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Unpopular Opinion Thread — Page 15

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imperialscum said:

Omni said:

Pretty sure George didn’t give a shit about him either, hence how he died on ROTJ. I must say, with as much Boba Fett fanboy-ism going on after Mando, I like his silly death scene more and more - we shouldn’t be thinking too much of the bad guys, focus on the heroes, dammit!

Having some cliché grand duel for Boba Fett’s death would be boring and stupid in my opinion. I think they way his death was done in ROTJ was great actually. It is kind of a homage to how some of the famous gunslingers of the old west died (e.g., Wild Bill was shot in the back, etc.). It kinda points to the fact that, in the end, no matter how good and skilled your are, eventually your luck will run out and one bad luck moment and you are gone in this kind of business.

He didn’t have to die screaming and then have the Sarlacc burp, though.

canofhumdingers said:

Second, he DOES do some cool stuff in ESB. He actually talks back to Darth Vader. Twice! And he gets away with it! All while imperial officers are dropping like flies for the slightest infractions throughout the movie. Plus he sees through Solo’s trick. He looks AWESOME. He even SOUNDS awesome (adding the spur sound effects to his walk was a stroke of genius). He’s this intimidating, mysterious “Clint Eastwood/man with no name” “strong silent type” guy in a cool armor suit who does a super cool job (bounty hunting) and even has to get singled out by the big man himself to be explicitly warned not to disintegrate his target!

I completely agree, and it bothers me to no end that people think Boba Fett looks cool, does nothing, and then dies. People need to rewatch the damn movie.

Boba Fett also outsmarts Han Solo. In a lesser movie, it might come off like the Empire are morons for letting Han hide in their trash, and Han’s a dumbass for letting himself get followed. But it comes off like Han’s a genius for thinking of disguising the Falcon as trash, where the Empire isn’t going to look, and Boba Fett’s an even bigger genius for seeing that coming.

Boba Fett also hears Luke cock his gun, which is a minor cool moment if you notice it.

I sort of blame the Special Editions for people thinking Boba Fett is lame. There’s a lot of people who have only heard the subservient, weak Boba Fett, and not the intimidating Man With No Name Boba Fett who’s Darth Vader’s equal. No shade to Temuera Morrison, he’s great, but it sounds like they only did one take. Plus Lucas’s awful direction.

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Doesn’t the 1997 version still have Wingreen as Boba. I thought the prequelisms were added in 2004 for the DVD release. Like Hayden at the end of Return of the Jedi. Of course that was carried through to the 2011 blu ray, 2020 special edition 4K. So there have been 4 special editions and 3 that had Morrison as Fett.

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You’re correct. Temuera was added in 2004. Generally I just refer to any post-1997 cuts as the Special Editions, though.

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Man, Wingreen was so menacing as Fett. Hearing “He’s no good to me dead.” in that growly voice through my TV speaker is awesome.

One issue I have with Boba in The Mandalorian is he’s too helpful and selfless. He doesn’t have the same ruthless energy he had in Empire. That could be chalked up to his traumatic experience in the Sarlacc, but he seems too nice, in my opinion.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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SparkySywer said:

Boba Fett also outsmarts Han Solo.

Yeah, I mentioned he sees through Han’s trick

Boba Fett also hears Luke cock his gun, which is a minor cool moment if you notice it.

It’s R2 Fett hears. But yeah, it’s another subtle, but very awesome moment that sheds light on his character.

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If Star Wars is ever going to recapture the magic that originally inspired it, it will need to return to its mythological, Campbellian roots. Original Star Wars was an imitation of mythical tropes. Modern Star Wars is an imitation of that imitation. That’s what I meant earlier when I said the essence of Star Wars had become diluted. The creatives at Lucasfilm should revisit the source material that Star Wars was derived from and work from there. The themes and archetypes of the OT have their basis across many cultures and thousands of years of history and myth. Those archetypes and structures exist for a reason, and you shouldn’t attempt to deconstruct them unless you’re very knowledgeable and very certain of what you’re trying to do.

The prequel trilogy should have started with Anakin already an adult Jedi. That way, the story could be an inversion of Luke’s story. Luke would rise from humble beginnings to knighthood while Anakin would fall from knighthood into his degraded state as Vader.

George’s sequel trilogy, if it had ever been made, would likely have been bad. Just a different kind of bad from what we ultimately got.

The plot of Rogue One feels too important to the overall story to be just an anthology film. It’s not really a side story at all. It almost deserves its own episode number, but at the same time, it messes with A New Hope’s “in medias res” opening, which bugs me.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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I think the problem is that most Star Wars fans have been introduced to Star Wars now in its diluted form. A lot of the original ideas have been lost, and I see a lot of people talk about Star Wars as if it were just another cliche-ass fantasy story. When you have generations of people who know the Force as midichlorians, don’t be surprised when Star Wars loses a lot of its mythicality. The people who are making Star Wars are appealing to them.

My unabashed love for TLJ incoming: I think, though, that TLJ is the closest thing to the very knowledgeable deconstruction of Star Wars we’ll ever get. Despite what the youtube comments section will tell you, Rian Johnson knew his shit when he was making the Last Jedi. Although I’m not going to turn this into a long ramble about TLJ.

The Last Jedi actually addressed and added to the ideas and themes of the Star Wars Trilogy, and it’s almost certainly the most divisive movie of the decade. Possibly the most divisive movie of the century so far, but don’t quote me on that.

There are a lot of people who want Star Wars to be shallow popcorn action-adventure movies. There’s nothing wrong with that, there’s a need for that in cinema, and it’s all a subjective matter of opinion anyway so who am I to say that’s wrong. But if you want Star Wars to recapture its magic, and for it to no longer be an imitation of itself, they are your main adversary.

Or, maybe I’m just being a moron. I might also be falling into the “Episodes 4 5 6 and 8 were totally indie arthouse kino flicks and Episodes 1 2 3 and 9 were soulless corporate garbage” sentiment, which is also wrong.

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SparkySywer said:

My unabashed love for TLJ incoming: I think, though, that TLJ is the closest thing to the very knowledgeable deconstruction of Star Wars we’ll ever get. Despite what the youtube comments section will tell you, Rian Johnson knew his shit when he was making the Last Jedi. Although I’m not going to turn this into a long ramble about TLJ.

KOTOR2 deconstructed Star Wars 13 years before TLJ, and did a much better job of it IMHO.

The Last Jedi actually addressed and added to the ideas and themes of the Star Wars Trilogy, and it’s almost certainly the most divisive movie of the decade. Possibly the most divisive movie of the century so far, but don’t quote me on that.

