ST Tidbits from TFA that had unfulfilled potential...

No, I meant that I thought TLJ was setting up KYLO to fill that role. I expected IX to have Supreme Leader Kylo Ren as the big bad, but defeated through redemption rather than death.

I think you can have Kylo be the clear 'antagonist' for most of the movie, and be redeemed at the very end. Whether he is sympathetic antagonist or not (sympathetic antagonists do work in movies).

100% agree. I felt the same way about Snoke, the First Order, the Resistance, Kylo Ren, etc.

 

Oh right... yes I agree. It was clear to me that Johnson was trying to shape Kylo into the main/chief antagonist.

I agree with the principle of what you state, but I think it would be a real challenge in its realisation. Sympathetic antagonists do work for sure, but usually within fiction, redeemed villains, of fallen heroes/anti-heroes, usually need to show they've been manipulated/misled or corrupted by someone more 'evil' (or have someone more evil to fight), in order for audiences to feel sympathy. Off the top of my head... Vader and the Emperor (obviously), Othello and Iago, Snape and Voldermort, Jamie Lannister and Cersei or even Gollum and Sauron. I can't quite put my finger on pertinent/successful examples of the main antagonist being redeemed in fiction, where another chief villain doesn't exist... Doc Oc in Spiderman2 perhaps (?), but he's kind of mind controlled.

 

Luke's face at the end of TFA expresses a different emotion than in TLJ. I guess Rian didn't read Episode 7's script.

 

Your post only confirms my thinking: TLJ, although a impressive movie in some points, did well worse to this trilogy than TRoS. Johnson had complete creative control over the film, as far as I know, and chose the worst path possible for the story to go.

 

I have never liked the Anakins saber being Excalibur idea. i mean it almost seems like people are creating some kinda image that doesn't actually exist. there is nothing special about that lightsaber. except maybe having the ghost of many dead children behind it. but because the whole chosen one angle is with anakin people kinda assume the saber should have some meaning... but no its just a saber. it would make more sense to be passed down through heritage and to me this is an annoyance of the sequel trilogy. all 3 movies were written from an in the box thinking perspective. similar to burying the sabers on tatooine. it only makes sense from in the box thinking. but actually doesn't make sense when you really think about it.

 

Agreed. Lucas shows that the attachment to it for Luke was emotional/sentimental (and maybe Obi-Wan too), but it's not 'special'... other than it was used to kill Dooku, lop off Mace's arm and kill Jedi/Jedi younglings. So it seems to me it's been used in as many dark deeds as good. So I've never been convinced by the 'Excalibur' motif, as excalibur was imbued with magic, whereas Anakin's sabre has just seen a bit of action...

 

Agreed. Luke didn't even blink twice about losing that saber on Bespin. In the first movie it's basically a hook. Obi-wan is trying to get Luke to come along. The saber represents his fallen father. So Luke wants to use that weapon to then kill Vader. Now that he knows Vader is his father, he doesn't need that weapon anymore. He needs to become stronger on the inside instead.

I think if the ST wanted to recapture this theme, Leia should have had Luke's green saber all this time. And Rey doesn't find it randomly in some bar basement, but is given the saber by Leia. Leia gives her the saber, so Rey can hand it to him, as some sort of reminder of his Jedi days. It's like saying "Give this to him, he's needed again".

The ST mucks up the message, because the saber is supposed to want Rey, ala Excalibur, and it takes the entire movie for her to accept her path. She finally uses to to defend herself against Kylo and sees her potential. But then next scene she's handing back to Luke.

 

I actually didn't notice this at all the first time I watched TFA, but I love that the film doesn't draw very much attention to it. It's a subtle thing you look back at and go "Aww, he probably thought about Rey being cold and gave it to her." And it's so much bigger when you realize Rey is comfortable enough with Finn to accept the jacket, considering it's a far cry from her not wanting him to take her hand when they first met.

There was never a small, touching moment like that for the rest of the trilogy, for me at least (maybe the TLJ hug, but mostly because of John/Daisy's acting and Williams's fantastic score doing the heavy lifting). Those two were the heart and soul of TFA, while the latter two films tried to turn Kylo into that.

 

It's just symbolism.

 

The symbolism does not have any in universe meaning. I believe it's just a nice reference to old real world tales such as king Arthur. Literally just symbolism. But I totally get your point.

 

The two biggest things that bother me is that we never found out in the movies how Maze got Luke’s lightsaber and they never explored the Knights of Ren which could’ve been an awesome thing for the lore of the franchise.

 

Well that’s kind of how the ST deals with detail... ‘don’t ask that question... look here’s an x-wing’...
What Abrams does, and I find it more specific to him, is that he can replicate a formula, but he doesn’t actually understand what goes into it/what’s behind it at all. It’s like when you can copy a piece of code, or Microsoft Excel formula, to complete an action... but you don’t understand what the “$&123COUNTALL”actually means... you just know you can copy and paste it and it kind of works. He’s an extremely unsophisticated filmmaker IMO... and the ST pays the cost for that lack of sophistication.

