ST Does just Episode 7 & 9 work for the ST on repeat viewings?

I've been giving the ST another chance and have somewhat warmed up to it. However, I feel it's safe to ignore TLJ...which was honestly probably JJ's intention. I think TFA works as a good jumping off point into both TLJ & TRoS, but the other two don't work well together unless you do some mental gymnastics (or just go along for the ride) . TLJ works okay as a standalone though. Imo, none of them really work as sequels, or even loose follow ups, to RotJ.

 

My experience with the ST was this...

When I first saw TFA, LOVED IT!!! However, with repeated viewing... loved it less and less. Now I just like it.

When I first saw TLJ, liked it. But with each repeated views, LOVED IT!!!!

When I first saw TROS, liked it! With each repeated viewing... eh, pretty much the same. I like it.

The ST was not what I expected, and I personally think TLJ is the gem of the three,

IMHO!

 

No. I'd still only watch 1-6 and Rogue One.

 

I would skip TROS altogether.

 

I loved TFA when I first saw it, and my love for it diminished slightly when I saw nothing was done with everything that film set up-but I still quite enjoy it.

I very much disliked TLJ when I first saw it, and since I've seen how the ST plays out it helped me like it go from disliking it to at least slightly enjoying it. But that's it.

I thought TROS was awesome when it first came out, but over time as more and more things come up that I have issues with (that I didn't notice before), I still like it but not as much as TFA. There are just so many "missed opportunities" that just leave me disappointed when I watch it.

As it is, I am actually working my way thru all the SW films right now-I'm almost done with Rogue One. This is only the 2nd time I have watched all 11 films in a row-I guess we'll see if the ST has grown on me...

 

TFA is the hardest one for me to "accept." It's exactly what you'd expect an Abrams Star Wars reboot to feel like, which isn't exactly a bad thing on its own, but pretty horrible for a film that is supposed to be number seven in an existing sequence.

 

Yes 7 & 9 work as apart of the saga, 8 feels like it's not apart of it in some respects, JJ simply should have been given the ST and then job done - then you wouldn't have this interloper of a movie that basically didn't look and feel like TFA did so in lot of ways 8 doesn't fit into the saga.

 

If I ignore TFA's opening crawl, then I think it works fine as a continuation of the saga up until Rey and Finn start running to the Falcon. After that it's all chaos. As a saga continuation, TROS feels even less serious than the Star Wars: Legacy comics.

Both TFA and ROTS are amusing as wacky alternate-universe re-imaginations of Star Wars, but neither feel serious or accomplished imo.

 

It would work with a little bit of CGI so Luke's already a force ghost at the end of TFA...

However, start at I, stop at VI and pretend the VII to IX was Pam at the end of Dallas season 9 is the way to go...

 

It may sound weird, but I kinda like that about the sequel trilogy. It’s very “malleable,” if that makes sense. You can treat 7 as a self-contained OT epilogue, you can treat 7&8 as a two-part epilogue, you can treat 9 as a self-contained epilogue (and just fill in some blanks with your head), you can treat 7&9 as a two-part thing, etc. As someone who’s mood/opinion tends to fluctuate a lot, this sorta thing makes it kinda fun for me.

 

TROS can be seen an adaptation of some of the general ideas Abrams may have had to follow-up TFA.

For example, we only see a few First Order star destroyers in TFA, crewed by noticeably younger officers. In TROS, we see one of the new Sith star destroyers deployed in advance of the full force, and it also has a younger crew. In TFA, the implication was that the First Order hadn’t fully deployed its fleet or its main forces yet; Poe was noticeably surprised by the Finalizer when he was captured. So it’s possible that the idea of having the enemy’s main fleet be hidden in preparation for full deployment would have been used for the First Order’s fleet instead, positioning their starfleet as the next big technological threat in the trilogy.

Another adapted idea is how Abrams would’ve delved into the main villain of the trilogy, Supreme Leader Snoke. In TFA, we are introduced to Snoke as this remote, mysterious figure who is only seen from the shadows. He is ghoulish, clearly the new manifestation of the dark side, and he has all the attendant horror aesthetic that could go with that. Johnson ended up making Snoke more human and less mythical, but Abrams may have shown us what he would’ve done with Snoke via the undead Emperor and his hellish throneworld of Exegol. The aesthetics of Exegol fit perfectly with what little we see of Snoke in TFA, even down to the heavily shadowed lighting. Since Palpatine was clearly brought in to replace Snoke, and this was a much more horror-inspired version of Palpatine than we’d ever seen before, I think it’s clear all that was originally meant for the Supreme Leader instead.

So, it’s interesting to look for hints in TROS at what an Abrams-only trilogy would’ve looked like. Some of these elements would’ve definitely helped to make the movies stand out more from the OT, even if Abrams does generally play it safe.

 

I see no evidence that Abrams had any ideas going forward after TFA. i mean even TROS recycled unused ideas he had for TFA rather than anything particularly fresh. and while people will say yeah but Rian Johnson stopped these new ideas with TLJ... well i think it would have been a little more noticeable in TROS if JJ had any original ideas outside of TFA.

When you recycle unused ideas from TFA that sounds more like someone who put all their thought process into 1 movie and didn't really think beyond that.

