Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 67

I guess the nature of Star Wars always being presented as not the first chronological instalment, and being rebranded as “Episode Four” as early as the following instalment, is why I don’t feel it’s different.

We still don’t need to know more about him, because he’s by his very nature a force to push Kylo Ren in his development. It doesn’t matter how Snoke came to power, what matters is he is in power, and how he’s using that power. Again, looking at Johnson’s intention (Abrams didn’t really have any coherent vision or plan, so he’s not worth looking at in this capacity), the plan was to have Snoke killed by Kylo and set up Kylo as the big bad. This shifts importance onto Kylo’s backstory, which was developed quite well across the films.

Rian even talked about this, saying that a reveal of who Snoke was or how he came to be wouldn’t really change anything for the characters in the story. He’s right. None of our characters care about the how, they want to combat him.

What you’re talking about is an audience desire, not something that would actually serve the story. Contrast this with Palpatine’s return. With Palpatine, we need more information because his reappearance contradicts his death that we’d already seen. Snoke arrives from a previously unexplored place, literally called the Unknown Regions, so his arrival and rise to power does not contradict any prior story. Information about him doesn’t impact anything about the story, partially because he wasn’t in those prior instalments. Even if he had been a crime lord, or Darth Plagueis and Palpatine’s teacher… it wouldn’t matter. His backstory only matters if he comes into contact with someone he had a shared past with.

JakeRyan17 said:

I guess the nature of Star Wars always being presented as not the first chronological instalment, and being rebranded as “Episode Four” as early as the following instalment, is why I don’t feel it’s different.

We still don’t need to know more about him, because he’s by his very nature a force to push Kylo Ren in his development. It doesn’t matter how Snoke came to power, what matters is he is in power, and how he’s using that power. Again, looking at Johnson’s intention (Abrams didn’t really have any coherent vision or plan, so he’s not worth looking at in this capacity), the plan was to have Snoke killed by Kylo and set up Kylo as the big bad. This shifts importance onto Kylo’s backstory, which was developed quite well across the films.

Rian even talked about this, saying that a reveal of who Snoke was or how he came to be wouldn’t really change anything for the characters in the story. He’s right. None of our characters care about the how, they want to combat him.

What you’re talking about is an audience desire, not something that would actually serve the story. Contrast this with Palpatine’s return. With Palpatine, we need more information because his reappearance contradicts his death that we’d already seen. Snoke arrives from a previously unexplored place, literally called the Unknown Regions, so his arrival and rise to power does not contradict any prior story. Information about him doesn’t impact anything about the story, partially because he wasn’t in those prior instalments. Even if he had been a crime lord, or Darth Plagueis and Palpatine’s teacher… it wouldn’t matter. His backstory only matters if he comes into contact with someone he had a shared past with.

I mean no offense, but your argument makes doesn’t make sense to me.

You said TFA explaining the First Order doesn’t matter because A New Hope didn’t explain everything about the Empire’s rise, but then you bring up how ANH was rebranded as Episode IV and never presented as the first installment. Well, since that’s the case, we already know how the Empire came to power in the Prequels. So it doesn’t need to be explained further.

The Force Awakens is different because it never bothers to explain where the First Order came from or why they’re so powerful. And there’s not going to be a film to explain this between VI and VII, unlike the Original Trilogy, which got a whole prequel trilogy to explain the intricacies of its backstory. OutboundFlight really explained it best.

OutboundFlight said:

For me, it comes down to how unlike a first installment, typically sequels continue the story of their predecessors. You can start midway through a backstory for a first movie, but a sequel? It’s just confusing and makes the first movie feel redundant. Imagine in Episode V’s crawl opened with the New Republic many years after the defeat of the Empire. It wouldn’t make any sense and would make ANH feel pointless in retrospect.

I’m not opposed to Snoke appearing, but it’s so upsetting to watch all of the OT, watch the ending celebration, and be hyped to see a New Republic victorious… and that never happens. We just reset to a Resistance / Empire dynamic again. It feels like there’s a trilogy missing to bridge this gap.

