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

How is that really all that different than the OT. That trilogy dealt with both and showed how somethings are stronger than blood. By the end of the film, the orphaned farm boy protagonist has found family, friends, mentors, enemies, alliances, and allies. Even dark side ones.

 

I think the decisive savior in the OT conflict was the power of family, though. Luke would never have tried to reach the Anakin in Vader had he not known of his heritage. In the ST, it was the power of community— not just a legion of non-military citizens coming to the fight, but the voices of all the Jedi speaking to and empowering Rey.

 

This was touted as a part of the Skywalker Saga though. Community is fine, and I would say that the OT certainly involved a lot of people working together as a rebel community; which is great. However the skywalker saga was basically supposed to be a family story told against the backdrop of a galactic civil war in an enormous, varied galaxy. However, the ST spent more time and energy destroying, humiliating, and finally killing off the entire Skywalker family than it spent building up community.

In my opinion, the ST tore down far more than it built up. Thanks to the ST, it seems that it would have been far better for the galaxy if none of the skywalkers had never been born. They were all either evil villains who were responsible for the deaths of trillions, or they were total failures, or both. Even Luke and Leia ( and Han) ended up being terrible for the galaxy, as Leia became the mother of the villain, Kylo; and Han, his father; while Luke was the catalyst who started kylo on his evil path, and then never tried to bring him back or help defeat him. The ST turned Skywalker family members who were heroes, into failures who brought much death and destruction to the galaxy. The ST ruined the family story and left no family and very little “community” in its place. I think that is a TERRIBLE thing for a sequel trilogy to do to its predecessor.

ST fans seem to try to keep coming up with some grand theme or purpose to the ST, when in my opinion, there is absolutely nothing there. It’s very like the children’s tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, with a lot of praise and spin, but nothing there at all. As I keep saying, the ST subtracted MUCH from the Lucas story, but added absolutely nothing.

 

I honestly don't see a difference. This was in ROTJ. When Yoda tells Luke one last time before he dies, that "last of the Jedi you will be", it's same theme. The same message. The same sense of heritage and community. The same pep talk. Only it's more visualized and literal in the ST, and placed within the fight. Luke uses his additional family connection to save his father. Rey doesn't.

I dunno. If that's all the ST does, I would say that's not much of it's own story or reason for existing.

 

I think the whole "all of the Jedi" thing just serves to make Rey seem more exceptional than it did in getting across any meaningful message about ''community''. A community of dead people Rey doesn't even know?...

On one hand, I like the idea of this grand finale involving all the Jedi banding together to defeat the villain in one giant Spirit Bomb, but at the same time... they're only doing it to help Rey. Where were they in any other fights? Same thing with Force healing; why wasn't that used to save anyone before? Because they weren't Rey and Kylo, I guess.

 

To show what happened to Luke's family and the destruction of the Sith, I guess.

 

I think this idea would have been better represented if say, Rey, Finn, Poe, and any of the new Jedi, as a group go up against Palpatine. Kind of like how Mace and the crew went up against him in ROTS, but underestimated him, and immediately failed. I think the spirits of dead Jedi pep talking Rey Palpatine into killing her grandfather once and for all isn't the sense of new community that some think.

 

Thing with Rey and Palpatine is that i think there is some merit to be had with that family connection. but in the film itself it does feel so tacked on. probably because it was. the message they could have really isn't there. and i don't mean Rey needs to try and bring Palpatine round to her side. Palpatine would just laugh in her face. the point is for Rey to feel weighed down by her own heritage and what it means to her. but that wasn't actually a thing in the film. sure she shoots lightning out her hands to show she is related to Palpatine but i think it needed more.

In terms of what it added to the saga...nothing. it struggled to know how to add, it just wanted to be the OT.

Really it was always just gonna be the main Jedi who confronted Palpatine. its like saying why wasn't Leia with Luke on the deathstar... because even though it could have added having both Vaders children there... she wasn't the main Jedi.

 

Or even just have Palpatine tempt her.

Seriously I think they have all of one conversation.

 

That's not the point I'm making. Darth Articulate up top was referring to how the ST's theme (and how it supposedly advances the saga story) is about community (whereas the OT was about family), and how they feel this is represented by all the ghosts speaking to Rey during the final fight. (((I think))). My point was that if community was supposed to be this advancing story/theme, then maybe we'd have some living Jedi community and not dead ones. Because basically the scene is the same as the ROTJ one where Luke gets the pep talk from yoda telling him "last of the Jedi you will be".

 

Not just all the Jedi, but a bunch of non-military citizens gathering to overpower the FO. Personally, I agree that it could have been stronger, but it is there. Whereas the PT was about the conflict between family and civil duty and the OT was about the saving grace of family, the ST feels like it wanted to/was naturally called to be about the synthesis of both family and civil duty in community.

 

What’s the difference though between that and the community of rebels who came together and worked together to defeat the emperor and his forces in RotJ?? I don’t see how the ST added anything new there at all. We had Luke on the Death Star doing his part by confronting Vader and the emperor. We had Leia and Han and the rebel forces AND the Ewoks working together on the Endor moon. We also had Lando and chewie and all of those forces on ships waging a huge space battle against imperial ships. They were all part of a community working together doing their parts to defeat palpatine, Vader, and all of the imperial ground and space forces. The skywalker family and the other groups of rebel military and even civilians ( Ewoks) worked together to achieve a goal. And they were all victorious....until the ST took EVERYTHING away from all of them.

I also think that the OT did it far, far better than the ST.

 

The Ewoks do give me pause in this line of thought, but they don’t seem to be the ones who were oppressed by the Empire. They seemed to be taken by the Rebel story and were fighting for their God 3PO. Their fight was more like an act of worship, whereas the larger citizenry of the galaxy fighting in TROS were all fighting for survival.