See above. Yet, KOTOR2 never received the venom many spit at TLJ. Perhaps if released today it would. 🤷‍♂️

There are a lot of people who want Star Wars to be shallow popcorn action-adventure movies. There’s nothing wrong with that, there’s a need for that in cinema, and it’s all a subjective matter of opinion anyway so who am I to say that’s wrong. But if you want Star Wars to recapture its magic, and for it to no longer be an imitation of itself, they are your main adversary.

Or, maybe I’m just being a moron. I might also be falling into the “Episodes 4 5 6 and 8 were totally indie arthouse kino flicks and Episodes 1 2 3 and 9 were soulless corporate garbage” sentiment, which is also wrong.

In the end, if Star Wars can have any claim to being art, in addition to being such a source of joy and inspiration to others, is because it came from an authentic place within George Lucas. Whether or not it’s a “popcorn” film is irrelevant.

“It is only through interaction, through decision and choice, through confrontation, physical or mental, that the Force can grow within you.”
-Kreia, Jedi Master and Sith Lord

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I’ve never played KOTOR 2. Only KOTOR 1.

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I know TLJ isn’t perfect, but I think the way it handled Luke felt very mythological to me.

I like to imagine an alternate reality where instead of George making a Star Wars trilogy, he adapted the legend of King Arthur into a trilogy. The trilogy ends with a happy ending, like ROTJ did. I guess Arthur becomes King, brings piece to Britain, and marries Guinevere. Something like that. A very typical fantasy, Happily Ever After, kind of story.

Now, obviously people would know what to expect if they know the text, but imagine most audiences didn’t, and they concluded the Arthur story decades later in another series of movies. Guinevere has a affair with Lancelot, Arthur hears a prophecy about a child born that would be the undoing of everything he loves, so he orders all babies born that day to be killed (What??? That’s so out-of-character for Arthur.), and eventually his own nephew Mordred, who survived the massacre, grows up to betray him, bring his kingdom to ruin, and Arthur fights him to the death. And the story ends with Camelot and the Round Table in ruins. I could imagine people saying, “Wow, I can’t believe they made Arthur sequels only to ruin their happy ending!”

I mean, Star Wars doesn’t have to be King Arthur, and doesn’t have to follow the same story beats, but the family tragedy that permeates the sequel trilogy definitely makes it feels more mythic to me. Even the stories of old didn’t make Arthur sinless, and I’m personally glad the Sequel Trilogy didn’t make Luke sinless either. I guess I relate to that, having made a lot of mistakes myself, but I understand others don’t.

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Rian was right about the story following a natural beat and rhythm and not catering to fan service.

Last Jedi is far from my favorite Star Wars, but i’m also sick of films being bogged down by catering to ancillary merchandise, toy sales and Happy Meals. The story is the story.

I respect an artist, filmmaker or novelist telling the story they want to tell. Even if it isn’t the way i would have done it, even if Rian’s interpretation of Luke doesn’t fit mine.

I also don’t really accept how JJ saw the characters either. Han, Luke or Leia. They did an okay job for the other characters they created. Making Luke a Mcguffin and not a character to begin with was a bad start for episode 7. And JJ relied way too much on Mystery boxes he made up the answers to later. They tricked us with the map for Skywalker what was Luke searching for. What great mystery of the force was it something to help defeat the sith and the first order, no he wanted to die. It does not make sense 7 and 9 are from a different trilogy than 8, completely different visions sharing only the commonality of characters.

Either JJ should have written and directed all 3 or Rian should have.

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JadedSkywalker said:

Rian was right about the story following a natural beat and rhythm and not catering to fan service.

Last Jedi is far from my favorite Star Wars, but i’m also sick of films being bogged down by catering to ancillary merchandise, toy sales and Happy Meals. The story is the story.

I respect an artist, filmmaker or novelist telling the story they want to tell. Even if it isn’t the way i would have done it, even if Rian’s interpretation of Luke doesn’t fit mine.

I also don’t really accept how JJ saw the characters either. Han, Luke or Leia. They did an okay job for the other characters they created. Making Luke a Mcguffin and not a character to begin with was a bad start for episode 7. And JJ relied way too much on Mystery boxes he made up the answers to later. They tricked us with the map for Skywalker what was Luke searching for. What great mystery of the force was it something to help defeat the sith and the first order, no he wanted to die. It does not make sense 7 and 9 are from a different trilogy than 8, completely different visions sharing only the commonality of characters.

Either JJ should have written and directed all 3 or Rian should have.

I agree. JJ gets too much slack for TFA because he deliberately avoided answering the difficult questions he created. The fact that he centered the whole movie around the search for Luke and spent so much time hyping up Luke, treating him as though he was the incredibly important key to defeating the First Order, was a big mistake. This didn’t make sense, and it was lampshaded by Luke himself in TLJ (his “laser sword” line), but the problem is that it was TFA that established the expectation that Luke would be super important. So Rian had the choice of either playing along with JJ’s deification of Luke, or throwing aside that setup from the previous movie. Neither was a good option.

With an ideal sequel trilogy, they could have found some sort of middle ground. Luke could have been a wise, respected mentor on the periphery of the story, but not an overpowered mcguffin.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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imperialscum said:

JadedSkywalker said:

Either JJ should have written and directed all 3 or Rian should have.

How about neither.

There’s an idea. Get Gareth Edwards to direct and get…someone competent…to write the whole trilogy. But I do believe that a full JJ trilogy or a full Rian trilogy would have been preferable to what we got.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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Eh, JJ doing 7 and Rian doing 8 was fine. JJ continued to work on 8 and Rian was involved with 7, so it’s not like there was a hard reset between each movie like some people think for some reason.

The reason the trilogy feels disjointed is because when Colin was fired, they legally had to throw away everything Colin was involved with (or else, shock horror, Disney would have to pay him for the work he did!). They did plan out the trilogy about as much as your average 2010-era movie series, but then for the conclusion of the series they essentially had to restart from scratch. With the same release date.

Duel of the Fates is seriously overrated, but further drafts would’ve been better, and it would’ve been more cohesive and just a better ending than TRoS.

The sequel trilogy could’ve been made more cohesive if there was one central vision behind it, but after the prequels I don’t think that would’ve been a good idea. Better to keep it as a group project, but, you know, not toss out the most important third of your trilogy.

Gareth Edwards directing would be an awful idea. He’s good with action sequences, but pretty awful at everything else. That’s why Rogue One is the way it is, good with action sequences, pretty uninteresting with everything else.

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SparkySywer said:

Eh, JJ doing 7 and Rian doing 8 was fine. JJ continued to work on 8 and Rian was involved with 7, so it’s not like there was a hard reset between each movie like some people think for some reason.

There are several discrepancies between TFA and TLJ. And JJ had little to no creative input on TLJ (though Rian had some input on TFA).

