But I begin to see how things could play out in this film. I have this gut feeling that one key aspect of this is going to be the return of Ben Solo with his grandfather’s blue saber.
Too many Star Wars fans forget the pulp serial origins of the series. Lucas went in a much more serious direction at the outset, but it still had that pulpy veneer on it and that is where Ewoks and Gungans came from. The old Marvel comics really nailed that aspect of it. That may be why I am so forgiving of some things. I loved those and enjoy some good pulp and camp… in small doses.
And while the song you bring up is not one I really care for, it was a #1 hit.
I think a lot of this really is about taste. I don’t care for Avatar but as you brought it into the mix I feel like the same logic you’ve used could all be said in defense of that movie, that maybe it seemed the same to you but there were a lot of new innovations, and it was a very compelling event at the time that felt fresh to many. Even when you say pulling characters directly from other films I think that’s getting back to the same finger pointing you could dish back at ANH.
I see the story of Avatar as totally derivative. There are a few scattering of new ideas (as far as the story) in there, but otherwise it has nothing new. The world was incredible, but if you study how to write a story, world building doesn’t make a story. James Cameron fell into that trap and reused so many old western tropes that there is nothing to to the story.
That is TFA. You see the similarity, but the rest is something else.
Somewhere in the middle there’s complete agreement here, that you can see something similar (which we have been over also isn’t inherently bad but that’s where I’m calling taste), but from there it has its own path, own new characters. For myself that new path is still fairly undefined and the ratio of similar to new leaned too far into the former category, the combination making it difficult to follow the ST as its own story.
There are pieces that are similar and pieces that are not. What TFA And TLJ are not are complete rehashings of the OT. There pieces in there, but a great deal that is new and fresh. Too much is being made of a few things. Sure, some may not be able to see past that, but I’m trying to point out that at the story level, the ST and OT are not that similar. And I begin to get the feeling that TROS is going to rewrite our understanding of things that have happened so far in the ST.
My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.
I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…
I don’t see how it’s baffling that someone would say they aren’t the exact same. I don’t think you’re actually baffled, you know full well they aren’t the same. I don’t understand why these conversations always turn to hyperbole. (Maybe because there’d be nothing to argue about if we were all honest with what the films actually are.)
Honestly, I like TFA, but I would say the plot is highly similar to ANH, with a few elements of TESB and ROTJ thrown in for good measure. The question is not whether it is, or isn’t similar, because it is, and not by accident, but if it is too similar, such that in the combination with the story, characters, and visuals, it ruins the movie for you. It didn’t for me, but I think because of the similarities, it’s lasting impact may be somewhat less, than if it had been more original. I would also say, that if someone were to argue, that they didn’t like TFA, because it was too similar to ANH, that that would not be an unreasonable point of view. I would say, that I can see their point, but the other elements in the film, and the way they were presented, made it seem fresh enough for me to like the movie, and not classify it as a rehash.
I would say the plot is completely different. ANH is driven by the Death Star Plans and a huge danger to the free galaxy (first Alderaan and then Yavin IV). TFA is driven by the search for Luke. In ANH Vader is searching for the plans protect his asset and they fall into Luke’s hands. In TFA, Kylo and Leia are searching for Luke and no one finds him until the last scene. The map to Luke never is within reach of Kylo like it is Vader (R2 is there on the Death Star with the plans). In TFA, the piece of the map they have is useless without the rest which we get after the climax of the film.
That is not completely different. That is very similar. In both films the villain is looking for important information vital to the survival of the heroes, that has been hidden at the last moment by one of the heroes in a droid. That droid ends up in the hands of the main protagonist, who lives on a desert planet, and with the help of an ally tries to get the information back to the home base of the heroes. The heroes go to a seedy bar in an attempt to further their quest. The villains use a super weapon to destroy a planet/planets. One of the heroes needs to be rescued from the villain’s base, we get another desperate attack to destroy the super weapon, we get another trench run, etc, etc.
Now what is the same are a lot of the setups and scenes. As I said before, the opening is setup almost identical in many ways, but once the McGuffin arrives in our hero’s hands, the story diverges greatly. We are treated to Abrams version of the Cantina (which makes story sense because it is the sort of place Han would frequent and would go to when he needed something), Death Star, trench run, enemy base rescue, imminent danger, etc. But the story between them is nothing alike. In ANH, they accidentally find Leia, in TFA they go to rescue Rey. In ANH Leia needs rescuing, in TFA, Rey does not. In ANH the Death Star is closing in to fire, in TFA Starkiller Base is charging to fire. In ANH Tarkin refuses to leave, in TFA Hux evacuates. So a lot of story points touch on the same ideas, but the execution and resolution is very different because they plot of the film has a different goal. ANH is all about the Death Star while TFA is all about finding Luke. The crawls set it up this way. I find both movies to feel very different. While TFA evokes a sense of nostalgia and plays in familiar territory, everything is different and new.
The fact that some details are different, or that the order of events have been altered somewhat, or that one character is switched for another does not suddenly make it completely different. It makes it not identical, because several things have been altered, but the similarities, are there, and they are obvious. The question is whether making a few changes, and adding some new elements is enough to make it seem fresh? Some will say yes, while other will say no.
You are focusing on what is the same. It is only the same in a vague way. In TFA the map was not stolen. Poe does not remain a prisoner but escapes with Finn’s help. Yes, that initial beat is the same, but nothing else about it is. TFA uses a few beats from ANH and rearranges them and changes how they play out to create a new story. It is not the same story retold. The details being different is what makes it a different story. It isn’t the second Star Wars film to feature a bar scene after all. It isn’t like it is the second Death Star. Star Wars has been full of reused beats and tropes. Most people have enjoyed it and it is the second most successful Star Wars film of the franchise. So it must have done something right. If you focus the the McGuffin and the super weapon, then yeah, they are going to seem the same. If you focus on who does what and why, then story is totally original. The McGuffin is not the plot. It is a tool to drive action and get us into the story.
If you have to focus on specific elements, than it is not totally original. I think most would say TFA does more than just reuse some beats and tropes. TFA is like the Vanilla Ice song, Ice Ice Baby, which has the exact same base line as Queen’s Under Pressure. If you focus on the baseline, it’s a copy, but if you add in the other elements, it’s still a different song. However, nobody would argue Ice Ice Baby is totally original, if you just ignore the baseline. Remove the baseline, and you remove an essential part of the song.
Well, if you want to bring music into this for comparison, there are only so many variations to music. There are limited patterns, limited chords, etc. So a modern artist taking an actual recording from another is neither new or unusual. And while the song you bring up is not one I really care for, it was a #1 hit. Queen’s original is a very cool song, but didn’t hit #1 in all the same places. Madonna did it more recently with Hung Up (with a sample from Abba’s 1979 hit Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)) that was a much bigger hit. And the examples throughout the music world of one song building on another are everywhere. The original Star Trek them starts with a section that Brahams has used from something even older.
And as a student of both history and literature I can tell you that this happens all the time. Historical events that mirror other and literature that borrows from older stories is common place. So much so that I don’t usually pay attention to that. I look for what they did that was different and fresh. I have two films that I consider what not to do - Pearl Harbor and Avatar. I felt those two films sucked because they didn’t just pull beats or sub plots from other films, but basically pulled their main character’s stories right out of other films. I felt I’d seen both those films before. TFA did not give me that feeling. It is not the same as ANH. It has some of the same beats but takes things in a different direction.
For instance the comparison is desert planet, plans, droids, Luke, cantina, and desert planet, map, droid, Rey, cantina. That comparison ignores character sitatuion and that Rey had to fight her way off the planet by stealing a ship where Luke tagged along with Ben as he arranged for passage. Rey had to travel to another planet (with a rathtar battle with a couple of gangs in the middle). Luke and co went on their way after a brief shootout with a squad of stormtroops and Rey was captured by Kylo Ren while the cantina and the building it was in was leveled to the ground. TFA is a story where they called back to some familiar scenes in the OT where Avatar is an entire plot that I felt I’d seen before.
