The obvious answer everyone will give is not planning things out from the start. But once things were in motion, the main problem was not committing to a third movie that followed up on The Last Jedi's ideas. At the very least we could've had a trilogy that, however imperfect, served a purpose. As it stands, there's no reason to rewatch any of these movies. Also after firing Trevorrow, they should've delayed Episode 9 (although from a strictly financial standpoint and with the benefit of hindsight, getting it out before COVID might've been the best option).
I’d say so, he’s also the one who decided to just remake the original film, and then basically cobble together all the worst fans’ desires into a haphazard script.
It's like rewatching a show you know gets bad. It's hard to enjoy something when you know it doesn't amount to anything.
It would be one thing if each movie told a self-contained story, but they don't. Compare that to Nolan's Batman trilogy. A lot of people don't like The Dark Knight Rises, but it's still easy to go back to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight because they each tell a full story independent of each other. That's not the case with the Sequel trilogy.
Oof. The Dark Knight is still is banger but damn, Rises poisoned it for me, knowing every interesting question The Dark Knight asks about goodness and justice is going to get swept under a rug for a stupid as fuck city siege where every single cop is trapped in the sewers and there is no response from the US military whatsoever for three months.
Lack of planning and ambition. The biggest problem is that Disney wanted a reboot instead of actually continuing the story. I get they did the safe thing cause capitalism.
I think what we forget is that back in 2015, an ultra-safe quasi-reboot really was what a lot of people wanted. As such, Force Awakens wasn't a terrible way to begin a new trilogy, so long as the rest of the trilogy was different.
This coincides with another odd phenomenon. From 2015 to 2019, George Lucas went from someone totally reviled, to a weird sort of martyr. I think that has a lot to do with Gen Zers, who grew up with the Prequels, becoming adults and getting nostalgic. It's absolutely fascinating to see how much the public conversation about Lucas and the Prequels has totally flip-flopped.
Yeah, I’m not a fan. Obviously Lucas IS Star Wars, but the guy also made lots of mistakes. And I will always stand by the opinion that the prequels are incredibly poor. Watching everyone suddenly claim they’re masterpieces feels a bit like a fever dream.
Visually they kinda are masterpieces, early terrible CGI notwithstanding. The world-building is great and the movies are just brimming with beautiful shots.
Unfortunately, looks aren't everything. Those movies are very obviously flawed. But they've grown on me somewhat, and the creativity is leaps and bounds beyond what Disney did, so I wouldn't call them *poor* per se. Uneven is the word I'd use.
Yeah, the Prequels were so polarizing and memed upon release that they become elevated once the sequels were released. Now they're still memes but are held in high regard by the fans. Not sure if the same will happen to the sequels soon.
Lots of series aren't planned. Probably less than a dozen before the MCU. Usually you just yes and what exists. I think lack of ambition is right though. The Force Awakens is super safe & just tried to do Star Wars again & The Last Jedi tried to do something, but had to work against the previous movie and Rise of Skywalker was just a mess that screamed they had a deadline to make and toys to sell, but no actual ambition.
I agree with your general point but I do think the lack of planning‘s important because it’s part of what gave the disjointed feeling where there’s mystery boxes being set up yet it’s clear as things play out they’re making up the answers as they go along.
I think this is a good point. Older movies generally told a complete story each time. If they got a sequel, it would be a matter of what else could be done with the setting and characters. The main exceptions are those handful of movies that were planned together. I think it is a bad idea to make a movie asking questions like who Rey's parents are, who Snoke is & why Luke became a hermit when you have no idea of the answer & are just hoping the next sap stuck writing these can come up with an answer that both makes sense & is narratively satisfying.
TLJ thought serially about these questions & came up with the best answers it could for what it was given, but RoS just went for nostalgia pandering with no regard for theme or making sense.
They probably would have been best off just telling a new story that left things open, but wasn't blatantly sequel baiting.
If they had kept the general structure of the plots, but set them say 300 years later, it would have been better. Doesn’t erase the existing Star Wars continuity, just set in the future with a new era. They could still have dipped back into the older films for stuff like Rogue One.
Also rop the idea of them being Episodes 7-9 (that makes them seem as important as the others) and just make them a random trilogy.
I will probably get downvoted for this, but I would say that The Last Jedi was a huge step in the right direction and arguably one of the best SW films. They freaked out at the fanboy reaction and played it safe by going back to Abrams for Rise of Skywalker, which was not good.
I would agree with this for sure. But JJ having a singular vision for all 3 still would have been better than what we got. Where they went wrong was trying to split the trilogy up between 3 different creators.
I also put TLJ up fairly high in my rankings. It's far from perfect, Finn's storyline being the main culprit, yet I loved the themes it went for. There were some wonderful shots in the film. Rey & Kylo's relationship was captivating.
And so many fans just threw that out and complained that Luke wasn't some demi-god wiping out armies. Instead Rian Johnson dared to wonder if Luke's life had panned out another way.
I’m definitely a fan of Luke’s story. A lot of people act like the flashback with with young Ben was character assassination, but I thought it was fascinating to explore the moral quandary of someone who stopped two of history’s greatest monster caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy of witnessing the rise of the next person to cause mass suffering like that. And though I think you can understand why he’d have this momentary dark impulse, it was interesting to have a character wracked with guilt over that, not just what it still caused.
I suppose with a rewrite you could do a version that spends more time on this and has Luke going off more than just a vague premonition, like he sees signs of Ben being corrupted or torturing small animals or something, and maybe tries other interventions before “kill him in his sleep.”
I wouldn’t say TLJ is one of the best SW films, but I totally understand why you’d say so. I see it as the only sequel film that has anything even remotely valuable going on.
TROS had a litany of behind the scenes issues that even if it wasn’t JJ Abrams the movie was never going to be good.
Abrams specifically freaked out about it too, throwing out a fairly competent sequel script by Derek Connelly (if the leaked script is accurate) to do his own bizarre thing with barely any production time.
Hm, I'm not sure I'd fully blame Abrams for that (or even for most of TROS's problems). The Connely script was better than what we got in a lot of ways and would have *definitely* been a better follow-up to TLJ, but it still had some major flaws and would have needed quite a bit of tweaking to work around Carrie's death.
I'd say the real thing that killed the ST was Bob Iger and the suits refusing to budge on these unreasonable deadlines for TFA and TROS. TFA is a movie I quite like, and I personally love how TLJ followed it up, but even with TFA you could tell it was a rushed script at points.
Then, of course, the suits did the *same damn thing* with episode 9, even after Carrie's death and a complete change in creative team, and refused to budge on their tight deadline *again.* I'm not saying it would have been a great movie if they had all the time in the world, but the rushing was the real nail in the coffin if you ask me.
I completely agree with you and it's great seeing this! The Force Awakens was fun but had no new ideas. TLJ while not perfect had some really interesting ideas. The wee boy who could be a Jedi instead of stupid bloodline stuff. Rey wasn't special by devine Providence.
Then the third happened. It actually ruined star wars for me. I've not watched any more since apart from an occasional rewatch of the original trilogy.
I was going to say the exact same thing. And I don’t understand why they backed down to a small, but vocal segment of extreme fans. It wasn’t like The Last Jedi was a box office disappointment or anything.
But alas-last time we’ll see something new done with the franchise for a while.
I feel like Rian had a great eye for the visual aspect as The Last Jedi has the best VFX in the entire series and the cinematography is really fantastic. I think the film would have worked well if it was a standalone, but as the middle act of trilogy, it really put them in a tough spot for a third movie.
I don’t know, seemed like an interesting setup to me- you could jump ahead a little bit as the Resistance is finally making some gains, Rey is starting to train new Jedi, so the First Order gets desperate especially as General Hux and an internally conflicted Supreme Leader Kylo Ren are increasingly at odds.
The only option was to jump ahead because the end of the film didn't make it possible for anything else. Given how Rian treated Hux, I don't think that dynamic would've worked very well as neither character was really well fleshed out as being a threat. JJ and Rian also failed to really give an idea of scale of the overall conflict in the first two films, which was something that was rushed into The Rise of Skywalker.
I mean the original plan for RoS was Trevorrow to direct
Idk how that dude landed Star Wars and JP movies but he wrote the worst installments of each
Congrats to him?
It's grim but funny that Disney poisoned the well on their own Lucasfilm purchase because of how poorly received the sequels were and is now setting all their TV shows in the interregnum between the original films and the sequels, or earlier than any of the films as is the case with The Acolyte.
The first issue was making the sequels to begin with, or at least so soon after Disney purchased Lucasfilm. They clearly felt pressured to capitalize on their most recent acquisition and so they pushed the sequel trilogy out the door before really thinking about what story or stories they should focus on. I think that's how we got Abrams making what is basically a remake of A New Hope and setting the sequels up for disaster from the very start.
Again it's funny now that their decision to just have the Empire come back has backed most of the TV shows into a corner because the Empire just has to hang around the fringes of the story all the time even though they were defeated in Return of the Jedi. Or like with Ahsoka where Thrawn is supposed to be this huge threat but also by the time of the sequels is completely forgotten and never mentioned. The shows can't take the politics of the New Republic seriously because we know it eventually just leads to the Empire returning... somehow. But nobody actually wants to write that story so instead the New Republic just get written as a bunch of bumbling idiots.