 

That's Abrams's style. Throw a bunch of mysteries at the audience and let the future writers sort it all out.

 

That’s fair, but remember also that TFA had a lot more pre-production time and saw Abrams and the team devoting all their effort toward coming up and defining a wholly new story. So there would be a lot that was considered and discarded, and which it would have made sense to re-use when there was very little time for a similar pre-production period.

In other words, he’d already poured his Star Wars ideas out there, and yeah they were likely inchoate and dependent on other creatives to flesh them out beyond that initial concept, but it would make more sense to revisit what was brainstormed rather than try to reinvent the wheel. So I think it’s more a matter of him saying, “Well, this is kind of what we’d been thinking this would lead up to, so let’s just adapt it to fit with what Johnson did and go through with it.”

I definitely get the impression that TROS is more an adaptation of what Abrams and team had generally envisioned (again, bare-bones as it was) than a genuine continuation of the story opening that Johnson provided.

 

This is where I break with some people on this subforum. It makes sense that if you hate everything about TLJ and all the story openings it did provide, you probably wouldn't care that TROS took this approach. But, for all the disdain I do have for TLJ, I did appreciate these story openings and think we would've gotten a much stronger, much more cohesive trilogy if IX had followed what TLJ had left, ideally combined with JJ/TFA's greater appreciation of the new character dynamics.

 

I don't think so. The jump from ROTJ to TFA still doesn't work for me and the exposition in the trilogy is way too backloaded for them to be particularly enjoyable.

 

As much as I disliked TLJ too, I would probably agree with you. If Abrams goes with Rey Nobody and Kylo Ren as the villain (No Palpatine), I think the movie has more time to breath than what we got with TROS because he wouldn't have to reset up the story. It would have mirrored the OT much more (ironically) as ANH was a standalone movie and ESB/ROTJ is where they changed plot points like Vader/Luke/Leia being related. Let's just say that the Vader relevation in 1980 didn't go over well, and it is revealed in ROTJ that he was lying to Luke. ROTJ is a much different movie, and the OT is a much different Trilogy.

 

I thought The Force Awakens was OK. It was fun seeing Han again and I looked forward to seeing the next one.

Rogue One was very cool, and got better the longer the movie went on. In fact, I think it has the best 3rd act of ANY Star Wars movie.

I watched The Last Jedi once. I was disgusted at the choices they made to do a big postmodernist deconstruction of Luke Skywalker instead of giving us another good Star Wars movie.

Never watched the last installment.

I am happy with episodes 1-6 and Rogue One.

 

For sure 1 thru 6 and ignore the ST. 100% throw R1 in there. But I gotta say I'd include Solo - it's a fun little SW movie. Which I can't say about any of the "ST".
My avatar (and signature) says it all.

 

I can't speak much about repeat viewings; I've watched TFA and TLJ once, never watched TROS, and I don't want to watch / rewatch any of them. After TFA I didn't want to bother with TLJ, and pretty much only did so I could better follow discussions about it on these forums.

If I'm honest, I probably would find things to appreciate about the ST if I did watch/ rewatch it all, but I also don't see the amount of that newfound appreciation changing my general dislike for the ST. Nothing can really get rid of that "They messed this up so much" feeling, simply because these films are what they are.

 

LFL meddling aside, I just don't see why all this is so inevitable. If you make a sequel to TLJ that incorporates TLJ's thematic and Kylo-centric biases sure...but I'm talking more about simply the plot, which the ST is IMO in desperate need of, and the story threads left by TLJ offer some kind of direction for. Why can't you have a script that effectively explores Kylo's inner state and journey while keeping Rey and Finn's story central as the protagonist/heroes? TROS isn't just a follow up to TLJ, it's a follow up to TFA as well, and that managed this dynamic pretty well. Why not return to it while also following up on the plot threads TLJ left? Plus TLJ doesn't just leave a dangling thread for Kylo, it leaves the heroes with the task of building up a new resistance and even leaves Rey with the possibility of recruiting more Jedi.

I just don't think a Kylo as leader storyline has to mean Rey's story is subordinate to his...if you come up with a good story for her. Which IMO shouldn't be as impossible at this point as people claim. Her story is wide open after TLJ and while having only one film left isn't ideal, I absolutely think more than enough can be done in 1 film in the hands of a good storyteller. I'm more agnostic on the parentage question I guess. I wouldn't fault them saying Kylo was lying and that she is a Skywalker, but I also think they maybe should've just gone with Rey Random and run with it. Either over what we did get lol

Like, this thread is literally about how TLJ is skippable and in many ways I agree. I think you can pretty much continue Finn and Rey's stories from TFA as-is in IX if you want to. Ideally though, you follow up on the promise of seeing Kylo as supreme leader, make Luke's sacrifice somewhat relevant so the TFA/TLJ scramble for him doesn't go completely nowhere. You can just say Rey hates Kylo Ren even more after the events of TLJ and start their dynamic from there. Tie the need to rebuild the resistance into Finn's capacity as a leader and his potential to help out other stormtroopers.

I would definitely have preferred that approach to IX than what we got. And I agree that it seems LFL played a heavy role in us getting what we got and that their Kylo-obsession seems to be the real culprit here..