Going back to music, the difference between what Madonna and Vanilla Ice did compared to what they took those small clips from is drastically different from two pieces of music that sound the same. The opening theme to the 1989 Batman and the battle scene from Cyrano DeBergerac sound almost identical and the movies and soundtracks came out at the same time. They are different you listen to them side by side, but in isolation they feel the same. Where Madonna’s song and Abba’s song as well as Vanilla Ice’s song and Queen’s song do not feel the same at all. You hear the similarity but the rest is something else. That is TFA. You see the similarity, but the rest is something else.
So the Empire spends almost 20 years developing the first Death Star, another 4 years to have a partial but functioning 2nd Death Star, and then 30 years have passed and there is a reminant of the Empire and they have continued developing similar weapons (Starkiller Base) and have adapted the Death Star weapon to a smaller scale (TLJ battering ram cannon) and we shouldn’t expect to see that technology used in some way in TROS? Seriously? That is kind of a ridiculous expectation.
My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.
I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…
I don’t see how it’s baffling that someone would say they aren’t the exact same. I don’t think you’re actually baffled, you know full well they aren’t the same. I don’t understand why these conversations always turn to hyperbole. (Maybe because there’d be nothing to argue about if we were all honest with what the films actually are.)
Honestly, I like TFA, but I would say the plot is highly similar to ANH, with a few elements of TESB and ROTJ thrown in for good measure. The question is not whether it is, or isn’t similar, because it is, and not by accident, but if it is too similar, such that in the combination with the story, characters, and visuals, it ruins the movie for you. It didn’t for me, but I think because of the similarities, it’s lasting impact may be somewhat less, than if it had been more original. I would also say, that if someone were to argue, that they didn’t like TFA, because it was too similar to ANH, that that would not be an unreasonable point of view. I would say, that I can see their point, but the other elements in the film, and the way they were presented, made it seem fresh enough for me to like the movie, and not classify it as a rehash.
I would say the plot is completely different. ANH is driven by the Death Star Plans and a huge danger to the free galaxy (first Alderaan and then Yavin IV). TFA is driven by the search for Luke. In ANH Vader is searching for the plans protect his asset and they fall into Luke’s hands. In TFA, Kylo and Leia are searching for Luke and no one finds him until the last scene. The map to Luke never is within reach of Kylo like it is Vader (R2 is there on the Death Star with the plans). In TFA, the piece of the map they have is useless without the rest which we get after the climax of the film.
That is not completely different. That is very similar. In both films the villain is looking for important information vital to the survival of the heroes, that has been hidden at the last moment by one of the heroes in a droid. That droid ends up in the hands of the main protagonist, who lives on a desert planet, and with the help of an ally tries to get the information back to the home base of the heroes. The heroes go to a seedy bar in an attempt to further their quest. The villains use a super weapon to destroy a planet/planets. One of the heroes needs to be rescued from the villain’s base, we get another desperate attack to destroy the super weapon, we get another trench run, etc, etc.
Now what is the same are a lot of the setups and scenes. As I said before, the opening is setup almost identical in many ways, but once the McGuffin arrives in our hero’s hands, the story diverges greatly. We are treated to Abrams version of the Cantina (which makes story sense because it is the sort of place Han would frequent and would go to when he needed something), Death Star, trench run, enemy base rescue, imminent danger, etc. But the story between them is nothing alike. In ANH, they accidentally find Leia, in TFA they go to rescue Rey. In ANH Leia needs rescuing, in TFA, Rey does not. In ANH the Death Star is closing in to fire, in TFA Starkiller Base is charging to fire. In ANH Tarkin refuses to leave, in TFA Hux evacuates. So a lot of story points touch on the same ideas, but the execution and resolution is very different because they plot of the film has a different goal. ANH is all about the Death Star while TFA is all about finding Luke. The crawls set it up this way. I find both movies to feel very different. While TFA evokes a sense of nostalgia and plays in familiar territory, everything is different and new.
The fact that some details are different, or that the order of events have been altered somewhat, or that one character is switched for another does not suddenly make it completely different. It makes it not identical, because several things have been altered, but the similarities, are there, and they are obvious. The question is whether making a few changes, and adding some new elements is enough to make it seem fresh? Some will say yes, while other will say no.
You are focusing on what is the same. It is only the same in a vague way. In TFA the map was not stolen. Poe does not remain a prisoner but escapes with Finn’s help. Yes, that initial beat is the same, but nothing else about it is. TFA uses a few beats from ANH and rearranges them and changes how they play out to create a new story. It is not the same story retold. The details being different is what makes it a different story. It isn’t the second Star Wars film to feature a bar scene after all. It isn’t like it is the second Death Star. Star Wars has been full of reused beats and tropes. Most people have enjoyed it and it is the second most successful Star Wars film of the franchise. So it must have done something right. If you focus the the McGuffin and the super weapon, then yeah, they are going to seem the same. If you focus on who does what and why, then story is totally original. The McGuffin is not the plot. It is a tool to drive action and get us into the story.
My last two cents on the “is TFA just SW 2.0?” argument: This video, in which the guy tries to be as unbiased as possible. It’s a good video.
I will say it’s baffling to see people saying that TFA doesn’t have the same plot as SW. The story isn’t exactly the same (even though it’s incredibly similar) but the plot is, pretty much, the very same thing…
I don’t see how it’s baffling that someone would say they aren’t the exact same. I don’t think you’re actually baffled, you know full well they aren’t the same. I don’t understand why these conversations always turn to hyperbole. (Maybe because there’d be nothing to argue about if we were all honest with what the films actually are.)
Honestly, I like TFA, but I would say the plot is highly similar to ANH, with a few elements of TESB and ROTJ thrown in for good measure. The question is not whether it is, or isn’t similar, because it is, and not by accident, but if it is too similar, such that in the combination with the story, characters, and visuals, it ruins the movie for you. It didn’t for me, but I think because of the similarities, it’s lasting impact may be somewhat less, than if it had been more original. I would also say, that if someone were to argue, that they didn’t like TFA, because it was too similar to ANH, that that would not be an unreasonable point of view. I would say, that I can see their point, but the other elements in the film, and the way they were presented, made it seem fresh enough for me to like the movie, and not classify it as a rehash.
I would say the plot is completely different. ANH is driven by the Death Star Plans and a huge danger to the free galaxy (first Alderaan and then Yavin IV). TFA is driven by the search for Luke. In ANH Vader is searching for the plans protect his asset and they fall into Luke’s hands. In TFA, Kylo and Leia are searching for Luke and no one finds him until the last scene. The map to Luke never is within reach of Kylo like it is Vader (R2 is there on the Death Star with the plans). In TFA, the piece of the map they have is useless without the rest which we get after the climax of the film.
Now what is the same are a lot of the setups and scenes. As I said before, the opening is setup almost identical in many ways, but once the McGuffin arrives in our hero’s hands, the story diverges greatly. We are treated to Abrams version of the Cantina (which makes story sense because it is the sort of place Han would frequent and would go to when he needed something), Death Star, trench run, enemy base rescue, imminent danger, etc. But the story between them is nothing alike. In ANH, they accidentally find Leia, in TFA they go to rescue Rey. In ANH Leia needs rescuing, in TFA, Rey does not. In ANH the Death Star is closing in to fire, in TFA Starkiller Base is charging to fire. In ANH Tarkin refuses to leave, in TFA Hux evacuates. So a lot of story points touch on the same ideas, but the execution and resolution is very different because they plot of the film has a different goal. ANH is all about the Death Star while TFA is all about finding Luke. The crawls set it up this way. I find both movies to feel very different. While TFA evokes a sense of nostalgia and plays in familiar territory, everything is different and new.
Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha
Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:
What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?
Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.
I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.
And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.
The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.
The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.
For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:
“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”
So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.
I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.
