ST What does the ST add to the Saga? What is its story purpose?

This topic isn't about complaining about the sequel trilogy, but rather discussing about what was the point of the idea of there being a sequel trilogy in the first place.

Return of the Jedi's ending concluded the story and gave full closer to all the characters. The prequel trilogy was necessary since there were missing pieces to the story that needed to be told.

 

I honestly don't think it's anymore unnecessary than the PT. The OT works well on its own, but both the PT and ST expand upon the story.

 

Well one could make the argument that ESB and ROTJ were unnecessary, given that ANH works well on its own.

The PT was only unnecessary if you completely disregard the fact that millions of fans had waited years to find out the details of those stories. There were lots of questions with unknown answers, and fans desperately wanted those answers. And I think for the most part, Lucas answered almost all the questions, mostly in satisfying ways.

With the ST, there were lots of questions left to be answered as well. What happens to Luke, Han and Leia? Do they rebuild the Republic? Does Luke restart the Jedi? Does Leia become a Jedi? Who are their children and what role do they play in the story? Will Luke finally have a relationship with his father who is now a force ghost? These were all legit mysteries. But the filmmakers dropped the ball with their answers to every single one of those questions. Luke and Han were generally speaking both failures. Han was no longer a hero, and Luke's character had regressed into a grumpy, depressed quitter. The Republic had been rebuilt, but we never got to see it before it was destroyed again. Luke restarted the Jedi, but we never got to see it before it was destroyed again. They only have one offspring amongst all of them, and he was not a character anyone would choose to get behind. Leia's force abilities are confusing to say the least. Luke never had a relationship with his father the force ghost, at least not that we know of... All of these answers suck.

So I would say the ST wasn't unnecessary from conception. If it feels unnecessary, it is totally because of the choices made by the filmmakers.

 

I think the answer to this thread is that they are no more necessary or unnecessary than any of the other sequels or prequels of the original film. How unnecessary they were in hindsight however will ultimately depend upon how satisfied you were with any of the answers those films provided and how you consume SW (you might have a different opinion on the matter if you consume supplementary material).

 

There were billions of dollars to be made. Tacking on a sequel trilogy to the original trilogy was the most assured way to make that money.

 

The PT wasn't necessary, but it was trying to provide a "why and how". The questions left at the end of RotJ weren't really big mysteries, just the kind of open-ended things you wonder about with those kinds of happy endings ("Did they get married? Did they have kids?", etc.)

The ST is just... more. It's pretty much like the Harry Potter epilogue if it was a series of books.

 

There is another
Pass on the things you have learned
My family has it
I won't get in the way
The prophesy of the one who will bring balance to the force (never explicitly resolved)
Darth Plagueis and cheating death

The ST claims to be addressing the first four of these open ended threads from the OT. The ST suggests that it is trying to address the fifth one by TFA's "finish what you started".

The pretense is that this corporate effort that eschewed the originator's vision is going to "wrap" up or somehow relate to the PT. To do that, Anakin has to make a showing and demonstrate he internalized lessons learned in the ROTJ throne room. Now, Obi-Wan has said "I cannot interfere", and OT and PT facing perspectives do not hold Ghost Anakin responsible for taking physical action. But ESB and ROTJ ghost Obi-Wan mentored, cautioned and corrected Luke. Ghost Anakin, if he has not disappeared into the ether, is ground zero for knowing how bad things get if another Sith master apprentice dynamic arises. So where is he? There has been no evidence of Anakin's involvement in any events of the ST. Not on film.

George took (some say great) latitude to reconfigure the OT Luke heros journey as the second part of a Tragedy of Darth Vader. So, latitude precedent, latitude granted. The makers of the ST can alter the deal of what the (PT && OT) was about.

As far as the most obvious connective tissue back to the PT, Anakin, there is no defense that this is an organic continuation that "wraps" up three trilogies. Palpatine is a force of nature, not a character that possesses an arc. He is a foil. Palpatine certainly introduced Darth Plagueis and cheating death, and is on record tempting Anakin to yield to his attachments to the living. As anti-Yoda as possible. So there are places to go where ST can distinguish itself and make claims that it connects somewhat organically to issues raised in PT. I don't see any of this happening with Abrams, but the issues themselves are not bad ones to tackle.

 

The PT seems to be a better idea than the ST. Seeing how Vader and Obi Wan were in their formative years, expanding the universe was a good idea despite the ending being known. It also seems to have started the prequel/origin craze we see in every other movie now. I'm sure movies did it before but this made it more popular.

 

The point of the sequel trilogy was that Lucas wanted to sell Lucasfilm and allow other creative filmmakers to tell further stories in the universe.