And also, it’s not just “audience desire” that requires the First Order to be explained. It’s just better storytelling to actually cover massive changes in galactic politics, rather than just have a mega-powerful new threat show up out of nowhere. I know they came from the “Unknown Regions”, but that still doesn’t make it make sense.
And responding to your point about Snoke’s backstory: sure, some characters might not care about Snoke’s past. But characters like Luke and Leia, whose entire lives were ruined by the sudden appearance of Snoke, would definitely care about where he came from, especially when they believed that the Dark Side was defeated.

But there’s really no point in arguing about this. Nobody’s going to change anyone’s minds; everyone in this thread has their own opinions, and that’s perfectly natural. : )

Like and Leia also act like they know everything they care to know about Snoke.

And my point is that for decades A New Hope was treated like a sequel to unseen events, and it wasn’t confusing. When the explanation came of how the Empire rose, most fans rejected it. Also, again, the difference is that the characters we know and interacted with were directly impacted by the events of the prequels. There’s no shared history with Snoke, so it doesn’t matter.

Take a Legends/EU example: the Yuuzhan Vong aren’t really explained. They just come from far away. Over the course of those stories they kinda delve into pertinent details, but they’re not giving all of this unnecessary information just to fill out more pages on Wookieepedia.

If that backstory reveal doesn’t affect what’s happening in the current story: it doesn’t matter. Snoke’s backstory never impacted the current stories being told. Pre-TROS continuity had him as an ancient dark force calling out to Palpatine from the Unknown Regions in novels and games. But what would such a reveal in the film matter when talking to characters that were born after Palpatine’s death? What would it matter to Luke and Leia who were concerned with toppling the Empire and restoring democracy to the Galaxy in the OT and have to help or not help do that again? When did they state that they’d defeated the Dark Side of the Force? Where does this plot point come up that you’re so attached to?

Again, it’s just for fans who want to fill out Wookieepedia pages. It did not serve the actual story being told. If you’re mad that we got the stories we got, a lot of people are mad at JJ Abrams for his decisions to do an off-brand A New Hope story and reset that status quo. The problem isn’t Snoke and the First Order, the problem is hiring a man who can’t write to be co-writer and director.

JakeRyan17 said:

Like and Leia also act like they know everything they care to know about Snoke.

And my point is that for decades A New Hope was treated like a sequel to unseen events, and it wasn’t confusing. When the explanation came of how the Empire rose, most fans rejected it. Also, again, the difference is that the characters we know and interacted with were directly impacted by the events of the prequels. There’s no shared history with Snoke, so it doesn’t matter.

Take a Legends/EU example: the Yuuzhan Vong aren’t really explained. They just come from far away. Over the course of those stories they kinda delve into pertinent details, but they’re not giving all of this unnecessary information just to fill out more pages on Wookieepedia.

If that backstory reveal doesn’t affect what’s happening in the current story: it doesn’t matter. Snoke’s backstory never impacted the current stories being told. Pre-TROS continuity had him as an ancient dark force calling out to Palpatine from the Unknown Regions in novels and games. But what would such a reveal in the film matter when talking to characters that were born after Palpatine’s death? What would it matter to Luke and Leia who were concerned with toppling the Empire and restoring democracy to the Galaxy in the OT and have to help or not help do that again? When did they state that they’d defeated the Dark Side of the Force? Where does this plot point come up that you’re so attached to?

Again, it’s just for fans who want to fill out Wookieepedia pages. It did not serve the actual story being told. If you’re mad that we got the stories we got, a lot of people are mad at JJ Abrams for his decisions to do an off-brand A New Hope story and reset that status quo. The problem isn’t Snoke and the First Order, the problem is hiring a man who can’t write to be co-writer and director.

Okay, so you clearly have a problem with anyone criticizing the writing of the sequels, particularly The Last Jedi based off of your dislike of J.J. Abrams. You seem to like to start personally attacking people who criticize these films with comments like “Where does this plot point come up that you’re so attached to?” and what you said to thebluefrog earlier, “your need for every answer coming from a 30 year gap is not the same as a flaw in storytelling.” Hence your strawman argument about “Wookieepedia pages” even though literally no one has said anything about that site.
I also see that you have a major beef with J.J. Abrams’ writing style, so okay, good for you.

And I have no idea why you’re claiming that “most fans” rejected the rise of the Empire. Even the minority of people that still hate the prequels will admit that Revenge of the Sith has good moments of storytelling.