At the end of TFA, Finn is severely wounded by a slash to the spine that puts him in a coma as a result of standing alone against a dark lord to protect his friend. In TLJ, he wakes up comically, his body completely fine, then is portrayed as a selfish coward in the following scene. He is then demoted from lead character to side character sent on a filler quest.

In TFA, the First Order is a fringe faction launching a surprise invasion of the galaxy. In TLJ, despite having just lost their most important weapon, they are abruptly put into the position of “established galactic government,” essentially making them the Empire again. (TRoS then nerfs them in order to make Palpatine’s fleet seem to matter.)

In TFA, Hux is a serious, calculating, but passionate military leader. In TLJ, he’s a clown.

In TFA, Snoke is portrayed as mysterious and imposing, someone commanding from the shadows, and the film ends with him resolving to complete Kylo Ren’s training. In TLJ, we see him in person with no real fanfare, and he looks like a cartoon villain in a golden bathrobe, who pettily mocks Kylo for his failure. He later orders Kylo to kill Rey while she is being held down and defenseless as a completion of his training, despite him just killing his father, which would have been much more difficult and significant for him.

Luke is shown in Jedi robes, then immediately changes out of them in TLJ.

Rey’s backstory is built up as a mystery, then cast aside as unimportant. (I admit it’s possible that “Rey Nobody” was always meant to be a misdirect to save the true parent reveal for Episode IX. But I can’t say for sure.)

And TLJ ends in a way that essentially felt like an epilogue. So many plot threads were cut off that Episode IX was bound to feel like a reset and be disconnected from the first two films. It also doesn’t help that neither Kylo nor Hux was a strong enough villain to serve as the main antagonist in the final film (and Lucasfilm seemed set on making Reylo happen, so Kylo had to be redeemed somehow, anyway).

The sequel trilogy could’ve been made more cohesive if there was one central vision behind it, but after the prequels I don’t think that would’ve been a good idea. Better to keep it as a group project, but, you know, not toss out the most important third of your trilogy.

I don’t think we should cast away the whole idea of a central vision just because George botched the prequels. The main issues with the prequels lie more in their execution (dialogue, acting, tone, character personalities, special effects). But the overarching story of the prequels has good bones. The issues with the sequel trilogy are on a much more fundamental level. The overarching story of the sequels was broken and built on a faulty foundation from the start. The sequels mostly nailed the more surface-level aspects of filmmaking that the prequels failed at, but that’s not enough to redeem a story that fundamentally doesn’t work. A clear vision of how to continue the story post-RotJ was desperately needed. You can’t make sequels to some of the most revered, classic films of all time by just “winging it.” If there was ever a sequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings written in a similar manner as these films were, they would be despised with good reason.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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I don’t really agree that TFA set up any of that, and I didn’t at the time either from 2015-2017.

I didn’t believe that Rey’s parents or Snoke were going to be connected to anything. At the time, I was downright confused why anyone thought it would be this big mysterious reveal, although in retrospect there was a lot of ancillary media that seemed to support that. TFA’s novelization has Kylo say “It is you” about Rey. But the Last Jedi is a sequel to the Force Awakens, not its novelization.

I don’t think TLJ contradicts TFA on Finn’s arc or on the political situation. Until TRoS came out, I expected the political situation post-TLJ to be more of a power vacuum than the First Order controlling everything, TLJ said the First Order was going out trying to conquer the galaxy, they didn’t say the First Order had the level of control that the Old Republic or the Empire had.

Hux’s role is the only main difference between TFA and TLJ I think is actually there, but it’s minor enough that I really wouldn’t call them disjointed because of it.

I don’t see how the Producer of the Last Jedi could’ve had little to no role in its development.

But the overarching story of the prequels has good bones.

If you keep stripping down the prequels, you’ll eventually get to a point where they sound good. But you can describe the Room as a heartbreaking tragedy of a man and his ex going through a nasty breakup, and that’s certainly in there, but it’s not the experience you get when you watch the movie.

You don’t have to strip the prequels down nearly as far as the Room. But Revenge of the Sith is not a heartbreaking Shakespearean tragedy yaddah yaddah yaddah, it’s a soulless cash grab where they took the backstory to the OT and played it absolutely straight as an arrow, with almost nothing new or interesting you can get from this movie that you couldn’t get from an exposition scene from the OT.

Attack of the Clones, the prequel which sounds best IMO when you strip it down, isn’t actually a thrilling adventure in where Obi-Wan uncovers a conspiracy to undermine civilization itself as Anakin and Padme fall in love while running for their lives. The conspiracy plot line doesn’t go anywhere and Anakin and Padme’s plot line gets dropped in favor of spending a surprisingly large portion of time showing Anakin and Padme sitting around doing pretty much nothing at all.

The Last Jedi is far more deserving of the “Good story, bad execution” title than the prequels. The Last Jedi has a compelling story about the legacy of the people and events of the Star Wars Trilogy, which is unfortunately undermined by bathos too much, but it’s still there.

The Force Awakens, I think it’s the weaker of the two, but because it doesn’t really have as much substance as the Last Jedi. Maybe that’s “Meh to okay story, good execution”. Maybe we can fault it for that, but the first movie in the other two trilogies were a lot less complex than the latter two movies, and they were both probably for the better for that. It was an enjoyable movie and the Last Jedi picked up the slack for it.

The Rise of Skywalker is the one that’s rotten to the core, fundamentally broken, but that’s its own fault. The first two sequel movies were coherent, and gave ample opportunity for 9 to be as cohesive, but that’s where they dropped the ball.

Speaking of which, one cool thing about 7 and 8 that was missing for 9 was the metanarrative about the IRL legacy of the OT told through the in-universe legacy of the OT. Pretty much everything interesting about 7 and 8 was dropped for 9.

If there was ever a sequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings

I don’t think the Star Wars Trilogy and Lord of the Rings are really comparable in this regard. The story of LotR is the culmination of history itself in-universe, but the Star Wars Trilogy feels relatively self-contained. The nature of sequels to either of them would be very different.

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SparkySywer said:

I don’t think TLJ contradicts TFA on Finn’s arc or on the political situation.