He specifically started out developing the ST because it would help set up the future of the franchise and make it more likely for someone with the proper means and motives to show interest. Without any movies coming up, the franchise was more or less dormant. There is the occasional ancilliary stuff, like books, comics, videogames or even some animated shows, all making quite a bit of money, but those aren't really on the same level of importance as movies are. But with new movies coming up, that's a whole different matter. Plus, with him starting development and then selling the company, you get the best of both worlds. If he had just sold it without new movies, and the new owner had developed some on his own, some people might have questioned if this was what Lucas intended. But by starting the project, you see that this is what he wanted, and by having someone else take over, you might also reach those who weren't fond of what Lucas had done with the prequels.

 

Money I guess?

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From a thematic perspective, I think it's fair to assume that had the saga ended with ROTJ, both the Jedi Order and the Republic would have been restored by Luke and the Rebels to their original states, respectively. Therefore, the point of the sequel trilogy is that it's not enough to simply restore these institutions back to the way they were, or else you risk the entire cycle of conflict starting all over again. The New Republic, Resistance and First Order don't differ much from their predecessors, and thus the outcome of this conflict is meant to create new institutions (new government and new organization of Force users) meant to last.

 

My view on this is it shouldn't be up to the third film of a trilogy to demonstrate importance, films one and two should have done that.

I think all three organisations do differ but it isn't being demonstrated in the films, instead it's present in other medium material. On the evidence of TFA and TLJ, I doubt we'll get much of galactic rebuilding - it'll be more 'First Order goes boom, yay, we free'.

 

Well in the OT the first two films show no signs of it being anything about Vader being redeemed to save the galaxy. It takes all three films to make it work coherently. The PT, without ROTS it is very hard to see Anikan being the man who became Darth Vader. Point being it takes all THREE films to complete the story line. The PT and OT both needed the third film to make any kind of sense.

 

Is it? I'd say AOTC makes a good case for showing what Anakin could become, but the difference between PT and OT is Lucas knew he had three films to play with.

The OT was a trilogy by default as ANH wasn't expected to be the uber-smash hit it was.

I tend to see the OT being the war with the Empire and the PT as the origin for it. Both films 1-2 cover that well, freeing up the third to conclude it as well as it can do. In contrast, tons of to-do stuff has been dropped on TROS by TLJ.

• ROTJ = Rescue Han / defeat Empire
• ROTS = Empire rises / fall of the Jedi and Anakin / creation of Vader
• TROS = Resolve Rey-Kylo, show FO ruling, Knights of Ren, The Emperor, Leia's fate, the new Resistance

It has near double what its opposite numbers had to do.

 

It doesn't feel needed to me given the direction they took. But that's not the fault of a basic plan for another trilogy. Might've only needed the smallest story seed from I-VI to develop a ST that felt essential to me.

 

Everything depends on what will happen in episode IX. Though I do remember GL mentioning LFL's employees as one of the reasons he sold the company.

 

All that says to me is Lucas needed a better HR department then!

 

No movie "needs" to be made. It's not like any of us "need" to be watching movies. Shouldn't we all be in the fields/factory/mines working for the glory of the State/Homeland/Motherland/Fatherland/God(s)?

 

My thoughts,

First, Lucas had plans for a PT and an ST way back when, late 70's/early 80's.
So it is not like the ST was an invention by Disney.
From what I remember, Lucas still talked about the PT and ST even after RotJ was done.
Only when he was making the PT did he change his mind and say that he never had any plans for the ST, that it was all an invention by the media.

Second, he wrote some outlines for an ST before he sold Lucasfilm.
If those outlines are the same outlines he talked about having for the ST back in the 80's is something I would be fascinated to know.

As for what is more "needed", a PT or and ST.
Leaving aside that neither is really "Needed", they offer different things.
A PT answer how and why something happened. It fills in the blanks and it might not have much in the way of surprises.
A risk with any PT is if you change too much of what was established and causes plot holes, then people might have issues with that. If you follow it too closely, the story might be too obvious and everyone can see everything coming.

A ST has more freedom, the end is not known and there is less continuity to worry about. So any storyteller has more room to move.
The risk here, esp if it comes many years after the original ended, that people have made up their own stories about what happened. This can also happen with a PT.
And with SW, the added issue is that there has been loads of books that depicted events after the OT.
And fans of those might want elements of those books in the films.
Plus there is the issue of what to do with the original characters.
Do too much of them and too little of the new characters, then those can look uninteresting.
Too much of the new characters and give short shrift to the old ones, then older fans can get upset at that.

Star Trek Enterprise, at least the first two season, had big problems.
They wanted to use established Trek things, like the Borg and the Ferengi but since those were supposed to be unknown later, they had to use the "magic-reset button" a lot.
Season three and four finally started to do something new. But then the damage was done.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I wanted to see Luke help train a new Generation of Jedi.