ST The Development Of The Sequel Trilogy

Well TFA I think did have the most interesting development starting from George’s treatments which evolved in Michael Arndt’s work which then evolved into JJ/Kasdan’s final script, plus a bit of a reshoot/ course correction with TFA was moved to December and they took a few weeks off when Harrison broke his leg because that door fell on him.

Notice I saw evolution since I honestly beleive it was less a “lets throw stuff out” and more things just changing and evolving as the movie is produced as most films are

 

Well, you probably were not around here in the TFA days. Many on these boards started seeing some important plot holes in the Reylated theories even back when we only knew the leaked outlines of MSW. Once TFA came out, even more people started to seriously consider Rey not being a Skywalker as a real possibility.

To this day, I would say at least the pro Rey Random (non-Reylos) at least have not been as tiresome as some Reylated fans, who cannot even accept how some things evidently do not line up with their pet theory.

 

I'm open to all possibilities regarding Rey's origin. But i don't see anything what makes Rey Luke's daughter for example impossible or damaging to his character.

Maybe he thought she was dead while someone maybe her mother took her to Jakku.

And there is the fact that he separated himself from the force for years. So until he reconnected himself he didn't really knew who she was.

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Before watching TFA, I initially thought she would be a Solo but after watching the scene at Maz's castle when Maz clearly differentiate who she's waiting for i.e. her family are not coming back from someone else who could (Luke she thought). I never expected Luke to have a child based on recent comments from GL and his apparent disdain for Mara Jade specifically. I must say it was quite annoying to have every conversation about Rey being hijacked in one way or another by all the parentage theories (Rey Skywalker/Solo being by far the loudest ones).

The conversations were less about Rey as a character and her journey than who she was linked to which was partly why I rarely participated in the conversations at the time because they were so circular. Also, the fact that PH could freely talk about some of the "clues" in TFA ("It is you" in the novelization for example which referred to the awakening line earlier in the movie) that could lead toward Rey Skywalker/Solo means that there wasn't any mystery behind most of them.

There is also the perception that parallels to other characters or SW movies means that they have to be related despite the fact that there's plenty of parallels with characters who are clearly not related to movie characters, or background noises in visions like screaming somehow make Rey and Luke related (how?). Then, we have interviews from DR saying that it didn't change from when JJ told her on set to RJ's idea and that she wasn't a Solo in TFA despite people's insistence that she was. Or JJ letting slip that her parents were not in TFA (we see a ship leaving Jakku but we don't actually see who's inside) and then clarifying that her parents could still be in her world, though that still doesn't necessarily point to either Solo/Skywalker theories.

Again, I personally think there's more behind the circumstances behind her abandonment than TLJ is telling us but I don't think Rey Related will be the ultimate reveal and RJ did tell us that Kylo was not lying to Rey, just like he didn't lie about his perception of that fateful night with Luke. He was telling the truth about the vision he saw, the question is whether that was the real truth or was it coming more from Rey's fears about her family?

 

Sure, that's the line given by Lucasfilm for public consumption. But based on things we've heard from both George Lucas and Mark Hamill, it seems like "things just changing and evolving" amounted to Disney/LFL explicitly rejecting not superficial details but major elements of the treatments which Lucas considered integral to his vision for the trilogy, leading to him objecting and then ultimately separating from the project.

That's the plain language version of what seems to have happened. Whatever you want to call that is up to you. But choosing to call it an "evolution" doesn't in any way rebut what people are criticizing when they say stuff was "thrown out." It's just playing around with words to put a positive spin on something many fans consider to be a negative.

 

Lucas' departure may have had a great deal to do with a divergence from his initial treatments, but I'm also inclined to think that he knew that a director like Abrams wasn't solely there to execute a story for him in the same way as Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand. So rather than impose his creative will on a film for a company he no longer owns, it made sense for him to step aside.

 

Maz could have had a certain point of view and not reveal the complete truth that she had access to. Yoda did not retrospectively reveal truth about Vader to Luke in ESB. Obi-Wan did not reveal full truth about Vader to Luke until ROTJ. Maz was intended to strike a Yoda power chord. If Maz also resonated with those heroic mentors' tendency to protect their charge from inconvenient fact, that would have been consistent. So, giving TFA the benefit of the doubt, that it might have instantiated a richer story than what this thing is, now, there was no reason viewing TFA to amputate / truncate possible resonance to the OT just because of a preference of a superficial reading of Maz words. (How many deterministic ways can you take Obi-Wan's configuration of Luke's father and Darth Vader in SW77? Not many...)

This can be repeated on an infinite loop: it is OK that Rey is a Random, or turns out to have always been a random, even from TFA opening credits. There simply was nothing in TFA mathematically deterministic that absolutely constrained her lineage to being NOT Skywalker, NOT Solo, etc. It was a rich question, once upon a time. It's all water under the bridge at this point.

