What are the things in Star Wars episodes 7 and 8 you didn’t like?

7 and 8 are The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

I loved 7 (and Rogue One) and really did not like The Last Jedi. It was like a convention for Star Wars superfans, with the constant references to the other movies and Luke worship. I like new stories.

The Farce Awakens:
The comical evil ginger space nazi.
Captain Phasma being built up to be a badass, and ending up doing fuck all.
The Butthole Eyes alien.
The Millennium Falcon being conveniently on Rey’s planet.
The stupid robot ball.

The Last Rian Johnson Movie:
Max Landis’ clammy, puffy, pale chest.
The built up at the end of the previous movie amounting to literally nothing.
Luke drinking spacecow sperm milk.
Phasma surviving the last movie, and still ending up doing fucking nothing.
CGI space emperor being built up in the last move as the big galactic overlord, and ending up amounting to fucking nothing.
The entire space casino sequence being a colossal, unnecessary waste of time.
The admiral’s outfit.
The ex-storm-trooper’s forced love interest.
The ex-storm-trooper’s forced love interest “saving” the ex-storm-trooper, and preventing him from destroying the siege laser, potentially dooming everyone in the bunker to death.
Yoda being an oaf.

I could go on practically forever. Mainly that they don’t seem to care about making sense at all. Seriously, when watching them I was constantly thinking about how nothing felt like it made any sense or would or even could ever happen as shown, and that it presented almost nothing that made sense. Therefore it utterly failed to conjure a situation I could be interested in, let alone suspend disbelief or care about.

To me they feel like throwaway action films that might as well be their own dumb action films but instead poop on the Star Wars series, and bring back the old characters just to make them look sad and incompetent and kill them off (and sell new toys).

Here is a pretty good list of things I also had problems with in VIII: https://youtu.be/5ECwhB21Pnk

Some particularly dumb parts about VII:

1) The Yaz’ cantina planet is NOT in the Republic home system, it’s on Takodana . They just see the Republic home system blowing up as a fireworks display in the sky from there because the film-makers don’t give a #%^ about making any sense! That attack hit the Hosnian system , which is in a different part of the galaxy (see “Takodana” and “Hosnian Prime” on this map of the entire G A L A X Y). So in other words, it makes no sense at all for the attack to be that size in the sky, or to be visible at the same time – it would be at least tens of thousands of light-years away, and be one of a million tiny twinkles probably not even visible in a night sky.

2) The Asian Space Mafia AND the Scottish Space Mafia both somehow (?) get the drop on supposedly-competent and legendarily-experienced space scoundrel and survivalist Han Solo inside his own ship somehow at the same time… WTF? That makes no sense in any way (and is followed by ridiculously fast-paced action that should be lethal and significant but it turns out no main characters get hurt so it’s actually meaningless, but at least we get to stop seeing Han’s giant rectangle-in-space ugly other spaceship), but given that it happened, how does it fail to alert Han that the Falcon is being tracked so it might get his friends at the cantina planet (and/or himself) attacked if he goes someplace and sit around far from his ship?

3) Why does Leia showing up (with an ugly little flying mobile home and a few X-Wings) cause Kylo and his titanic Star Destroyer to run away, instead of killing/capturing them and staying to capture the droid he came there for?

4) The stupid disregard of making sense and timing and nearly everything else in the final battle.

5) Starkiller Base itself being just a totally ridiculous thing in an excessive number of ways.

Huh, I actually am in complete agreement with @ragingloli. Um.. shit, I’m speechless.
Visually these movies were spectacular but that’s all the credit they’ll get. These stories were so bad that it made me slightly willing to entertain the hint of an idea of watching the prequels again…maybe.

In Episode VII, I hated that there was a 3rd death star. It’s like “think of something new—ANYTHING new, for the everfucking love of God!” The fact that Rey is a Mary Sue is disappointing. You can have badass female characters without having them be Mary Sues (e.g. Leia in the original trilogy). Those eye monsters were ridiculous, not believable, and didn’t belong. Snoke was stupid. Kylo was a lousy villain and should have kept his helmet on.

