As you all all know by now, we here at Respawning are celebrating 10 days of Star Wars and I am yet to get involved really, so here I am! I want to start by saying that although I massively enjoy Star Wars, I’m not a huge fan like a lot of the writers here and my knowledge on the franchise isn’t great so don’t @ me if I get some details wrong! With that being said, you may want to @ me if one of your favourite Star Wars characters appears in my list because today I’m ranking my top 5 most annoying characters in all of the Star Wars movies so far! Here we go… (cue opening crawl).
I want to preface this entire list by saying that I will only be adding characters who have a decent amount of screen time, So Sy Snootles, you escape my wrath! Nute Gunray would have gotten away with it as well had I not recently started my Star Wars marathon ahead of Rise of the Skywalker this December. I completely forgot how much screen time is given to this absolutely boring, grating waste of space. One of the biggest criticisms of the prequels (which I agree with) is the amount of boring space politics there is. I don’t watch Star Wars to learn about the ins and outs of the bloody Trade Federation! Gunray is unfortunately the leader of said Trade Federation and when you tie that in with his shoddy CGI look and obvious Asian stereotyping, you’re left with a dull character and one of the lamest ‘villains’ in the saga.
This could be the most controversial entry on this list… I understand that people love these cuddly little bastards but let’s call a spade a spade, this is garbage. I love the original trilogy, I love that nostalgic feeling I get whenever I go back and watch them, but for whatever reason I just have never understood peoples love for the Ewoks. Storm Troopers don’t exactly have a reputation for being hard as nails, but the fact that they and their AT-ST’s get taken out so easily by living teddy bears with rocks just borders on insulting. I get it, it’s their planet blah blah blah, but it just makes the Storm Troopers feel less threatening than they are in any other movies in the saga. Ewoks are dumb and childish (this is coming from a self confessed man child) and was nothing more than a poor excuse for George Lucas to market toys to kids. Ewoks suck and if they had appeared in the prequels instead, they’d be hated a lot more. Stop giving them a pass for nostalgia’s sake. COME AT ME NERDS!
Here he is. The most obvious entry in the entire list and probably number one for a lot of people and for good reason! We all know what makes Jar Jar so annoying so no need to retread old ground here. At least Lucas took the criticisms from Episode One on board and dialled his involvement way back after that. Still, those prequels would be a lot better without everyone’s favourite Star Wars character to hate.
Urgh… That’s the noise I found myself making every single time the droid L3-37 appeared on screen. 2018’s Solo is a very divisive movie, personally I found a lot to like and would have fallen at about an 8/10 had it not been for one thing, L3-37. God I hate this droid. Voiced by Pheobe Waller-Bridge, L3-37 is a droid obsessed with fighting for droid’s rights… It’s like space politics all over again, I’m just here for the Lightsaber fights dammit! There might have been a positive message in here somewhere but the delivery doesn’t just fall flat, it becomes an irritating slog of awful dialogue and cringey voice acting which annoyed me to the point of dropping this film from a solid 8 to somewhere between a 6 and a 7. I believe the film makers had really good intentions here, but L3 (now seen as the first ever ‘woke droid’) serves nothing to the movie other than opening a whole new can of worms about droids being slaves. That’s right, everybody’s favourite loveable droid, R2-D2 was nothing but a slave to Luke Skywalker this whole time… Thanks L3-37, you managed not just to ruin your movie but the rest of them as well.
Remember how excited everybody was to see the origin of Darth Vader? To find out exactly how one of the most badass movie villains in history came to be? Episode One gave us the innocent child Anakin who just wanted the best for his mother; sure there were some issues, but in general this was a good start to our Jedi hero turned bad story arc. Then came Episode 2… Who the hell is this whiny little bitch of a teenager who hates sand and doesn’t talk like a real person? THIS IS VADER?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!
Anakin should have been a likeable hungry Padawan, not too dissimilar to his child self in Episode One, maybe with just a few hints of a dark side which could be taken advantage of when a certain Sith Lord comes along. Instead we get a petulant teenager who is in need of a slap around the face and an early night rather than any sort of Jedi training! And did we get those subtle hints of an evil side? Well definitely not subtle! Instead we were bashed over the head with it thanks to some terrible dialogue, where Anakin outright talks about a Dictatorship in an effort to get in Padme’s pants WHICH WORKED BY THE WAY! It’s not just the beyond awful script that’s to blame here though, Hayden Christensen played the role of Anakin with about as much charisma as a broom.
So there we have it, whenever we see arguably the most iconic villain to ever grace the big screen, we now know his journey to the dark side began because Obi Wan Kenobi tells him what to do and that makes Anakin a sad boy, ooooo scary. Even when he does finally flip after seeing the death of his mother, what should be a character defining scene is cut short thanks to Lucas chasing a PG rating. It’s okay though because we get that speech.. “I killed them, I killed them all. There dead. Every single one of them. But not just the men, but the women, and the children too.” Yes we get it, you’re becoming evil!
Well that was a fun rant! Apologies if I’ve burst in here and put a negative spin on the 10 Days of Star Wars, but hopefully the rest of the content we have so far will be enough to keep those hype levels high for everything Star Wars as we prepare for Jedi: Fallen Order, The Mandalorian and Rise of the Skywalker!
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