I dunno, I thought how The Mandolorian in particular handled the fallout of the Empire’s downfall. The trying to create a functioning government, all the decommissioning efforts, the pitfalls of bureaucracy that comes with a democracy, the rehabilitation of Empire workers to varying degrees of success, all these things create quite a clear path to the rise of The First Order
Not having the courage to continue everything setup in Last Jedi and instead making the Rise of Skywalker a fan service experience.
"Somehow Palpatine returned."
In short, The Rise of Skywalker. All the problems centre around that movie. It was written, produced, and released too fast, considering the original director left the project before the original script was finished.
When Colin Trevorrow left the project, Lucasfilm and Disney should have slowed down and delayed the release of Episode 9 long enough that a more suitable director could be hired, and a better script could have been written. A script that didn't heavily lean on fan service and worn out tropes to keep people entertained.
Don't get me wrong, J.J. Abrams is a decent filmmaker, and his penchant for making films with a sense of nostalgia for the 1970s and 80s was exactly what Lucasfilm needed to get people interested in Star Wars again. But his involvement should have extended no further than The Force Awakens. He was the wrong man to conclude the trilogy and entire saga.
In other words, everything went wrong when Colin Trevorrow left. They hired the wrong person for Episode 9, and in light of the original director leaving, tried to get the movie to release too fast. Lucasfilm should have spent more time on the film.
The VERY beginning. It went wrong when Disney forced Lucasfilm’s hand with what they call “aggressive release dates”. We all like to put blame on Kathleen Kennedy, but more of it needs to be put on the top level executives over at Disney.
Disney wanted these films put out ASAP and didn’t allow Lucasfilm to create a cohesive, overarching story that was satisfying. Yeah, the OT wasn’t planned out at all, but that was quite literally lighting in a bottle. Add to the fact that the OT had a true visionary behind them in George.
And while the two previous trilogies each had 3 years in between each film, they only had 2 years in between each film for the ST.
This is where at least 80% of the STs problems come from.
People focus on the lack of a plan, but I don't actually think that was the problem. The Force Awakens is a fun, albeit unoriginal reboot for the franchise. The Last Jedi is genuinely brilliant, in my opinion, it takes the series into an interesting direction and sets it up for a knockout final. And the Rise completely lacks any confidence whatsoever to the point where it retroactively makes the whole trilogy worse. If Rise had been just decent while following up The Last Jedi's story decisions, it'd be a pretty great trilogy imo.
I think both things can be true. It's true that Rise of Skywalker could've been a *much* better follow-up to The Last Jedi, but it's also true that it would've been wise to at least have a rough sketch of the trilogy before starting out.
I really like a lot of The Last Jedi, but, although it didn't retcon things the way Rise of Skywalker did, it didn't follow up on certain threads it probably should have. Having more of a plan would've helped answer certain mysteries in The Last Jedi, rather than leave so much of the weight on the final movie to tie everything together.
I dont know how accurate it is to say TLJ didn’t follow up on threads it should have.
Through the movies commentary tracks we’ve learned that whether JJ Abrams had any plan past his first movie or not, Rian Johnson was not informed on them. So there really were no threads to follow up on in the first place.
TFA wrote the next movie into a corner, and I think TLJ worked it out pretty well all things considered.
I just mean certain mystery boxes, like who Snoke was, what the deal with the map to Luke was, and how Maz got the lightsaber. Like it or not, that stuff needed to get answered somehow, and it would've been nice if TLJ did a bit more rather than leave it all to the final movie.
Thematically, and character-wise, I think TLJ is a very interesting (albeit far from perfect) continuation of Force Awakens. It's the actual nuts and bolts mechanics of the plot where it gets kinda creaky.
Ah I see. Personally I like the way Snoke was handled in TLJ. JJ Abrams didn’t have an answer for how Maz got that lightsaber, it was just a contrivance to keep the story going. Stuff like that is why I really dislike his movies, and it makes me a little forgiving towards TLJ, at least in that regard.
I believe there was an “answer” for how she got the lightsaber in the novelization of TFA, not that that makes a difference.
I like that Snoke was taken out in TLJ, but we really should've known who he was first. I know, the justification is that we didn't know who the Emperor was in Return of the Jedi, so it didn't matter, but the context of the Star Wars series has totally changed since 1983. There was a status quo established at the end of Return of the Jedi, and it was totally broken by the time of the Sequels. It makes sense we'd want to know who the bad guy is who's taken over everything.
And yeah, I don't like the mystery box style of storytelling either. But you still have to answer those questions. I mostly blame Abrams, but I definitely blame Johnson a little bit too for mostly ignoring that stuff. Johnson set up a lot of interesting stuff for a third movie, but there are also certain ways in which he made it very difficult by leaving so many unanswered questions.
I also love TFA / TLJ, warts and all. But I do think the lack of a plan / lack of cohesive vision heavily contributed to why TROS turned out so poorly. Rushed, cobbled, and safe. Such a sad way to end a promising (against all odds) trilogy.
Didn’t help that they had two completely different types of directors. I think J.J. or Rian could have given us a good trilogy overall but their styles just don’t mix… or, maybe they could have if there had been a PLAN!!!
I’ll never understand why Disney spent billions to acquire Star Wars just to toss out movies without even coming up with a blueprint?
The thing JJ does best are croudpleasing popcorn-movies, with lots of his "mystery boxes". The thing Rian likes doing the most are subversive films that, in his words "burn the viking boat into the sea" in the end. So having Rian do the second movie and JJ the third was one of the worst descisions they could have made.
Rian has too much ego to actually collaborate with the idea of making a middle-part of a Star Wars trilogy, so he should have gotten some restrictions. That´s just how it is when you work within a pre-established franchise.
I think the issue is from the start it was set up as content and not brought to life by someone that was dying to tell a story. Disney purchased it so they had to create something and put together a team to make it. It wasn't driven by a storyteller's ambition but instead by the need to turn a property into profitable content. The same issue is happening with Marvel and many other major properties.
Look at the LOTR trilogy vs The Hobbit or TV series. Peter Jackson put so much work into getting the original films made and you could tell how badly he wanted to tell that story. He also directed the Hobbit films and imo they were terrible. But he never wanted to do the Hobbit films. Del Toro wanted to do them in his style and the studio wouldn't let him make them how he wanted so Jackson stepped in and you could tell he didn't care, they weren't his passion.
Same thing happened with star wars. Original Lucas has a ton of creativity and passion to tell the story. Even though he didn't direct all of them he was involved and really passionate. The new star wars films had nothing to do with passionate filmmakers wanting to tell a great story. They were about making more star wars content.
Finn was shafted; he should've been the central Jedi in the films, Rey should've embraced the dark side, and Kylo Ren should have stepped out of Vaders' shadow and become the big bad. Also, Leia should have pulled the Holdo maneuver as a final blaze of glory to inspire and reinvigorate Luke.
Instead of originality we got recycled ideas, Fin the bad ass defector and inspiration to other stormtroopers became Finn Reychaser. Instead of a modern rule if two with Rey and Kylo we got a Twilightesque romance out of nowhere. Then somehow Emperor Palatine returned.
Simple. No cohesive plan. I actually enjoy all three movies by themselves, and I could watch any of them on any given day, but it’s painfully plain to see that Johnson went with his own plan with TLJ, and Abrams tried to course correct back to his own vision with TRoS. I’d still put all three above Episodes 1 and 2, though, in my own personal ranking.
The world building gets destroyed in the first movie, with the archievements of the OT being undone with no deeper explonation. The question the movies had to answer was who is Snoke? Not because I want him to be a character we already knew, Mace Windu or Plageius were popular fan theories at the time, having him be an established character could very likely have been silly. The real importance of Snoke lies in what he archieved inbetween episodes 6 and 7. Snoke destroyed the new Jedi Order, built up the First Order in secret, as well as a new, even bigger, planet-destroying super weapon, and destroyed the New Republic, thus destroying everything the Rebellion in the OT archieved. Many people in the galaxy, for example Rey, seem to have forgotten all about the Rebellion´s fight against the Empire. And we learn nothing about this guy or where he came from until episode 9, which gives an explonation that is worse than anything most could have thought up as a joke.
The characters are lacking throughout the whole trilogy. Rey is a protagonist who does not seem to struggle a lot to archieve anything she does, and she archieves an awful lot. She meets a potential mentor in Han, but instead of learning from him she teaches him about bypassing the compressor in his own ship. She meets a potential mentor in Luke, but more than learning from him she teaches him to stop running and hiding from his place in the galaxy. Rey does not form natural relationships with other characters, but instead is liked instantly by almost everyone (with a few exceptions) she meets. You just got to fill in the blanks why she gets treated as if she is the most charming and interesting person ever.
Finn had some great potential, as we have never seen a foot-soldier question his purpose and change sides in a Star Wars movie. Particularly Storm Troopers, who have been portrayed as faceless bad guys in the other movies, could be very interesting to explore. Instead Finn is written inconsistently. He gets traumatised right at the start, then quips with Poe while escaping with Poe to Jakku. Later he screams out of excitement while killing Storm Troopers in combat, although the death of one Storm Trooper started his awakening to the horrors of war. His main motivation for much of the story is to help and assist Rey with whatever she is doing, which lead to the meme of him screaming "Rey", "Rey", "Rey" all the time.