 

• Knights of Ren: Whether they're old students of Luke's, or new students of Kylo's...whatever.
• Luke's New Jedi Order: Could have been other Jedi out there somewhere for Rey to find.
• New Republic: Despite being blown up, I thought we'd see a The New Republic Strikes Back kinda episode, where the we their surviving fleets crush/chase the FO.
• Stormtrooper uprising: Can't just let all those kidnapped kids turned programmed troopers get killed, right? Finn should have led an underground trooper revolt.
• Jakku: Rey's former 'family' on Jakku didn't really matter much, but there could have been a moment where Jedi Rey goes back to her old boss for a shakedown of information on her parents. And to see how far she's grown. I dunno. I also don't think the parents question was resolved in a fulfilling manner anyway.
• Snoke: Could have been anything. But Hugh Hefner wearing gold bathrobe 9 foot tall Emperor clone who just dies...eh. Unfulfilled potential.

 

The Skywalker lightsaber worked perfectly for me. Especially in TFA, where the symbolism of legacy was strongest, as others have said. It’s not a disappointing to me that Rey turned out to be unrelated to the Skywalkers by blood. Legacy’s not just about blood, and her being a relative seems completely unnecessary and not as powerful. When the lightsaber goes to Rey instead of to Kylo in TFA, that was a powerful moment for me, where the Force chose her to carry on the Jedi legacy.

Having said that, I do think the rest of the movies failed to establish that legacy by not having a more traditional apprenticeship for Rey. TLJ does still work for me, but I understand why it doesn’t for others, and so I wish they’d at least have given her and Luke more time. That way the audience would have more easily accepted Luke’s passing of the torch to her. Which he still did in TLJ, just in a less traditional sense.

Going beyond the lightsaber, I do agree and wish the Knights of Ren had been better used in the trilogy. Their archetypal role was so interesting. They were essentially what the Sith Lords originally were in Lucas’s early drafts for ANH: mercenaries taught the ways of the dark side by a fallen Jedi, and who now served a dictator and hunted down any remaining Jedi. I think the biggest issue may have been that a lot of great action and melodrama was relegated to backstory. I appreciate the movies’ focus on a new generation—new characters unrelated by blood to the legacy characters—but I wish they could’ve kept that aspect without sacrificing that dramatic story that happened before TFA.

Perhaps this could have been done if the Jedi had been revealed to only be in hiding by the end of TFA. Subsequent movies could then have focused not only on Rey’s (and Finn’s?) Jedi training but also on Kylo’s journey to dark-side mastery and his development into a more complete villain as he hunted down the Jedi along with his Knights and fought to establish a new Empire.

 

For me it's Snoke. I have no issue with him being killed in TLJ, but it would have been more impactful if we had got to know him better. Rian wasn't interested in who he was, but the audience certainly was, as this guy suddenly appeared on the scene after 6 movies and was allegedly powerful enough to corrupt Ben Solo. Who was he? Why was he as powerful as Palpatine? Where had he been all this time? This was the big uber-villain who was now leading a resurrected Empire, who was as big a threat as Palpatine and we were given 0 answers until TROS where we found out that he was some sort of dark side experiment which was anti-climactic.

 

I completely agree. Many people did find Snoke boring, and I would only agree that the movies didn’t do too much with him, though TFA certainly did more than enough. But like you said, his very presence and effect on the story make him interesting.

He was a giant, powerful, massively scarred Force user who seemingly appeared out of nowhere to become the new villain. Wanting him to have a bigger role wasn’t exactly like wanting a background character to have a full biography. He was literally created as a central part of the story!

 

There are some ways Snoke could have been made more interesting. After TFA, I thought he could have been a con all along. Like he doesn't really have force powers, he's a Wizard of Oz baddie, a don't look behind the curtain, all along type. Or is in a weakened state and requires Ben to become powerful again. The original Snoke concepts said they were going for something vampiric, so sucking the force from Ben could have been cool. I mean, that's what they ultimately went with but just shifted things to Palpatine-All-Along

Snoke had just enough mystery to warrant further explanation in the next episode. That he end up boring, is pretty much TLj's fault.

 

If Abrams or whoever was really dead set on that lightsaber being in the ST, they should have had it be in Kylo's possession along with Vader's helmet. All you need is an understanding that the villain is obsessed with Vader and thus you have a completely plausible reason for the lightsaber to be around. Just have Rey take it after she breaks free from her restraints on Starkiller Base (she never uses it before that anyway) and then have the story carry on from there.

Why they felt the need to have two random artifacts (the lightsaber and helmet) floating around the story with two unrelated backstories and then feeling the need to flesh out neither is beyond me.

 

Everything to do with Maz, probably should have just been Leia.

It could have made some sense if Leia had that saber. And gave it to Rey to coax Luke out of retirement.
It could have made some sense if Leia was the one who spotted Rey's force potential and gives her the pep talk. Which would have built up the connection to the Skywalkers.
It could have made some sense for Han to to go Leia first, when all this stuff starts to align and hit the fan.

Instead of making a pit stop at some bar, we could have spent more time with the Leia, the Resistance, or even the NR. And if Leia has the saber, that might be motivation for Kylo to be hunting her, and attacking the Resistance, and why she's desperate to give it to Luke.

 

I always thought that if JJ and Kasdan were adamant about Han not going directly to Leia, then Maz should have been Lando instead.

 

This trilogy needed a new Yoda. so Maz was introduced.

 

Luke Skywalker the Planet. So stationary you can chart his galactic position on a map.

(tbh TLJ kind of did that with Angsty Sulking Hermit Luke but I'm still vastly amused by the idea of "a map to Luke Skywalker")