I too strongly disagree. Your argument hinges on the fact we should just focus on one element of the story, the journey of the hero, which you argue is original, and ignore the vast majority of other highly similar plot points, because they don’t fit your narrative. A film is much more than the journey of the hero. However, even if we go your way, and just focus on the hero’s journey, your argument breaks down. While I would say, it is debatable, which of the heroes, Anakin or Rey, is more similar to Luke in their first films, Rey’s journey in TLJ is anything but original. Her arc is an obvious mix of elements taken from TESB and ROTJ. Her arc starts by first following the plot of TESB, seeking guidance from a Jedi master, who initially turns her down, but after an old friend persuades him gives the hero a few lessons/training, then the hero enters a dark side cave, which gives her some cryptic preview of a reveal that will follow at the end of the movie, then after having a vision of the future, leaves that master against his advice to face the enemy, then switching to the plot of ROTJ, where she delivers herself willingly to the enemy in hopes of redeeming the villain, then that villain betrays and kills his master to save her life, and then back to the plot of TESB for the offer to rule the galaxy at the villains side, and the big reveal about the her parentage at the end. Anakin’s journey in AOTC has far less similarities to the OT than Rey’s journey. While he may lose a limb in a vain attempt to rescue his friend and mentor at the end, the bulk of his story is actually about his feelings for Padme, which lead to forbidden love, resulting in a secret marriage, while his attachments to the past, and subsequent emotional trauma, steer him down a dark path, and together with his secret marriage lay the seeds for his eventual turn to the dark side in the next installment. I should add that we haven’t even discussed the context of the hero’s journey, which in the case of the ST is just a copy of the OT, where a tiny band of rebels are facing an overwhelming force of Space Nazis led by a former Jedi student of the hero’s mentor, who has turned to the dark side, and had been instrumental in the destruction of the Jedi order. The context of the PT is a villain operating from the shadows, who through subversion, and manipulation starts a war, where he controls both sides, and uses the crisis to convince the Senate to willingly hand power over to him, a completely different premise from the OT.
These two videos clearly show how both TFA and TLJ heavily borrow scenes, plot threads, and visuals from the OT, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call them rip-offs, they represent more of a mix tape of the OT’s greatest hits, with some new elements added for good measure, than an original story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BX18Icf6fQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AgRgwW1Ovc
Hopefully TROS will finally change that, and offer a story that isn’t in some way an adaptation or remix of the OT.
The problem with your argument is that some of the core story points from the OT aren’t replicated in the ST. Especially when you include pacing. TFA starts off the same as ANH, the McGuffin goes from rebel hands to a droid to a native of the desert planet. That is when things go off the rails. In ANH Luke wants to leave but isn’t willing to go until his Aunt and Uncle are killed and he meets his mentor. In TFA, Rey doesn’t want to leave, but is convinced that the droid needs to be delivered to the right hands. Luke and Ben charter a ship. Rey and Finn steal a ship (same ship 34 years later). And from there it is hard to make the two trilogies feel very parallel. There is a bit between the Death Star and Starkiller base, but none of the events play out in similar ways. The ST pushed the meeting with the mentor out until the start of the second movie and our Skywalker defeats his evil master an entire movie early. I feel the ST had jumbled things up quite sufficiently to have a fresh feeling story. Similar events in a new generation leading to different choices and different outcomes. In TESB and TLJ we even have a different number of stories. In TESB they all start out together on Hoth. Then they split into two groups (we don’t follow anyone with the rebel fleet). In TLJ they are split in two from the end of the last film and then split again giving three distinct stories. And then the confortation with Rey and Snoke parallels the confrontation with Luke and Palpatine from ROTJ. Again breaking the pure parallels of story telling between the trilogies. Also, in TESB, the Rebels escape with few losses. In TLJ the resistance is nearly wiped out and is in no shape to fight back. And while TESB and TLJ both have Jedi training sequences, they follow completely different paths with Luke not being willing to train Rey and ending in her leaving with little training and Luke following (as a force projection).
So while I agree that some scenes are similar, overall the stories take very different paths and the end result of the trilogies is going to be very different. While at the same time I feel that the PT and the OT share more beats in common. The characters also take very different journeys. So I don’t see much in common between the OT and ST.
Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha
Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:
What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?
Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.
I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.
And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.
The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.
The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.
For one the PT is far less similar to the OT than the ST is. Secondly just because Lucas used similar trials to highlight the choices made by Anakin, and Luke, which unlike the ST were part of a single narrative with a beginning and an ending, doesn’t mean that he meant Star Wars to be an endless cycle of similar characters facing similar situations. Lucas also made it very clear he feels each trilogy needs its own visual style:
“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”
So, Lucas obviously felt TFA was too much of a repeat of what we had seen before. Apparently he doesn’t share your views on similar storytelling to the extend that it was used for the ST.
I disagree. I think the PT had more parallels to the OT. To really understand the trilogies you have to focus on the hero and their journey. Anakin’s journey ended in his downfall. Luke rose to great heights and redeemed his father. Rey… what will she do? The death of Qui-gon is closer to the death of Obi-wan than any death in the ST. The great celebration at the end of ANH and TPM. The young boy from Tatooine finding a way off the planet and on the road to becoming a Jedi. The middle chapter where the training is tested and both fail in their major battle and lose a limb. The final chapter where they face their greatest challenge and one fails while the other succeeds. The girl, the guy, the droids, the galaxy in turmoil. In terms of plot points crucial to the final outcome of the main plot, they are far more similar than the ST is to either. Sure it features a McGuffin like the OT, and a hotshot pilot like Han, but it gives the girl the lead role and replaced the princess with the ex stormtrooper. Rey’s training does not flow to success like Anakin and Luke’s and she does not face an opponent she is unprepared for and she doesn’t lose a limb. The mentor only dies AFTER the hero moves on on her own. In some ways TLJ may feel a bit more like TESB in tone, but in plot points it is laid out differently and serves a different purpose.
It is supposed to be a very long film so I don’t think there is a need to break it apart.
Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha
Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:
What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?
Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.
I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.
And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.
The Zahn trilogy does not have Empire vs rebels 2.0, or have the New Republic wiped out of existence, such that we reset the galaxy to an OT state. It does not have a Darth Vader wannabe, who also was a former Jedi pupil of the hero’s Jedi mentor. It does not have a fascimile Emperor. It does not have another Death Star like super weapon. It does not have another Jedi prodigy from a Tatooine clone. It does not have another ground battle involving walkers on a white plane. It does not have another throne room scene, where our hero has to witness the destruction of the rebel fleet, and an apprentice betraying his master to save the life of the hero. The Zahn trilogy was new and fresh. I can’t say the same for the ST. I’m not saying the films aren’t entertaining, and there are new elements, and nuances, but the so called cyclical nature is a poor excuse for resetting the story, and essentially giving us the OT with a new coat of paint. I’m not saying I dislike the ST in general, or that they’re bad movies. I’m saying it could have been a whole lot better, if they hadn’t undone most of the OT’s victories, and in stead given us a new and original story with new and original heroes, and villains, that weren’t in some way a slight variation of characters and stories we have seen before.
The Zahn trilogy does have a reminant of the Empire. It does have a unique Jedi student situation. The Republic is unsteady so the players are pretty much the same as Empire vs. Rebels 2.0. And in The ST, the republic has not be wiped out, only the government. We won’t know what the state of the galaxy is until TROS comes out since only days or weeks have passed since the Hosnian system and the fleet were destroyed. I feel you are making too much of what you see as parallels and you aren’t seeing how different the ST is from the OT. I do not share any of your feelings as to what the story of the ST is. I see closer parallels to the Zahn Trilogy. But in any case it is supposed to be similar. Read or seen the Cloud Atlas? Lucas has been going for a simlar story telling feel in Star Wars. Different generations face similar trials and handle it different ways. Anakin failed. Luke redeemed Anakin. What will Rey do? TROS will reveal it. And I think if they create the right trailer and buzz, the movie is going to do very well.
Huh I guess Star Wars really is dead and TLJ killed it. Good job, you proved it. Haha
Nope, Star Wars is in decline, and I’ve said nothing about TLJ being the cause, just that Disney’s strategy hasn’t worked, which is a reasonable conclusion, if the objective is growth, a conclusion supported by the recent analysis of bloomberg:
What then would you say is Disney’s strategy that has been so disastrous?
Out with the old, in with the new. The Galaxy Edge theme park is the best evidence, that Disney gambled on the strength of the new canon. In the process they alienated a subsection of the previous generations of fans, whilst not being able to win over the new generation. They essentially rebooted the franchise with characters that aren’t as compelling, and so people lose interest.