It’s not so much that TLJ contradicts Finn’s TFA arc. It’s that Finn’s arc and treatment in TLJ is insulting and patronizing. Finn had been abducted and brainwashed since he was a toddler to kill for an authoritarian regime. Then, whether through the Force or through his own conscience, he rejected his lifelong programming and broke free. He was frightened, confused, and traumatized. He had never been out in the real world on his own. He went out of his way to protect Rey, a stranger he came to care about when there was essentially no one else in his life. Both Finn and Rey have scenes on Takodana where they run away from fear, yet only Finn is ever called out on it or made to look bad from it. Some people claim that Finn was selfish in the third act because he only went on the Starkiller Base mission to find Rey. But Finn owes the Resistance nothing. Finn has every right to want to be left alone and get away from the people who brainwashed and oppressed him. After TLJ, many people retroactively viewed Finn’s actions in TFA as those of a cowardly, selfish man, because that’s how TLJ framed him at the start. (Then there was that Lucasfilm story group member on Twitter who had a weird animosity toward Finn, and used to constantly tweet about how Finn was a coward who needed to be taught a lesson in TLJ). But Finn standing up to Kylo, a man who symbolized Finn’s lifelong oppression, was a moment of great personal significance and heroism for Finn. But it never gets brought up again. Ever.

Both Finn and Kylo get seriously injured at the end of TFA. Only Kylo’s injury is treated seriously and used to try to make the audience sympathize with him. Finn’s is glossed over, and his awakening is played for laughs. Finn then gets admonished for trying to leave to protect Rey, even though it is well within his rights to do so. He is not obligated to stay with the Resistance. Then he goes to Canto Bight, where he gets lectured about child slavery and war profiteering, despite being a child soldier, and then he doesn’t even help the slave children who are stuck there. There’s no sense of recognition he feels towards them, when there ought to be. And he leaves them behind to be punished for letting the Fathiers escape.

Then he gets lectured by DJ about how there are no truly good or evil factions in the galaxy and how none of the fighting matters. And Finn actually seems surprised and considering of this idea. When he should absolutely know from experience how horrific the First Order is, given what they did to him, and would fiercely reject what DJ is saying. Only one faction kidnaps children as soldiers, and the other faction only exists to try to stop them.

The whole of TLJ treats Finn like he’s a selfish child who needs to be taught a lesson about the world and about committing to a cause. There were so many directions they could have taken his story after TFA. Force sensitivity. Leading a Stormtrooper rebellion. Going on an actual personal journey of self discovery that isn’t just him learning that the Resistance is good.

The Last Jedi is far more deserving of the “Good story, bad execution” title than the prequels. The Last Jedi has a compelling story about the legacy of the people and events of the Star Wars Trilogy, which is unfortunately undermined by bathos too much, but it’s still there.

The Force Awakens, I think it’s the weaker of the two, but because it doesn’t really have as much substance as the Last Jedi. Maybe that’s “Meh to okay story, good execution”. Maybe we can fault it for that, but the first movie in the other two trilogies were a lot less complex than the latter two movies, and they were both probably for the better for that. It was an enjoyable movie and the Last Jedi picked up the slack for it.

TFA isn’t merely a simple story. It’s a hollow story. It was JJ who pushed the script in the direction of being a soft reboot, and I’m pretty he’s the reason we never got to see a functioning New Republic or New Jedi order in these films. There were countless stories that could have been told post-RotJ that could have honored the original story and appealed to nostalgia while still telling something new and interesting. This notion that the film had to be a soft reboot in order to “remind people of how great Star Wars” is entirely false. You can use nostalgic imagery within a new, original story. You don’t need to copy the story beats as well. And in doing that reboot, TFA entirely undid the OT. The heroes of the OT lived long enough to watch everything they had fought for come crumbling down around them, not just partially, but in its entirety. The New Republic was a spineless failed state. None of what they accomplished survived. And their lives post-RotJ were miserable and fraught with failure. The EU for the new Disney canon had to contort itself and create a depressing new timeline just in order to make the plot of TFA happen.

TFA is one of the most corporate, shallow, manipulative movies I’ve ever seen in my life. The only aspect of the story that interested me in the slightest was Finn, and maybe Kylo. Everything else felt like a cardboard cutout of the OT, or a Hollywood product wearing the dead skin of a Star Wars movie. It was obnoxious and had nothing to offer while teasing the audience with future mysteries in a cheap ploy to drum up excitement for future films. It had no substance. It was a hype tool.

TLJ was slightly better in terms of artistic integrity, but was less polished. The film was a bloated mess that attempted some profound metacommentary that would challenge the themes and ideas of the saga, yet failed to fully understand what it was critiquing. The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force, like not understand what “Balance of the Force” means, or acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists. The worldbuilding was barely existent, and by the end of the film, the galaxy had never felt smaller. The ending, which was supposed to feel inspiring and uplifting, instead felt empty and depressing.

Speaking of which, one cool thing about 7 and 8 that was missing for 9 was the metanarrative about the IRL legacy of the OT told through the in-universe legacy of the OT. Pretty much everything interesting about 7 and 8 was dropped for 9.

That’s largely why the sequel trilogy doesn’t work. It’s far too concerned with metanarrative that takes you out of the saga instead of just being about the characters and continuing the story in a logical direction. The characters of the OT are not their actors. The real-world history of the Star Wars franchise is not the history of the galaxy. The films are more about Star Wars, either paying tribute to it or challenging/subverting it, rather than just being Star Wars films.

The Rise of Skywalker is the one that’s rotten to the core, fundamentally broken, but that’s its own fault. The first two sequel movies were coherent, and gave ample opportunity for 9 to be as cohesive, but that’s where they dropped the ball.

I cannot imagine any alternate reality where TFA and TLJ both exist and Episode IX was good. The story had run into a dead end. The universe was shrunken. The end of TLJ feels oddly upbeat, as though we should be excited for the supposed new world of possibilities that await our heroes. But that’s not what we saw in the movie. We saw a film that was catastrophic for our heroes, and should have ended with them in mourning for all they’ve lost, and for the tragic fate of the galaxy falling into the hands of a madman. TLJ was a Pyrrhic victory for the First Order, but still a victory nonetheless. They had essentially obliterated the Resistance as a faction. Kylo couldn’t carry the film as a main antagonist, though. Not after having been humiliated over the course of the two films. Palpatine was brought back out of desperation, because JJ was aware of that fact. TLJ doesn’t work either as a second film in a trilogy, or as a penultimate film in a nine-part saga.

If there was ever a sequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings

I don’t think the Star Wars Trilogy and Lord of the Rings are really comparable in this regard. The story of LotR is the culmination of history itself in-universe, but the Star Wars Trilogy feels relatively self-contained. The nature of sequels to either of them would be very different.

I don’t think they’re as different as you believe. Tolkien actually did start writing a sequel to LotR, then scrapped the idea when he realized it was a dead end and would only undermine what he had already written, and be quite depressing.

“I did begin a story placed about 100 years after the Downfall, but it proved both sinister and depressing. Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: their quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going around doing damage. I could have written a ‘thriller’ about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would have been just that. Not worth doing.”