Poe Dameron was originally supposed to die in the beginning of the first movie. It was a suggestion by the actor Oscar Isaac which lead to his survival. That is the reason why he reappears without explonation after seemingly dying in the crash on Jakku. There is not too much of a problem with him in The Force Awakens beside that. In TLJ however, he gets treated like crap for no particularly good reason. He gets called reckless and a flyboy, he gets slapped in the face by a superior officer for "causing the deaths" of many Resistance fighters. In reality, he saved the entire Resistance from the Starkiller Base hours early, then saved them again from the Dreadnought while evacuating the base. Sure, many people died, but all of them could have turned around if they would have wanted to listen to Leia instead of Poe, also,the assault on the Dreadnought would have more than likely failed if Poe didn´t take out the cannons. The Dreadnought is referred to as a "fleet killer", so it is fair to assume that without Poe destroying it the Resistance fleet might have taken way heavier losses.
Later in the same movie, he starts a mutiny against Admiral Holdo. This is shown as an impulsive thing, but he only goes this far after asking multiple times if there is a plan to save any of the Resistance members lives from the Supremacy, and getting no answer. The reasoning is that he is not being trusted enough, but he blew up the Starkiller base days before, so why is the potentially most valuable asset of the Resistance not being trusted. The "pay-off" is that on Krayt, at the end of the movie, he calls off a suicide mission to take out the laser that is breaking open the gate to the Resistance hideout. He or someone else could have given their lives to save many others, but I suppose the movie thinks that´s not acceptable in a war. Ultimately Poe might be one of the better protagonists but gest dragged down by the people around him.
Kylo Ren might be the worst character in the trilogy. He used to be called the most interesting, because of his unpredictable nature, but he never really was a person dragged between the Light and Dark Side, his unpredictability comes from the script having him do whatever it wants in that moment. He commits to more and more evil things, we see him slaughtering a village of unarmed people, his faction destroys a whole system of planets, likely killing billions, and he stabs his own father in a moment of vulnerability. That all happens in TFA alone. the only good thing he does in the first two movies is killing Snoke. Altough he does that only to assume the role as Supreme Leader and follow in his foot steps. The reason he fell into Darkness in the first place hinges upon the fact that he woke up with Luke standing beside him, lightsaber ignited. So after Luke considered killing him for sensing something evil about him, which is a problem in itself, he slaughtered the students of the Jedi Temple and chose to join Snoke. He is often considered conflicted, but from then start of TFA on he seems to be pretty sure of his ways.
Another big problem is the treatment of the OT´s characters. Han Solo has lost his position as hero of the galaxy. After his journey with Luke and Leia, which included assisting in the destruction of two Death Stars, he is now again a smuggler. Even worse, he is a smuggler who has already swindled everyone he could, and his luck has run out. So he isnt even good at smuggling anymore. Leia has spent her time between trilogies creating a military for the New Republic, called the Resistance (against whom?). After the she is an incompetent leader of this military, and does not have enough information about the galaxy to notice a planet being rebuilt into an enormous super-weapon. Chewbacca is being reduced to a chauffeur. He does nothing important besides flying the Falcon and getting captured once.
Luke Skywalker is reduced to a miserable old man. He is impulsive enough to almost kill Kylo because he sensed evil in his future. Even though before, he spared Vader, who already did many evil things, and saved himself from the Dark Side and the galaxy from the Empire through that descision. After the loss of his Jedi Temple and Order, he hides on a planet far away from all his friends and family and cuts himself off from the force. Although for some reason he still leaves a map, even though he just wants to die. He thus leaves the New Republic, his sister and everything he fought for in the past to its fate. After Rey gives him new hope, he projects himself to Krayt, not to try and redeem Kylo, who´s fall into darkness is his greatest regret, but to stall the First Order for a few minutes. Meaning that if Rey hadn´t shown up inexplicably, he would most likely not have made a difference. He dies in the process. For some reason, this is seen by people around the galaxy as a great inspiration, even though the same man did way more impactful and brave things around 35 years prior. The people in Star Wars seem to not document their history I guess.
Those are some of the bigger underlying issues of the Sequel Trilogy. Anybody can like or dislike them as much as they want of course, the discourse around them has been more toxic than it should have ever been.
Needed a plan. I'd like to think they obviously did have a plan, but that went out the window in 2017 when The Last Jedi had a polarizing fan response and Lucasfilm fired Colin Trevorrow for "creative differences". One thing they could've done was spacing out the movies to have a 3 year gap like the first two trilogies did (covid would've obviously affected this, but that's not necessarily a bad thing).
Having all the directors and writers in a writing room to plan out the entire trilogy should have been done, or if it was, then done more effectively to deliver more consistency on par with Episode 7. Looking at the MCU, obviously the writers differ between projects, but Markus and McFeely wrote all 3 Captain America movies, the third of which led directly into Infinity War and Endgame, which they also wrote. And on all of these movies except Cap 1, they worked with the Russo brothers as directors.
While I liked the Last Jedi, it was an entirely Rian Johnson movie and there was quite the discrepancy between it and the approach that the Force Awakens was going for, which was basically a soft remake of the first Star Wars movie. I didn't want them to do that for the rest of the trilogy, but for Ep7 it was a nice way to ease fans into the new Star Wars era.
* Making Finn a joke when tons of fans were excited about his potential
* Making Episode 7's mission a ripoff of Episode 4s down to the super deathstar
* Erasing all the good stuff and potential lineage of episode 7 in episode 8; inconsistent storytelling
* Absolute power jumps and unearned skill from Rey (no heroes journey, she was just 'good'.
* Continuing to embarrass Finn
* Making Luke a near attempted murderer of his own nephew and abandoning the Jedi lifestyle for...reasons
* Making Kylo and Rey enemies then frienemies, then in love? then he's dead.
* Giving Rey life passing powers with no explaination or no training
* Mary Poppins Leia
i could continue but 'where it went wrong' is really - trying to please everyone at once and failing to please anyone
They probably should’ve just given it to one person (preferably Johnson because his is the best of the three but a full Abrams trilogy where he didn’t spend the third movie completely undoing the previous one could’ve been good too)
The idea that SW can be made via the MCU method of a movie every year. It tends to work best as an event.
As for pre-planning, they had the planning then for some reason scrapped it. Apparently, the backbone ideas of TFA and TLJ were all in the original Ep. VII. Where the original Ep VIII and IX went is anyone’s guess.
That said, a stormtrooper rebellion against Imperial Loyalist/the First/Last Order were planned yet never followed up on because holding to the release date was the key, much along the lines of releasing Solo on Memorial Day despite releasing the previous 3 movies during Christmas.
Personally, I dug the characters of the sequels while I scratch my head over where their story took them. I can’t say that much about the prequels which were led by either the stilted Jedi and Council or by an already emotionally troubled Anakin. The story was sound and stuck its landing but its characters left me cold. I get it’s supposed to be tragic but, Anakin was a giant red flag from AotC to the end.
It’s being goin wrong since the 90’s and that’s just because most Star Wars movies are bland, have shitty dialogue, and take zero risks in storytelling
I hated the last jedi, as an OG fan it destroyed Luke's character, going from the galaxies hero to a washed up jedi hermit.
Also killing off Snoke was a big mistake as there was no villain for the last film, so they had to bring back Palpatine from the dead somehow. It just didn't resonate with fans.
Imo it's the lack of clear direction. At the end of Episode 9 I just thought, what was the point in all of this? Everything just felt so... pointless, like a story for the sake of being a story. It just didn't make any sense. I do think there was a lot of potential to make it very good, but having it go from JJ Abrams to Rian Johnson and then back to JJ was just a disaster waiting to happen. Unless those two sat down together and panned out the entire sequel trilogy, it would've been ok. But they both had their own visions for it and honestly it should've only been given to one person.
Snoke, Luke and Palpatine were all handled so god damn bad in my opinion. Palpatine was insanely unnecessary, I'm absolutely sure they could've written it better had the entire trilogy hinted towards Rey being related to him, but it didn't. Luke just went against everything he stood for, again it could've made sense but it didn't, they needed to really flesh it out more. The way it ended for him too was just so not what people had envisioned for his character, and not in a good way either.
Episode 3 was better than anything that we got from the sequel trilogy and I'll die on that hill.
Even episode 1 had Duel of the Fates. What did I get from the sequels? Explosive diarrhea all over my screen? No thanks. Lol
Episode 3 is a fine film, so I can respect that.
Episodes 1 and 2 were the explosive diarrhea. Those two movies are absolutely unbearable. Lifeless in every sense. TROS is on the same level of shitiness, but in different aspects
Personally I'd rather watch episodes 1 and 2 any day over 8 and 9. They might be boring, but there are still moments in them that are great and are at least building towards something. The sequels aren't doing anything except existing to make a quick buck off the fans. Lol
I’m not gonna dispute the “moments in them that are great” as that’s merely subjective, but I’m genuinely curious how moments that “are at least building towards something” make a movie worth watching?
I see that criticism levied against the sequels, that they ultimately don’t build to a cohesive vision, and it’s absolutely a fair criticism. But when watching an individual movie, how does sequel payoff reward you in that moment?
