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
- The very next guy to do it managed to be much worse than Abrams.
Debatable. Anyway, the very next guy after the very next guy managed to be infinitely worse than both. What was his name again?
The guys that also ruined game of thrones?
Ironically Game of Thrones was ruined because the show runners got an offer to do a Star Wars movie. They turned down HBOs offer to do more episodes of GoT and instead hurried through and botched the ending because they wanted to get started on that Star Wars project. They botched GoT so bad that Disney got rid of their movie. Serves them right.
Lol, if that’s true, it really is one of those situations when you drop everything you carried trying to catch something unimportant
This is all accurate but I think the same effect was hitting everyone in the whole franchise. They were all incredibly famous and getting all mannner of offers to do everything under the sun and it was going to be hard to keep all of them together for that much longer. It wasn’t exactly Harry Potter where all the principals were children who grew up making the movies. By the finale, even the actors who started young were in their prime.
Nah. VIII had a few missteps, but it was better then the rehashed plot of the first, and far better then the mess that followed.
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.
- Threw out pretty much every story thread Episode VII set up
- Did a complete character assassination of Luke
- Turned Leia into a force user because, well I don’t even know why.
- The entire casino world plotline which is not just entirely irrelevant to the plot but also completely fucks with timeline of events.
- That whole thing between the purple haired captain? and Poe. Especially that super secret plan that for no fucking reason was never explained to the rest of the crew.
- Breaking the whole hyperspace explanation and the whole space combat consistency with the hyperspace kamikaze
- The asian lady plot
- The ending sets up literally nothing for episode IX
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?
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
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.
Except that it ignored everything set up in the previous movie, thus causing the next movie to be an absolute mess.
The force awakens basically had that same problem though, effectively undoing everything concluded in return of the Jedi. Granted there’s a time gap but there’s no explanation as to why the former rebels (whatever they were called at that time I forgot) were still such a small force compared to the new big bad (something order?), not to mention why this order exists in the first place, what their motivations were, how they got their numbers and resources, etc. They’re just a galaxy-level threat sprung from thin air. It seems pretty clear to me that JJ just wanted to remake a new hope with as little consideration of the conclusion of return of the Jedi as he could get away with, plot holes be damned. RJ tried to address some of these plot holes but even he doesn’t really attempt to justify the something-order’s existence. If the force awakens was the first star wars movie as a new hope was then it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but coming just a few decades after the return of the Jedi, there ought to be some explanation for how they lost so much progress in that time, preferably in the first act. But nah, it’s just “somehow the empire returned (with cool new branding)” because JJ can’t write a plot to save his life.
Yeah, there was so much material they could have pulled from the Expanded Universe. The New Republic era, reclaiming territory from the imperial remnants and rebuilding the Jedi Order; the New Jedi Order era, fighting off the Yuuzhan Vong and the Killiks; the Fate of the Jedi era, when the Sith make a comeback; and then there’s the Legacy era after that.
That’s at least 3 or 4 trilogies right there.
Not to mention going back in time to the Old Republic era with its wars against the Sith empires, and the Dawn of the Jedi in the Origins era prior to that.
If they really wanted to milk the franchise, they had plenty of material to work with instead of just saying “nah” and declaring it all non-canonical, only to replace it with slop…
This is why I really don’t care for the new trilogy through. Episode VII is a fun movie in isolation but as a follow-up to VI it makes zero sense. Says a lot about audiences that they just blindly accept its premise with no questions asked. The rebels are magically the underdogs again guys, nothing that happened in original trilogy matters!
there’s no explanation as to why the former rebels (whatever they were called at that time I forgot) were still such a small force compared to the new big bad
They weren’t. A good portion of them became the New Republic, which was destroyed by Starkiller Base.
not to mention why this order exists in the first place, what their motivations were, how they got their numbers and resources, etc.
They were what remained of the Empire plus new recruits/conscripts taken in the period after the Battle of Endor.
Yeah if anything the New Order showed a much more realistic outcome of assassinating an Empire’s Emperor.
If an assassination meant the end of an Empire, Rome would not have existed very long
It wasn’t just an assassination though. They defeated their two most powerful leaders; both of their Sith lords, at that. They destroyed their main battlestation and a large chunk of their military leadership along with it, decapitating the rest of their forces.
And it doesn’t end after the battle of Endor. The Empire is defeated, yes. So they celebrate. They begin reconstructing the New Republic and the New Jedi Order. But there’s still an imperial remnant, and wayward warlords throughout the galaxy. So a large chunk of the story following the Original Trilogy is them hunting down and pacifying those imperial remnants.
There could have easily been a trilogy made just from the material that already existed. They didn’t have to try to rewrite the whole thing, and do an ass job of it at that…
Nah, don’t put the blame on ep. IX mess into VIII. It also ignored everything set up on the previous movie, and even if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be any need for it to suck that much.
Now, none of that makes VIII good…
Nothing was “set up” in VII. It was the usual, hollow “mystery box” Abrams always uses. Given what was basically a blank slate, Rian did what he wanted with it, something new, which is something the franchise desperately needed. Exactly what fans say they want, but always shit on even while everyone moans about there not being anything but reboots and rehashes.
