Your ideal Star Wars Sequel Trilogy — Page 4

Thanks for the comments, RogueLeader! I was not enamored of Trevorrow’s script as a whole – I found the climax nonsensical, for one thing – though there were certainly elements (Rey’s impulse to build, Finn’s stormtrooper rebellion) in which the core ideas exceeded what Abrams did.

Diagnosing the thrust of Rey’s arc is one thing, of course, and dramatizing it in a way that would be coherent in a single film and digestible to mass audiences is quite another. It would require the judicious introduction of some new characters, though every SW film does this to some degree. I do think a time jump of several years would have been apropos, and that the story ought to have built to a confrontation between Rey’s fledgling pupils and the Knights of Ren. If her triumph would be to transcend Luke’s failure, then her community would need to survive where his crumbled, and for that it would need to undergo some sort of crucible. This is just me spitballing, but it seems to me that Rey would be called on to resist to the end and finally demonstrate some great selfless or sacrificial act (not necessarily mortal) for her students, and that this would strengthen their resolve to work together rather than fracture. The big reveal would be that the Knights of Ren are not the “ultimate Dark Side badasses” that they initially seem to be beneath all the black armor – but that they are, in fact, bullied and traumatized children (albeit very powerful children) not unlike Rey’s own pupils. Lacking Ren’s twisted obsession with the past, and never having witnessed the true power of the Light Side, they would either break and scatter or turn on him following Rey’s great moment. Ren would be reduced to impotent fury. During the climax, he might not be killed after all, but expend so much power that he burns himself out and becomes dead to the Force. He would be taken into custody, a broken man, withdrawn into the torment of his own mind … perhaps with Rey holding out hope that she will be able to reach him someday. And in the meantime, she will gather her followers – perhaps now including several of the Knights of Ren – and her new community will be rebuilt stronger than ever. Again, just spitballing … but that’s the overall shape of the core story I’d have wanted to see. (Poe and Finn would have had their own parallel arcs, of course, with Poe growing into the leader of the Resistance movement while Finn and Rose fanned the flames from within the First Order.)

Admonisher said:

But Abrams ignored all of that in RISE OF SKYWALKER. Instead, he has Rey grapple with her dark ancestry, redeem the bad guy through the power of love, and reject the temptations of the Evil Emperor. She doesn’t build on Luke’s failures, she just repeats his successes, beat for beat. It was an awful failure of imagination and it left me, as a viewer, totally uninterested and disengaged. Perhaps future films or shows involving Rey will address some of these concerns. But the chance to tell that story in the context of her natural ideological foil, Kylo “Burn it All Down” Ren, has been squandered. And that’s a real pity.

I’ve been saying it for years.

J.J. Abrams can’t come up with an idea of his own. All he ever does as a director is recycle the pop culture he enjoyed in his childhood and adolescence.

The Thrawn Trilogy, maybe condensing and adapting three books into two and then adapting the Hand of Thrawn duology into the third movie. Maybe throw some Jedi Academy/I, Jedi/Kyle Katarn stuff into the mix in the second or third movie.

If I had to use the existing sequel concepts as a base, then I would delete the First Order, delete Starkiller Base, and lean heavily into the angle of Kylo Ren worshiping Darth Vader. The Knights of Ren would be an actual cult of Vader. Their acts would be more like terrorism and less like a military. They would kill and corrupt some of Luke’s students but not all of them, with maybe Rey being their newest student so there’s an audience surrogate for them to explain things to. The Knights’ goal would be more to destabilize the New Republic than conquer or destroy it, and with this they’re pretty successful until the third movie. There are too many competing interests in the New Republic (politicians, planets, corporations, the Jedi, criminals, former imperials, etc.) for it to easily hold together, and they exploit these tensions, probably using assassinations and sabotage, to cause chaos. If Snoke still existed, Snoke would be their leader or maybe their financier. He’s a ruthless alien warlord who got exiled out of the Empire and always hated Palpatine. For a prequel tie in, maybe he’s a former Separatist leader.

Their beliefs would be based on the silly ideas that a lot of current fans have about the Force and how it works, and they would see Anakin/Vader as the embodiment of Balance in the Force, as in someone who was equally attached to the “light side” and the dark side and found total fulfillment by seeking out both (something silly people also say about Revan.) They view themselves as “gray jedi,” with a utilitarian, ends justify the means sort of concept. It would be the task of Luke, Leia (a jedi), and Anakin’s ghost to impress upon them that Vader was enslaved by the dark side and he was not some kind of god of balance, he was a good man who was corrupted by giving into temptation and the power of the Emperor.

It’s up to our heroes Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2 and 3PO, and their pals to defeat the Knights of Ren! Maybe because of the political stuff going on, they have to team up with some scum and villainy types to do it, like a resurrected Boba Fett or some other mercenary guys.

Love your idea for the Knights of Ren! I also think it would’ve given Kylo a more interesting motivation. His motivation for turning to the dark side was never expanded upon in the films, but this would give you the idea that he felt he was doing what was right for the galaxy, even if it was misguided. Him and the other Knights may believe they could control the dark side without it controlling them, but as the trilogy progresses we’d see how it corrupts them.

The Force Awakens novel opened with this “quote” from the Journal of the Whills:

First comes the day
Then comes the night
After the dark
Shines through the light
The difference, they say
Is only made right
By resolving the gray
Through refined Jedi sight

It is an intriguing prologue, but the trilogy never delves into that. Your idea could resolve the “gray” and put the arguments to rest.