I also agree with @ragingloli.

Episode VIII was a complete trainwreck IMO. There were some breathtaking visuals, but the plot didn’t make any fucking sense, and what’s even worse, it retroactively ruined the earlier films (the Rebels were apparently too stupid to think up hyperspacing stuff into the Death Star, and Luke’s journey of learning to fight evil by surrendering and self sacrifice, was actually for nothing because he didn’t really learn anything and was willing to murder his nephew in his sleep).

Setting aside the obviously grotesque and cringey moments like the “yo mama joke,” Luke drinking the milk and “Mary Poppins” Leia, you’re left with a film that looks like it was written backwards. It’s like they said, we need: x number of main locations, Walkers—so we can sell the toys, a way to kill off Luke to put the focus on Rey, something for Finn to do for a while, etc. And then they wrote it backwards to meet the requirements. That’s why the story doesn’t make any fucking sense at all and is so contrived—a slow chase across space until they run out of gas… really?! I could write a novel about the problems with this film.

I really disliked most of the humor in The Last Jedi, especially the storyline with Finn on the rich, capitalist planet.

Well, wow. Glad I’m not alone frustrated with these 2 episodes.

The prequels sucked so much I actually got teary eyed watching the Falcon soar in the trailer for ep. 7 when it first came out.

And then I saw the movie. Which at least, unlike when I saw the first 15 minutes of Ep. 1, it did not quickly dawn on me that the movie is going to be crap. With ep. 7…it took a few days. Lol

I wasn’t prepared and just didn’t enjoy the character of Fin, a stormtrooper turned hero. I think it’s just me. I’m an OT guy basically and didn’t care an iota about any of the books, none of those extended stories and universes and extended fandom over minor characters like Bobba Fett.

I was just all about the collective “magical” appeal of the character ensemble in 4–6. And that awesome narrative thread those episodes started and ended with great aplomb.

Just hated that Lucas took out that sweetly upbeat and triumphant score at the end of 6 and put something meh in its place. Why? wtf! Lol

This bums me out! I really enjoy the three new Star Wars—Rogue One and The Last Jedi especially. I think they’re genuinely fun to watch. Well I guess there are four new Star Wars out! But I haven’t seen Solo.

The thing I didn’t like about Force Awakens—after about a week, I realized I couldn’t remember much of what happened. The plot all sort of blended together in my mind; like, I could remember snapshots here and there, but not really what happened, not how it all came together. I’ve seen it once or twice more since, and I can remember it better, somewhat. Not sure if that’s a me thing or something about the movie itself. By contrast, I feel like I can recall the major beats from Rogue One and The Last Jedi, and there are some spectacular scenes in both of those that I can call to mind even after just seeing them once.

I’ve also become a bit “meh” about J.J. Abrams after learning about his “Mystery Box” theory of story writing, and it’s because of this theory of his that I worry about him directing the final movie in the trilogy, but that’s a bit of a tangent…

I thought those involved with creating Rogue One and The Last Jedi stories did great. As someone who’s only exposure to Star Wars is through the movies, I feel like both of them really appreciated the source material and yet weren’t afraid to challenge it and take it farther (which is what a story needs to be able to keep going). The Last Jedi, especially, did this quite overtly.

What I most don’t like about the new Star Wars in general is the section of the internet all up in arms because they think the movies are “too diverse” now, “ahhhh!” It’s a small group, but they’re annoyingly loud with their stupidity.

I thought I’d share two YouTubers’ perspectives on the newer films. Might give you another way to look at the new movies, if you’re interested—

Patrick H. Willems, What Do We Want from a Star Wars Movie?; The Last Jedi; The Storytelling Language of Star Wars

Just Write, The Last Jedi and the 7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama; Why We Can’t Agree about The Last Jedi

They both have their distinctive styles in how they put their videos together, so just kind of roll with it.

^^ Thanks for the links!

Solo is the best SW movie after the OT. Next to Solo is Rogue 1. The rest for me is forgettable.

Mostly the desperation to flog a long since dead horse…mostly.