A few missteps is quite the understatement. I’d take boring rehash over universe-breaking any day. But it doesn’t matter in the end. It’s like comparing different flavors of shit.
“Universe breaking”, lol.
they already broke the universe before the seventh movie by declaring that nothing mattered. eight felt like a fan reaction to that by trying to bring stuff back.
IDK. VII was disappointing, but I hated VIII so much I still haven’t watched IX. But maybe picking a winner out of these is besides the point. Rogue One showed what a good, modern Star Wars film could look like, and in comparison with that, both VII and VIII are just terrible.
8 is the best Star Wars movie
Honestly if you told me that Alex Kurtzman was a psyop by Rick Berman to make us hate him less I would have to believe it.
What is it with Ricks?
They made a government to get away from governments. Not the brightest in the bunch.
goongas
Hey, someone got the reference!
“Every singe image is so dense, it has so much going on!”
i can’t not hear it.
Force Awakens > Last Jedi > Rise of Skywalker
So it’s really a toss up. Somehow Abrahms returned and ROS hit the lowest lows in the series.
Disney ruined Star Wars.
Should’ve just used the Thrawn Trilogy as Episodes VII through IX. But that would’ve eventually lead to
spoiler
Chewie dying on Sernpidal
and think how much that would’ve hurt merchandise sales…
I still believe that they should wipe the last three as “legacy” or whatever the fuck they call the old cannon and go full send with the Thrawn Trilogy.
I agree, but I can’t see it happening until they’ve milked this “timeline” dry.
Are Chewie toys still top sellers?
I don’t know, but his death was the primary reason they killed the Expanded Universe. The merchandise aspect is my cynic interpretation, because the stated non-reason why it’d be a problem makes zero sense.
The real reason was they wanted to go a different direction and shed the EU baggage (and potential royalties) while reimagining the stuff they liked (like Thrawn).
The royalties are the most convincing reason I’ve heard for dropping the old EU in it’s entirety.
We can’t let someone else profit from this! Only the mouse may enrich itself, and anyone else gets the crumbs we allow them and nothing more.
That and they would have had to pay the author to use it. That’s the whole reason they de-canoned the books in the first place.
Where do you get that certainty from? Lucasfilm owned all the rights to the Expanded Universe, including all work-for-hire novels. Disney acquired everything Lucasfilm owned, so they shouldn’t have had to pay any further royalties.
Do you have better evidence than this interview, where it was stated that Chewie dying was the reason?
The first season of TNG has some great episodes. It’s just that several episodes are very much worth skipping.
Well obviously you start with TOS …
Dammit we do timeline order and you know what that means
It’s been a long road…
If you’re doing that, Discovery S2 to S3 will be the longest road ever.
I’m starting with the lizards
getting from here to there
https://startreklist.blogspot.com/2011/04/list-of-all-star-trek-episodes-sorted_05.html
You watch it in this order. Movies included.
I was going to complain about that list being incomplete, but it was saved by a comment:
Doing DS9 within TNG and VOY might be fun. Or so confusing
I actually did this whole watch. It does make sense.
There’s nothing particularly confusing about it, there is storyline overlap between TNG, DS9, and Voyager. They aired that way and used each other’s stories as a way to market the other shows.
For sure. If you watched it live you would watch it that way. Sounds like fun
It’s easy to forget how different TNG was when it came out in 87 and the Cosby Show and Cheers ruled the airwaves. Season has its dogs looking back at it almost 40 years later, but at the time, it was the right break from TOS and something really new on TV.
I missed much of it when it was originally out, but found this guide very useful for going back.
Brad Shoemaker recommended that I include The Offspring, which he says “moved him to tears.”
😭
That episode hit so hard.
TNG had some random heavy hitters when you least expected them. Lwaxana Troi episodes were supposed to be comic relief, which makes it especially cruel that two of the saddest episodes in the series were Lwaxana episodes.
Excellent episode.
I’ve probably seen it hundreds of times in the last 35+ years, and it still makes me cry every single time.
some of the later ones were wierdly crusher centric, sex ghost, Her own "personal universe.
JJ Abrams
I think you mean Jar Jar AbramsUh … he’s tall?
it would be funny if he took over STAR wars franchise, or allowed kurtzman to do it.
JJ Abrams is a talentless hack that couldn’t direct water out of a boot if the script was on the heel.
He’s great technically, but his problem is he has nothing to say–he’s not an artist.
And that’s exactly why studio execs love him so much.
deleted by creator
Hot take: I loved the JJ Abrams Star Treks
I didn’t love them, but they were fun.
I mean, it’s Star Trek we’re talking about. When it’s good, it’s very good, and when it’s not it’s unbearable. You can find a lot worse than these movies in the franchise.
Pretty much my only real exposure to Star Trek prior to the movies was watching Voyager episodes at night not in order.
I really enjoyed the Abrams movies as a neutral fan. To me they were just actions movies in space around an IP I wasn’t invested in.
