Honestly
@Crni Vuk, I believe that's kind of a given. Sensibilities move on, not only the author's but your own as well. I think people would be equally as pissed if it was as binary as the OT anyway so they just decided to go with either what made more sense, the results of a coin flip or a mix of both.
Or, some franchises and stories are simply not meant to have prequels, sequels and continuation, because they are done and there is nothing else worth to tell.
Star Wars is a binary story and it works as it's a (very) simplistic narrative. A typical heroes journey. And it works. That's why it's the narrative for so many really succesfull movies and stories out there. That doesn't mean that it should be done all the time and with every story. But there is no sense in changing it from a franchise that made its success with it. The core of Star Wars, certainly isn't gray morale or pushing some huge agenda down your throat - like how they tried at the casino planet. Yeah, we get it abusing slave children and space horses by a rich society is evil as shit.
But we're talking about Disney here after all, and the thing that counts the most for them, is market value, not what Star Was was about or why Lucas and his friends actually made
A New Hope.
Star Wars as a franchise in it self lends extremly badly to world building, it's not like let us say Dune. Even though Star Wars is sometimes seen as it, it is not Science Fiction, maybe 10% of it is Sci-Fi, calling it that is like saying a bicycle is a car, because it has wheels. Star Wars shares more with LotR than with typical Sci-Fi in that regard, but even here, you could squeze a lot more world building out of LoTR than SW, simply because Tolkin himself, actually build a whole world with a history before he created The Hobbit and LotR. Lucas made A New Hope as an homage to the old movies of his youth, the stuff he enjoyed as a child, Flash Gordan type of movies and something like that, they stole a hell of a lot of content from other movies too.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually believed that A New Hope would never gain so much attention by audiences. And I think a lot of the ideas for Prequels and back stories, came actually much later.
To say this, I am only talking here about the movies, not the expanded universe with comics, books, games you name it as I think it was never meant to be a franchise with a lot of intriguing and very elaborated plots and characters behind it, with those huge back stories and all.
Star Wars is schlock. It always was. It always will be. It's very entertaining schlock. But at the end of the day, that's still it. Nice fantasy for (grown up) children. And getting any 'gray morale' in to that, is simply making it a worse experience over all.
Well that's fine, it just seemed a bit strange/off kilter. While I would disagree about the bad writing, it is mediocre. I agree that it lacks substance in the way ANH did, in the sense of any deeper meaning. To me overall looking back I would say that it is an above average film, this is likely due to the strength of the actors, I do feel that they had a lot of fun with the movie and poured their hearts into it, which is sort of supported by the various interviews I have seen with the actors. Overall, I think that the fact that it had a budget of 200 million probably meant that it wasnt all bad as they could get good actors and a workable dialogue, along with stunning visuals.
It contains a hell of a lot bad writing. For example the part where Luke would think for a moment to kill his Nephew as he might fall to the dark side, which serves as explanation why Kylo Ren was pushed to the Dark Side. That's bad writing. As Lukes character would simply not act in such a way, from all we knew of the old movies.
Better writing would be, if Luke decided to not train Kylo anymore telling him that he's not a student of his anymore serving as a trigger pushing him to the dark side and Luke leaves the temple to the elders to tell Leia his decision. And when he returns, he sees his temple in ruins where Kylo asked the students if they are with him or against him.
Or almost every dialog between Fin and Rose. Rose in particular was a strange character which I guess the Audience was supposed to like because she worked in a meaningless position and her siste died heroically in a bomber. Again, bad writing.
Good writing would have actually showed some interaction between her and her sister, before she died in the battle. A good movie does such stuff.
Or the whole way how Snoke was treated, building up a character in The Force Awakens, teasing him as a kind of master mind working behind the scenes ... just to kill him off without any after thought? It makes you simply wonder, who is this guy, why is he so strong with the force? And why has no one heard about him ever before? Nonexistant writing, is also 'bad' writing.
