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Tommy Siegel | Bluesky
Transcript
A Helpful Guide To Star Wars vs Star Trek
Star Wars
[Image of Han Solo in Tommy’s style]
- Don’t start with the ‘first’ movie, let me tell you where to start
- Looks like ruined farm equipment in space
- In summary: the past was horrible
- JJ Abrams ruined it
Star Trek
[Image of Jean Luc Picard in Tommy’s style]
- Don’t start with the first season, let me tell you where to start
- Looks like a cruise ship in space
- In summary: the future is incredible
- JJ Abrams ruined it
What the actual fuck? Episode VIII is quite literally the worst mainline Star Wars movie made. I consider even episode IX to be better, not by a big margin but still better for no other reason than to try and salvage the clusterfuck that was episode VIII. Here’s a short list of things episode VIII got wrong.
The whole movie is one massive misstep that derailed the entirely sequel trilogy. I get Episode VII wasn’t anything magnificent but the entire point of episode VII was to reaffirm to the fans (who were skeptical about the continuation of Star Wars considering Episode III didn’t really leave on a high note and Episode VI kinda tied up the loose ends) that the series is going somewhere and isn’t nosediving off a cliff. That’s why they effectively redid the Episode IV plotline, because it was a safe starting point that sets up characters for episodes VIII and IX. Abrams even left a rough draft for VIII and IX but then Johnson was given full creative control to throw the entire trilogy draft out the window and do whatever the fuck he wanted. We don’t know if episode IX could’ve ever been good because episode VIII fucked the entire trilogy so hard it became impossible to salvage.
The only context in which Episode VIII could be better than IX is if you view them as individual movies and not a part of a trilogy. And you know, Episode VIII probably could’ve been an okay standalone film. But it wasn’t. It had to respect what episode VII set up and it had to give episode IX something to follow up on. It didn’t neither and for that both Episode VII and IX are worse off simply because episode VIII exists. In fact the movie almost killed the entire franchise by taking all the characters and storylines and driving them off straight off the cliff.
You’re right with all your bullet points. Episode VIII has a fundamentally broken plot in many ways. The thing that it has going for it though is that it has a few actual themes that I found interesting. I like that Johnson questioned the whole light side dark side polarity and that Rey came from nobody in particular. I liked the rejection of the Skywalker family and assertion that heroes could come from anywhere. If it had followed a better movie, “let the past die” would have been a legitimate highlight for me. It didn’t work in the trilogy it’s a part of, but if the trilogy had been based around the VIII we got I think it could have worked as a sequel trilogy to Star Wars.
And the thing is that I think those are about the only things I particularly like in the entire sequel trilogy besides Babu Frik (I hate how much I love that little dude), and that makes episode VIII the best of a trilogy of bland to bad movies for me. Episode VII was the best constructed of them, and it had cool stuff, but it didn’t do anything that made me think “oh that’s interesting” (like VIII did) because so much of it was nostalgia based 'memberberries. You’re right about it being made to address fan concerns, but that was only relevant in 2015, and I’m looking back at in 2026. Episode IX was just a train wreck start to finish, and I don’t particularly blame it because it had the unenviable task of following up VIII, but it’s still just bad with nothing interesting to show for it.
I have to say I’m getting of directors both-sidesing every story. It was one of the reasons I didn’t like episode VIII. Star Wars was better when it was good guys vs bad guys.
7 put Luke on an island during a war, 8 was just doing the best it could with Abrams’ nonsense mystery boxes
Really? Episode 7 forced episode 8 into such a narrative corner the best they could do was turn Luke into a green titty milk loving weirdo?
You say that like cow milk doesn’t come from a titty. Like you’ve been alienated from the source of your food. Luke isn’t alienated from nature, he’s connected to all the nature around him. He knows exactly where all his food comes from. He uses the force and his knowledge to survive.
Connecting with nature is an important part of spiritual enlightenment. The old Jedi lived up in a tower above a city. They were alienated from nature. Luke is practicing the way of the light side of the force every day. Remember, it’s an energy field that binds all life together.
You’re just like Rey: alienated from the land, afraid of titties. And that is not the way of the new Jedi. Luke may be disillusioned with the Jedi as heroes and peacekeepers, but he’s perfected his monk game in a way most Jedi never did.
First of all I grew up among cows, chickens and other farm animals. I’ve drank warm milk straight from a cows teat. I’ve collected chickens eggs from the nests. I’ve spend morning foraging mushrooms from the forest to make a mushroom stew. Unless you live in a land largely untainted by urbanism I’m probably far more connected to the land than you are.
And your little nature spiel is irrelevant to the movie because the movie doesn’t need to show cleaning out shit from a chicken coop to show how connected a character is with nature. The same way the movie didn’t need to show Luke drinking green titty milk to show he’s connected to nature. There was a million different ways to show that, just look at how Episode 5 introduced Yoda. Drinking milk was a deliberate decision to make him look weird because while I’m well aware where milk comes from other people aren’t and they’re going to think it’s weird.
