jar-Jar. But despite being shallow escapism, it wasn’t bad shallow escapism: I liked the effects and wanted to see how the story arcs progressed. This one closed a lot of arcs, and was well done to boot. The best of the pretty good.
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| Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
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This movie seems to be a vehicle not only for rampant merchandising of goods by Disney, but also a vehicle for people to peddle their rants and opinions about the movie and everything else -- like cynical observations about that merchandizing, or how derivative this movie is (failing to observe that's true of 98% of what comes out of Hollywood). Viewers were mostly happy, which makes sense, while derivative, it wasn't bad.
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| Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
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Solo: A Star Wars Story is a prequel about the Star Wars character Han Solo (in case you've been hiding under a rock or something). Like Rogue One, this is a stand alone story about events prior to "A New Hope" (the original) -- and this tells about the early adventures of Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian, and their caper heists within the criminal underworld of the Empire. On it's own, it's thoroughly predictable but done well enough to not be a rip-off. But for Star Wars lore, or to get the full canon, it's probably a bit better than that. And if you're a Star Wars fan, it's probably better still.
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| Memes-Star Wars
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List of memes on Star Wars. I didn't want to do a Star Wars section... but they're so Pop-culture, that they kept popping up in Memes about other things.
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