 

If that was the reason he decided to divorce himself from the project entirely, he would have done so at the outset. It's not as if he was unaware of what selling his company to Disney meant for him in terms of creative control. He knew he wasn't directing the movie. But he did apparently think they would at least use the stories he gave them. It was only when they started diverging from his stories in fundamental ways that he actually ceased his involvement completely.

 

The assumption that he “would have done so at the outset” is wrong. Lucas, having never sold his company before, didn’t know what consulting (as the original creator), while not being in charge, would be like. Once he found out what it was like, he decided it was best for him and for Lucasfilm that he step away. This is a common occurrence with founders who try to maintain input after new leadership is brought on. It’s frustrating, and usually doesn’t work. But Lucas had to find that out for himself before deciding to part ways.

 

Alan Horn, Walt Disney Studios Chairman: “We needed to have an understanding [with George Lucas] that if we acquire the company, despite tons of collegial conversations and collaboration, at the end of the day, we have to be the ones who sign off on whatever the plans are.” (March 7, 2013)

 

The irony is that Disney didn't actually choose to tell a different story over Lucas' treatment. They actually chose to wing it from director to director. They chose no road map over the map he gave them. Seems to me like that means that although they didn't like Lucas' treatment, they couldn't come up with anything better themselves, and since time was of the essence, they chose to take a leap of faith and hope they could figure it out as they went. The entire thing is bizarre and hard to understand.

 

That reads more like your interpretations based on no facts at all, than actual reality. How would you possibly know what Lucas would have rejected? How would you know what exactly Lucas had in mind for Luke or what Abrams thought his role would be? The only things that we do know, is that Lucas envisioned him to at some point be somewhat like Colonel Kurtz, and that Abrams set up the story for the next director to move it wherever he wants to take it. He himself might have opted for a different path if he had been in charge of VIII, but that is entirely irrelevant. What matters is that he set up the story as open as possible.

I also don't get where these weird ideas about Finn come from. There isn't really anything to support them, nothing beyond baseless speculation. Rey as the main protagonist and Kylo Ren / Ben as the main antagonist were always the ones who the whole story would center around and thus would require some sort of emotional connection to increase its impact. Finn, meanwhile, is the co-star, and he got exactly that role in TLJ as well. Luke had hardly any moments with Han and Leia in ESB, but how dare Finn not be paired with Rey in TLJ after TFA specifically split them up?
Finn had the third most screentime in TLJ, and got an entire story-arc just for himself. The fact remains, he had an important role in the movie and got lots of time to further develop his character. To judge this story-arc it couldn't be less relevant whether someone liked it or not, as that has no impact on what transpires on screen. And funnily enough, IX seems to head into a direction that Johnson originally had come up with as well, before opting for a three-arc split instead: pairing Poe and Finn for a prolonged amount of time.

Or, more likely, you just have absolutely no clue what they did or didn't do, and now proceed to opt for the most negative interpretation because you don't like the product they delivered. As if you disliking it could only come from them having a chaotic production.

They clearly did have a road-map, multiple people involved with the production have confirmed as much. What they didn't have was an exact plan of what would happen in each episode. You know, exactly how Lucas always made his movies as well. Lucas never had anything more than the broad strokes of the general story of the trilogy, and made up each episode only when it was time to make it. Heck, Vader wasn't even Anakin in ANH or at the start of development for ESB. You'd think that this would be a rather important detail to have set right away. The Emperor wasn't even close to what he ended up as either. And that's the thing, development happens, you constantly get new ideas and change things, and what seemed like a core pillar of the story gets left behind because something totally different takes it place. There was absolutely nothing unusual abou their approach, nor is there anything that suggests that a clearly defined storyline is in any way superior to making it up as you go, as clearly shown by Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

It shows the hypocrisy of people who bash an approach that they had zero problems with earlier on.

 

^ How did they clearly have a road map, if RJ confirmed over and over, or should I say bragged, that he could do WHATEVER HE WANTED? That means no road map.

 

Yeah Finn learns how to let go of his selfish wants in two back to back movies WOW!!!

JJ literally said RJ took his story in another direction.

RJ literally said he was given freedom to write the story that he wanted - before a principal photography on TFA began - and noted it as a positive as it gave him more "freedom".

"Hypocrisy of people who bash an approach that they had zero problems with earlier on"? No. Who made YOU the authority on how other people think?

A large amount of fans criticized the mystery box approach while at the same time praising TFA as an overall enjoyable movie - and acknowledged that its legacy hinged on if Ep 8 delivered on the mystery boxes it set up.

They were ALREADY criticizing it for being a remake of ANH - but giving it a chance in the event that the sequel would justify its existence.

 

That's stupid though. It's the exact path that each episode goes down that matters in the end. They still have to build on top of each other. It's just a roundabout way of saying they get the general idea but have not refined the details which is really just as bad because in the end, all you have is an outline, not a fleshed-out story.

The problem with making comparisons to the OT was that the OT during release was essentially the saga in its infancy. It was a time where they were still trying to figure out a broader story that Lucas and co. realized they could now actually do where previously they were unsure that ANH would have actually succeeded financially. Everyone involved in writing the new films now are writing Star Wars films in an era in which the series is iconic, has had a whole other trilogy released and is now under the biggest entertainment conglomerate existing today. Lucas during the late '70s had no idea what would come of his creation. Everyone under Disney now has the luxury to actually write out a full story and they ultimately chose to wing it. Instead of using their resources to make something great, they used the scale of the franchise to be lazy.

 

Sorry to say but it seems pretty clear that even if they did have a roadmap they did not follow it.

An easy example to point to is the character of Snoke. If the plan was (as they now claim) always to have Palpatine return, dramatically it makes sense to have that happen at the end of VIII and not IX. You don't introduce your overarching villain in movie 3, that makes no sense at all. The character Snoke may as well have not existed for all that he amounted to in the story. If Snoke is going to turn out to BE Palpatine all along, again that reveal should have come in VIII. And regardless, I think a lot of people (myself included) are only cool with the whole return of Palps thing now because they were so dissappointed by the villains we ended up with.

The whole "map to Luke" thing is another thing that makes absolutely no sense in the context of the trilogy as a whole. In TFA its implied Luke is searching for the first Jedi temple for some kind of reason but in TLJ he outright states he was just looking for somewhere to die. Why would he choose an extremely force-sensitive place to go cut himself off from the force? Returning to Tatooine or literally anywhere else would make more sense. These kinds of character inconsistencies can be found throughout the two released films in the sequel trilogy and imply that there was not a plan at all for the arc of these characters and story outside of a vague "VII is for Han, VIII is for Luke, IX is for Leia" type of deal.

 

I have to think that preserving the Palpatine reveal for TROS was a guiding narrative choice from early in the development of the sequel trilogy. I think that's part of why crucial narrative developments in between trilogies (the fall of Ben Solo / the rise of Snoke / the rise of the First Order) were pushed into offscreen exposition and backstory because Palpatine likely had some influence over them, but to show those as they happen would be giving away things too early.

I think it's fair to suggest that possibly bumping up the Palpatine reveal for the end of TLJ would have had more weight dramatically. It certainly would have provided a big cliffhanger to lead into TROS, even if it would feel like a post-credit sequence. But ultimately, just as Palpatine doesn't become a major player in the OT until ROTJ and doesn't reveal himself as Sidious in ROTS until halfway through, saving his reveal for TROS works fine for me from a structural perspective.

 

I think it's fair to say that we should take a wait and see approach, but I will reserve the right to critique the Palpatine return angle if we don't end up getting the necessary backstory to justify it.

I want to think that Palpatine is the reason why some of the key backstory (the fall of Ben Solo / the rise of Snoke / the rise of the First Order) has been left out thus far, but it still strikes me as odd we would need to wait for the final movie to understand the context of the whole story.

 

@godisawesome

I heard a intersting theory regarding Uber, and Talon that Uber actually was Palpatine and Talon became Snoke....Since Talon was supposed to ‘seduce’ jedi and Snoke seduce Kylo aka the Jedi Killer.

Though to be fair, TFA is what dropped the ball on Snoke/the First Order/ and the whole war in terms of just basic expostion, I mean you didn’t need to go in depth about it.

Now TROS can make Snoke’s dismissal work if he really was not the big bad and Uber was Palpatine the whole time if you believe that Palpatine was in the cards for a while. At least for me.

I know Rian said when he was working on TLJ he really had little to go on at first.

Poe for example is a character in TLJ compared to TFA when he was originally just supposed to die.

TROS will be I think the only script were the Director/Writer did have some space....Although JJ said he submitted his script pre TLJ’s release, although re-wrote a lot during filming but that’s not intently unusual I think TFA worked that way too.

Though i guess really at the end of the day it all boils down too, does it boil down to you or not. And if it does then there is not problem is it doesn’t then problem. For me it does.

 

If this was really the case, I feel like Palpatine's lingering influence should have been a stronger theme in the first two films. But really, aside from one passing mention by Luke, no one cares about him. It's all about Darth Vader. That's what makes Palpatine's apparent ascension to ultimate Big Bad of the sequel trilogy feel so unearned and out of left field. It feels very strongly like something the powers-that-be pulled out of their hat after backing themselves into a narrative corner. I don't buy that it was planned all along.

Of course we'll have to wait and see before making final judgments about the execution.

 

I completely agree with you, I was just trying to put forward a positive attitude about the whole thing. If Palpating really was to be the big bad all along then it makes the decisions made along the way even more baffling, as there has seemingly been absolutely zero setup for a return of Palpatine storyline.