The Original Trilogy was a fairly traditional fantasy tale with a happy ending. Any sequel trilogy released later could never be viewed in isolation from the Originals, especially if it included the same characters, since it would fundamentally alter that original story in a much bleaker, more cynical direction. The three trilogies can’t be fully divorced from each other, as much as I would like for them to be. It’s a continuously running story from Phantom Menace to Rise of Skywalker. The creative choices made in the sequels have consequences for all the prior films. They recontextualize their events and characters and how people perceive them. That’s not something that writers should consider lightly.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

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I think Hal’s edit of TFA helps give the movie it’s own identity.

The Last Jedi is amazing.

I like TROS but rehiring JJ was a massive mistake.

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Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

I don’t think TLJ contradicts TFA on Finn’s arc or on the political situation.

The whole of TLJ treats Finn like he’s a selfish child who needs to be taught a lesson about the world and about committing to a cause.

That’s really not what I got out of TLJ.

The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force … acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists.

I don’t think TLJ is the one misinterpreting basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force.

Edit: I don’t want to presuppose your beliefs, but I see this on the internet a lot, so let me inb4 this: Pacifism does not mean refusing to prevent harm, or allowing violence to be done simply because the only way to prevent it is violence. The Jedi being guardians and warriors does not mean they aren’t pacifists, and a prequel trilogy that actually understood the Jedi instead of making them into a weird bureaucracy might have either focused on them being forced into war with no choice, or actually spend time on how joining the war was super un-Jedi-like, instead of leaving it to EU writers.

Besides, it’s not like Luke comes out and says “I am a Jedi, and Jedi never use violence in their lives, ever.” What happens is that Luke uses non-violence. That’s it. There isn’t even really a statement on what the Jedi are like. So, why this seems to get brought up every time this scene is talked about is beyond me.

It’s worth mentioning that on TLJ’s director’s commentary, Rian Johnson mentions the reason that the astral projection was written into the movie, you have two options: Kill off Kylo Ren (really stupid idea, hopefully for obvious reasons), or repeat Han’s death in TFA, but this time with Luke instead. I’d argue there’s a third, even worse option, though: Have Luke look like a schmuck for picking a fight and then losing. But that’s beside the point. The point is: Rian never intended to make any commentary on the nature of the Jedi.

Besides besides, even ignoring all the Jedi stuff, if Luke just showed up and unloaded on the First Order without anything more going on, it would be really horrible. The astral projection was an actually cool moment in the movie, and just replacing it with a cliche-ass, boring-ass SFX sequence is a pretty definitively bad choice.

Plus, you’d have to invent some reason for Kylo Ren to not just do this. If you do, please don’t use the overused Harry Potter-ass “I have to be the one to kill him.” It’s ridiculous and never makes any logical sense given the characters’ motivations.

“Back away! I will death with this Jedi slime… myself.” Worst fight in Star Wars history. Worst action sequence in Star Wars history, honestly.

The worldbuilding was barely existent, and by the end of the film, the galaxy had never felt smaller. The ending, which was supposed to feel inspiring and uplifting, instead felt empty and depressing.

Just like the Star Wars fandom needs to put the kibosh on the “Subverting expectations” phrase, it also needs to put the kibosh on “worldbuilding”. Because I see people talk about it all the time, but they’re always wrong about what worldbuilding even is.

I mean, honestly, the worldbuilding is barely existent in most Star Wars movies. 90% of the worldbuilding in the movies is in ANH, and 9% is in ESB. The other 1% is split between the other movies, unless you count the prequels contradicting the OT as worldbuilding. This isn’t necessarily a defense of the newer movies, I kind of feel like Star Wars’s worldbuilding alternates between stagnation and just openly contradicting previously established stuff. It’s all either living in ANH’s world without expanding upon it, or forgetting basic details to make way for lazy, boring sludge. But that’s sort of beside the point.

I don’t know. I’m not George RR Martin, but worldbuilding has been a hobby of mine since I was like 14. In some ways more conlanging than other aspects of worldbuilding, but whatever. I’m not a published author, but I still feel like I’m knowledgeable on this subject.

The worldbuilding I’ve done as a hobby, the worldbuilding done in other hobbyist communities, the worldbuilding talked about in RP circles, the worldbuilding talked about in every other fantasy story and its fandom, that’s all one thing. And then you have people talking about Lucas’s genius worldbuilding or how the sequels had a complete absence of it, and it’s like… what do you even mean by worldbuilding?

Because I can’t even say “No, that’s not worldbuilding, that’s X. Worldbuilding is Y.” because I have no idea what this worldbuilding even is. Outside of AHH and a little bit of ESB, the movies tell us pretty much nothing about the history of the galaxy, the cultures of the galaxy, the peoples of the galaxy, the individual planets of the galaxy and any details on them besides, like, a biome or two.

Do people mean art design? Or, like, building a world out of CGI? Because that’s the one thing within an arm’s reach of making sense, but even then, that has nothing to do with the storytelling and people bring it up in a storytelling context.

If there was ever a sequel trilogy to Lord of the Rings

I don’t think the Star Wars Trilogy and Lord of the Rings are really comparable in this regard. The story of LotR is the culmination of history itself in-universe, but the Star Wars Trilogy feels relatively self-contained. The nature of sequels to either of them would be very different.

I don’t think they’re as different as you believe. Tolkien actually did start writing a sequel to LotR, then scrapped the idea when he realized it was a dead end and would only undermine what he had already written, and be quite depressing.

I don’t really get your point.

I mean, yeah, a sequel to LotR wouldn’t work. The ending to LotR has cosmological significance. It’s the end of an era of reality itself. The ending to the Star Wars Trilogy is more character-oriented, the story ends here it’s where Luke becomes a Jedi and the conflict between him and Vader is resolved. To the galaxy, the events at the end of RotJ are almost incidental. Sure, it’s a big win for the Rebels, and Vader and Palpatine dying are pretty important, but there’s no way anything significant changes in the state of the galaxy. It’s been the butt of jokes for as long as I remember and it’s no surprise that in both Legends and in the New EU, not only do Imperial Remnants, pretenders, successor states, and Empire-adjacent factions live on for a really long time after RotJ, but the Empire proper lives on for a while after RotJ. 7 years in Legends and a little over a year in the New EU.

Maybe you could invoke some of the Chosen One stuff from the prequels. Anakin fulfills the prophecy and it has the same cosmological significance as destroying the One Ring, but the Chosen One prophecy was always something arbitrarily slapped onto Star Wars decades after the fact. The OT has nothing to do with it, and it seems that George Lucas was quick to abandon it, considering that one of the four ST ideas he’s had that we know about involves Leia having been the real Chosen One.

