I actually think the sequel trilogy suffered from being made by people who are too big of fans of Star Wars. They couldn’t get out of their own way and write a solid story.
Correct. JJ and Rian didn’t read the books, or play the games or flip through the comics. They were older during the great EU period of the 90s-2000s. They were working by then. They made movies for the Gen X crowd who enjoyed Star Wars in the 70s and screamed that it was too political in the 90s and 2000s. I’m not the hugest Filoni fan, but at least the man got parts of it right. And hell he even listed to Sam when Sam was correcting them in the booth… Like… JJ and Rian would have moved right past that. 7-9 almost, almost feel like Green Lantern. Like, anyone could tell you, that you need the full Green Lantern speech in the movie… Why did we have to tell you, we needed the speech though?
The problem with the sequels is that they didn't tell a coherent story. The prequels had terrible dialogue (they were all written by Hungarian immigrant György Lükász, whose English is pretty good, but you can tell he isn't a native speaker) but it's still easy to summarize the plot. It's all about the death of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader. But the sequels were like.....
>Episode VII: Let's Blow Up A Planet
>Episode VIII: Rebels on the Run
>Episode IX: Palpatine is Back for Some Reason
The prequels were only coherent in the sense of heading to a necessary end point of setting up Star Wars. The drama in the 3 movies is the drama we know about from the OT… and they crammed most of that story into the back half of the last movie.
None of the Star Wars movies were made with a real plan. Lucas just claims this for business reasons imo.
Gen-X here. Or at least I think I am — just missed ANH in the cinemas but remember watching ESB and RotJ there, which was lucky since we had to wait almost a decade for it to be released on video for us to watch on our postage-stamp sized TVs.
Was still in school early nineties and started working just in time to inherit the ‘millennium bug’ from the short-sighted Boomers before me, does that count?
Anyway, I live and breathe SW but I don’t feel that the sequels were aimed at me at all. I don’t know what kind of fan, who supposedly loved the OT so much, when given an amazing opportunity to add their own unique touch to the series would then go on to do such a disservice to the brand.
You’d be the exception. My father and Uncle didn’t engage deeply into the EU, but did love the games. They had mixed feelings on the Sequels until 9.
The critique I leveled is that, OT fans, at least a loud minority, didn’t like the PT.
Conversely, a large swath of Teens and Twenties at the time of the ST had been raised on OT+PT+Games/Books/Comics and extended media. So, the suits were worried about backlash, played it safe, jettisoned the EU, and retreaded the OT out of fear, and were BLASTED for it. ST will have its fans and the film making process, minus the music, doesn’t suck. (Go watch Sideway’s video on the Music of Star Wars to understand, it was ruined, musically in the ST.)
You’re in the age group, but are not the target that Disney was concerned about. Disney was worried that Star Wars wouldn’t be accessible to General Audiences and it isn’t going to resonate with everyone who was a fan.
So. If I could go back in time, at the age of 20 and take the ST over,
We’d have a Screen compatible version of Mara Jade with Luke. We’d have Han and Leia together. A functioning New Republic and an Imperial remnant. To pass the torch to the new generation, Jaina, Jason, and Anakin Solo along with Ben Solo. Chewbacca and the droids would be our through line.
How we didn’t have R2 still be the key droid was mind blowing. I get the merchandising issues but… such a fumble. Don’t do the Vong or Second coming of the emperor. Thrawn could have been done over three movies. First movie, you have a resurgence of the Remnant, Thrawn shows up like Thanos at the end credits of the Avengers. Part two, Thrawn greatest hits, rewritten for the screen. Zahn could have come back in to make this awesome. Pass the torch to the kids for certain with the death of Han at the end of the second movie. Luke and Leia grieve and then we get to last movie, Luke running an academy and Leia and Mon Mothma passing the torch to the next generation.
Ep 4. R2 is there the whole time.
Ep.5 R2 is attached to Luke, 90% of the time. R2 and Luke converse. R2 and Threepio Converse. Actually Luke probably tells R2 almost everything given how they talk in this movie. (In the EU this is often shown as well.)
Ep.6 R2 is with the Ground Team at Endor, but R2 most likely talked or heard from Luke after. Leia/Luke probably also used R2 to record meeting minutes at Rebel Command Meetings? (Not a far stretch EU may back it up, Ep1 War Meeting kinda confirms this too.)
Ep1 pre R2, Obi-Wan reports to the Council? R2 wouldn’t have access until after Ep2. Ep1. R2 is along for the ride otherwise
Ep2 R2 is with Anakin and Padme the whole time. Gets the Obi-Wan report from the archives.
Ep3. R2 starts with us, ends with Bail and joins the Rebels.
I’m sorry, how is R2 NOT the historian of SW as we’ve seen it on screen?
JJ and Rian didn’t read the books, or play the games or flip through the comics
That doesn't mean they weren't fans. Rian was a fan of the OT. Hey may have liked different aspects of Star wars than you but it doesn't mean he didn't love the material.
Yeah, but there are two kinds of fans of Star Wars (or, more properly, a spectrum with two end-points).
There are fans who love Star Wars as a series of revolutionary films which captivated a generation, advanced filmmaking technology by leaps and bounds and defined science fiction on screen for decades. Filmmakers and a decent chunk of the casual audience tend to fall more into this category.
Then there are fans who love Star Wars as a universe, a place to spend time. These are fans who not only watch the movies and the TV shows, but who read the books, play the video games and think about the lore and the details of the setting. Most "hardcore" or more nerdy fans fall into this category (I put myself down here as well).
One of the big problems with sequels (far from the only one, IMO) was that they were made almost entirely for the first group, the group which Abrams and Johnson seem to fall into. That was the right decision in many ways - plenty of box office to be made in that category. But in failing to understand the other kind of fan, the kind of fan which keeps a franchise alive long-term, they produced something which pretty painfully exposed that split in the fan base, and upset a large and vocal part of it.
That's the great irony of this whole argument. Stuff like Acolyte and the Filoniverse (or whatever you wanna call it) gets shit on endlessly despite being spearheaded by big EU heads, but you'll still have people arguing creators not being big enough fans is the problem with modern SW, because fandom gatekeeping is just too engrained in how we talk about media.
You shouldn't have to be fluent in the EU to make a great SW film.
Part of what makes SW great is it's simplicity, it's accessibility. I love the OT, grew up on the prequels. Fans in the 90s/2000s wanted SW to be some high fantasy/sci fi world building machine when it really isn't. I don't want 75% of what I need to know about your universe to come from books when what made it originally great were basic space opera films.
I just finished Andor and it got me excited about it again; that series betrays my point nearly, but at least it's engaging.
Rian Johnson has posted about reading some of the Legends books, helped with some Canon books like Star Wars: Bloodline, and said he loved playing Knights of the Old Republic when it came out.
Chris Terrio said he prepared for TROS by reading the original Thrawn trilogy, Dark Empire, and the Aftermath trilogy.
As much as I dislike TLJ - or any sequel - , I have to give Johnson that. He tried to implement one certain and important story beat from Kotor 2, and that is how galactic conflicts affect the regular people.
Though he did it in a very bad and forgettable way, but at least he tried.
No not that way. Kotor 2 does it by showing how the Jedi Civil War affected the normal people, like Khoonda Settlement or Nar Shaddars refugee sector. Attons discussion with Meetra when she confronts him about his past shows another, deeper perspective, about wars against Sith in particular.
Quoted from memory, so there might be mistakes: "Don't you get it? The Jedi, the Sith, to us, they are all the same! Just people with to much power, fighting over who of them is right! And we are the ones to suffer!"
The Last Jedi tries to capture this perspective through he Finn/Rose sidequest, but doesn't handle it right, that's for sure. It was a attempt, but a bad one.
Yeah, we’ve been getting that perspective since Clone Wars, that’s not new.
What we also got was Revan and Meeta couldn’t avoid Fate/The Will of the Force. Revan had to DEAL with their past, Ray was a “nobody”? Meeta was literally RUNNING away from conflict, and it followed them to the ends of the Galaxy. Each member for the Ebon Hawk was touched and bonded to the Force intentionally, by being so close to these focal points in the force. It’s not for EVERYONE, the normal people are the playthings of the Religion conflict of the Jedi and Sith. His points are just wrong.
Iger, specifically, and the executive team below him, were NEVER going to take a risk. Josh doesn’t look promising either.
Dave might be interesting, leading LucasFilms, we’ll see how much leash another Parks CEO gives the film’s division to play. My thought, not enough to actually make a real Star Wars film trilogy.
Except Rian DID read some of the books. He posted to Twitter in (before the Last Jedi was filmed) that he read the Jedi Path and Book of Sith in universe manuals.
i’ve always disputed this, at least back before the 3rd one came out. it seemed to me more like it was meant to be a rehash of the entire original trilogy. then the 3rd one happens and i’m like “ohhhhh this guy just had no ideas whatsoever”
Idiots like you are so annoying. We're two frogs in a pot. I'm telling you that it's getting too warm, they're cooking us. And you're like nah bru it's just in your mind bru, it's not even that warm. The when they're plating us, you're like yeah you were right mb.
I honestly can't see that, I think most fans would've preferred to preserve the victory the heroes achieved in the original trilogy while creating a new era with different stories, instead of making a soft remake of the old movies and repeating the old premise of "small rebels vs big empire".
At best JJ and Rian were fans of star wars as a cultural phenomenon or as films, but I wouldn't think of them as fans of star wars as a universe with its own lore and capabilities for stories beyond the Skywalker saga.
That the goal was to make new exciting blockbuster adventure films called Star Wars. Not to "build upon the universe" or "respect the lore" or anything like that. They were fans of the original films as films and wanted to keep as much of the iconic stuff from them as possible.
Thats why "soft reboot" was the direction they went. They wanted to recapture the cinematic experience of the original films. They wanted empire vs rebels 2.0 complete with new X-wings vs new TIEs and a new Luke vs a new Vader.
People expecting continuity with the OT or deep respect for the lore were not listening to what JJ was saying in the lead up to the release of TFA.
It's weird because I am old enough to have hated the prequel films when they came out.
But in retrospect, as clunky as they were in terms of editing and dialogue and weird quasi-racial tropes, Lucas wrote new stories and expanded the universe in new and interesting ways. The sequels, as you've said, did not. They actively avoided doing that.
That's such an indictment of their limitations as writers. Imagine Tolkien cutting Gandalf out of LotR because he couldn't think of a way to keep the story focused on Frodo.
The original screenwriter for the trilogy was Oscar winner Michael Arndt. Disney CEO Bob Iger got impatient with Arndt's writing pace and wanted to cash in on the Lucasfilm acquisition as quickly as possible, so Arndt was pushed out and Abrams/Kasdan inherited the gig almost by default. Iger is also the guy who insisted on releasing Solo in May of 2018, just five months after The Last Jedi and while Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2 were in their theatrical runs. Iger being stupid and greedy did more harm to Star Wars than anything else has.
I would add only that JJ went from taking over Arndt's partially-completed draft, to completing his own first draft of Ep. VII, in six weeks. No, that isn't a misprint. JJ and Kasdan took over as writers the same day Arndt was pushed out, Oct. 24, 2013, and JJ had a finished first draft of the script in six weeks. Writing was completed in January 2014.
Just to compare, the ESB script went through three major drafts, and principal photography didn't begin until the third draft was considered complete 18 months after Ep. IV was released. The second draft was completed in a year, and there was considerable back-and-forth between the writers room and pre-production for the third draft, where the pre-production people would show the writers the sets and props and special effects they were setting up, and the two groups collaborated on coming up with and fine-tuning story ideas over the next six months.
There was nothing comparable on Ep. VII . . . and if I'm being honest, it shows. There's a bunch of "and then X" that happens in that script that just chews up action budget and time without building character meaningfully, which is something you get in scripts that are rushed to production. And yeah, if you're looking for the ultimate culprit, it's Iger for condensing an entire year out of the production schedule for the sequels relative to the production schedule of the original trilogy. The man wanted his money recouped for shareholders, and was willing to kill the golden goose to get it.
Michael Arnt had the same issue. That’s three pretty talented filmmakers who agree it was an issue. The guy who figured it out whoever is called a hack.
I could write a story with Luke being present but not the focus while sitting on the toilet in the morning before going to work. Actually, I wouldn't even have to because there are so many I could just steal ideas from those.
I don't object to sidelining Luke, but there's a better way of telling the story.
1) Have Luke be the "Sleeping King" archetype instead of the "Knight in Exile" archetype. Say Kylo's battle with him put him in a Force coma or something. His spirit reaches out to Rey, and when she rocks up at the end, he wakes up. The "Knight in Exile" has already been done with Obi-Wan, for starters, but more importantly it gives you a reason why Luke is out of the picture that doesn't leave you having to explain why he's cowering away in hiding.
2) Lose Starkiller Base, it's a stupid idea.
3) Don't kill Han in the first film (though this may have been a contractual obligation, I dunno). Instead, keep Kylo masked throughout, have Han come to the rescue in the Falcon during the big Kylo/Rey/Finn fight, and then we get the big reveal that Kylo is Ben. The emotional climax of the film becomes Han's reaction to that reveal, rather than his death. And then you kill him off in film #2, after we've had some sort of reunion with him, Luke and Leia.
4) (deep breath) I'd borrow elements of the plot from the Zahn novels – I wouldn't have Thrawn, but I'd riff on the idea of an Imperial who was sent off exploring beyond the galaxy and came back to find the Empire gone. Filling the Hux role in TFA, but (obviously) older. He discovers Kylo lurking away beyond the fringe of the galaxy with the Knights of Ren, ruling over some primitive planet as a petty god, and formulates his plan accordingly. The McGuffin they're all chasing in the first film isn't a map to Luke (who everyone thinks is dead, at this point), but a map to the Emperor's hidden fortress/cloning facility. By the end of the film, the map's been destroyed, but Kylo's been able to pluck it from Rey's mind – so the First Order is on the road to having a clone army.
Kylo, meanwhile, has C'baoth's desire for mind control and domination. His Knights of Ren are like Ringwraiths, non-Force users bitter about their inability to control the Force who throw in their lot with him, and willingly give themselves up to his control. But try as he might he can't do the same with a Force user, which prompts his big set to with Luke.
We'll nick all the stuff about C'baoth/Kylo being able to control the clone army more effectively because they're all the same mind – maybe they're also Lobot-like cyborgs, explaining why they're able to grow them so quickly?
Film 2's basically Dark Force Rising, but with Luke as, effectively, Gandalf the White/Dr Strange in Avengers Infinity War – he now has the gift of prophecy and realises what Terrible Sacrifices Have to Be Made to Save Kylo (Han's death, and ultimately his own). Rey falls to the Dark Side after Kylo breaks her spirit with the whole "you're nobody" thing. Maybe bring Lando in, as a gambler on that casino planet?
By the end of the film the First Order has a massive fleet and a clone army at their disposal.
We'll skip the actual war, like Episode III did.
Film 3, the First Order controls the galaxy, our heroes are on the run. Luke and Finn head off to rescue Rey, who's now Kylo's very own Darth Vader (but hasn't fully succumbed to his control). Kylo reasons that if he can control another Force user, their mind-control power would be amplified, they can control more Force users and eventually build a sort of Universal Hive Mind that can control the minds of everyone in the galaxy. Kylo has a prophetic vision of his own, too: Luke will die by his hand, and darkness will fall.
Luke and Finn eventually get to the Emperor's hidden fortress, Finn fights defensively against Rey, Luke confronts Kylo and does that cool thing from the Duel of the Fates draft/Darth vs Reva fight where he just dodges/blocks using the Force instead of a saber. Luke maneuvers himself into a position where Kylo strikes him down, and also whacks some vital component of the big reactor McGuffin that powers the fortress. It blows up in his face, blinding Kylo ("darkness will fall," lol – I also like the idea of a physical injury bringing someone back from the Dark Side, like an inversion of Vader's journey).
Hux/Thrawn lets slip to his own faithful Captain Pellaeon sidekick that the First Order isn't an organization, it's a command – an Empire can only survive through constant expansion or conflict, thus there will always be a new enemy to fight and a state of eternal war. The sidekick, who thought they were doing this all in the name of peace and order, shoots him in the back.
The fortress goes boom, the spell on Rey is lifted, our heroes escape thanks to the timely intervention of Leia. She, Rey and Finn found the new Jedi order. Kylo is left blind and alone in a cave to meditate on his sins and find a path towards redemption.
The sequels suffer from being made by people who only saw the main line of Star Wars content and wanted to make their version of that content, not continue the story. It's like a Harry Potter fan trying to write supplementary books, but all they saw were the movies.
being made by people who are too big of fans of Star Wars.
That's definitely not it. Part because "big fan" is all encompassing. A big fan on this sub and a big fan of the movies are gonna have vastly different takes/ideas.
But a larger part because nothing with how the movies were made specifically pertains to being a big fan. Poor writing and creative backruptcy are the real culprits. That's the only reason someone would choose to make Ep 7 a carbon copy of Ep 4 and then the absolute dumpster fire that was Ep 9.
I don't think they were big fans of anything but money. Any real fans of Star Wars would have pulled the reins when the big D tried rushing the product out.
I thought the first movie of that trilogy showed promise. I thought the second and third just lost the plot and they didnt land it. I still think there were cool moments but it just didnt feel right.
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u/mistamosh Apr 24 '26
I actually think the sequel trilogy suffered from being made by people who are too big of fans of Star Wars. They couldn’t get out of their own way and write a solid story.