Back in ‘83, one of the things that disappointed me about ROTJ was the sudden realisation that Lucas’ was really just making this all up as he went along. There was no ‘saga’. He hadn’t even known who the ‘other hope’ was when Yoda spoke that line in TESB. Of course this made sense in the context of Star Wars’ creation, but “Leia, Leia’s my sister” and “what I told you was true, from a certain point of view” still make me cringe to this day.
So when the prequels came along you’d think this would be an opportunity to tie it all together logically - give it some weight. Instead we got a GL who didn’t give a damn about his own continuity. Anakin was the wrong age (ditto Owen and Beru), Padme died without giving Leia those famous memories, and the saga was now peppered with dumb crap like Midichlorians, the Sith rule of two, Obi/Yoda’s absurd 20-year waiting plan, and a space-Jesus Vader whose head would be unceremoniously glued onto Sebastian Shaw’s body in the world’s worst retcon.
But we wore it right? We went full ‘cognitive dissonance mode’ and convinced ourselves that Midichlorians were okay and somehow made the Force all the richer, that Leia’s Force-sensitivity granted her the memories Luke couldn’t have, that there was a logic to hiding Luke with his uncle and letting him keep his old surname, that there were complex reasons Vader seemed to conveniently forget the ‘rule of two’ that was about to cost him his job, that Tatooine weather gives the illusion of rapid ageing etc etc. We’re fans goddammit!
I liked TFA, despite knowing full well I was being seduced by carefully orchestrated nostalgia. But I liked it largely because I knew (assumed) that all the crazy coincidences and unexplained story threads were set to culminate in a rich, detailed, fully-realised Star Wars epic. Then I read somewhere that RJ apparently had free reign to do whatever he liked with all of the plot threads.
Well surely not ‘all’ plot threads (I thought to myself) because JJ and Kasdan would have mapped it all out right?
Nope.
I don’t hate TLJ (I’m still not sure how I feel about it overall) and I do like a lot of the choices RJ made. But I don’t give a hoot what’s going to happen in IX because it’s clear the writers don’t either. Their guess is as good as mine, so it’s hard to feel invested. All I can picture is a cabal of nerds sitting around the writers’ table saying “we need an even bigger cantina in this one…” and “maybe Rey could have heat-vision this time”.
George wrote the OT on the fly and it shows. He wrote the PT - clearly without rewatching the OT - on the fly and it shows. This series is looking similarly clunky to me.
Still on the fence…