I’ve already said that nobody’s opinion is going to change from arguing on this forum, so I’m not going to engage in this conversation any further when you’re clearly not willing to listen to anything anyone else has to say in good faith.

And I have no idea why you’re claiming that “most fans” rejected the rise of the Empire. Even the minority of people that still hate the prequels will admit that Revenge of the Sith has good moments of storytelling.

Trust me, there are still plenty of Prequel haters.

ExpandedUniverses said:

And I have no idea why you’re claiming that “most fans” rejected the rise of the Empire. Even the minority of people that still hate the prequels will admit that Revenge of the Sith has good moments of storytelling.

Yeah, you can also see this just with the box office results. The SW movies had diminishing returns from Empire to Jedi to Phantom to Clones…then Sith had a slight uptick.

TFA then had a MASSIVE jump to the second most popular SW film of all time…then dropped again with TLJ and then down even more with Rise. For reference:

https://i.redd.it/sa8ggtyqb4n51.png

Basically this means the “worst” SW films are, in order: Ep 2, Ep 9, Ep 3 and ep 8. There’s a huge gap between Ep 8 and the next highest, Jedi.

The prequels are not good movies overall, but at least they were thematically coherent. The characters were the same characters from Phantom to Sith. This was a serious problem with the sequel trilogy, and frankly would require a massive 3 movie edit to force coherency between the competing directors. I think TLJ and Rise COULD be massively edited together to make a better climax to the series, but that’ll be extremely hard for editors, particularly as people seem to be attaching their egos to their favorite/least favorite of the sequel trilogy and not really trying to see the bigger picture.

When I ripped the BDs I forced a constant 23.98fps. It’s always a good step to check frame rate from the start.

If doing a 3-in-1 wherein the 3rd act, Rey regrettably defeats Kylo on the Death Star ruins, have TRoS’ Rey crash her tie on Aktoo, toss the lightsaber into the tie fighter flames, look down in sullen reflection and jump to the end credits.

Doesn’t even have to be a 3-in-1 for that.

Very true. Just tried to give more hypothetical context, but I’d only want to rewatch this sequel trilogy as a 3-in-1 tbh. There’s so much…I’d rather not see again. It’s the same case with the Prequels which has some decent 3-in-1’s.

Might as well keep consistent then and make the Originals a 3-in-1.

I’ve said this before, but I like the idea of doing standalone prequel and sequel bookends to the original trilogy. So five films total, consolidating the best of the PT and the ST into two separate films, and leaving the OT untouched.

RogueLeader said:

I’ve said this before, but I like the idea of doing standalone prequel and sequel bookends to the original trilogy. So five films total, consolidating the best of the PT and the ST into two separate films, and leaving the OT untouched.

I’m with this sentiment. The OT would suffer from that sort of drastic truncation anyway since lots of the unessential elements are still successful/interesting examples of world building.

SparkySywer said:

I tried doing a 3-in-1 of the OT, it doesn’t work. The OT simply doesn’t have the sheer amount of filler that the PT does.

Idk about you, but most of Han and Leia’s plotline in ESB, and the infiltration of Jabba’s Palace qualify in my book. And what exactly was the purpose of the wampa or the trash compactor?

I think it’s more that the OT depended on off-screen development. Putting the films together requires acknowledgment of that development being skipped over.

Prequels, especially AotC/RotS, take place during a war with the romance tying it together and scenes that kinda show the characters being reunited after a gap in time. This makes a 3-in-1 simpler. The sequel trilogy similarly has two films back-to-back and the next film has a “recap” scene of sorts when Poe and Finn return to Ajan Kloss at the start of the film.

The OT doesn’t have the same kind of connective tissue, it’s much more designed to imply gaps between episodes.

Apparently Kelly Marie Tran reprised her role in the Lego SW Holiday Special. Is there any way we could get some mileage out of those lines to augment her role in TRoS?

Could Pasaana be made into Scarif somehow? I’m just so sick of desert planets.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Could Pasaana be made into Scarif somehow? I’m just so sick of desert planets.

While I agree with the sentiment, I feel like that would be incredibly difficult. Too much of the terrain is too different.

Maybe it could be modified to be Nevarro? That would be more of a color-correction based change, rather than full replacement. Might even be able to pull an Imperial Remnant officer mentioning Nevarro to use when Kylo is being notified.