I see you are unaware of what has happened at Disneyland. It is not the failure you think it is. The access to Galaxy’s Edge has been full up. Crowds have been good. What has not been good is overall attendance because no one wanted to compete with the crowds they expected for the opening period. Disney made plans to address that, but not before people had made their vacation plans and skipped over this summer. I expect next year to be one of Disney’s best at the two parks with Galaxy’s Edge.
And it is your opinion that they rebooted the franchise. That completely ignores the cyclical nature of the story and how much the ST is paralleling the EU stories that so many fans are familiar with. I don’t see any issue with attracting a new generation at all. A number of people who are more casual fans like the ST more then the previous movies. And the box office numbers (adjusted for inflation) show that the ST is more popular than the PT was. The only group I see with a big problem with the ST are those who had expectations of what the ST would and would not include and don’t like that it doesn’t live up to that. A repeat of the PT all over again. Let the writers tell their story and sit back and enjoy. I indulge in spoilers so I can divest myself of all expectations and just enjoy how the story unfolds. Your theories of deconstructing and rebooting over analyze the trilogy and widely miss what the movies say about themselves. The ST was always going to involve the death of Luke in the first Episode (the first one he was in) and Harrison has been saying Han should die for 30 years. They passed the torch and Carrie’s passing forced that to be even more complete. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy and the OT characters are really just enlarge cameos. You had expectations, perhaps not of exactly what the characters would do, but definitely what they shouldn’t do. It is almost as if Lucas, Abrams, and Johnson set out to make a trilogy that was exactly what you didn’t want to see. I see symmetry in the repetition. I see the parallels in myth, history, and pop culture (Star Wars is a more serious take on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers after all) and I’m enjoying the tale. It is very much what happens after the great war is over and how things move on. Often it is ghosts of the past that haunt the future and bring back a defeated enemy. I find the story of the ST to be very mythic and very classic and not repetitive at all. Certainly not a reboot. If you want to know what I call a reboot, just look over at Star Trek under CBS. The ST has nice echos of the Zahn trilogy while being new and fresh. Just in the ST, they took 30 years instead of 10 years to regroup and attack the Republic.
It’s an event movie, it’s a holiday release, I don’t see them struggling. Nothing’s impossible but I see the failure of Solo as something caused by timing and marketing rather than SW as a brand.
A brand which lately has been struggling to reach a new generation of fans, whilst alienating a fraction of the previous generations of fans:
TROS will likely make a profit, but the question is whether it will break the $1B mark. If not it will be seen a failure nonetheless.
It should world wide. I’m very confident it will do better than TLJ. I will be very surprise if it fails to do that. That means in the US it should get about $630 million and worldwide about $1.4 billion.
I’m thinking of the music that plays while Luke is lost in the snow, and while the film cuts to the Echo Base and a new piece comes in, the score alone carries on. I just always remember it because they used it in the Shadows of the Empire game soundtrack.
There’s a lot of music from Empire that was cut out, particularly at the beginning (and in some cases new pieces were recorded instead). But the intention originally was in fact to include that music in the film.
Two tracks were dumped in favor of other tracks. The search for Han and Luke has the Hyperspace track from the end of the film instead of what was written for it. And the concert version of the Imperial March was used for the reveal of the SSD instead of the track written for it. Like everything else, it is a matter of having the right music and sometimes what a composer comes up with and records is not what works best.
So far the performance of the Star Wars movies has not surprised me in the slightest. There really aren’t strong figures to go on for the OT and with all the re-releases of Star Wars in those early years it really slants things. It was a game changer on many levels. The rest of the OT had to live up to that and did a great job. They were able to craft a sequel that was better than the original in many ways, though the younger version of myself did not appreciate it.
But since TPM, I have been tracking things. Box Office numbers can be fun to look at. TPM had along run. AOTC had a shorter run. ROTS had the shortest run, but the biggest opening. Just from what I’ve seen, this is likely to be the trend for the ST.
Another trend I’ve noticed is that complaints reduce over time. As time goes on the lasting impression of the films improves. The initial complaints mellow out and more attention is paid to what was done well.
Ultimately the only two statistics that we can track long term are box office numbers and home video numbers.
But here are some variables to consider to interpret the Google stats presented here. Age of fans. Social media use of fans. Dedicated online sites for fandom. Quality of trailer. Quality of toys. Variety of toys. Collectableness of toys. Well, I could go on and on with different things that can very widely and affect stats. Harry Potter fans were largely young when the first books came out and were of an internet savy generation. Marvel fans came in all ages. There had been a few movies, but mostly comic books. But the age of some of the characters means you have a mix of fans covering a wide range of ages and duration. Star Wars has a huge and varied fan base. Fans have come on board with every film and every decade. The thing Star Wars has are many online communities (like this one). So when looking at statistics from Google we have to ask if things are different. What stats are going to give the full picture.
For instance, you can wander over to YouTube to the official Star Wars channel and look up how many views the various trailers have had. The thing you have to keep in mind is that those numbers are not static and keep growing. And the channel isn’t old enough to cover the PT, much less the OT, so it is only useful for comparing the ST and the stand alones. The first teasers in order of release are:
TFA: 24 million
R1: 45 million
TLJ: 44 million
Solo: 13 million
TROS: 31 million
There was a second teaser for TLJ that has 82 million
Then there are the official trailers, not including TROS which hasn’t come out yet:
TFA: 103 million
R1: 38 million
TLJ: 53 million
Solo: 18 million
There was a second trailer for Rogue One that has 27 million
And then the box office from Box Office Mojo (adjusted domestic gross and including all the films):
ANH: 1,286,033,500
TESB: 710,548,800
ROTJ: 729,660,300
AHH SE: 271,395,100
TESB SE: 132,691,800
ROTJ SE: 89,256,800
TPM: 764,280,500
AOTC: 468,630,500
ROTS: 534,514,500
TCW: 44,123,400
TFA: 974,117,000
R1: 544,579,000
TLJ: 609,026,300
Solo: 205,860,700
Of the new films, Solo has done the worst in all areas. If you go by this list and the number of views just of the first trailer for TROS, I’d predict the teaser gets 5-10 million more views by the time the movie is released, the full trailer will have 50-60 million views, and the box office will be better than TLJ, but under $700,000,000.
And to me it isn’t a mystery why Solo bombed. It was the combination of too close to TLJ, the casting, the subject matter, and stiff competition in the theaters. The views of the trailer show the lack of interest.
But my question again is if the Google stats are so informative and show a lack of interest in TROS, why the views of the trailer are so high? And if it is so accurate, why didn’t Rogue One overtake TFA at the box office? Rogue One made more than ROTS, but less than TFA or TLJ, even though by these graphs it should have made more than at least TLJ. But it didn’t. Statistics can be very flawed. The trick is to find solid and repeatable statistics that do provide useful predictive information.
And as a side note, Avengers Endgame is #16 for adjusted box office for all time, between Avatar and ROTJ.
The speculation about how the film may or may not perform is a complete waste of time.
In what sense? In this case it is not just speculation, it is a prediction based on a model, that has been scientifically validated, a model which shows movies with less interest on google trends tend to have lower box office returns, whereas higher interest generally leads to higher box office returns. So, it is simply an indicator, an indicator which gets more accurate as the movie’s release date approaches.
The truth will be in the proverbial pudding. Until then you can pat your back that everyone hates Disney Star Wars as much as you do. But the fact of the matter is, when the film is released, it’ll make the company a fair bit of money either way. And ultimately, who cares? The ST is done no matter how the film performs. The idea that Star Wars is ‘dead’ or will be after the film comes out is delusional. Disney will release more Star Wars films whether you like them or not. The only possible effect a disappointing box office run might have on the future of the franchise is that they’ll give into the nebulous desire for more of “what the fans want,” which is not something anyone should be foaming at the mouth for.
This is nonsense. I don’t hate Disney Star Wars anymore than I hated the prequels. I think both trilogies are deeply flawed, but they have their merits as well. I also haven’t stated, I expect Star Wars to be ‘dead’ in the future. So, I don’t know where all these baseless statements are coming from. I thought we had moved past these sort of outbursts, but I guess not.
