The people in charge of Star Wars right now are stupid and can't come up with anything more intimidating to fight than a Death Star.
Which is dumb because the book writers had no problem coming up with new ideas. The Sun Crusher was much more powerful while still feeling fresh, and was used pretty uniquely. Admittedly some of the books wouldn't adapt to movies very well because not all of them are action-packed, but there are things that could work.
You know what's funny? In the books, when they tried to make something similar to the Death Star (the Darksaber project) it failed catastrophically. It makes no sense that the New Republic would allow anything resembling a Death Star to actually come to fruition, much less twice. That is my biggest frustration with the movie. With active people like Leia in charge (Leia becomes Chief of State in the books) it is completely illogical that they would be so relaxed as to let the First Order arise unchecked. But Abrams doesn't put any thought into that, because the people he's catering to don't put any thought into it either. The new Star Wars makes me actively angry because of the way it just assumes that everyone watching it is stupid. But honestly, they fucking are.
Should have just adapted the EU. Do the Yusong Vong arc. They were at least different and had the potential to be intimidating. Rey and Kylo are just knockoffs of the Solo twins anyway.
Wyatt Morgan
>the book writers Stopped reading there.
Jordan Perez
I would have liked this a lot more. Yes, a lot of the EU is complete shit, but there are some gems in there. No reason to adapt any of the crappy ones, but they could have taken from some of the better books which at least felt very Star Wars like. Regardless of the general quality, they did establish a fairly coherent and logical political progression after the fall of the empire.
Nolan Wood
You don't need an epic planet-destroying battle station to have fun star wars stories. Can just have the first order attack the republic conventionally and have the main characters be tasked with defeating snoke, ren, and hux to end the war.
Carter Gomez
Yeah, even if the actors getting older made it hard for them to adapt the early stuff in the EU without recasting (which they honestly may as well have done since the new characters are basically Luke/Leia/Han expys as it is), the EU went on long enough that they could have skipped ahead to a point in the EU where everyone was in fact older. The Yuuzhan Vong War was some 20 years after RotJ so that easily could have worked.
Ethan Long
Yeah, you could have had Jacen become Darth Cadeus in order to fight the Vong and have a Sith/Jedi team up to destroy something that wants to kill the Force. Might have been tacky, but it would have been different at the very least.
Ian Long
I think Lucasfilm is scared of the idea of going to the effort of making a film without a bunch of huge setpieces. But there were tons of cool battles without anything the Death Star or even magic Force powers. Part of the X-Wing series covered the retaking of Coruscant from the Imperials by a new Rogue Squadron and that was pretty awesome. And then there was Wraith Squadron which was basically a spec ops team and did a bunch of commando missions on top of fighting space battles. (The X-Wing books were some of my favorites so I always gush about these.)
Cameron Young
>the accomplishmens and character growth of Luke Han and Leia all got reset and meant nothing
I will never forgive this
Easton Price
Shit, even with it being reset, it is an absolute bullshit writing decision that Han would split up with Leia and go back to smuggling like he did in TFA. That's not even consistent with his character in the films themselves.
Cooper Peterson
Preach, brother.
Jonathan Russell
The moment I saw the new death star in TFA was when it all fell down to me. Before that I had problems with Rey superpowers but that was the final thing.
Jace Turner
I literally exploded with anger when not only was it a Death Star, it was a Death Star that could blow up MULTIPLE PLANETS AT ONCE. How the fuck does the LOSING SIDE gain this technology? The Death Star in the original trilogy made sense because the Empire had its claws throughout the galaxy. But the First Order was in hiding. I swear, I bet they'll retcon it with something stupid like "aliens gave it to them."
Joseph Clark
BOOM
Dominic Martinez
Well you can shove your lil nerd fantasy books up your ass, cracka.
Colton Gomez
>creative executive A non-role, like "executive producer."
Austin Hernandez
Ain't she your typical star wars nerd, bro? I mean, while you were bullied by stacies and chads in the old days for being a star wars fan, you'd always have that black female who'd just love this universe just like you.
Wow, she actually does have a really nerdy voice and attitude. Kind of dishonest that the other guy made fun of her just because he was black, but that's Trump supporters for you.
Carter Baker
Yep
The new movies are incredibly underwhelming and I don't see them making much at the box office the next go around
Noah Roberts
Well Rogue One at least had the dignity to not go with the "another Death Star but bigger and better for no real reason" angle. Although it still literally revolved around the Death Star because apparently the Death Star is the only idea they were proud of.
Seriously, say what you will about the prequels, but at least each of their climactic battles were something different that didn't retread the OT. We would have been better off if Lucas were still in charge of Star Wars.
