TCTTS said:
This is basically what all your arguments come down to; "the big picture." And I ask, why are only stories that tell "the big picture" the only stories worth being told in your eyes?
For instance, was Solo "necessary"? No. But it was a hell of a lot of fun, and a movie that most of TexAgs now seems to really enjoy. So what's the problem? I had more fun with Solo than I did with The Last Jedi, but according to you, The Last Jedi - because it's part of "the big picture" - is the only one of the two that should exist, which could not be further from the truth.
I'm pointing out absurdity when I posit "It's just lore in movie form. It's not a true story", and that R1 is about "How the Rebels got the MacGuffin to the MacGuffin".
Think about that for a second. The MacGuffin to the MacGuffin.
Really? The MacGuffin is already a relatively minor thing in a story, but for a company to double down on it like that? It's absurd and ridiculous, and tells me a committee came up with this movie.
Because why reintroduce the Death Star?
Why not just have the story take place in a completely different part of the galaxy?
Why bring back Han Solo?
Why not have a new unique character?
Oh, I know why.
Because having the movie take place in familiar OT settings means more merch sales.
These are not movies. They're corporate products in the worst way.
And you know what, despite all that absurd and tasteless pursuit of cash, I would be relatively okay with it all if they were fun movies. Because again, since they're not giving us important backstory, they need to make up for that by being fun.
Let me repeat that: I'm fine with tasteless, pointless, ancillary stories, as long as they're fun. But imo, R1 and Solo weren't fun. If others like them, fine.
One last thing - when the stories aren't fun and even end up failing, setting them in old settings takes away from what came before. My previous points about
Saul and
Alien are examples of this.
And in the case of SW, I don't need to know that the Rebels were boring, joyless, miserable people, and I don't need to know how Han got his last name and that he had a romance with some chick who works for f***ing Darth Maul a guy who got cut in half and fell 1200ft down into a plasma reactor. (Those Maul toys ain't gonna sell themselves.) It craps on the legacy of what came before, kinda like what the prequels did.
There was a period, a very brief period of time, when Star Wars was just a series of well-liked blockbusters. And now, it's not special anymore. Now it's just another manufactured Hollywood product.