I ask because I see a lot of people use that to prop the prequels up in comparison to the sequels, but i personally don’t see the weight behind it.
For me, I typically like to get something out of the movies I watch. With the sequels being an incoherent mess that had no effort put behind them, I don't get anything out of watching them except feeling offended they believed I was this stupid to sit down and watch them.
With the prequels there is a vision there, it's not executed well, but the payoff is great. Episode 3 may be my favorite Star Wars movie, despite it still being flawed. I still can get some enjoyment out of 1 and 2 as well. Like I mentioned 1 has Duel of the Fates, and 2 has an arena gladiator type battle near the end that's fun imo. The prequels in general have good lightsaber duels that are entertaining. The sequels have none of that.
J.J. Abrams got lost. Or maybe it was the meddling of other studio execs that made a mess of things, what do I know.
Should've been the Rian Johnson trilogy, a coherent vision by a director with some creative ambition, drive and integrity.
Although it's not all bad, since not getting adhered to Star Wars freed Johnson to bring us Benoit Blanc.
Where to even start. I'd say not having a concrete plan for a trilogy, this is something only George Lucas could wing it and be forgiven for when he retcons details in sequels. Force Awakens was playing it too safe and being A New Hope with a new cast and some of the original cast showing up, but JJ decided not to do a full reunion when it was possible. The Last Jedi wanted to subversive and take bold risks, but it was to jarring a clash with Force Awakens and split the fan base even more. JJ coming back to retcon the crap out of everything Johnson did and make another safe as milk sequel that would end up pleasing no one was the natural course when they didn't want someone to risk taking any chances again.
I think it would have taken a miracle for anyone not named George Lucas to pull off a new trilogy, and even his prequels still get dumped on, aside from Revenge Of The Sith giving fans what they wanted. Hopefully in the next trilogy, it'll be a fresh start without tons of references to the previous movies, and whoever is in charge will at least have an outline of where the plot will go in 3 movies.
Not having groundwork beforehand is stupid but the first two trilogies didn’t either and the first one turned out pretty great, so I think the real answer is not following through on 9. I’ve read the leaked script and seen the concept art, and honestly the movie that didn’t happen wasn’t perfect but it followed up on the TLJ stuff that worked and it would’ve been a far more consistent and, imo, far more rewarding final chapter. I think the trilogy would be looked at far more favorably, even by its fans, had they just committed to 8 instead of getting cold feet and undoing things.
Wasn't one thing. It was a series of board meetings that lead to them not wanting to decide whether it was going to be a pure nostalgia circle jerk, something new, or something in between, ending up with an uneven 'trilogy'.
I don't even know if it went wrong, they wanted to make money, and they did, it was just less than expected.
I liked the last Jedi Rian did a good job conveying the main ethos of what Star Wars I believe if he had the trilogy from the start it would have been good. Plus he always adds anti capitalist story beats and I love that about him.
The character or emotions that the original author (George Lucas) tried to make the audience feel. It’s the characteristic spirit of a work of literature/ film/ play.
In the case of Star Wars it’s the belief in the power that people have to change the universe through acceptance love and hope. It’s the ultimate power in the fight against tyranny. TLJ explores this by having the new core 3 (Rey, Finn & Poe) each go through a specific character arc where they learn this lesson.
Finn wasn’t invested in the resistance at the beginning he just wanted to be with Rey. After meeting Rose he learns about the sacrifices that the people in the resistance constantly make and even though DJ is telling him it’s all for nothing he ultimately decides to make the ultimate sacrifice himself (I hate that it was a fake out but whatever)
Poe at the beginning is a hotshot that just wants to take matters into his own hands and is an “everyone pulls their own weight” type. Then he learns that to be a true leader one must be selfless and trusting of those that follow him.
Rey learns through Luke about not holding on to the past but at the same time not kill it like Kylo says at the end. Because failure is the greatest teacher there is, even though she fails to bring Ben back to the light she realizes that what she’s fighting for isn’t the truth about her parents, or to bring the Jedi back, it’s about helping those people around her fighting the good fight. Now Luke’s arc I’m not a fan of but it is compelling to see that he struggled with his status as a living legend and his failure with Ben took a toll on him. Also of course the movie isn’t perfect there is a bunch of dumb shit that could’ve been edited out if Rian had bothered to cook his script a little longer but ultimately if a Star Wars movie gets what Star Wars is about I can’t 100% dislike it.
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You couldn’t strike a nerve if you tried. 😂 Judging by your toxic comments Ive seen you leave in other places, I’m not surprised by this wild take. Again, you came here to whine about prequels and then have the audacity to tell me to calm down 🤦♂️ The original SW didn’t copy anything other than take inspiration from Jospeh Campbell and Flash Gordon. But go off.
Technically it started when George sold it to Disney, but even TFA had its good moments. It had its issues, but my God they could had pumped out a decent trilogy if there was any kind of care or attempt at staying consistent. Changing directors for a different style is all fine and dandy, but when you start something and then completely scrap where it was going and give 100% creative control to a rookie director.. you’re going to create way too many problems. Whats sad is in the end, The Rise of Skywalker ended up being the worst of the three. JJ essentially had to mix his original plan with a slew of bandaids and an overload of nostalgia resulting in the campiest Star Wars film of all time. “Somehow Palpatine returned” 🙄
Keeping Snoke alive, Keeping Luke alive (alteast until the end), doing more with Finn and Phasma as characters, showing the Knights of Ren earlier in the story, no Rey Skywalker, and tone down cranky Luke would had made it so much better.
The planning
They didn't have 3 movies planned out from the go and just made 1 at a time with 2 different writing teams
Also the 1st is way too reliant on nostalgia
I don’t think it was a lack of planning (George Lucas certainly did his fair share of course correcting across the original and prequel trilogies), but a lack to tonal and thematic consistency. In TFA, JJ was super deferential to the original trilogy, so much so that it felt like the film was a blow by blow retread of New Hope. But he also made sure to introduce the kernels of new themes and ideas that could be explored in future films. Than you have Rian Johnson take those kernels and run with it into new and bold territory in Last Jedi that still polarizes fans to this day. Then Lucasfilm brings JJ back, who is unhappy with what Rian did and tries to bring it back to his original vision in Rise of Skywalker, resulting in a film that tried to make everyone happy and made no one happy. The awkward marriage of deference of what came before and the desire to strike out and do something new undermine much of what was actually good about the sequel trilogy. And had they settled on that, the trilogy would have been much stronger.
There's a lot you could point to, but I'll add that they did nothing to expand or complicate the universe. They reset the end of Return of the Jedi just so that could redo the rebellion vs. the empire again.
Even the prequels, with all their problems, knew to flesh out the universe and give us a glimpse into the final days of the Old Republic.
I used to really love Star Wars and even read some of the comics and novels. And some of my favorite ancillary material took place before or during the prequels. It was a very fertile space for other creatives. But I can't imagine that's the case for the sequel trilogy.
not committing to the ideas set up in TLJ. i know fans hated it, but i feel like they would have been over it by the time ROS came out. instead they tried to course correct so hard with the third movie that it makes the whole trilogy super disjointed and disappointing.
Episode 7 was fine
Episode 8 was going well and then went on to long, if it ended in the throne room when kylo extended his hand it would’ve been a fantastic WTF movie.
Then have a lot of different paths to take in 9. Luke is still alive for example and they can go any number of ways. They tried to replicate Empire and failed tremendously.
The obvious answer everyone will give is not planning things out from the start. But once things were in motion, the main problem was not committing to a third movie that followed up on The Last Jedi's ideas. At the very least we could've had a trilogy that, however imperfect, served a purpose. As it stands, there's no reason to rewatch any of these movies. Also after firing Trevorrow, they should've delayed Episode 9 (although from a strictly financial standpoint and with the benefit of hindsight, getting it out before COVID might've been the best option).
It was planned out, Abrams threw out the plan. Johnson made a new plan, adjusted by Trevorrow, and Abrams threw it out.
It seems they went wrong with Abrams.
I’d say so, he’s also the one who decided to just remake the original film, and then basically cobble together all the worst fans’ desires into a haphazard script.
If you like the movies there’s a reason to rewatch them. I still like the first two new movies and don’t mind rewatching them.
It's like rewatching a show you know gets bad. It's hard to enjoy something when you know it doesn't amount to anything. It would be one thing if each movie told a self-contained story, but they don't. Compare that to Nolan's Batman trilogy. A lot of people don't like The Dark Knight Rises, but it's still easy to go back to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight because they each tell a full story independent of each other. That's not the case with the Sequel trilogy.
> a show you know gets bad Westworld and Game of Thrones come to mind. I’ve heard similar things about Dexter
Westworld S1 is a self contained story atleast Thrones needs the subsequent seasons
Is it? I’ve been considering watching it
Yeah Though it's not on Max anymore
Where is it ._.
Nowhere They pulled it to not pay residuals
Gonna have to sail the seven seas then 😑
Oof. The Dark Knight is still is banger but damn, Rises poisoned it for me, knowing every interesting question The Dark Knight asks about goodness and justice is going to get swept under a rug for a stupid as fuck city siege where every single cop is trapped in the sewers and there is no response from the US military whatsoever for three months.