The fact is interest in the franchise is waning, and I’m certainly curious about what Disney is going to do about it, and how TROS is going fit into that picture, both in terms of the current interest in the franchise, and the direction TROS might give for the future.
Not meant as an outburst. Figured you might take issue with some of my word choices but I was writing quickly and they did well as shorthand for - if not your feelings specifically - the feelings of many who talk about similar concerns on the internet. No need to take things personally, it was meant as a general comment.
As for the franchise waning, it’s a fact only so far as it’s naturally coming down from the all time high (77 excluded) of the TFA revival. Anything beyond that is up for debate - like any franchise Star Wars has always had its ups and downs. When the dust settles we’ll see if this is just a natural dip in between Episodes or something more. Either way it shouldn’t affect our view of the content itself.
Star Wars fever ran high from 77 to 80. It kept going from 80 to 83. After 83 it fizzled within 2 years. I saw the same with the PT. The energy was high, toys everywhere, then ROTS came out and poof… everything dropped off.
So I expect that after TROS that things are going to drop off faster. It isn’t a matter of the love of Star Wars waning, it is just that everyone knows the trilogy is over.
And I really can’t align the stats DrDre is quoting to the stats that currently, this far out, that the TROS teaser has 75% of the views of the TFA trailer. That is a huge number of views at this point compared to a teaser trailer that came out 4 years ago. To me that indicates that something about the stats DrDre is quoting are incomplete and aren’t giving us the whole picture.
John Williams’ brother, Don: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Score Will Include ‘Every Theme That You Ever Heard’ (from IGN)
(with an inference that Episode IX runs for 135 minutes…)
It has been a while since I have heard Jar Jar’s theme 😉
Actually the scores of movies in general and Star Wars specifically are shorter than the actual runtime of the film. Having seen ANH and TESB with an orchestra, one of the first things I noticed is, that there are a number of scenes in both films, that don’t have any music at all. For example the trash compactor scene doesn’t have any score. So, if the score for TROS runs 135 min, we can expect TROS to have a runtime closer to 3 hrs.
It should be pointed out that quite often scenes are scored but then the decision is made in editing that the scene works better with no music. Case in point - the lightsaber duel in ESB is almost entirely scored, but very little of the score appears in the film. So the total minutes of score written and recorded is often quite a bit higher than the amount of score actually used in the film.
Which isn’t to say that every minute of the film is scored from the get go, there’s plenty of scenes that are never scored, too. But I don’t think you can get 3 hours from 135 minutes of score. Probably closer to 2.5 hours, with maybe 110-120 minutes of the written score used in the 150 minutes of runtime.
And sometimes they reuse a track instead of the one scored for it. It happened twice in TESB.
If the leak in this article has any validity then it sounds like TROS will be the third ST movie to continue with the soft reboot / remake in repeating and reusing many plot points and elements from the OT, in particular ROTJ for what this article talks about which is essentially ANOTHER Death Star but as a ship this time (still thats going on four! Or FIVE if you’re just talking about the use of “Death Star tech”) that can at the least take out whole continents or possibly even up to whole planets again as it reportedly has the same power level of the first DS.
Apparently it even has a trench in its design for what would be the third trench run now, though to be mimicking ROTJ they would need to fly into the ship in order to destroy it.
https://movieweb.com/rise-of-skywalker-onager-star-destroyer-star-wars/
Well, if you really look at it, when you consider when the first Death Star was finished, it makes sense that that type of weapon can be scaled down and mounted on a ship. It makes a lot more sense than Starkiller base. Something tells me that that one is one of the pieces that came from Lucas. Just the sort of thing he would do.
But while we are talking about repeating elements, the PT had a fair share of repeating as well. It shared a lot of plot points with the OT. A lot.
And when you think about it, the hero of these films (Anakin, Luke, Rey) has yet to personally defeat the evil. Anakin did throw Palpatine over the railing, but during Luke’s time as hero. So Rey having a bigger part in Palpatine’s downfall would be an awesome way to round things out. And maybe we might see a redeemed Ben Solo live to see the end. Just hopeful guessing there.
And when it comes to graphs with Google, they are only as good as the data. If, as I am guessing, many people find the trailers via other means (such as the many social media venues) then they don’t need to use a search engine to find it. The fact that the views for the TROS teaser are at 75% of the views of TLJ indicates that people are finding the trailer other ways. So don’t take too much stock on one statistic. It might not be very accurate depending on the current links to things on the internet.
Fantastic Films did a series of articles attempting to predict what would happen in ROTJ. This is the only issue I could find.
https://archive.org/details/Fantastic_Films_028_April_1982_vol4_no4_c2c-Tranzor-HQS
“One thing that will not happen is that Han will come back and marry Leia without a word or protest from Luke Skywalker?”
That was a good laugh. While we don’t know if the marriage ever happened, it might as well have and witout a word of protest from Luke. Love it.
On the other hand, to me the whole trilogy has been about how there’s no way to definitively end tyranny, and how the dark side will always come back and you have to be prepared to stop it even in the face of knowing stopping it might not be permanent. To that end, I’ll be kinda upset if they “definitively” end the war, as I don’t think that’s be a very satisfying end to this story.
I think a good story should have a beginning and an end. A new story can unfold, but imo it should not be about Empire vs rebels, or a Jedi apprentice betraying his or her master. Been there, done that…twice… If you can’t tell an original story with new characters, who are put in new situations, better not tell a story at all, I think, or risk turning the franchise into a cliché. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, the Skywalker Saga already feels like butter scraped over too much bread for me.
You haven’t paid attention to how many fallen Jedi apprentices there are in the EU, have you? Not just in the post ROTJ, but the KOTOR as well.
What I see as the crux of this saga is how the Skywalker family has ended up as the linchpin in the Sith/Jedi conflict. So in some way the Skywalker family will end the age old Sith/Jedi conflict once and for all. The other thing I see is a fundamental change in understanding of the force. We have always taken Ben’s word from ANH that there is a dark side and light side to the force and the dark side is inherantly evil. What if that is not the case and the evil comes from how it is used. So if the Skywalker family can end the conflict and if Rey can start a new tradition of balanced used of both sides of the force, there will be no further conflict in the Galaxy, at least not for a very very long time (more like 3000 years instead of 30).
And what I see in the ST is a bunch of ideas floated in the EU (I haven’t adjusted to calling it Legends) and distilling them into an epic story to finish up the Saga. The Thrawn trilogy esentially did exactly what the First Order is doing, but lacked the dark side force master running things. Palpatine came back in a way in the EU. There were other dangers as well. So this trilogy has a lot of familiar things that I see no need to question. I was not a big follower of the EU, but I kept up on what the major books were about and read quite a few of them. I’ve also watched all of Clone Wars and Rebels. I try not to bring any of that up, but it does provide a lot of insight into where Lucasfilm may be taking the Saga, at least in terms of the force. There has been a big emphasis on balance, which cropped up in TLJ. And also having read the old Marvel comics, the original Star Wars scripts, and a bunch of other things, I’ve seen a lot of Lucas’s discarded ideas come back and seen just how much of the Star Wars universe has come from outside the films (and ended up in later films). So while Lucas as stated that the force is not like yin yang, the way things are moving very much make it a yin yang with the users being good or evil or even neutral. TPM introduced balance into the film canon and now it is time to see what that really means.
When it comes to Snoke, we already know that he is the leader of the First Order which rose from the ashes of the Empire. It has not been covered, but likely from a industrial complex on the outer rim where they at first kept the Empire alive and then decided to reconquer the galaxy. At what point Snoke came into the picture we don’t know. At what point Kylo Ren was turned we don’t know. At what point they came up with Starkiller Base we don’t know (though I can see this being one of Palpatine’s projects). Who Snoke is is only as important as the end of the saga needs it to be. That Palpatine was not completely defeated in ROTJ brings this back to the origin of the saga in TPM with Anakin (or his offspring) bringing balance to the force and the final defeat of Palpatine and the Sith. Just which of the Snoke/Palpatine relationship theories is accurate is immaterial to the ending. They will do something to tie things together that they think makes sense and that some will like and some won’t. But I think the ending of the Saga is going to be as personal as ROTJ was. It is going to finish the expanded story that grew from the battle between Luke, Vader, and Palpatine in ROTJ to the Jedi vs. Sith over thousands of years and bringing balance to the force. Lucas’s retelling of the end of ROTJ was pretty much shoehorned on to the existing movie and there is room for whatever Lucas had in his mind before he canned the ST for a decade.
