Brett Arnold of Yahoo! is distinctly unimpressed with the latest, endless installment in the Star Wars franchise:
“‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is easily the worst Star Wars movie, but even calling it a movie feels like giving it more credit than it deserves. It’s a feature-length episode of streaming-era television, and boy, does it look and feel like it. It’s uncinematic in pretty much every way, from the drab visuals to its repetitive structure that lacks the storytelling heft needed to make the jump from TV to film. Say what you will about ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ or the prequel trilogy; at least they’re movies!”
Reading the above, I feel a little like the lead singer in the J. Geils Band, who discovered that his high school sweetheart had been turned into onanistic fodder for a girlie magazine:
Star Wars was amazing when it first came out. I can say this with certainty because I was there at the beginning.
It was the summer of 1977 and I sat with my dad in a cinema in northern Kentucky as the very first Star Wars film began.
I was nine years old.
I will soon be 58.
I’m sure you caught the irony. That was almost half a century ago.
The last Star Wars movie that was really necessary was Return of the Jedi in 1983. I remember watching The Phantom Menace in 1999, sixteen years later. It didn’t feel like Star Wars.
Since then, the movies have only gotten worse. It’s obvious that Disney is just milking the Star Wars universe as one of its few reliable cash cows.
Star Wars was great! But it’s time for new science fiction stories and fresh space operas.
-ET