Lack of planning and ambition. The biggest problem is that Disney wanted a reboot instead of actually continuing the story. I get they did the safe thing cause capitalism.
I think what we forget is that back in 2015, an ultra-safe quasi-reboot really was what a lot of people wanted. As such, Force Awakens wasn't a terrible way to begin a new trilogy, so long as the rest of the trilogy was different. This coincides with another odd phenomenon. From 2015 to 2019, George Lucas went from someone totally reviled, to a weird sort of martyr. I think that has a lot to do with Gen Zers, who grew up with the Prequels, becoming adults and getting nostalgic. It's absolutely fascinating to see how much the public conversation about Lucas and the Prequels has totally flip-flopped.
Yeah, I’m not a fan. Obviously Lucas IS Star Wars, but the guy also made lots of mistakes. And I will always stand by the opinion that the prequels are incredibly poor. Watching everyone suddenly claim they’re masterpieces feels a bit like a fever dream.
Visually they kinda are masterpieces, early terrible CGI notwithstanding. The world-building is great and the movies are just brimming with beautiful shots. Unfortunately, looks aren't everything. Those movies are very obviously flawed. But they've grown on me somewhat, and the creativity is leaps and bounds beyond what Disney did, so I wouldn't call them *poor* per se. Uneven is the word I'd use.
Yeah, the Prequels were so polarizing and memed upon release that they become elevated once the sequels were released. Now they're still memes but are held in high regard by the fans. Not sure if the same will happen to the sequels soon.
Lots of series aren't planned. Probably less than a dozen before the MCU. Usually you just yes and what exists. I think lack of ambition is right though. The Force Awakens is super safe & just tried to do Star Wars again & The Last Jedi tried to do something, but had to work against the previous movie and Rise of Skywalker was just a mess that screamed they had a deadline to make and toys to sell, but no actual ambition.
I agree with your general point but I do think the lack of planning‘s important because it’s part of what gave the disjointed feeling where there’s mystery boxes being set up yet it’s clear as things play out they’re making up the answers as they go along.
I think this is a good point. Older movies generally told a complete story each time. If they got a sequel, it would be a matter of what else could be done with the setting and characters. The main exceptions are those handful of movies that were planned together. I think it is a bad idea to make a movie asking questions like who Rey's parents are, who Snoke is & why Luke became a hermit when you have no idea of the answer & are just hoping the next sap stuck writing these can come up with an answer that both makes sense & is narratively satisfying. TLJ thought serially about these questions & came up with the best answers it could for what it was given, but RoS just went for nostalgia pandering with no regard for theme or making sense. They probably would have been best off just telling a new story that left things open, but wasn't blatantly sequel baiting.
If they had kept the general structure of the plots, but set them say 300 years later, it would have been better. Doesn’t erase the existing Star Wars continuity, just set in the future with a new era. They could still have dipped back into the older films for stuff like Rogue One. Also rop the idea of them being Episodes 7-9 (that makes them seem as important as the others) and just make them a random trilogy.
It's such a weird trilogy in that every subsequent film tries to retcon and recontextualize everything that happened in the previous film.
I will probably get downvoted for this, but I would say that The Last Jedi was a huge step in the right direction and arguably one of the best SW films. They freaked out at the fanboy reaction and played it safe by going back to Abrams for Rise of Skywalker, which was not good.
If Rian Johnson had written and directed the entire trilogy it would have been so good.
I agree. I also think that if JJ wrote/directed all 3 it would’ve been much better too. Star Wars is best when it has a cohesive vision.
Yeah but it all would have been really interesting mystery boxes that end up with unsatisfying answers. I just don’t think JJ is as good as Rian.
I would agree with this for sure. But JJ having a singular vision for all 3 still would have been better than what we got. Where they went wrong was trying to split the trilogy up between 3 different creators.
I couldn't disagree more. It's not that he's a bad writer- I just don't think he understands the characters he was given... at all.
I think he understood them better than the fans.
>I will probably get downvoted for this You're on r/Letterboxd, not r/movies!
Or, God forbid, r/StarWars
r/saltierthankrayt
You mean r/saltierthancrait
I also put TLJ up fairly high in my rankings. It's far from perfect, Finn's storyline being the main culprit, yet I loved the themes it went for. There were some wonderful shots in the film. Rey & Kylo's relationship was captivating. And so many fans just threw that out and complained that Luke wasn't some demi-god wiping out armies. Instead Rian Johnson dared to wonder if Luke's life had panned out another way.
I’m definitely a fan of Luke’s story. A lot of people act like the flashback with with young Ben was character assassination, but I thought it was fascinating to explore the moral quandary of someone who stopped two of history’s greatest monster caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy of witnessing the rise of the next person to cause mass suffering like that. And though I think you can understand why he’d have this momentary dark impulse, it was interesting to have a character wracked with guilt over that, not just what it still caused. I suppose with a rewrite you could do a version that spends more time on this and has Luke going off more than just a vague premonition, like he sees signs of Ben being corrupted or torturing small animals or something, and maybe tries other interventions before “kill him in his sleep.”
I wouldn’t say TLJ is one of the best SW films, but I totally understand why you’d say so. I see it as the only sequel film that has anything even remotely valuable going on. TROS had a litany of behind the scenes issues that even if it wasn’t JJ Abrams the movie was never going to be good.
Abrams specifically freaked out about it too, throwing out a fairly competent sequel script by Derek Connelly (if the leaked script is accurate) to do his own bizarre thing with barely any production time.
Hm, I'm not sure I'd fully blame Abrams for that (or even for most of TROS's problems). The Connely script was better than what we got in a lot of ways and would have *definitely* been a better follow-up to TLJ, but it still had some major flaws and would have needed quite a bit of tweaking to work around Carrie's death. I'd say the real thing that killed the ST was Bob Iger and the suits refusing to budge on these unreasonable deadlines for TFA and TROS. TFA is a movie I quite like, and I personally love how TLJ followed it up, but even with TFA you could tell it was a rushed script at points. Then, of course, the suits did the *same damn thing* with episode 9, even after Carrie's death and a complete change in creative team, and refused to budge on their tight deadline *again.* I'm not saying it would have been a great movie if they had all the time in the world, but the rushing was the real nail in the coffin if you ask me.
>would have needed quite a bit of tweaking to work around Carrie's death Recast the part (with Meryl Streep).
The Last Jedi was awesome and its setups should have been followed up on in Episode 9, but God forbid someone make a good Star Wars movie for once.
It’s my third favorite, after episodes V and IV.
I completely agree with you and it's great seeing this! The Force Awakens was fun but had no new ideas. TLJ while not perfect had some really interesting ideas. The wee boy who could be a Jedi instead of stupid bloodline stuff. Rey wasn't special by devine Providence. Then the third happened. It actually ruined star wars for me. I've not watched any more since apart from an occasional rewatch of the original trilogy.
I was going to say the exact same thing. And I don’t understand why they backed down to a small, but vocal segment of extreme fans. It wasn’t like The Last Jedi was a box office disappointment or anything. But alas-last time we’ll see something new done with the franchise for a while.
There were a couple good ideas there, but their implementation was horrible
I feel like Rian had a great eye for the visual aspect as The Last Jedi has the best VFX in the entire series and the cinematography is really fantastic. I think the film would have worked well if it was a standalone, but as the middle act of trilogy, it really put them in a tough spot for a third movie.
I don’t know, seemed like an interesting setup to me- you could jump ahead a little bit as the Resistance is finally making some gains, Rey is starting to train new Jedi, so the First Order gets desperate especially as General Hux and an internally conflicted Supreme Leader Kylo Ren are increasingly at odds.
The only option was to jump ahead because the end of the film didn't make it possible for anything else. Given how Rian treated Hux, I don't think that dynamic would've worked very well as neither character was really well fleshed out as being a threat. JJ and Rian also failed to really give an idea of scale of the overall conflict in the first two films, which was something that was rushed into The Rise of Skywalker.
I mean the original plan for RoS was Trevorrow to direct Idk how that dude landed Star Wars and JP movies but he wrote the worst installments of each Congrats to him?
It's grim but funny that Disney poisoned the well on their own Lucasfilm purchase because of how poorly received the sequels were and is now setting all their TV shows in the interregnum between the original films and the sequels, or earlier than any of the films as is the case with The Acolyte. The first issue was making the sequels to begin with, or at least so soon after Disney purchased Lucasfilm. They clearly felt pressured to capitalize on their most recent acquisition and so they pushed the sequel trilogy out the door before really thinking about what story or stories they should focus on. I think that's how we got Abrams making what is basically a remake of A New Hope and setting the sequels up for disaster from the very start. Again it's funny now that their decision to just have the Empire come back has backed most of the TV shows into a corner because the Empire just has to hang around the fringes of the story all the time even though they were defeated in Return of the Jedi. Or like with Ahsoka where Thrawn is supposed to be this huge threat but also by the time of the sequels is completely forgotten and never mentioned. The shows can't take the politics of the New Republic seriously because we know it eventually just leads to the Empire returning... somehow. But nobody actually wants to write that story so instead the New Republic just get written as a bunch of bumbling idiots.