Before the prequels, maybe you could make some OT-centric era argument. Star Wars is fundamentally about the Empire and the Rebels, so the story of Star Wars has to end with the end of the Empire, which is at least bound to happen by the end of RotJ. Which, back in the 80s or 90s when Star Wars avoided anything too far before or after from the OT, fair enough, but the prequels have kind of blown that door wide open. Now we have so many wildly different eras of Star Wars, it’s almost inevitable that a sequel dealing with the galaxy 30 years after the OT would have happened.

Not so with Lord of the Rings. I don’t think I need to explain myself here, but while there’s tons of stuff written by Tolkien which details what goes on long before Lord of the Rings, there’s absolutely not for after Lord of the Rings. Even with what goes on before Lord of the Rings, it all relates to the events of Lord of the Rings. There’s no Knights of the Old Middle Earth.

Sequels to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings would be wildly different, and while one is pretty much doomed by the basic facts of the story, the other feels almost inevitable.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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 (Edited)

SparkySywer said:

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force … acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists.

I don’t think TLJ is the one misinterpreting basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force.

That’s not what Yoda meant in context. The Jedi are meant to defend the innocent, and that often involves striking down those who would harm others. ANH has Obi-Wan cutting off an assailant’s arm. They absolutely are willing to resort to the use of force to fight someone who threatens innocents. That’s why they carry lightsabers in the first place. This notion that a “true” Jedi doesn’t actually even use his saber to defeat someone is a misinterpretation by Rian Johnson of what the Jedi actually are. Striking down Kylo, or at least genuinely trying to talk him down, could have saved countless lives and ended the war. This notion of a Jedi being purely pacifist never reflected George’s vision or intention. Rian doesn’t know Star Wars better than its creator. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who understand Star Wars better than Rian does.

Also, Rian misinterpreted “Balance of the Force” to mean “the balance of Light and Dark.” This is sadly a very common misconception, when George clearly stated that “balance” meant the destruction of the Sith. The Sith are not a natural result of the Force achieving balance. They only exist as an unnatural corruption of it that must be purged.

I mean, honestly, the worldbuilding is barely existent in most Star Wars movies. 90% of the worldbuilding in the movies is in ANH, and 9% is in ESB. The other 1% is split between the other movies, unless you count the prequels contradicting the OT as worldbuilding. This isn’t necessarily a defense of the newer movies, I kind of feel like Star Wars’s worldbuilding alternates between stagnation and just openly contradicting previously established stuff. It’s all either living in ANH’s world without expanding upon it, or forgetting basic details to make way for lazy, boring sludge. But that’s sort of beside the point.

The PT has massive amounts of worldbuilding. That’s the prequels’ strongest area by a large margin. It took me watching the sequels to appreciate just how much the prequels expanded the world and made it feel so much larger and more complex and developed. The prequels don’t have as much history exposition as the OT, but the sheer volume of worlds, species, factions, and cultures introduced in the PT provided so much fertile ground for new stories to tell and history to flesh out. It’s genuinely quite impressive, and it makes me believe that the prequels aren’t entirely the cynical cash grab some people make them out to be (the sequels, on the other hand, are entirely a corporate cash grab). George was bursting with story and worldbuilding ideas that he genuinely wanted to bring to the screen. The OT and the PT together, while not lining up perfectly, provide a surprisingly fleshed out world, which served as a launchpad for stories that expanded the universe in countless directions. The Sequels are a massive step down in terms of worldbuilding from the previous films.

I don’t know. I’m not George RR Martin, but worldbuilding has been a hobby of mine since I was like 14. In some ways more conlanging than other aspects of worldbuilding, but whatever. I’m not a published author, but I still feel like I’m knowledgeable on this subject.

The worldbuilding I’ve done as a hobby, the worldbuilding done in other hobbyist communities, the worldbuilding talked about in RP circles, the worldbuilding talked about in every other fantasy story and its fandom, that’s all one thing. And then you have people talking about Lucas’s genius worldbuilding or how the sequels had a complete absence of it, and it’s like… what do you even mean by worldbuilding?

Because I can’t even say “No, that’s not worldbuilding, that’s X. Worldbuilding is Y.” because I have no idea what this worldbuilding even is. Outside of AHH and a little bit of ESB, the movies tell us pretty much nothing about the history of the galaxy, the cultures of the galaxy, the peoples of the galaxy, the individual planets of the galaxy and any details on them besides, like, a biome or two.

The OT films tell us about the history of the galaxy. The PT actually shows us a period of that history in action. All the new species, planets, and factions introduced had their own unique cultures. The prequels didn’t go out of their way to spell out a planet’s culture to us, but the basics could usually be inferred from what we were shown, and it leaves fans curious to know more about those worlds without taking time away from the main plot. We finally got to see the Republic and the Jedi and how they functioned. We got to see the different corporations that formed the CIS. There’s this constant sense in the prequels of things happening off screen on all these different planets. The worlds actually feel like societies that go about their business even when the cameras aren’t on them. By comparison, you never get the impression in the Sequels that things are happening when the heroes aren’t there. Every planet is just another set for action to take place on. They only exist when the cameras are actually focused on them, and most of them look earthlike and generic to avoid being seen as too “prequelish.”

The ST does have some rudimentary worldbuilding, but it’s so barebones because JJ wanted his soft reboot, so he wrote a movie that actively discourages its audience from thinking about what’s happening in the galaxy.

I mean, yeah, a sequel to LotR wouldn’t work. The ending to LotR has cosmological significance. It’s the end of an era of reality itself. The ending to the Star Wars Trilogy is more character-oriented, the story ends here it’s where Luke becomes a Jedi and the conflict between him and Vader is resolved. To the galaxy, the events at the end of RotJ are almost incidental. Sure, it’s a big win for the Rebels, and Vader and Palpatine dying are pretty important, but there’s no way anything significant changes in the state of the galaxy. It’s been the butt of jokes for as long as I remember and it’s no surprise that in both Legends and in the New EU, not only do Imperial Remnants, pretenders, successor states, and Empire-adjacent factions live on for a really long time after RotJ, but the Empire proper lives on for a while after RotJ. 7 years in Legends and a little over a year in the New EU.

I have absolutely no problem with the Empire surviving for years post-RotJ. I do have a problem with the Empire rising to full power out of the blue with no buildup within the lifetimes of the original characters, and tearing down everything they worked for with nothing surviving. You can still have the Empire exist as a faction. But the ending of RotJ still needs to mean something to the world as a whole. Because it was absolutely meant to.

Maybe you could invoke some of the Chosen One stuff from the prequels. Anakin fulfills the prophecy and it has the same cosmological significance as destroying the One Ring, but the Chosen One prophecy was always something arbitrarily slapped onto Star Wars decades after the fact. The OT has nothing to do with it, and it seems that George Lucas was quick to abandon it, considering that one of the four ST ideas he’s had that we know about involves Leia having been the real Chosen One.

