ST Behind the Scenes of the Sequel Trilogy

The overall feel that TROS is a largely passionless production by a bunch of professionals who likely disagree on what direction to go, but agree on a purely mercenary process to get something out in theaters, seems to hold true.

 

Filmmaking to appease the "Almighty Shareholder".

 

Well, they may have wanted to, but you have to remember that honoring an actor who passed comes in at a very distant second to keeping the shareholders happy. At the end of the day, THAT is their responsibility, and primary concern. This is BIG business filmmaking, not an indie film passion project. That doesn't mean that passion can't be there, but this thing was GOING to come out on time, no matter what. The mandate was to get it out, and finish the story, without completely damaging the IP for further profitability. JJ is well known for being able to cut corners, and move a production along quickly, while still producing successful "crowd pleasers". It's why he keeps getting hired. As long as the films are profitable the shareholders are happy, and so is the studio.

 

Yes, I think the people involved with the ST definitely love Star Wars, or at least the OT, but that has to take a back seat if the production starts having trouble and the release date is threatened. That's just the nature of the business. You're very lucky that you were able to enjoy the film, despite the production issues. I actually think TROS is the most entertaining film of the ST, but it also has the most problems, and it's production problems show in the final product.

 

Because they made bad choices, imo. Just because they think something won't damage the IP doesn't mean they're right. They're human. They can make mistakes. JJ makes mistakes all the time, again, imo.

 

I even think the “logic” behind each move is also pretty clear, though likes also emerges from different forces with different ideas and priorities:

1. Bringing Back Palpatine - LFL didn’t actually want Kylo as the Final Boss of the 9-film story and instead wanted Ben to be on the heroes’ side of the climax, and had seen that other possibilities proposed by Trevorrow in later drafts as dubious and untenable. Palpatine affords a large scale antagonist who can overwhelm Kylo’s role as the primary antagonist simply by his presence, and match the scale they believed the film should have as a climax.

2. Undoing Anakin’s sacrifice - This pretty much flows exactly from the same idea as #1; I presume you could probably further clarify that it’s simply a natural consequence of finding Palpatine the only viable alternative when you’re primary goal is getting Ben Solo a redemption arc and offering up a Bigger Bad for the story in his place.

3. Making Rey Palpatine’s Granddaughter - This one is likely Abrams feeling that, quite simply, Rey Random wasn’t up to the task of being the primary finale heroine in a film now launching itself as hard as it could towards making Palpatine the main villain for Ben’s sake. Rey Random has no history with Palpatine, nor does anyone in her family, and Rey’s story isn’t served by losing Kylo as her opponent at the last minute just so Ben Solo, with the family ties he has, can step up next to her. But Rey is also the main character of the ST, so you can’t have her just floating around as a disconnected main character in a film now about the same family as before.

None of these decisions are really good, and are arguably all decisions made in reaction against something from the first two films in the ST, rather than inspired originality and vision.

All three have some basis in logical objective that someone else failed to keep to: LFL didn’t want a climax to end on just a bitter, purely incidental afterthought of an ending to a family story people had technically been following since the 70s, and Abrams didn’t want to just give over the entire climax of the ST to a still barely defined antagonist character who’d already usurped his original male lead and become a “rival” to the overall main heroine.

But, well, making sure Rey was still the main character and that the Skywalkers could have a satisfactory ending was basically impossible after TFA and TLJ. TFA had thrown the family into too steep of a tailspin, and TLJ had cut out whatever “parachute” they may have been able to construct using Rey.

I mean, after TFA, the only real way forward to achieve both Rey as the main character and a satisfactory ending for the Skywalkers was Rey Solo/Skywalker, but that was predictable, and rejected by TLJ. No one wanted to “pay the check” on that, but no one wanted to backtrack too much...

...So you get TROS, trying to stabilize and just get things over with in a kind of damage control, hoping to at least avoid running everyone off or admitting the weaknesses of the previous two films.

 

Wrong thread.

You'll want to leave your usual "Mocking others, and showing general contempt for those I don't agree with, because I have nothing else to contribute" post here.
https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-development-of-the-sequel-trilogy.50046418/page-271