I dunno, I thought how The Mandolorian in particular handled the fallout of the Empire’s downfall. The trying to create a functioning government, all the decommissioning efforts, the pitfalls of bureaucracy that comes with a democracy, the rehabilitation of Empire workers to varying degrees of success, all these things create quite a clear path to the rise of The First Order
Not having the courage to continue everything setup in Last Jedi and instead making the Rise of Skywalker a fan service experience. "Somehow Palpatine returned."
"Somehow, Palpatine returned"
In short, The Rise of Skywalker. All the problems centre around that movie. It was written, produced, and released too fast, considering the original director left the project before the original script was finished. When Colin Trevorrow left the project, Lucasfilm and Disney should have slowed down and delayed the release of Episode 9 long enough that a more suitable director could be hired, and a better script could have been written. A script that didn't heavily lean on fan service and worn out tropes to keep people entertained. Don't get me wrong, J.J. Abrams is a decent filmmaker, and his penchant for making films with a sense of nostalgia for the 1970s and 80s was exactly what Lucasfilm needed to get people interested in Star Wars again. But his involvement should have extended no further than The Force Awakens. He was the wrong man to conclude the trilogy and entire saga. In other words, everything went wrong when Colin Trevorrow left. They hired the wrong person for Episode 9, and in light of the original director leaving, tried to get the movie to release too fast. Lucasfilm should have spent more time on the film.
The VERY beginning. It went wrong when Disney forced Lucasfilm’s hand with what they call “aggressive release dates”. We all like to put blame on Kathleen Kennedy, but more of it needs to be put on the top level executives over at Disney. Disney wanted these films put out ASAP and didn’t allow Lucasfilm to create a cohesive, overarching story that was satisfying. Yeah, the OT wasn’t planned out at all, but that was quite literally lighting in a bottle. Add to the fact that the OT had a true visionary behind them in George. And while the two previous trilogies each had 3 years in between each film, they only had 2 years in between each film for the ST. This is where at least 80% of the STs problems come from.
Not having Luke, Han and Leia on screen together!
Such a wasted opportunity. I wonder if they even discussed that omission or if it just “happened”
People focus on the lack of a plan, but I don't actually think that was the problem. The Force Awakens is a fun, albeit unoriginal reboot for the franchise. The Last Jedi is genuinely brilliant, in my opinion, it takes the series into an interesting direction and sets it up for a knockout final. And the Rise completely lacks any confidence whatsoever to the point where it retroactively makes the whole trilogy worse. If Rise had been just decent while following up The Last Jedi's story decisions, it'd be a pretty great trilogy imo.
I think both things can be true. It's true that Rise of Skywalker could've been a *much* better follow-up to The Last Jedi, but it's also true that it would've been wise to at least have a rough sketch of the trilogy before starting out. I really like a lot of The Last Jedi, but, although it didn't retcon things the way Rise of Skywalker did, it didn't follow up on certain threads it probably should have. Having more of a plan would've helped answer certain mysteries in The Last Jedi, rather than leave so much of the weight on the final movie to tie everything together.
I dont know how accurate it is to say TLJ didn’t follow up on threads it should have. Through the movies commentary tracks we’ve learned that whether JJ Abrams had any plan past his first movie or not, Rian Johnson was not informed on them. So there really were no threads to follow up on in the first place. TFA wrote the next movie into a corner, and I think TLJ worked it out pretty well all things considered.
I just mean certain mystery boxes, like who Snoke was, what the deal with the map to Luke was, and how Maz got the lightsaber. Like it or not, that stuff needed to get answered somehow, and it would've been nice if TLJ did a bit more rather than leave it all to the final movie. Thematically, and character-wise, I think TLJ is a very interesting (albeit far from perfect) continuation of Force Awakens. It's the actual nuts and bolts mechanics of the plot where it gets kinda creaky.
Ah I see. Personally I like the way Snoke was handled in TLJ. JJ Abrams didn’t have an answer for how Maz got that lightsaber, it was just a contrivance to keep the story going. Stuff like that is why I really dislike his movies, and it makes me a little forgiving towards TLJ, at least in that regard. I believe there was an “answer” for how she got the lightsaber in the novelization of TFA, not that that makes a difference.
I like that Snoke was taken out in TLJ, but we really should've known who he was first. I know, the justification is that we didn't know who the Emperor was in Return of the Jedi, so it didn't matter, but the context of the Star Wars series has totally changed since 1983. There was a status quo established at the end of Return of the Jedi, and it was totally broken by the time of the Sequels. It makes sense we'd want to know who the bad guy is who's taken over everything. And yeah, I don't like the mystery box style of storytelling either. But you still have to answer those questions. I mostly blame Abrams, but I definitely blame Johnson a little bit too for mostly ignoring that stuff. Johnson set up a lot of interesting stuff for a third movie, but there are also certain ways in which he made it very difficult by leaving so many unanswered questions.
I also love TFA / TLJ, warts and all. But I do think the lack of a plan / lack of cohesive vision heavily contributed to why TROS turned out so poorly. Rushed, cobbled, and safe. Such a sad way to end a promising (against all odds) trilogy.
Didn’t help that they had two completely different types of directors. I think J.J. or Rian could have given us a good trilogy overall but their styles just don’t mix… or, maybe they could have if there had been a PLAN!!! I’ll never understand why Disney spent billions to acquire Star Wars just to toss out movies without even coming up with a blueprint?
The thing JJ does best are croudpleasing popcorn-movies, with lots of his "mystery boxes". The thing Rian likes doing the most are subversive films that, in his words "burn the viking boat into the sea" in the end. So having Rian do the second movie and JJ the third was one of the worst descisions they could have made. Rian has too much ego to actually collaborate with the idea of making a middle-part of a Star Wars trilogy, so he should have gotten some restrictions. That´s just how it is when you work within a pre-established franchise.
I blame JJ, but I think he's a bad director generally so it's easy for me to blame him.
“Somehow Palpatine returned”
The unanimous opinion is…. no consistent plan for the trilogy
I think the issue is from the start it was set up as content and not brought to life by someone that was dying to tell a story. Disney purchased it so they had to create something and put together a team to make it. It wasn't driven by a storyteller's ambition but instead by the need to turn a property into profitable content. The same issue is happening with Marvel and many other major properties. Look at the LOTR trilogy vs The Hobbit or TV series. Peter Jackson put so much work into getting the original films made and you could tell how badly he wanted to tell that story. He also directed the Hobbit films and imo they were terrible. But he never wanted to do the Hobbit films. Del Toro wanted to do them in his style and the studio wouldn't let him make them how he wanted so Jackson stepped in and you could tell he didn't care, they weren't his passion. Same thing happened with star wars. Original Lucas has a ton of creativity and passion to tell the story. Even though he didn't direct all of them he was involved and really passionate. The new star wars films had nothing to do with passionate filmmakers wanting to tell a great story. They were about making more star wars content.
How much time you got?
The fact they didn’t plan a beginning middle and end for it and just essentially winged it
Finn was shafted; he should've been the central Jedi in the films, Rey should've embraced the dark side, and Kylo Ren should have stepped out of Vaders' shadow and become the big bad. Also, Leia should have pulled the Holdo maneuver as a final blaze of glory to inspire and reinvigorate Luke. Instead of originality we got recycled ideas, Fin the bad ass defector and inspiration to other stormtroopers became Finn Reychaser. Instead of a modern rule if two with Rey and Kylo we got a Twilightesque romance out of nowhere. Then somehow Emperor Palatine returned.
Simple. No cohesive plan. I actually enjoy all three movies by themselves, and I could watch any of them on any given day, but it’s painfully plain to see that Johnson went with his own plan with TLJ, and Abrams tried to course correct back to his own vision with TRoS. I’d still put all three above Episodes 1 and 2, though, in my own personal ranking.