A puppet being operated by the real villain?
But why have a dime store Palpatine if the plan all along was to use the real thing?
Because that’s how Palpatine operates. Masks, deceptions and lies. Snoke was just a more sophisticated version of wearing a hood and keeping his face in a strategically placed shadow.
That’s a nice in-universe explanation, but in reality it’s almost certain, that JJ intended for Snoke to be the big bad, and when RJ dispatched him, they had to bring back Palpatine in some form to up the ante. Had it been their intention to bring back Palpatine, they would logically have introduced him as the puppet master in a cameo at the end of TLJ. Additionally RJ clearly made TLJ with the intention to break free from what came before, whilst TROS seems to do the opposite promising a whole host of connections to the past.
I have to disagree with your interpretation of TLJ. That is the message that hermit Luke and Kylo Ren share. Both are proved wrong by the rest of the movie’s plot. The end of the movie is about embracing exactly what Luke said they didn’t need before Rey and Yoda brought him back to himself. And Kylo is trying desperately to be bad and be consumed by the dark side and yet he can’t seem to manage it. He’s trying to convince himself that he needs to destroy the past so he can be bad enough. But that is not RJ’s message in TLJ. Luke executes the very single handed battle with his lasersword against incredible odds and creates a legend, reminding Kylo and us that he will not be the last Jedi - meaning he is embracing the past and letting it carry forward. Quite the opposite of breaking free from what came before. And there is no hint that JJ is going to undo anything.
I disagree. TLJ spends most of its time deconstructing the mythology of Star Wars. It then reconstructs it in some form, but not by embracing the past. Luke’s last stand is not a reaffirmation of the reality of his legend in-universe, it is a ruse, which tells the audience, that legends and myths aren’t real, but they can serve a purpose when others choose to believe in them. This is in stark contrast to the OT, where the legend of Luke Skywalker is real in-universe. The Luke of the OT is the guy who really faces down the bad guys with his laser sword, whereas the Luke at the end of TLJ is an illusionist of sorts, intent on perpetuating a legend in-universe, while the viewer has been made aware it is all just smoke and mirrors.
This brings up the question of what Luke’s legend actually was, in universe, after the events of ROTJ.
Is Luke a Jedi and hero who can singlehandedly dispatch an AT-AT with a lightsaber and who blew up the Death Star, who defeated not only Vader but the Emperor in a single stroke? If so, I can see Luke wanting to distance himself from this story since it is rather deceptive.
Or is Luke in the minds of the people more of an aspirational figure whom they know is all-too human, and who only managed to topple an empire due to his compassion and loyalty helped by his powerful friends and family? This is a legend he would probably embrace but it isn’t as alluring to the everyday person so I would bet that most of the galaxy thinks of him as the Jedi superman.
So I think it’s very apt that Luke would act as an illusionist in embracing this admittedly false legend in TLJ. Luke doesn’t ultimately use the lightsaber to defeat his enemies, he throws it away in favor of a more compassionate, human approach. This is now lost to the galaxy in favor of his newly-affirmed legend of Jedi superman, and could be a sinister turn for his legacy and history.
Luke’s ‘in-universe’ legend post-ROTJ would have to be simply that he (supposedly) killed the bad guys. If he had let slip at the Ewok party that he had stood by and shown mercy while the Emperor and his bestie were slaughtering thousands of innocent beings, he would have been lynched. Imagine how thrilled the many victims of Palpatine/Vader’s tyranny would have been to hear that Vader was a nice guy after all and that it had been worth letting a few more Rebels die in order to facilitate Vader’s bedside conversion.
I keep harping on about it but it never ceases to bug me - Luke did not save the galaxy. At best he inadvertently (accidentally if you will) prevented Palpatine’s possible escape from the exploding Death Star. All he cared about was saving Vader’s soul and keeping his cool so he could become a guru.
Chewbacca saved the galaxy. TFA should have opened with “Chewbacca has vanished…”
The story we have on our end is not what Luke would be known for in universe. I can’t say if Vader’s part would have come out, but if it had it would have been that he came back to himself and sacrificed his life to kill the Emperor. The story we see is very compelling because we were not the Empire’s victims. The story told in universe would have to be adjusted and changed in order for it to be compelling and picked up as a legend. And they would only have Luke’s word as to what happened. The larger picture is that Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando, and Wedge, worked together to bring down the shields and destroy the Death Star, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. Learning that Luke is the new Jedi would have caused the public story to emphasize him because of the stories from the past of all the Jedi exploits. People would imagine that Luke had led the troops as Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace, and Yoda once had. They would want him to do it again. While Luke did it with illusion, he really played out exactly what people in universe would imagine a Jedi doing, so he very much was embracing the past and the legends of the Old Republic Jedi and giving his sister and Rey exactly what they needed, which he earlier said was not what they needed. He did a 180 on his views thanks to Rey and then Yoda.
When TROS picks up a year later, I imagine we are going to find out that Rey has been training with Luke’s force ghost and has turned her raw talent into great skill. I’m not sure if she will be recruiting and training even more just yet, but that will be her goal.
And even with Palpatine in the PT, we still don’t have much to his backstory. We had to wait until ROTS to hear of Darth Plagueis the Wise and we didn’t learn his first name in the films. There is so much about him that was left to the tie-in media to explain. We did get a full account of how he became Emeperor, but even that many viewers missed because it wasn’t handed to them on a plate but layered in obliquely. Many of the questions about Snoke that are outstanding are still outstanding with Palpatine even after the PT. Other than he started TPM as a Senator from Naboo, we know nothing about him. Even the name drop in ROTS doesn’t reveal if that was his master or his master’s master. Those things were all left to reveal in books. What we know of him from the books is almost everything. I see Snoke the same way. We get what we need in the films (he is the head of the First Order, a group that has risen from a fragment of the Empire) and he is a master of the Dark Side of the force and has lured Ben Solo to the dark side turning him into Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren. What more do we really need to know? Star Wars doesn’t have a history of giving us the full backstory, only what we need to know who these people are. There is so much that came from books and comics that is considered fact, but it isn’t in the films. We didn’t know anything about how Han won the Falcon until Solo came out. Han was a mystery except he made a run for Jabba the Hutt that ended in him dropping the shipment. We know the most about the Skywalkers, but not much about anyone else. How did Lando become head of Cloud City? We didn’t know how Owen and Beru were related to Luke until ATOC. Some answers came in films years later, some came in books right away, some have never been answered. But most have not been answered in the trilogy we meet these people in.
Me and Dr. Dre explained why Snoke is incomparable with OT Emperor already.
And I don’t agree.
A puppet being operated by the real villain?
But why have a dime store Palpatine if the plan all along was to use the real thing?
Because that’s how Palpatine operates. Masks, deceptions and lies. Snoke was just a more sophisticated version of wearing a hood and keeping his face in a strategically placed shadow.
That’s a nice in-universe explanation, but in reality it’s almost certain, that JJ intended for Snoke to be the big bad, and when RJ dispatched him, they had to bring back Palpatine in some form to up the ante. Had it been their intention to bring back Palpatine, they would logically have introduced him as the puppet master in a cameo at the end of TLJ. Additionally RJ clearly made TLJ with the intention to break free from what came before, whilst TROS seems to do the opposite promising a whole host of connections to the past.
I have to disagree with your interpretation of TLJ. That is the message that hermit Luke and Kylo Ren share. Both are proved wrong by the rest of the movie’s plot. The end of the movie is about embracing exactly what Luke said they didn’t need before Rey and Yoda brought him back to himself. And Kylo is trying desperately to be bad and be consumed by the dark side and yet he can’t seem to manage it. He’s trying to convince himself that he needs to destroy the past so he can be bad enough. But that is not RJ’s message in TLJ. Luke executes the very single handed battle with his lasersword against incredible odds and creates a legend, reminding Kylo and us that he will not be the last Jedi - meaning he is embracing the past and letting it carry forward. Quite the opposite of breaking free from what came before. And there is no hint that JJ is going to undo anything.