For example, I wish Luke had a moment in the trilogy to give some spiritual speech that was on the same level as Yoda’s “for my ally is the Force” speech. You could’ve had Luke explain to Rey why Kylo’s philosophy is wrong in an interesting, optimistic way. I think it’d still be nice to show how Luke’s Jedi Order might be different than how it was before, how he “resolves the gray”, but with an answer that isn’t “Grey Jedi”.

Really, the ST could’ve posed an interesting question and theme. Okay, Anakin brought balance to the Force, but what does that mean? And how do you maintain it? That question could’ve not only applied to the state of Jedi and the Force, but also to the state of the New Republic? How do you protect democracy, and keep it from falling to fascism again?

This is a common idea people have, but you could’ve had a simple role reversal and the Imperial remnant could’ve been the rebels, with ragtag stormtrooper militias committing acts of terrorism across the Republic. And Leia could’ve done some politcking, trying to weed out senators who are trying to turn the Republic back into an Empire. Our heroes could be wondering who has stormtrooper uniforms in their closets.

Speaking of which, I picture the ST “stormtroopers” looking more like this.

I mean, this would’ve been cool for the fandom, too. Imagine the 501st having their members make costumes like this. Could’ve had some pretty cool action figures too, and encouraged fans to kitbash their own stormtrooper figures. I think it narratively makes sense to see how the Imperial element has regressed and become more extremist in the wake of their defeat.

I don’t like that quote at all (even if I agreed with the ideas, the cutesy rhyming is really annoying lol) but I get your point. It would be more interesting to explore the ideas and actually grapple with them.

As for the Empire, I would prefer not to take the view that they’re just IRL nazis who have to be exterminated for all time, and if you don’t exterminate them hard enough they just come back for another sequel trilogy. I think it makes more sense if they’re a government that a lot of people consider legitimate and want to live under. Again, I think the Thrawn books and especially the Hand of Thrawn do this in a much better way. The Empire are the bad guys but they’re not completely incompetent, and after the death of Palpatine they change and adapt according to the circumstances. They get rid of their anti alien biases, and they enter peace talks with the New Republic. Leia goes out of her way to establish peace, which is the polar opposite of their idea in the sequel movies, where she is the only person dedicated to total war and everyone else is just too dumb to listen to her.

Somewhere along the line people picked up this idea that the Empire is only WW2 Germany and not also the Roman Empire or even the United States at times. Palpatine isn’t just Hitler, he’s Julius Caesar and Napoleon and others as well. But it’s so common now to see modern domestic political opponents as literally Hitler/Nazis that it produces a kind of tunnel vision where that’s all Star Wars was ever about, and if you try to introduce any nuance then you’re doing something dangerous.

With that said, either way, the main thing to be original would be to focus on an underground terrorist kind of enemy instead of a standing army that’s exactly the same as the Empire or the Trade Federation/Separatists.

True. I know the canon novels have the New Republic paint Leia as a war monger, but she sort of was even if it was justified. I agree that think it would’ve fit Leia better if she was trying to maintain peace as a politician rather than just be a general.

So you’re saying that you would’ve had the New Republic on one side, the Imperial Remnant on the other, with their being peace or a truce between them, and the Knights of Ren as the main antagonists trying to stir up trouble?

That sounds like a pretty neat idea.

What if the Imperial Remnant was trying to distance itself from its dark past and forge a new way forward for itself but the Knights of Ren are hellbent on retaining its autocratic nature? The IR seeking peaceful coexistence with the New Republic but the Knights of Ren are still stuck in the conquering warlike mentality of the Empire. I would take away the focus from how the New Republic is developing but let’s be honest, conflict is what drives these kinds of stories.

A society at war with itself, one half looking to build a better future dealing with its dark legacy while the other half wants to restore the Empire to its former glory.

fmalover said:

That sounds like a pretty neat idea.

What if the Imperial Remnant was trying to distance itself from its dark past and forge a new way forward for itself but the Knights of Ren are hellbent on retaining its autocratic nature? The IR seeking peaceful coexistence with the New Republic but the Knights of Ren are still stuck in the conquering warlike mentality of the Empire. I would take away the focus from how the New Republic is developing but let’s be honest, conflict is what drives these kinds of stories.

A society at war with itself, one half looking to build a better future dealing with its dark legacy while the other half wants to restore the Empire to its former glory.

I always thought the sequel trilogy should have been about a civil war between Imperial factions: a large militaristic but pragmatic remnant who want to establish a post-Sith order & a smaller group of Sith-cultists carrying out terrorist attacks. The New Republic gets reluctantly drawn in as the conflict spills out into its territory. You could have a Snoke figure or the Sith eternal as the hidden force fuelling the conflict, bringing the new Jedi order into the fray.

My ideal Star Wars sequel would be anything that isn’t related to what we’ve already seen. I want brand new stories, characters, worlds and etc. I am sick of the same things over and over.
Maybe a Mandalorian saga.

RogueLeader said:

True. I know the canon novels have the New Republic paint Leia as a war monger, but she sort of was even if it was justified. I agree that think it would’ve fit Leia better if she was trying to maintain peace as a politician rather than just be a general.

So you’re saying that you would’ve had the New Republic on one side, the Imperial Remnant on the other, with their being peace or a truce between them, and the Knights of Ren as the main antagonists trying to stir up trouble?

It could be done that way or it could be that the former Empire is already incorporated into the New Republic, and so some former imperials help the Knights of Ren with an insurgency. I think they’re more enemies from inside than outside.

Another non-Empire enemy could involve the Corporate Sector, but that might be too similar to the Separatists.

I think the New Jedi Order books had the right idea make a new Villains that are not Sith or the Empire the Villains for the Sequels should have been something different