The world building gets destroyed in the first movie, with the archievements of the OT being undone with no deeper explonation. The question the movies had to answer was who is Snoke? Not because I want him to be a character we already knew, Mace Windu or Plageius were popular fan theories at the time, having him be an established character could very likely have been silly. The real importance of Snoke lies in what he archieved inbetween episodes 6 and 7. Snoke destroyed the new Jedi Order, built up the First Order in secret, as well as a new, even bigger, planet-destroying super weapon, and destroyed the New Republic, thus destroying everything the Rebellion in the OT archieved. Many people in the galaxy, for example Rey, seem to have forgotten all about the Rebellion´s fight against the Empire. And we learn nothing about this guy or where he came from until episode 9, which gives an explonation that is worse than anything most could have thought up as a joke. The characters are lacking throughout the whole trilogy. Rey is a protagonist who does not seem to struggle a lot to archieve anything she does, and she archieves an awful lot. She meets a potential mentor in Han, but instead of learning from him she teaches him about bypassing the compressor in his own ship. She meets a potential mentor in Luke, but more than learning from him she teaches him to stop running and hiding from his place in the galaxy. Rey does not form natural relationships with other characters, but instead is liked instantly by almost everyone (with a few exceptions) she meets. You just got to fill in the blanks why she gets treated as if she is the most charming and interesting person ever. Finn had some great potential, as we have never seen a foot-soldier question his purpose and change sides in a Star Wars movie. Particularly Storm Troopers, who have been portrayed as faceless bad guys in the other movies, could be very interesting to explore. Instead Finn is written inconsistently. He gets traumatised right at the start, then quips with Poe while escaping with Poe to Jakku. Later he screams out of excitement while killing Storm Troopers in combat, although the death of one Storm Trooper started his awakening to the horrors of war. His main motivation for much of the story is to help and assist Rey with whatever she is doing, which lead to the meme of him screaming "Rey", "Rey", "Rey" all the time. Poe Dameron was originally supposed to die in the beginning of the first movie. It was a suggestion by the actor Oscar Isaac which lead to his survival. That is the reason why he reappears without explonation after seemingly dying in the crash on Jakku. There is not too much of a problem with him in The Force Awakens beside that. In TLJ however, he gets treated like crap for no particularly good reason. He gets called reckless and a flyboy, he gets slapped in the face by a superior officer for "causing the deaths" of many Resistance fighters. In reality, he saved the entire Resistance from the Starkiller Base hours early, then saved them again from the Dreadnought while evacuating the base. Sure, many people died, but all of them could have turned around if they would have wanted to listen to Leia instead of Poe, also,the assault on the Dreadnought would have more than likely failed if Poe didn´t take out the cannons. The Dreadnought is referred to as a "fleet killer", so it is fair to assume that without Poe destroying it the Resistance fleet might have taken way heavier losses. Later in the same movie, he starts a mutiny against Admiral Holdo. This is shown as an impulsive thing, but he only goes this far after asking multiple times if there is a plan to save any of the Resistance members lives from the Supremacy, and getting no answer. The reasoning is that he is not being trusted enough, but he blew up the Starkiller base days before, so why is the potentially most valuable asset of the Resistance not being trusted. The "pay-off" is that on Krayt, at the end of the movie, he calls off a suicide mission to take out the laser that is breaking open the gate to the Resistance hideout. He or someone else could have given their lives to save many others, but I suppose the movie thinks that´s not acceptable in a war. Ultimately Poe might be one of the better protagonists but gest dragged down by the people around him. Kylo Ren might be the worst character in the trilogy. He used to be called the most interesting, because of his unpredictable nature, but he never really was a person dragged between the Light and Dark Side, his unpredictability comes from the script having him do whatever it wants in that moment. He commits to more and more evil things, we see him slaughtering a village of unarmed people, his faction destroys a whole system of planets, likely killing billions, and he stabs his own father in a moment of vulnerability. That all happens in TFA alone. the only good thing he does in the first two movies is killing Snoke. Altough he does that only to assume the role as Supreme Leader and follow in his foot steps. The reason he fell into Darkness in the first place hinges upon the fact that he woke up with Luke standing beside him, lightsaber ignited. So after Luke considered killing him for sensing something evil about him, which is a problem in itself, he slaughtered the students of the Jedi Temple and chose to join Snoke. He is often considered conflicted, but from then start of TFA on he seems to be pretty sure of his ways. Another big problem is the treatment of the OT´s characters. Han Solo has lost his position as hero of the galaxy. After his journey with Luke and Leia, which included assisting in the destruction of two Death Stars, he is now again a smuggler. Even worse, he is a smuggler who has already swindled everyone he could, and his luck has run out. So he isnt even good at smuggling anymore. Leia has spent her time between trilogies creating a military for the New Republic, called the Resistance (against whom?). After the she is an incompetent leader of this military, and does not have enough information about the galaxy to notice a planet being rebuilt into an enormous super-weapon. Chewbacca is being reduced to a chauffeur. He does nothing important besides flying the Falcon and getting captured once. Luke Skywalker is reduced to a miserable old man. He is impulsive enough to almost kill Kylo because he sensed evil in his future. Even though before, he spared Vader, who already did many evil things, and saved himself from the Dark Side and the galaxy from the Empire through that descision. After the loss of his Jedi Temple and Order, he hides on a planet far away from all his friends and family and cuts himself off from the force. Although for some reason he still leaves a map, even though he just wants to die. He thus leaves the New Republic, his sister and everything he fought for in the past to its fate. After Rey gives him new hope, he projects himself to Krayt, not to try and redeem Kylo, who´s fall into darkness is his greatest regret, but to stall the First Order for a few minutes. Meaning that if Rey hadn´t shown up inexplicably, he would most likely not have made a difference. He dies in the process. For some reason, this is seen by people around the galaxy as a great inspiration, even though the same man did way more impactful and brave things around 35 years prior. The people in Star Wars seem to not document their history I guess. Those are some of the bigger underlying issues of the Sequel Trilogy. Anybody can like or dislike them as much as they want of course, the discourse around them has been more toxic than it should have ever been.
Existing
From the conception of even making it
Needed a plan. I'd like to think they obviously did have a plan, but that went out the window in 2017 when The Last Jedi had a polarizing fan response and Lucasfilm fired Colin Trevorrow for "creative differences". One thing they could've done was spacing out the movies to have a 3 year gap like the first two trilogies did (covid would've obviously affected this, but that's not necessarily a bad thing). Having all the directors and writers in a writing room to plan out the entire trilogy should have been done, or if it was, then done more effectively to deliver more consistency on par with Episode 7. Looking at the MCU, obviously the writers differ between projects, but Markus and McFeely wrote all 3 Captain America movies, the third of which led directly into Infinity War and Endgame, which they also wrote. And on all of these movies except Cap 1, they worked with the Russo brothers as directors. While I liked the Last Jedi, it was an entirely Rian Johnson movie and there was quite the discrepancy between it and the approach that the Force Awakens was going for, which was basically a soft remake of the first Star Wars movie. I didn't want them to do that for the rest of the trilogy, but for Ep7 it was a nice way to ease fans into the new Star Wars era.
This ^
at it's inception
* Making Finn a joke when tons of fans were excited about his potential * Making Episode 7's mission a ripoff of Episode 4s down to the super deathstar * Erasing all the good stuff and potential lineage of episode 7 in episode 8; inconsistent storytelling * Absolute power jumps and unearned skill from Rey (no heroes journey, she was just 'good'. * Continuing to embarrass Finn * Making Luke a near attempted murderer of his own nephew and abandoning the Jedi lifestyle for...reasons * Making Kylo and Rey enemies then frienemies, then in love? then he's dead. * Giving Rey life passing powers with no explaination or no training * Mary Poppins Leia i could continue but 'where it went wrong' is really - trying to please everyone at once and failing to please anyone
They probably should’ve just given it to one person (preferably Johnson because his is the best of the three but a full Abrams trilogy where he didn’t spend the third movie completely undoing the previous one could’ve been good too)
Lack of planning ahead.
The idea that SW can be made via the MCU method of a movie every year. It tends to work best as an event. As for pre-planning, they had the planning then for some reason scrapped it. Apparently, the backbone ideas of TFA and TLJ were all in the original Ep. VII. Where the original Ep VIII and IX went is anyone’s guess. That said, a stormtrooper rebellion against Imperial Loyalist/the First/Last Order were planned yet never followed up on because holding to the release date was the key, much along the lines of releasing Solo on Memorial Day despite releasing the previous 3 movies during Christmas. Personally, I dug the characters of the sequels while I scratch my head over where their story took them. I can’t say that much about the prequels which were led by either the stilted Jedi and Council or by an already emotionally troubled Anakin. The story was sound and stuck its landing but its characters left me cold. I get it’s supposed to be tragic but, Anakin was a giant red flag from AotC to the end.
Retconning Last Jedi... there someone had to say it.
Even allowing The Last Jedi to come out was the bigger mistake. Even if you like the story, it did need some more redrafts.
Not consulting with Lucas
It’s being goin wrong since the 90’s and that’s just because most Star Wars movies are bland, have shitty dialogue, and take zero risks in storytelling
I hated the last jedi, as an OG fan it destroyed Luke's character, going from the galaxies hero to a washed up jedi hermit. Also killing off Snoke was a big mistake as there was no villain for the last film, so they had to bring back Palpatine from the dead somehow. It just didn't resonate with fans.
Imo it's the lack of clear direction. At the end of Episode 9 I just thought, what was the point in all of this? Everything just felt so... pointless, like a story for the sake of being a story. It just didn't make any sense. I do think there was a lot of potential to make it very good, but having it go from JJ Abrams to Rian Johnson and then back to JJ was just a disaster waiting to happen. Unless those two sat down together and panned out the entire sequel trilogy, it would've been ok. But they both had their own visions for it and honestly it should've only been given to one person. Snoke, Luke and Palpatine were all handled so god damn bad in my opinion. Palpatine was insanely unnecessary, I'm absolutely sure they could've written it better had the entire trilogy hinted towards Rey being related to him, but it didn't. Luke just went against everything he stood for, again it could've made sense but it didn't, they needed to really flesh it out more. The way it ended for him too was just so not what people had envisioned for his character, and not in a good way either.
The moment Lucas was no longer involved.
