What's the worst Star Wars movie?

The year that doesn't have a Star Wars movie.

 

I have to revise my earlier opinion.

There is one film that hits bottom for me so much that I even forget it exists.

Rogue One is the worst Star Wars film for me.

I don't hate it. I don't feel anything about it.
It's a wash of grey for me emotionally.

The reason it doesn't work for me isn't that it lacks the Jedi or Sith narratives, but instead that it lacks the grand poetic motifs that Star Wars is so known for.
It has poetic shots in the sense of artistry, but it doesn't build poetic refrains that build into a metaphorical chorus.

It's the difference between a ballad that uses free verse poetry and an epic that uses ballade poetry (the "e" is intentional - ballad and ballade are different - the latter sounds like buh-lawd rather than bal-id).

Rogue One is like a ballad using free verse, while the rest are epics that use ballade.

It's the difference of gates of walk; manerisms.
The way you can recognize someone from across a street and from the back just by their general shape and motion.

A difference between a Londoner and a Geordie, the difference between a New Yorker and a Bostonian, or the difference between the Belgians and the French.

Delicate as the difference may be, like well done digital human faces, there is a nearly intangible difference.

It was a neat sci-fi film set in the Star Wars universe, and it certainly wins the award for really cool ship battle scenes probably more than any other Star Wars show or film to date, but it just doesn't carry itself with the right gravitas of prose in its narrative or cinematic movements.

I think it's great that people love it; rock on!
But it does nothing for me.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Interesting take on R1, @Jayson and I agree with you as far as it being the most different SW movie. However that is one of the things that I love about R1. I am a big fan of not only SW movies but also “war movies” in general, and R1 feels like a war movie to me. In that there is some sort of overarching mission that a military team undertakes.....it is kind of hard to explain I guess. the sacrifices that Jyn’s team make in the name of each other and the mission .....

 

It is most definitely a war film.
It's effectively a Star Wars Vietnam story - straddling its legs somewhere between Platoon and Apocalypse Now, but at a scale of Saving Private Ryan.

Which, again, is great for folks like yourself.
It's just not much of anything for me.
It could. If it had done it with a sort of fairy tale approach to telling a war story and treated its parts like verses to song, but it didn't.
It went more with playing it straight.

Which...cool for those it works for, like yourself.

In fact, this prosaic form, I believe, will eventually become the standard for most of Star Wars; if not all.

Writing, desigining, shooting, and editing poetically is very draining, convoluted, and often more expensive and potentially estranging than it typically is prosaically.

Simpler thematic rhythms are plenty sufficient for the vehicle of story telling at a fraction of the frustrations and often offerring far greater liberty, so I full well expect that we'll get a burst of passion on the onset for each to take their crack at the ballade-like nature of this epic, but each will likely quickly tire of it and find it artificially confining and just go with more poetry of the shot in a more free form of take on things.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but based on Mando, I don't think so. I think very soon we'll be in the Star Wars equal of SG-1, where lore and world building like a living encyclopedia rule the day.

So many will be thrilled, and for them it will be grand.

I will part ways at that point and stop keeping up on Star Wars. It will have become a child of a child of a person I once knew.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

The argument comes down to Attack of the Clones and Rise Of Skywalker to me. I think you could make an argument for Phantom Menace just do to the multitude of failed creative decisions made with it, the expectations vs reality of it's plot, and the sometimes disturbing level of characterization it has for side characters, but I will say that while the climax of the film is an absolute mess in terms of tone, the majority of the film is well-structured and not totally off the rails, even if it's subpar in any way possible. I can't find an argument for any other movie here to be included, so it does boil down to those two.

Attack Of The Clones is a dull movie. Not only does it entirely balk against the very structure of a Star Wars movie in terms of pacing and content, it also spends massive amounts of time entirely outside of it's genre. I wouldn't mind that if the acting and writing was good, but the stunted dialogue and the lack of chemistry only add to it's incredible length. I think folks that have fond memories of it's ending haven't watched it more than a few times, because there's nothing within the span of it's ending that forgives it's slog of a pace. That said, if we were to give the movie any sort of credit, it does have a place within the prequel trilogy and does serve the overall plot, even if the execution was absolutely wrong.

Rise Of Skywalker has the opposite problem in almost every way. It's a movie that never breathes. The first real moment where the characters are allowed to feel the weight of the movie more than mere seconds is an hour and twenty minutes into the film, and the pacing never slows down again. It feels like a movie specifically structured to not have you stop and think about the plot and how it works with the previous two movies, and I think the reason for that is that it has very little to do with the previous two movies. It feels like the slate was entirely wiped in order to create something different and it lessens the entire trilogy with that. The strongest trait of the movie is the absolutely electric chemistry between the entire cast but you rarely get to see it outside of quick action shots, and it's introduction of characters the movie spends little time with bogs this down as well. It's that nature of feeling removed from the rest of the story that leaves it at the absolute bottom for me.

On an entirely different side note; It is very strange, with I-IX now out, how the very first and very last episode seem to almost be on an island in terms of story from the seven movies between them.

 

I love all of the Star Wars movies... but AOTC, sorry.

 

I'm mildly disappointed that a couple other people have already mentioned the Holiday Special because I wanted to be the first person to say it.

 

I don’t want to go off on what I “hate” in my favorite franchise, so let’s just call the list below what I feel is, uh, “subpar:”

1) Season 1 of Rebels. (With exception.)
2) Resistance as a whole (with the exception of several wonderful episodes, notably the series pilot, finale, and mid-season finale.)
3) That holiday special
4) Rise of Skywalker ( lots of wasted potential, though I liked most of it.)
5) E2 S2 of Mandalorian (frog lady episode.)
6) that Clone Wars episode where the crazy German scientist is living under the Naboo swamps.

 

Has anyone mentioned The Clone Wars movie? The one with Jabba's kid or something. I enjoyed The Clone Wars series but man that movie suuuuuuucked.

 

The Holiday Special was the only thing I truly disliked. Most of the rest of the franchise I've consistently enjoyed.

 

TROS is without a doubt the worst Star Wars movie ever, in my opinion. Though, TLJ is probably my least favourite.

As unoriginal and contrived as TFA is, it was at the very least an okay start to a trilogy and set-up a lot of possibilities for the next two films, but alas, here we are

 

what about the clone wars movie

 

Not good, but not as terrible as some people seem to think, just very forgettable. TCW series more than made up for it!

But, If we're talking Clone Wars, then The Phantom Apprentice/Siege of Mandalore is my joint-favourite SW movie since Filoni wrote is as a movie split into four episodes, it is a masterpiece.

 

Sorry I got carried away there, I tend to do that

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 13, 2021, Original Post Date: Jan 13, 2021 ---

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By far, TFA, followed by TROS. However, they aren't really the worst out of all the SW movies. I just like them less.

 

The Last Jedi has been my least favorite for a while. I thought the acting in the movie was poor or maybe it was a directing problem. But nevertheless, the movie was not good at all. It felt very unnecessary even down to some of the characters like Rose Tico.

 

I love all the Star Wars films flaws and all... if I hated them I wouldn't be here.