I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.
More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.
Exactly. We do know that they kept some of what Lucas had come up with. They also revisited a lot of his abandoned ideas for earlier films. I would love to see his treatments, but if you read some of his other treatments, the final films came out much different. And in history and myth, evil is something always lurking and endangering the good we create. The idea that Star Wars should somehow deviate from that and must keep what the heroes of the OT worked so hard to win is indeed silly. Each generation has their own fight and some generations lose that fight (the PT).
I don’t agree with everything your saying but it is important to remember Flash Gordon. Star Wars, like old space opera serials, is supposed to be a never ending saga, where we know no matter what the heroes will always be there to save the dar. If the evil can be defeated for forever, that’s it’s not really never ending is it?
This gets back to the fact that I fully believe that many people just fundamentally did not want to see movies made set after ROTJ, whether they say so or not. Simply put, to make a story set after ROTJ, you needed to undo that ‘happily ever after’ victory. What made TFA and TLJ so great is that they didn’t just wantonly undo it, they gave a thematic reason for doing so that justified their addition to the story. TROS… not so much.
Lots of people wanted to see movies made after ROTJ, but they wanted new stories, and new settings, not a reset to Empire vs rebels without so much as an explanation. There’s nothing wrong with The New Republic facing a new thread, or even a thread with some links to the past. However, the ST presents us with a New Republic as ineffective as the old one, when Palpatine took control. That is a very cynical outcome, especially since our heroes fought and bled for its establishment.
If the PT taught us anything it’s that we should never fully trust our political institutions. The heroes fought for freedom, and they had it for 30 years. The fact that the system that was put in place ended up failing doesn’t discredit their achievements. Again, the cyclical nature is the whole point, and the cynicism of such an outcome is precisely the thing that serves as the main conflict of the trilogy. The hope in the OT was hope in the face of tyranny. The hope in the ST is hope in the face of cynicism and despair. It’s a permutation and a maturation of the themes of the original films.
Maybe it’s not what you would have done personally (I’m not sure if it’s what I would have done) but it’s crazy how stubborn people are that they won’t take something at face value and they can’t get past the simple fact that it’s not what they imagined. So what? Look at what the films are actually saying. They’re wrestling with these exact things.
The New Republic was turned into a cipher in TFA, not because it made narrative sense in terms of the first six episodes in the saga, but because it made financial sense, since the OT iconography is more marketable than a new story, and setting would be. I would also argue, that it would have been far more satisfying, if our new generation of heroes had to overcome new challenges, rather than have the old generation fail spectacularly at almost every turn, such that the new generation can effectively take their place. While there are some good narrative reasons for Rey to choose the Skywalker name, it’s also quite interesting to note, that Luke and Anakin’s victory is now Rey’s, as she is the one to “finally” destroy the Sith, and becomes the last Skywalker, and last Jedi. She quite literally replaced them. I will also note, that the cyclical nature was not Lucas’ intention, I believe. The Old Republic stood for a thousand generations. That is what our heroes were fighting to re-establish. The fall of the Old Republic was presented as a rather unique set of circumstances, that through the manipulation, and corruption of the Senate by a Sith Lord was turned into an Empire. It was the fact, that the Sith had been secretly undermining the Old Republic for a thousand years, like a game of galactic chess, that gave their final victory weight in the grand scheme of things. I feel the way the ST just pulls dark lords, massive fleets, super weapons, and resources out of thin air greatly undermines the meaning and weight of both the victory of the Sith at the end of ROTS, and the Jedi at the end of ROTJ. That to me is not a maturation of the themes of the original films.