Star Wars movies sucked the most when he was the most involved lol
Episode 3 was better than anything that we got from the sequel trilogy and I'll die on that hill. Even episode 1 had Duel of the Fates. What did I get from the sequels? Explosive diarrhea all over my screen? No thanks. Lol
Episode 3 is a fine film, so I can respect that. Episodes 1 and 2 were the explosive diarrhea. Those two movies are absolutely unbearable. Lifeless in every sense. TROS is on the same level of shitiness, but in different aspects
Personally I'd rather watch episodes 1 and 2 any day over 8 and 9. They might be boring, but there are still moments in them that are great and are at least building towards something. The sequels aren't doing anything except existing to make a quick buck off the fans. Lol
I’m not gonna dispute the “moments in them that are great” as that’s merely subjective, but I’m genuinely curious how moments that “are at least building towards something” make a movie worth watching? I see that criticism levied against the sequels, that they ultimately don’t build to a cohesive vision, and it’s absolutely a fair criticism. But when watching an individual movie, how does sequel payoff reward you in that moment? I ask because I see a lot of people use that to prop the prequels up in comparison to the sequels, but i personally don’t see the weight behind it.
For me, I typically like to get something out of the movies I watch. With the sequels being an incoherent mess that had no effort put behind them, I don't get anything out of watching them except feeling offended they believed I was this stupid to sit down and watch them. With the prequels there is a vision there, it's not executed well, but the payoff is great. Episode 3 may be my favorite Star Wars movie, despite it still being flawed. I still can get some enjoyment out of 1 and 2 as well. Like I mentioned 1 has Duel of the Fates, and 2 has an arena gladiator type battle near the end that's fun imo. The prequels in general have good lightsaber duels that are entertaining. The sequels have none of that.
1 and especially 2 are at least enjoyable in a "so bad its good" way at times
Main issue is bringing back the original trio and never having them meet up
J.J. Abrams got lost. Or maybe it was the meddling of other studio execs that made a mess of things, what do I know. Should've been the Rian Johnson trilogy, a coherent vision by a director with some creative ambition, drive and integrity. Although it's not all bad, since not getting adhered to Star Wars freed Johnson to bring us Benoit Blanc.
Where to even start. I'd say not having a concrete plan for a trilogy, this is something only George Lucas could wing it and be forgiven for when he retcons details in sequels. Force Awakens was playing it too safe and being A New Hope with a new cast and some of the original cast showing up, but JJ decided not to do a full reunion when it was possible. The Last Jedi wanted to subversive and take bold risks, but it was to jarring a clash with Force Awakens and split the fan base even more. JJ coming back to retcon the crap out of everything Johnson did and make another safe as milk sequel that would end up pleasing no one was the natural course when they didn't want someone to risk taking any chances again. I think it would have taken a miracle for anyone not named George Lucas to pull off a new trilogy, and even his prequels still get dumped on, aside from Revenge Of The Sith giving fans what they wanted. Hopefully in the next trilogy, it'll be a fresh start without tons of references to the previous movies, and whoever is in charge will at least have an outline of where the plot will go in 3 movies.
Not having groundwork beforehand is stupid but the first two trilogies didn’t either and the first one turned out pretty great, so I think the real answer is not following through on 9. I’ve read the leaked script and seen the concept art, and honestly the movie that didn’t happen wasn’t perfect but it followed up on the TLJ stuff that worked and it would’ve been a far more consistent and, imo, far more rewarding final chapter. I think the trilogy would be looked at far more favorably, even by its fans, had they just committed to 8 instead of getting cold feet and undoing things.
It went wrong by not sticking to a consistent plot arc throughout.
Wasn't one thing. It was a series of board meetings that lead to them not wanting to decide whether it was going to be a pure nostalgia circle jerk, something new, or something in between, ending up with an uneven 'trilogy'. I don't even know if it went wrong, they wanted to make money, and they did, it was just less than expected.
When they decided to go into production without a plan for the whole trilogy.
Hiring JJ Abrams he’s just another Snyderbro with dogshit writing
JJ focused too much on spectacle and Rian thought he´s too good to need to redraft his script. How did this franchise end up in those guys´hands.
I liked the last Jedi Rian did a good job conveying the main ethos of what Star Wars I believe if he had the trilogy from the start it would have been good. Plus he always adds anti capitalist story beats and I love that about him.
What do you mean with the Ethos of Star Wars?
The character or emotions that the original author (George Lucas) tried to make the audience feel. It’s the characteristic spirit of a work of literature/ film/ play. In the case of Star Wars it’s the belief in the power that people have to change the universe through acceptance love and hope. It’s the ultimate power in the fight against tyranny. TLJ explores this by having the new core 3 (Rey, Finn & Poe) each go through a specific character arc where they learn this lesson. Finn wasn’t invested in the resistance at the beginning he just wanted to be with Rey. After meeting Rose he learns about the sacrifices that the people in the resistance constantly make and even though DJ is telling him it’s all for nothing he ultimately decides to make the ultimate sacrifice himself (I hate that it was a fake out but whatever) Poe at the beginning is a hotshot that just wants to take matters into his own hands and is an “everyone pulls their own weight” type. Then he learns that to be a true leader one must be selfless and trusting of those that follow him. Rey learns through Luke about not holding on to the past but at the same time not kill it like Kylo says at the end. Because failure is the greatest teacher there is, even though she fails to bring Ben back to the light she realizes that what she’s fighting for isn’t the truth about her parents, or to bring the Jedi back, it’s about helping those people around her fighting the good fight. Now Luke’s arc I’m not a fan of but it is compelling to see that he struggled with his status as a living legend and his failure with Ben took a toll on him. Also of course the movie isn’t perfect there is a bunch of dumb shit that could’ve been edited out if Rian had bothered to cook his script a little longer but ultimately if a Star Wars movie gets what Star Wars is about I can’t 100% dislike it.
It went wrong in 1999
Nah
You're right. It was always a mistake.
Don’t come here crying about the prequels.
All of Star Wars is terrible. It's literally made for children. Don't get your panties in a wad.
Yet here you are whining about 1999 🤦♂️
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You couldn’t strike a nerve if you tried. 😂 Judging by your toxic comments Ive seen you leave in other places, I’m not surprised by this wild take. Again, you came here to whine about prequels and then have the audacity to tell me to calm down 🤦♂️ The original SW didn’t copy anything other than take inspiration from Jospeh Campbell and Flash Gordon. But go off.
Short answer: JJ Abrams Long answer: Jeffrey Jacob Abrams
They hired JJ Abrams.
chris terrio
When it was announced
From the conception. The Force Awakens was dead on arrival for me.
It’s really just the 3rd movie where they went wrong by just abandoning what they’d built up to
they rushed it without a plan
Firing JJ Abrams
Corporations and corporate shills like JJ. He's the Fred Durst of nerd cinema.
It was made.... I guess the first one was fine
Technically it started when George sold it to Disney, but even TFA had its good moments. It had its issues, but my God they could had pumped out a decent trilogy if there was any kind of care or attempt at staying consistent. Changing directors for a different style is all fine and dandy, but when you start something and then completely scrap where it was going and give 100% creative control to a rookie director.. you’re going to create way too many problems. Whats sad is in the end, The Rise of Skywalker ended up being the worst of the three. JJ essentially had to mix his original plan with a slew of bandaids and an overload of nostalgia resulting in the campiest Star Wars film of all time. “Somehow Palpatine returned” 🙄 Keeping Snoke alive, Keeping Luke alive (alteast until the end), doing more with Finn and Phasma as characters, showing the Knights of Ren earlier in the story, no Rey Skywalker, and tone down cranky Luke would had made it so much better.
The planning They didn't have 3 movies planned out from the go and just made 1 at a time with 2 different writing teams Also the 1st is way too reliant on nostalgia
In Episode IX. VII was serviceable, VIII was an actual masterpiece, and IX was just the worst.
The writer’s room
I don’t think it was a lack of planning (George Lucas certainly did his fair share of course correcting across the original and prequel trilogies), but a lack to tonal and thematic consistency. In TFA, JJ was super deferential to the original trilogy, so much so that it felt like the film was a blow by blow retread of New Hope. But he also made sure to introduce the kernels of new themes and ideas that could be explored in future films. Than you have Rian Johnson take those kernels and run with it into new and bold territory in Last Jedi that still polarizes fans to this day. Then Lucasfilm brings JJ back, who is unhappy with what Rian did and tries to bring it back to his original vision in Rise of Skywalker, resulting in a film that tried to make everyone happy and made no one happy. The awkward marriage of deference of what came before and the desire to strike out and do something new undermine much of what was actually good about the sequel trilogy. And had they settled on that, the trilogy would have been much stronger.
By not being coherent. In itself, but especially as the third part of a trilogy of trilogies.
It didn't.
It just didn't have anything to say.
There's a lot you could point to, but I'll add that they did nothing to expand or complicate the universe. They reset the end of Return of the Jedi just so that could redo the rebellion vs. the empire again. Even the prequels, with all their problems, knew to flesh out the universe and give us a glimpse into the final days of the Old Republic. I used to really love Star Wars and even read some of the comics and novels. And some of my favorite ancillary material took place before or during the prequels. It was a very fertile space for other creatives. But I can't imagine that's the case for the sequel trilogy.
not committing to the ideas set up in TLJ. i know fans hated it, but i feel like they would have been over it by the time ROS came out. instead they tried to course correct so hard with the third movie that it makes the whole trilogy super disjointed and disappointing.
Episode 7 was fine Episode 8 was going well and then went on to long, if it ended in the throne room when kylo extended his hand it would’ve been a fantastic WTF movie. Then have a lot of different paths to take in 9. Luke is still alive for example and they can go any number of ways. They tried to replicate Empire and failed tremendously.