And the milk thing is just a meme that everyone knows, there’s more wrong with the character. Such a throwing away his own lightsaber. Which would make sense if he considers lightsabers irrelevant to the new teachings of the Jedi, except he still uses that very lightsaber when going against Kylo. And perhaps the most damning fact about how the character was butchered came from Mark Hamill who’s been very public about disagreeing with how the character was written for episode 8.
And finally, nothing you said indicates the root problem with the character was that Episode 7 stuck Luke on an island.
Sorry, I need to come back to this one, I’m confused.
So you’re a titty milk drinker, and Luke is a titty milk drinker, and you don’t think there’s anything wrong with titty milk drinking. But you don’t like that Luke did it in the movie. Because… why?
Because it’s socially frowned upon? You don’t like that Luke defied social norms?
Nah, he views lightsabers as irrelevant, and he doesn’t use a lightsaber against Kylo. He uses an illusion of a lightsaber, and he doesn’t even attack with it. He just dodges and distracts. The lightsaber is nothing more than a symbol to distract Kylo. It’s serving the same function as a set of jangling keys.
And he had to have that pacifistic viewpoint, that anti-lightsaber viewpoint, because Abrams put him on an island during a war. The best answer RJ could come up with to that is that he’s become a pacifist.
Would a pacifist pick up a weapon to defend themselves and even hit back? Because that’s exactly what he did when Rey attacked him.
I don’t get your need to defend Rian Johnson. I have nothing against him. I loved Looper and I enjoyed Knives out movies. I’m simply calling out a stinker for what it is, a stinker. And the last Jedi is a godtier stinker.
Yes, a pacifist would.
I get that the movie has flaws, but it also has more vision and philosophy than any other Star Wars movie, and I prefer a movie with vision. The Canto Bight stuff was weak. They did a terrible job with Finn. Rose is unlikable. But the Rey and Luke stuff is peak Star Wars.
100% this it was Rian Johnson’s inability to work from someone else’s starting point.
To add to your list. Finn. Johnson butchered Finn’s story so much that the actor vocally said he would never take another Star Wars job.
He was supposed to be a Luke analog. He was supposed to be force sensitive. He was supposed to confront Phasma. The first movie projected so many hints at the path many of these characters were going to take in the trilogy. There was a parallel to Finn and Rey. Finn’s force awakening literally breaks his mind control and we see Kylo sense him!
Johnson came in and burned all of those threads.
I accepted a lot about Episode VIII, but the ruin of the Finn stuff is where it actually became unforgivable for me.
I put Finn (and Phasma) together with all the other threads Episode VII set up and Johnson wrote off. There were simply too many to mention each thread individually.
But yeah, it was a travesty what Johnson did to Finns story. Considering how shafted he got it would’ve been a mercy kill if Finn had sacrificed himself in Episode VIII but even then Johnson needed to subvert expectations and continue ruining characters.
wouldn’t you say the same for A New Hope?
I would, but A New Hope gets the excuse of actually being a standalone movie. A New Hope came into theaters as “Star Wars” and became Episode 4 later. Like I said, The last Jedi probably would’ve been an okay standalone movie. The problem is that The Last Jedi was never supposed to be a standalone movie.
I’ll accept that. In general, though, I feel like having the time jumps pull a lot of weight is core to the Star Wars movies’ identity, so if there’s any movie that should leave few threads loose at the end, it would be Star Wars. (Thus, I also feel there was no reason for IX to have been what it was.) I would also argue Kylo Ren being now in control of the New Order in the state of mind that he is (plus his arc with Rey) is a very loose thread with very promising potential. (Plus the ending shot seemed like foreshadowing the fate of the trilogy’s end would be decided by entirely new possibilities.)
You can have time jumps between movies but if the movie is a part of a trilogy it needs to serve the trilogy. Imagine if at the end of two towers Frodo throws the ring into the fire. What would return of the king be about? You couldn’t have the return of the king because the story is resolved, the ring is gone. It would have to be a completely new u story and it wouldn’t make any sense in the context of the trilogy.
That’s basically what Johnson did. He took the whole story and instead of setting up the final movie to resolve the story he resolved the story on his own and left nothing for the last movie.
All the New Order lost was the equivalent of two aircraft carriers. (Using the ancient art of calculus, 1+ \int_{TR-8R}^{some other named squadron} fighter dust = 2.) The story absolutely was not resolved. Ren in control of the Order while going insane, whatever’s up with Finn and Rose surviving, how exactly was the rebellion going to continue (they clearly were but what do they do now?), and final scene may as well had marked with big giant circles who shall be the next heroes.
Did we watch the same movie? The Order won and the rebels lost.
The movie setting up “next heroes” is literally my point. It sets up something new with new characters instead of setting up the conclusion to the trilogy with existing characters. It doesn’t set up the next movie with existing characters because their archs got concluded.