I disagree. TLJ spends most of its time deconstructing the mythology of Star Wars. It then reconstructs it in some form, but not by embracing the past. Luke’s last stand is not a reaffirmation of the reality of his legend in-universe, it is a ruse, which tells the audience, that legends and myths aren’t real, but they can serve a purpose when others choose to believe in them. This is in stark contrast to the OT, where the legend of Luke Skywalker is real in-universe. The Luke of the OT is the guy who really faces down the bad guys with his laser sword, whereas the Luke at the end of TLJ is an illusionist of sorts, intent on perpetuating a legend in-universe, while the viewer has been made aware it is all just smoke and mirrors.
This brings up the question of what Luke’s legend actually was, in universe, after the events of ROTJ.
Is Luke a Jedi and hero who can singlehandedly dispatch an AT-AT with a lightsaber and who blew up the Death Star, who defeated not only Vader but the Emperor in a single stroke? If so, I can see Luke wanting to distance himself from this story since it is rather deceptive.
Or is Luke in the minds of the people more of an aspirational figure whom they know is all-too human, and who only managed to topple an empire due to his compassion and loyalty helped by his powerful friends and family? This is a legend he would probably embrace but it isn’t as alluring to the everyday person so I would bet that most of the galaxy thinks of him as the Jedi superman.
So I think it’s very apt that Luke would act as an illusionist in embracing this admittedly false legend in TLJ. Luke doesn’t ultimately use the lightsaber to defeat his enemies, he throws it away in favor of a more compassionate, human approach. This is now lost to the galaxy in favor of his newly-affirmed legend of Jedi superman, and could be a sinister turn for his legacy and history.
Luke’s ‘in-universe’ legend post-ROTJ would have to be simply that he (supposedly) killed the bad guys. If he had let slip at the Ewok party that he had stood by and shown mercy while the Emperor and his bestie were slaughtering thousands of innocent beings, he would have been lynched. Imagine how thrilled the many victims of Palpatine/Vader’s tyranny would have been to hear that Vader was a nice guy after all and that it had been worth letting a few more Rebels die in order to facilitate Vader’s bedside conversion.
I keep harping on about it but it never ceases to bug me - Luke did not save the galaxy. At best he inadvertently (accidentally if you will) prevented Palpatine’s possible escape from the exploding Death Star. All he cared about was saving Vader’s soul and keeping his cool so he could become a guru.
Chewbacca saved the galaxy. TFA should have opened with “Chewbacca has vanished…”
The story we have on our end is not what Luke would be known for in universe. I can’t say if Vader’s part would have come out, but if it had it would have been that he came back to himself and sacrificed his life to kill the Emperor. The story we see is very compelling because we were not the Empire’s victims. The story told in universe would have to be adjusted and changed in order for it to be compelling and picked up as a legend. And they would only have Luke’s word as to what happened. The larger picture is that Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando, and Wedge, worked together to bring down the shields and destroy the Death Star, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. Learning that Luke is the new Jedi would have caused the public story to emphasize him because of the stories from the past of all the Jedi exploits. People would imagine that Luke had led the troops as Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace, and Yoda once had. They would want him to do it again. While Luke did it with illusion, he really played out exactly what people in universe would imagine a Jedi doing, so he very much was embracing the past and the legends of the Old Republic Jedi and giving his sister and Rey exactly what they needed, which he earlier said was not what they needed. He did a 180 on his views thanks to Rey and then Yoda.
I agree with this in spirit, and I like the idea (if not the execution) of a disillusioned Luke reclaiming his legend, even if the legend isn’t 100% accurate. My beef is with ROTJ itself. To have the in-universe narrative be ‘Luke defeated the Emperor’ would be a lie. Luke accidentally defeated the Emperor - it was a lucky byproduct of Luke’s focus on his (and Anakin’s) personal religious goals. And the idea of the galaxy embracing the notion of Vader’s turn is outrageous. It might work for us as SW fans, but not for his victims. Would you forgive Osama Bin Laden because you’d heard he had a puppy?
All it would take (for me) is a bit of dialogue on Endor. Have Luke say to Leia something like “…he can feel when I’m near, which means the Emperor is on to us. You and Han take care of the shield generator. I’m going to make sure that the Emperor never leaves the Death Star”. Leia would weep at the power of Luke’s self-sacrifice and this would be the stuff of legends. This would be a hero whose goal is to defeat the bad guys (as per the trajectory of the saga). With Luke’s intentions stated thus, the details of Anakin’s turn and the real events surrounding Palpatine’s defeat would be irrelevant to the consequent legend, and Anakin’s noble sacrifice would be a by-product of Luke’s desire to protect the galaxy.
Yeah, when you think about the ramifications, the true events on the Death Star in ROTJ don’t play well as a public legend. Luke would have to lie about it - or just adopt a different point of view. I can see the public story being something like Luke went to stop Palpatine and in the process he was nearly beaten but managed tap into the dormant feelings in Vader and Vader scraficed himself to kill the Emperor. It doesn’t ask for the public to forgive Vader and keeps Luke the hero for without him risking his life, Vader would not have acted. That is close enough to the truth without revealing some of the things that would make the public mad at Luke. Frankly, looking at it now, I can’t see how Luke could have ever defeated Palpatine. Only keeping him occupied until the death star blew up. But by sparing Vader and crying out to him for help, Luke broke through and Palpatine was defeated by the only person strong enough. No one would understand Luke throwing down his saber and sparing Vader.
When TROS picks up a year later, I imagine we are going to find out that Rey has been training with Luke’s force ghost and has turned her raw talent into great skill. I’m not sure if she will be recruiting and training even more just yet, but that will be her goal.
And even with Palpatine in the PT, we still don’t have much to his backstory. We had to wait until ROTS to hear of Darth Plagueis the Wise and we didn’t learn his first name in the films. There is so much about him that was left to the tie-in media to explain. We did get a full account of how he became Emeperor, but even that many viewers missed because it wasn’t handed to them on a plate but layered in obliquely. Many of the questions about Snoke that are outstanding are still outstanding with Palpatine even after the PT. Other than he started TPM as a Senator from Naboo, we know nothing about him. Even the name drop in ROTS doesn’t reveal if that was his master or his master’s master. Those things were all left to reveal in books. What we know of him from the books is almost everything. I see Snoke the same way. We get what we need in the films (he is the head of the First Order, a group that has risen from a fragment of the Empire) and he is a master of the Dark Side of the force and has lured Ben Solo to the dark side turning him into Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren. What more do we really need to know? Star Wars doesn’t have a history of giving us the full backstory, only what we need to know who these people are. There is so much that came from books and comics that is considered fact, but it isn’t in the films. We didn’t know anything about how Han won the Falcon until Solo came out. Han was a mystery except he made a run for Jabba the Hutt that ended in him dropping the shipment. We know the most about the Skywalkers, but not much about anyone else. How did Lando become head of Cloud City? We didn’t know how Owen and Beru were related to Luke until ATOC. Some answers came in films years later, some came in books right away, some have never been answered. But most have not been answered in the trilogy we meet these people in.
All we ever needed to know about Palpatine was built into the story - there was an evil Empire, he was its Emperor, and Vader had helped him destroy the Jedi (and Luke’s father) and thus bring on ‘the dark times’ that everyone happened to be rebelling against. Even without the prequels, it works.
All we really need to know about Snoke is in the film in the same way. And I think the point of this is not going to be the ultimate defeat of evil, but building a new order of Jedi who aren’t as easy to prey on. Luke was trying to be an Old Republic Jedi. Rey is not. If they continue in that manner then solving why Ben became Kylo can break the cycle and we don’t need to know anything about Snoke we don’t already know. I think the key is the duality of the figure on the cave floor in TLJ. The original Jedi were not split between dark and light, but were the balance of dark and light. Luke was perpetuating the old ways as he trained Ben and it failed so going back to the beginning and relearning that original balance is going to be key.