Nevertheless, the Chosen One prophecy is etched into the canon now, and whether it was George or someone else making the sequel trilogy, it would be important to honor that and make the story work within the context of the prophecy. George came up with the prophecy partly to give RotJ’s ending a greater sense of finality and importance. The ending wasn’t just a personal victory for Luke. It was the destruction of the Sith, and a crushing blow to the Empire that they shouldn’t have been able to fully recover from, at least not off-screen.

Before the prequels, maybe you could make some OT-centric era argument. Star Wars is fundamentally about the Empire and the Rebels, so the story of Star Wars has to end with the end of the Empire, which is at least bound to happen by the end of RotJ. Which, back in the 80s or 90s when Star Wars avoided anything too far before or after from the OT, fair enough, but the prequels have kind of blown that door wide open. Now we have so many wildly different eras of Star Wars, it’s almost inevitable that a sequel dealing with the galaxy 30 years after the OT would have happened.

Which makes it all the more a shame that they decided to rehash Rebels vs. Empire again. As you said, Star Wars had grown beyond just being about those two factions. And again, I’d be fine with this new Empire existing as long as it wasn’t just a more cartoonish copy of it with comically oversized, overpowered super weapons, and if we had a proper New Republic instead of just a Rebel Alliance palette swap. And there were several EU stories set decades after the OT that introduced brand new factions to oppose the New Republic, in addition to the different splinter factions of the Empire with their own distinct cultures and divergences from one another. That makes way more sense than the First Order.

Not so with Lord of the Rings. I don’t think I need to explain myself here, but while there’s tons of stuff written by Tolkien which details what goes on long before Lord of the Rings, there’s absolutely not for after Lord of the Rings. Even with what goes on before Lord of the Rings, it all relates to the events of Lord of the Rings. There’s no Knights of the Old Middle Earth.

Sequels to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings would be wildly different, and while one is pretty much doomed by the basic facts of the story, the other feels almost inevitable.

The Sequel Trilogy was never inevitable for any reason beyond lust for profit. The prequels actually added something significant to the story. They gave a greater sense of context to the OT and its characters. Granted, it did a sloppy job, but the effort was there. It worked to close the circle and end the story where the OT began.

The sequel trilogy only makes any sense in a meta context, not an in-universe one. It does nothing to complete the story. It only undermines what came before. That’s why I said the sequel trilogy was built on a rotten foundation. It’s part reboot, part sequel, but it’s a sequel who’s choices can only be justified in a real-world context. And in the end, regardless of whatever TLJ tried to do, the trilogy’s still just an inferior copy of the OT with some of the components scrambled around. That’s why it’s worse than the prequels. At the very least, the prequels were something.

Also, as a side note about Finn, I absolutely believe John Boyega when he says that his role in the trilogy was diminished and sidelined on account of his race. And that disgusts me more than anything else about TLJ.

But we can’t turn back. Fear is their greatest defense. I doubt if the actual security there is any greater than it was on Aquilae or Sullust. And what there is is most likely directed towards a large-scale assault.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

Servii said:

SparkySywer said:

The film misinterprets basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force … acting like the Jedi are meant to be pacifists.

I don’t think TLJ is the one misinterpreting basic concepts of the Jedi and the Force.

That’s not what Yoda meant in context. The Jedi are meant to defend the innocent, and that often involves striking down those who would harm others. ANH has Obi-Wan cutting off an assailant’s arm. They absolutely are willing to resort to the use of force to fight someone who threatens innocents. That’s why they carry lightsabers in the first place. This notion that a “true” Jedi doesn’t actually even use his saber to defeat someone is a misinterpretation by Rian Johnson of what the Jedi actually are. Striking down Kylo, or at least genuinely trying to talk him down, could have saved countless lives and ended the war. This notion of a Jedi being purely pacifist never reflected George’s vision or intention. Rian doesn’t know Star Wars better than its creator. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who understand Star Wars better than Rian does.

Called it in the inb4!

Also, Rian misinterpreted “Balance of the Force” to mean “the balance of Light and Dark.” This is sadly a very common misconception, when George clearly stated that “balance” meant the destruction of the Sith. The Sith are not a natural result of the Force achieving balance. They only exist as an unnatural corruption of it that must be purged.

You can find quotes by George Lucas going literally both ways. George Lucas is a pathological liar, contradicts himself on the reg. He’s a time traveling revisionist whose “true, original vision” changes every other hour. His word is almost entirely meaningless.

“The Force has two sides, the good side and the evil side, and they both need to be there.” -Lucas 2002

“The third [trilogy will] deal with moral and philosophical problems … Eventually you have to face the fact that good and evil aren’t that clear-cut and the real issue is trying to understand the difference.” -Lucas 1983

Ironic that advocates of a more grey aspect of Star Wars also claim that Lucas totally supports them, especially because of the prequels.

I’m personally not a huge fan of the sort of grey “light and dark are both good, balance is in between” angle, but it’s not unfounded.

The PT has massive amounts of worldbuilding. The sheer volume of worlds, species, factions, and cultures introduced

Like what? Like who? The closest thing we get to that I can think of is that they have some new alien designs, but that’s art design again, not worldbuilding.

in the PT provided so much fertile ground for new stories to tell and history to flesh out.

The EU picking up the slack for the PT does not make the PT good. The EU doing worldbuilding does not mean the PT had any, in fact it just highlights the sheer lack of worldbuilding in the PT.

We finally got to see the Republic

We get to see the Republic is a really shallow ripoff of the United States government made by someone whose understanding of the US government clearly didn’t go beyond, like, 7th grade civics class. We don’t know anything about how it functions other than that the Chancellor is the leader of the executive and that the Senate has some legislative authority, and there is a third branch that is never relevant, despite us being told it’s supposed to be in, like, 2 lines?

Compare, like, literally any other fantasy Republic, or even any other fantasy government. There’s so much more interesting nuance that could be here, but is ditched for a really shallow-ass allegory about how Bush did 9/11 or some shit.

Maybe it could be said that spending too much time on the functionality of the Republic would be a bad idea and detract from the story. I’d probably agree. But that’s a justification for the prequels’ lack of worldbuilding, the fact of the matter is that there is a lack of worldbuilding, and the little bit that is there is downright uncreative.

We got to see the different corporations that formed the CIS.

Aside from the Trade Federation, we get name drops for the different corporations that formed the CIS. That’s it.

You don’t even have to leave Star Wars to see this done right, compare the depth the CIS gets in the EU and TCW to the complete lack thereof in the prequels.

Even the Trade Federation is literally just the GOP. They’re not even trying to hide it. Nute Gingrich + Ronald Raygun = Nute Gunray. While I hate the Republican Party, the Trade Federation as a criticism has the depth of tin foil. We don’t know anything about their beliefs, private or public, we don’t know anything about why their policies are bad, we just know that they’re evil and greedy and mean and they’re in league with George Walker Hitler.