Which is exactly what ruined those treks for Trekkies. It was literally just a western in space. Pew pew action, and not much more.
I always preferred the quiet, thought-provoking part of trek. Dialogues, moral Dilemma, ethical choices. And, obviously, the lack of sexism, racism, specicism and money. An occasional pewpew was fine, but never the focus nor the story.
I’m sorry you had to watch Voyager, I binged all of DS9 and loved it… Moved onto Voyager expecting something of anywhere near the same quality. Gave up after the first season, and now I have a burning hatred of Janeway, a woman who either loves the Prime Directive and thinks it’s the best thing ever made, or despises it and feels it should be ignored whenever, depending on which reaction to the Prime Directive will keep her ship from leaving the Delta Quadrant, and Chakotay…
After seeing how authentically black Sisko was, I was ready for Chakotay’s native american background to be well… Not a blatant collection of tired stereotypes, knowing they hired a fucking Klansman to help keep Chakotay “Authentic” was not a surprise, they really fucked up with him.
You could do a lot worse for a movie night. I liked the first one well enough
Ok I have another comment under this post where I shit on JJ’s star wars, but I also actually didn’t mind his star trek. I’ll rewatch them every once in awhile.
I actually kinda like that Abram’s Star Trek takes place in an alternate universe. In that way, it hasn’t ruined anything. None of his movies are in the Prime universe.
And I like that Disney doesn’t have mind control drugs (yet?) so I can just consider their shit a seperate universe that Luke hallucinated after banging his head too hard on one of those doors designed more for looking like a cool sci fi door and less for being easy to go through without banging your head.
But they did blow up Romulus in the Prime Universe and give us Picard.
Absolutely start with the first season of Star Trek! What the fuck kind of nonsense is that? The original series is a gods damned masterpiece! Except for I, Mudd, just skip that one, it sucks.
I think that was about TNG? People often say start when Riker gets his beard and then go back later if you like it.
I can agree on that.
TOS is what got me watching almost all of Star Trek in the last 3 years. It was the damn star trek memes on lemmy (when there used to be a lot less content) that made me check it out, and I got hooked. I love me some sci-fi, what can I say
i started with TNG, i assume most of us did, but i dont watch the older ones except some of the important clips.
The worst episode of TOS is the one with the planet of children where Kirk puts the rizz on a little tweenage girl. I think it’s called Miri. Skip that one.
Oh yeah, I completely blocked that one out. That one is disgusting, definitely a skip.
I can hear it now…
HarCOURT!
tng first season was awkward, trying to find its legs.
It was also mostly made up of leftover stories that didn’t make it into the original series.
JJ abrams is responsible for what nutrek is today, all flash and no substance that KURTZMAN happily copied.
pre-disney star wars decent, but not after disney bought the franchise, and turned it intoa slop machine, and its basically just drama in space at least for the current ones.
Soooo many great franchises got turned into slop machines with no soul and the writing of a ninth grader.
true, SG1 almost become another slopbox, good thing the showrunners dint budge on what the exects wanted for the show, which was 'broader audience"
I was talking about SG1 the other day and how when they did write something that was not a good idea long term, they would ignore it in universe and then make fun of it in a later Wormhole Xtreme/time travel/parallel universe episode. Really a good way of doing retcon that takes the steam out any arguments.
Ohh, this comment section is gonna be good. 🍿
Aren’t you going to argue firefly is better than then both?
I tried watching a bit of that, but I didn’t really like it. (This screenname predates that show.)
What is “the past” in Star Wars?
Edit: I came to the right place.
It is complicated asking about “the past” in Star Wars because much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves; immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the Race of Men, who above all else desire power.
But they were all deceived, for another ring was forged.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away
Every time I see this come up, I’m reminded of that one Achievement Hunter clip of
The opening lines are quite famously: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”. So … everything.
All of it
Star Wars IS the past. It’s literally the first line in each movie.
Why couldn’t Picard train his replicator to give him the right kind of tea when he just said “tea”, instead of having to say “Tea, Earl Grey, hot” every time? It obviously knew already what “hot” means.
Also, I happen to know that Riker peed a little every time Picard said “Fire at will”.
The “hot” part was not in in the script. Patrick Steward added it because the tea on set was notoriously cold.
Fire at will
You know when you see or hear something, and you can never go back to not having seen or heard it?
Add another to the list.
the replicator should said “do it yourself”
Totally wrong.You should start with the first movie and the first season of both.
Yes, you can’t really appreciate Riker growing the beard until you’ve put up with a season of baby face.
I meant TOS but there’s a case to be made for that. Anyway, you will start it after finishing TOS.
Yeah totally, you should start with The Phantom Menace. The best movie of them all.
I meant chronogically.
Yes, that one from the '70s.
yes, TOS is what I was referring to ;-)
I was kidding
There’s no doubt about that.
Season 1 and 2 have a few of my favorite, albeit campy episodes. Plus, you can’t just skip character setups.
Start with the first season.
Yeah but is that first season of TOS, or just skip to first season of TNG
I mean TNG, which establishes the modern lore. Ive actually never watched all of TOS.
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