This new series is the sequel to the OT and needs to supply some context. Who the heck is Snoke and how did he undo the rebel victory? Where and what was he this 30 years gone? What happened with Kylo? Why did Kylo join him? If this is just stuff that happens, then the entire OT is pointless - there will always be Sith Emperors and Anakin Skywalkers and the OT is basically trivial.
Even more galling is the fact that TFA was designed to make us wonder as fans. Mystery boxes mystery boxes. JJ knew he was making us wonder, and it’s ludicrous that he didn’t even have the answers himself. Yes, Lucas did the same thing (“the other is…uh…your sister! Yes, Leia’s your sister!”) but he had the excuse of writing on the fly due to not knowing how well the films would go down.
I can ignore his mystery boxes. Sure the answers would be nice to know, but the films don’t have to be where that is answered. JJ likes to just throw out such mysteries while Lucas carefully crafted one or two at a time. This is one reason I rate TFA so low. I’m hoping that with TROS being the end he doesn’t incorporate any new mysteries he isn’t prepared to reveal.
A puppet being operated by the real villain?
But why have a dime store Palpatine if the plan all along was to use the real thing?
Because that’s how Palpatine operates. Masks, deceptions and lies. Snoke was just a more sophisticated version of wearing a hood and keeping his face in a strategically placed shadow.
That’s a nice in-universe explanation, but in reality it’s almost certain, that JJ intended for Snoke to be the big bad, and when RJ dispatched him, they had to bring back Palpatine in some form to up the ante. Had it been their intention to bring back Palpatine, they would logically have introduced him as the puppet master in a cameo at the end of TLJ. Additionally RJ clearly made TLJ with the intention to break free from what came before, whilst TROS seems to do the opposite promising a whole host of connections to the past.
I have to disagree with your interpretation of TLJ. That is the message that hermit Luke and Kylo Ren share. Both are proved wrong by the rest of the movie’s plot. The end of the movie is about embracing exactly what Luke said they didn’t need before Rey and Yoda brought him back to himself. And Kylo is trying desperately to be bad and be consumed by the dark side and yet he can’t seem to manage it. He’s trying to convince himself that he needs to destroy the past so he can be bad enough. But that is not RJ’s message in TLJ. Luke executes the very single handed battle with his lasersword against incredible odds and creates a legend, reminding Kylo and us that he will not be the last Jedi - meaning he is embracing the past and letting it carry forward. Quite the opposite of breaking free from what came before. And there is no hint that JJ is going to undo anything.
I disagree. TLJ spends most of its time deconstructing the mythology of Star Wars. It then reconstructs it in some form, but not by embracing the past. Luke’s last stand is not a reaffirmation of the reality of his legend in-universe, it is a ruse, which tells the audience, that legends and myths aren’t real, but they can serve a purpose when others choose to believe in them. This is in stark contrast to the OT, where the legend of Luke Skywalker is real in-universe. The Luke of the OT is the guy who really faces down the bad guys with his laser sword, whereas the Luke at the end of TLJ is an illusionist of sorts, intent on perpetuating a legend in-universe, while the viewer has been made aware it is all just smoke and mirrors.
This brings up the question of what Luke’s legend actually was, in universe, after the events of ROTJ.
Is Luke a Jedi and hero who can singlehandedly dispatch an AT-AT with a lightsaber and who blew up the Death Star, who defeated not only Vader but the Emperor in a single stroke? If so, I can see Luke wanting to distance himself from this story since it is rather deceptive.
Or is Luke in the minds of the people more of an aspirational figure whom they know is all-too human, and who only managed to topple an empire due to his compassion and loyalty helped by his powerful friends and family? This is a legend he would probably embrace but it isn’t as alluring to the everyday person so I would bet that most of the galaxy thinks of him as the Jedi superman.
So I think it’s very apt that Luke would act as an illusionist in embracing this admittedly false legend in TLJ. Luke doesn’t ultimately use the lightsaber to defeat his enemies, he throws it away in favor of a more compassionate, human approach. This is now lost to the galaxy in favor of his newly-affirmed legend of Jedi superman, and could be a sinister turn for his legacy and history.
Luke’s ‘in-universe’ legend post-ROTJ would have to be simply that he (supposedly) killed the bad guys. If he had let slip at the Ewok party that he had stood by and shown mercy while the Emperor and his bestie were slaughtering thousands of innocent beings, he would have been lynched. Imagine how thrilled the many victims of Palpatine/Vader’s tyranny would have been to hear that Vader was a nice guy after all and that it had been worth letting a few more Rebels die in order to facilitate Vader’s bedside conversion.
I keep harping on about it but it never ceases to bug me - Luke did not save the galaxy. At best he inadvertently (accidentally if you will) prevented Palpatine’s possible escape from the exploding Death Star. All he cared about was saving Vader’s soul and keeping his cool so he could become a guru.
Chewbacca saved the galaxy. TFA should have opened with “Chewbacca has vanished…”
The story we have on our end is not what Luke would be known for in universe. I can’t say if Vader’s part would have come out, but if it had it would have been that he came back to himself and sacrificed his life to kill the Emperor. The story we see is very compelling because we were not the Empire’s victims. The story told in universe would have to be adjusted and changed in order for it to be compelling and picked up as a legend. And they would only have Luke’s word as to what happened. The larger picture is that Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Lando, and Wedge, worked together to bring down the shields and destroy the Death Star, Darth Vader, and the Emperor. Learning that Luke is the new Jedi would have caused the public story to emphasize him because of the stories from the past of all the Jedi exploits. People would imagine that Luke had led the troops as Obi-wan, Anakin, Mace, and Yoda once had. They would want him to do it again. While Luke did it with illusion, he really played out exactly what people in universe would imagine a Jedi doing, so he very much was embracing the past and the legends of the Old Republic Jedi and giving his sister and Rey exactly what they needed, which he earlier said was not what they needed. He did a 180 on his views thanks to Rey and then Yoda.
When TROS picks up a year later, I imagine we are going to find out that Rey has been training with Luke’s force ghost and has turned her raw talent into great skill. I’m not sure if she will be recruiting and training even more just yet, but that will be her goal.
And even with Palpatine in the PT, we still don’t have much to his backstory. We had to wait until ROTS to hear of Darth Plagueis the Wise and we didn’t learn his first name in the films. There is so much about him that was left to the tie-in media to explain. We did get a full account of how he became Emeperor, but even that many viewers missed because it wasn’t handed to them on a plate but layered in obliquely. Many of the questions about Snoke that are outstanding are still outstanding with Palpatine even after the PT. Other than he started TPM as a Senator from Naboo, we know nothing about him. Even the name drop in ROTS doesn’t reveal if that was his master or his master’s master. Those things were all left to reveal in books. What we know of him from the books is almost everything. I see Snoke the same way. We get what we need in the films (he is the head of the First Order, a group that has risen from a fragment of the Empire) and he is a master of the Dark Side of the force and has lured Ben Solo to the dark side turning him into Kylo Ren, leader of the Knights of Ren. What more do we really need to know? Star Wars doesn’t have a history of giving us the full backstory, only what we need to know who these people are. There is so much that came from books and comics that is considered fact, but it isn’t in the films. We didn’t know anything about how Han won the Falcon until Solo came out. Han was a mystery except he made a run for Jabba the Hutt that ended in him dropping the shipment. We know the most about the Skywalkers, but not much about anyone else. How did Lando become head of Cloud City? We didn’t know how Owen and Beru were related to Luke until ATOC. Some answers came in films years later, some came in books right away, some have never been answered. But most have not been answered in the trilogy we meet these people in.
Speaking of Ewoks, if the wrecked Death Star is in fact the Death Star II and that planet is Endor, a small part of me would love it if Warwick Davis briefly reappeared as an old battle-scarred Wicket, now the chieftain of his tribe, who has grey, matted hair, is blind in one eye and is missing an ear. Maybe 3PO could use his god credentials and ask them for directions to the Haunted Coast!
If they are being details and accurate then the wreckage we see is Death Star I and that would be the Yavin system. I compared the ROTJ superlaser and the ANH superlaser to the trailer and what we see in the trailer matches the details of the ANH superlaser.