As an instance of worldbuilding, they have even less depth than tin foil.

I mean, yeah, a sequel to LotR wouldn’t work. The ending to LotR has cosmological significance. It’s the end of an era of reality itself. The ending to the Star Wars Trilogy is more character-oriented, the story ends here it’s where Luke becomes a Jedi and the conflict between him and Vader is resolved. To the galaxy, the events at the end of RotJ are almost incidental. Sure, it’s a big win for the Rebels, and Vader and Palpatine dying are pretty important, but there’s no way anything significant changes in the state of the galaxy. It’s been the butt of jokes for as long as I remember and it’s no surprise that in both Legends and in the New EU, not only do Imperial Remnants, pretenders, successor states, and Empire-adjacent factions live on for a really long time after RotJ, but the Empire proper lives on for a while after RotJ. 7 years in Legends and a little over a year in the New EU.

I have absolutely no problem with the Empire surviving for years post-RotJ. I do have a problem with the Empire rising to full power out of the blue with no buildup within the lifetimes of the original characters, and tearing down everything they worked for with nothing surviving. You can still have the Empire exist as a faction. But the ending of RotJ still needs to mean something to the world as a whole. Because it was absolutely meant to.

Maybe you could invoke some of the Chosen One stuff from the prequels. Anakin fulfills the prophecy and it has the same cosmological significance as destroying the One Ring, but the Chosen One prophecy was always something arbitrarily slapped onto Star Wars decades after the fact. The OT has nothing to do with it, and it seems that George Lucas was quick to abandon it, considering that one of the four ST ideas he’s had that we know about involves Leia having been the real Chosen One.

Nevertheless, the Chosen One prophecy is etched into the canon now, and whether it was George or someone else making the sequel trilogy, it would be important to honor that and make the story work within the context of the prophecy. George came up with the prophecy partly to give RotJ’s ending a greater sense of finality and importance. The ending wasn’t just a personal victory for Luke. It was the destruction of the Sith, and a crushing blow to the Empire that they shouldn’t have been able to fully recover from, at least not off-screen.

Before the prequels, maybe you could make some OT-centric era argument. Star Wars is fundamentally about the Empire and the Rebels, so the story of Star Wars has to end with the end of the Empire, which is at least bound to happen by the end of RotJ. Which, back in the 80s or 90s when Star Wars avoided anything too far before or after from the OT, fair enough, but the prequels have kind of blown that door wide open. Now we have so many wildly different eras of Star Wars, it’s almost inevitable that a sequel dealing with the galaxy 30 years after the OT would have happened.

Which makes it all the more a shame that they decided to rehash Rebels vs. Empire again. As you said, Star Wars had grown beyond just being about those two factions. And again, I’d be fine with this new Empire existing as long as it wasn’t just a more cartoonish copy of it with comically oversized, overpowered super weapons, and if we had a proper New Republic instead of just a Rebel Alliance palette swap. And there were several EU stories set decades after the OT that introduced brand new factions to oppose the New Republic, as well as different splinter factions of the Empire with their own distinct cultures and divergences from one another.

Not so with Lord of the Rings. I don’t think I need to explain myself here, but while there’s tons of stuff written by Tolkien which details what goes on long before Lord of the Rings, there’s absolutely not for after Lord of the Rings. Even with what goes on before Lord of the Rings, it all relates to the events of Lord of the Rings. There’s no Knights of the Old Middle Earth.

Sequels to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings would be wildly different, and while one is pretty much doomed by the basic facts of the story, the other feels almost inevitable.

The prequels actually added something significant to the story.

I really have to disagree hard on this. The Last Jedi feels like an actual contribution to Star Wars. It developed on interesting characters introduced in TFA, and gave Luke a character arc I was interested in. It contributed to the Star Wars mythos, and I kind of think you have to ignore the whole movie to say there wasn’t a lot of passion and care put into this movie or that it didn’t add anything significant to the story.

Because it’s really easy to imagine a sequel trilogy that actually was totally vapid and just gunning for the box office. At the very least, it would have made the polar opposite decisions that TLJ made, and there’s a lot of decisions that TFA made that wouldn’t line up with this.

I’m not about to tell you that the ST was the next Citizen Kane or anything, because it wasn’t. Rebels v Empire 2 was a shame. Starkiller Base is indefensible. Most of TRoS is indefensible. Etc.

But a lot of criticisms made against the ST seem to be because they weren’t totally vapid. Especially ones having to do with Luke Skywalker.

I don’t think the prequels were a straight cash grab, because it looks like there was actual effort put into the Phantom Menace. But overall we have:

-One movie with an actual story, but none of the events of this movie really end up being all that relevant, and it’s not even like this story is all that complex

-One movie that feels like it’s trying to be the setup to a new trilogy, but doesn’t have much of an interesting story of its own, and, you know, it’s actually Episode 2, and should be starting to wrap the story up.

-One movie that starts off by dropping all the setup done in the previous movie, farting around on Coruscant telling us exposition for over an hour, then acts out backstory we already knew from the OT (really inaccurately I might add), then goes on an ANH fanservice montage it didn’t earn or justify

Actually, we know behind the scenes that they kinda hard pressed the reset button after TPM, which is why pretty much nothing in TPM is relevant. I wonder if they also did that between AotC and RotS, although more of a soft press this time. Every single movie feels like the first movie in a prequel trilogy, but (believe it or not), they’re not all the first movie. So when the end of Revenge of the Sith rolls around, it feels like the story of an entire trilogy is crammed into the last 40ish minutes of the movie, and a ton of that time is devoted to overly long SFX sequences, not the actual story.

The only thing the prequels contributed to Star Wars is the very beginnings of the scaffolding the EU used to actually contribute to Star Wars.

Absolutely everything that you’d think the prequels could have or should have contributed is entirely absent from the prequels and mostly in the EU. Especially the Clone Wars. We see the very, very beginning, and the tail end is there in some SFX sequences, but the war itself is entirely absent.

Hell, we know surprisingly little about, like, anything to do with the galaxy during the time of the prequels. All of that is in the EU and TCW.

As for context to the OT characters, it’s so incredibly unclear that it doesn’t even really seem to matter. Mainly, Anakin’s reason for becoming Vader changed behind the scenes for all three movies, and even the final movie where it’s supposed to happen can’t seem to make up its mind on why.

I can’t even think of anything else that the PT contributed to the OT’s context to really argue for or against. That’s pretty much it.

The OT itself gives far better context than the trilogy that’s actually supposed to be depicting its context. All the PT does is make the OT more muddied.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories