Saga Will the Sequel Trilogy fit in with the Ring Theory?

Now, the Ring Theory has never been officially confirmed as "a thing" by George Lucas, but assuming it was intentional, does that mean The Force Awakens and its sequels won't fit in? Do the directors of the Sequel Trilogy care or even know about this?

If it doesn't connect with the Ring Theory, wouldn't that make it even more unconnected with Lucas' Original Saga? And will the Sequel Trilogy feel as intricate or myth-based as the first six?

I know some will think that if TFA, VIII, and IX don't connect to the Ring Theory, it won't affect the quality of the saga at all but please try to give an honest opinion without outright bashing anything.

 

Probably have to modify it into something new.

 

Actually, I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about. What is the Ring Theory? Something to do with canon or continuity?

 

http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/

Basically a structure for mirroring (and some philosophising on the meaning) in the current six-film saga that follows a ring-pattern; Ep1 correlates to Ep6, Ep2 to Ep5, and Ep3 to Ep4.

 

DaveyWanKenobi

 

Ah, okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

Now's the square theory?

 

I suspect it won't .... not unless the scriptwriters at Disney feel like stepping on George RR Martin's toes.

 

I've seen the film.

My opinion is that it doesn't fit into this theory.
TFA is so different visually and structurally. We'll have to wait and see until more people have seen it.

 

The Star Wars Ring Theory is when you die seven days after watching the Saga.

 

I really dig Ring Theory, but I don't think Star Wars was intentionally ring-structured. It's almost a fact at this point that Episode I parallels Episode IV, and II parallels V, etc. TFA most definitely parallels ANH so this pattern may likely continue.

 

I think it will more likely follow the parallel theory

 

The trilogy parallels are just the most obvious ones. You'll find if you look deeper there are links between all six of the original films in differing ways. Lucas was watching them all when making the PT.

 

My favorite Lucas quote is him admitting to lacing SW with Ring Theory. So yea he has confirmed it. Someone can go get the real quote but anyways...

Yes It has ring theory weaved right into it exactly like the OS. It was one of the MAIN things I was watching for and paying attention to and noticing literally right from the first shot which uses the whole "Star Destroyers are arrow pointers" thing going on and pointing in the directions the Saga is going with right being "forward" and left being considered "going back ward". When looking out for Ring Theory I was paying attention to direction which is important to ring theory and the movie is exactly crafted with ring theory like the other 6. From the first shot. A star destroyer pointing us "forward" (about 2:00 to the right in the film) like a "new era" is emerging. very symbolic for the ST gen.

TL ; DR: Ring Theory is absolutely in TFA. Payed large homage to without a doubt in the least (like Indiana Jones 4 with the mushroom cloud at begin and flying saucer at end for example) and perhaps running all through out the movie just like Lucas did with OS Ring Theory at most. I saw the movie once and was looking for it. Its there.

Im glad.

 

Oh crap. Five days to write my will

 

I believe it is present in The Force Awakens. This generational saga has always had parallels, rhyming verses, inverses, etc. The sequel trilogy is no different. To answer how it all fits together--we'll have to wait for the next two.

 

While TFA has many callbacks to the OT, I don't think it mirrors them like the PT did. Also my guess is that two different directors for eps VIII & IX will mean more stylistic differences

 

It might be broadly consonant with "Ring Theory", but it has already thrown out Lucas' "documentary fantasy" grammar, and the visuals and art direction are a big step down.

Going off of TFA, anyway.

And IMO.

 

There is a hint of it, as TFA somewhat mirrors ROTJ the way ANH mirrors ROTS - or perhaps the way TPM and ROTJ mirror eachother. I'm not exactly sure at the moment. It could be a little bit of both.
It's nowhere near as intricate as what GL did, though. I doubt that they'll even attempt to match that level of ingenuity.
I'm completely fine with that. They don't have to adhere to the principles of ring composition. Lucas's saga will seem all the more special if they don't - like a massive, self-contained super prologue to the continuing adventures of the Skywalker family. That's why I'm kind of hoping that they'll keep the saga going past Episode IX.

As I said, though, there is a hint of it. They'll probably continue the tradition of mirroring trilogies, with references to all episodes scattered throughout. That's a sign of respect for what GL built and I appreciate that.

Best Star Wars Ring Theory post ever.

 

Well obviously I-VI are laced into TFA all over the place. I don't know that it will fit into the structure of the ring as set over the 6 movies but they are certainly using all sorts of elements of it.

https://clonecorridor.wordpress.com...exalogy-despite-its-script-contains-spoilers/

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens has seen an incredibly positive reception in the critical press for which one can only congratulate Abrams, Kasdan and Kennedy as well as the actors and all others involved. Several reviews and discussions on fan-sites however also reveal there is a lot of criticism on the lacklustre treatment of some of the deeper themes of the Star Wars hexalogy.At first sight much of this seems to be discarded in favour of a high-octane, fast-paced space adventure pulp-romp … of which some will say that this is exactly what Star Wars is supposed to be. I will argue here however that Episode VII does contain all these deeper layers even though this might be despite Kasdan and Abrams and not because of them.

There is no room for ‘Author’s intent’
The first point I want to make here is one that might disturb you a little: in my analysis here there is no room for ‘Author’s intent’. What I mean by that is that it is irrelevant whether Kasdan and Abrams wanted to write a ‘deep’ story or whether they ‘wanted to avoid doing so’. Stories are not so much what they were intended to be, but they are what hey can be seen to be. Let me apply this notion to Mike Klimo’s Star Wars Ring Theory idea.
Is it important for the justification of the claim that the Star Wars Hexalogy has a ring-composition structure that such was Lucas’ intent? Many of you might say ‘Yes!’ but I will say ‘No!’. What is, in my view, essential is that the material we are presented with by the author (Lucas) supports that structure. When it does the claim that it has that structure is evidently legitimate even when the author would say ‘but I never intended that’. Unintended consequences do not only occur in military interventions, in emotional disputes between people but also in the creative process that goes into making art. In fact, one of the downsides of the commercialization of Art is that the process of making it consumable often actively tries to suppress unintended consequences.

Mythology is stronger than ‘the author’
A key aspect of real mythology is that it is ‘alive’, something that fans who fuzz about canonization do not seem to appreciate. A mythology is alive when it is open to ‘change’ of the stories that are already there as well as open to the addition of stories to the existing batch. One of the downside of the devotion of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is that is suggest, as does the misnomer ‘monomyth’, that mythology is something static and unchangeable throughout human history. However such unchangeable myths are the ‘dead’ myths we encounter in canonised books, myths that can even be revered without actually being able to read or understand them.
A successful author of a mythological piece will inevitably however lose control over it. This of course, to paraphrase Palpatine, is what they all fear to lose. It is the inspiring characteristic of living mythology that moves other authors to add their stories and/or to change existing stories. If a myth loses that inspirational property then usually what we see is that it ends up being ‘regurgitated’ for consumption by people who get warm feelings of nostalgia and longing for a better past when hearing it. The distinction between the regurgitation of dead myth and the ‘rhyming’ of living myth can be terribly hard to see. It is typically not the author who chooses on which side of the dividing line she is.
If you go to a Christmas carols service then there is no doubt many of those actively involved in it will consider themselves as rhyming living myth yet at the same time these story-telling events hardly ever manage to go beyond what is really just nostalgic regurgitation. If you want to see evidence that the mythological story surrounding Jesus’s life is still alive than don’t look for run-of-the-mill depictions that typically drown in either dogmatically fuelled narrative (say ‘The Passion of the Christ’) or in the unbearable lightness of nostalgic sweetness. Usually this outcome of a project is not what its creators were after. It can equally be the unintended side-effect of such a project however (for example as in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, the ’73 movie, or in Scorsese’s ‘Last Temptation of Christ’) that it adds a living dimension to a re-telling of a story that reveals a myth is still very much alive.

The Force Awakens
Star Wars The Force Awakens is in many ways a re-telling of the three Original Trilogy films baked into a single story that has to mark the departure point of a new trilogy. It is amusing that where Prequel Trilogy fans were worried we would see Disney go for a reboot of the Prequels, what Lucasfilm actually came up with almost resembles a reboot of the Original Trilogy … talking about unintended consequences.
But The Force Awakens is not such a reboot despite all its borrowing of plot points, motives and themes from across the OT. It is totally evident that Kasdan and Abrams were looking for a film that would recycle many of those elements in a more kinetic and high-paced, and yes a more pulpy, fashion of 21st century cinema. They have done so exceptionally well and the laurels for that are well-deserved. But now the beautiful thing of living mythology comes into play.
The Force Awakens resonates with the Originals and the Prequels, whether anyone likes that or not. In particular this means that any shot, scene or dialogue that the authors of this Episode VII have written will derive meaning not merely from their intention (entertainment for the audience) but also from how it connects to the tissue of the Star Wars Hexalogy.
Interestingly (EU fans, relax please!) The Force Awakens does more to re-awaken Jacen and Jaina Solo’s narratives than any additional EU books could ever have done. A ‘story-group’ can decide to cut these book from the ‘canon’ but the funny thing is … they can only control output but not the meaning associated with whatever output they allow. The Force Awakens is full of rhymes with the prequels and the originals that we can already identify as incredibly meaning-laden even when it is not easy yet to say which meaning that exactly is.

Examples of meaningful rhyming
I just want to go through a couple of examples of this rhyming that I selected for the purpose of showing how powerful they are and yet how ambiguous their interpretation is.
Towards the end of The Force Awakens Rey picks up Anakin’s lightsaber from Revenge of the Sith, she then brings it to Luke. The shot of her picking it up from the snow-covered ground is nearly identical to the shot of Obi Wan doing so in Revenge of the Sith. Obi Wan picks it up there and in Episode IV we see him handing it to Luke, in Episode VII we see Rey picking it up and handing it to Luke. This places Rey in an odd resonance with Obi Wan Kenobi. It is totally clear that this is full of meaning and yet it remains completely open to speculate what this meaning could possibly be. Note also that in A New Hope it is Obi Wan who takes the lightsaber from a wooden box before he gives it to Luke, just like Rey does in Maz Kanata’s lair.
Another example is the destruction of the central system in the New Republic by the Star Killer weapon. In terms of it’s scoring as well as in terms of it’s cinematography it is an echo of the Order 66 sequence, albeit a much shorter one. It resembles that scene much more, and in many ways, than it does the destruction of Alderaan in A New Hope. Alderaan is destroyed in an almost burocratically coincidental manner in order to dish out some pain to Leia and we never see a response of the citizens on Alderaan. The destruction of the New Republic’s core system however is depicted as a genocidal act that is to clear the way for the First Order to assume full control and to allow them to target the Resistance next. Notice the nice inversion here: Where in Revenge of the Sith the small band of Jedi who protect the Republic are eliminated so as to allow the Sith to take on the Republic next, in The Force Awakens the New Republic that is protecting the small band of The Resistance is targeted so as to allow the First Order to take on exactly that Resistance.
A final example is the resonance between the last scene of Han with Kylo Ren and two other scenes. Han’s attempt at drawing Kylo back to the light within him takes place in a setting that echoes Luke’s duel with Vader from Empire Strikes Back. Luke makes no such attempt although there to we see a father attempting to get his son on his side. Of course Luke doesn’t as he does not yet know the full truth of his ancestry and such an attempt would most definitely come ‘to early’ for Vader. Well, as you have seen, so it does for Kylo. Amidala attempts something similar on Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. The last thing she asks Anakin, after noting he has changed, is to comeback and she expresses her love for him in a desperate attempt. Han does exactly the same and, significantly, Padme and Han meet the same fate. Padme’s heart breaks while Han’s is pierced.

Final Remarks
It is interesting that in a Star Wars movie that some say call merely fan-service by re-using Original Trilogy plot-devices, or that is a love-letter to the Originals as other assume, there are visual and narrative echoes from across the 6 films (yes including the Prequel Trilogy) that front-load seemingly irrelevant scenes and shots with great potential for depth. It is still early days in analysing the true content of The Force Awakens and I am not convinced Abrams and Kasdan are fully aware of what they have put in. What I am trying to argue is that to find out what The Force Awakens means we shouldn’t be waiting for interviews in Entertainment Weekly and it’s peers, but rather we should explore that meaning ourselves from the film and it’s 6 predecessors. we are the authors of that half of the Star Wars myth. As long as we do there will always be some of us who will keep making Star Wars films and the mythology remains alive.

 

No, I doubt it. It doesnt need to. I'm hoping that episode 7 begins its own 6-movie saga from 7-12

 

No. The ring Theory is done. Using it like TFA is not a good idea.

It seems to work much better as Present+Past instead of Future+Past+Present.

Plus, TFA was not made with the mind of the PT.

 

You read my mind. Anyone know what he thinks of the ST, whether quality, betrayal of Lucas, or his theory.

 

Which is why I have a problem with the movie. I never wanted a reboot of the OT or the PT in the first place.

 

Yes. Ring fits the ST. After watching TROS it's much clearer how the ST mimics, mirrors, modifies, and treads on new group compared to the OT and PT. It rings.