The Ewoks were primitive. They had very little interest in the Empire that was building shop right above them and the Empire clearly had little interest in them. They didn’t spring to action until their god regaled the entire OT to them.

 

What was the sequel trilogy's purpose?
To erase all the Skywalkers and replace them with their new characters, who Disney believed were better. With the exception of Palpatine, whose seed lives on. Mission accomplished.

 

It absolutely does not do any of the above. It rewrites the story with a good deal less heart and emotion than the Lucas films. @ChildOfWinds and @PendragonM are understandably upset in what it does to the OT characters and story. My issue lies in what it does to the PT characters and story. I'm 47 and I love the PT just as much as the OT. I can't stand what the ST did to Anakin Skywalker. He gave up his life to stop the horror that he'd helped Palpatine unleash on the galaxy thus bringing fulfillment to the prophecy. (Not interested in debating whether or not prophecy worked for all. Lucas said he was the Chosen One and the story worked for me. If you hate the PT and or Anakin then of course this works for you.) When I watch Lucas' films it's the story of the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker yet this particular legacy character is no where to be found in the ST.

The ST changes the story to give Rey Palpatine the accomplishment of killing the galaxy's most cunning villain. Anakin isn't given any recognition for his previous defeat of Palpatine but his unnamed force ghost is apparently good enough to give Rey that extra boost. I am really thankful I didn't have to watch Anakin's ghost give up his essence completely for her to defeat someone he had already removed from the story.

Anakin is never once mentioned in any of the films by name. The ST dwells on Darth Vader as if that persona was the definitive end of Anakin's character arc. Having Kylo aspire to be like Vader doesn't do any justice to Anakin's legacy. Especially when the ST wants to make it known that redemption is absolutely the end game for the lip quibbler automatically because he is a Skywalker descendant. It creates a Luke who appears to only remember that Vader existed rather than the role he played in redeeming him. Luke, Leia and Han are never shown to take any comfort in the memory that Luke successfully went up against a dark sider and turned the tide. Wouldn't that be a natural factor in the idea that Kylo could be redeemed? Instead the notion that Ren can be turned and its misguided effort comes from someone who has no connection to the family.

I appreciate Luke as much as the next person and while the OT appeared to be his hero's journey, once the PT came into the picture, Return of the Jedi took on a new meaning for me. Anakin Skywalker was just as present in the first 6 films as Palpatine was, except Anakin was both hero and villain. For all the destruction of the OT3's accomplishments, the ST erases the redemptive story of the original Skywalker and turns him into a party trick for a Palpatine family fight. Then, at the very end, his name is given to Rey Palpatine and we're expected to rejoice. Thanks but no thanks.

 

I love Kylo Ren. Unashamedly. He'll always be my favourite SW character. Ever. But at the end, this is not just about Kylo, but what the ST was supposed to tell us.
What was it about, really? The OT gave us three characters we loved. But for some bizarre reason DLF wanted them gone.
Let's stop thinking about who we loved and hated and sit back dispassionately to look at what they could have done.
They don't want the Skywalkers? Fine. How about setting the story centuries in the future? But...no. They won't do that?
Okay, they want the Skywalkers. So....why not make Rey Luke, Leia or Han's long lost child? Um...no.
Why make Kylo Han and Leia's tragic, long lost son if they simply wanted to kill him off? Why not make him a one note Darth Maul type?

Over and over I have tried to think of a rational explanation. But there isn't one. DLF Have no logical explanation for what they did. Except that they wanted the legacy characters dead, and their own heir dead....by saving the last Palpatine.

They made the bad guy win. End of. And I will never understand why.

 

I agree with all that... What always seems totally bizarre to me is that they make TFA, which for me is a very 'made by committee' approach to Star Wars e.g. it doesn't try and offend, it relies on nostalgia and existing iconography, it doesn't take creative risks etc., but then, for the direct sequel, they bring in a relatively inexperienced filmmaker and give him creative control to basically rip up everything that happens in the previous film. Was it that Lucasfilm were offended by the criticisms of TFA being 'too derivative' and being a 'reboot'? I don't know... but it just seems very odd that they allow two films to be so at odds with each other, in terms of approach and in terms of story/characters... and then that gets further compounded in TROS.

 

Part of why the ST mostly fails for me (particularly 7 and 9) is its unwillingness to engage with and deepen the themes of Star Wars. The PT honed in on the idea of how human fears and attachments get in the way of using the Force in a balanced way, and the Jedi's policy of denying your emotions meant it wasn't prepared to deal with emotionally wounded Anakin, and Darth Sidious could spin a trap for him. I expected the sequel trilogy to build on that conversation. As Frank Oz put it, "George would probably have had a more overall arc that would follow the other stories and have a moral depth ... But, my gosh, what J.J. did was really entertaining. It was so much fun.” Was that fun worth the cost to the story? Not for me.

I hated that TFA undid the OT just to repeat it, but if there were a thematic reason for it, then I'd have come around. TLJ tried to grapple with that. The movie avowedly asks (through Luke) why the same stuff has happened again and how the next generation needs to change. At first I didn't like the choice Johnson made that Luke has seemingly modeled his Jedi order on exactly what went before (unlike his EU incarnation whose new order seemed to allow for more humanity instead of requiring Jedi to deny it). But, accepting that choice, the film asked a big question of how do you break this cycle? It set us up for a finale where the antagonist embodies the idea that without darkness you are weak, and the protagonist has to come up with an answer to that, potentially heralding a new approach to the Force. Duel of the Fates tried to do that, explicitly trading in prequel themes. By contrast TROS is (according to Chris Terrio) concerned with two questions: "who is Rey?" and "how strong is the Force?" I wasn't that interested in the first question, and the latter is kind of meaningless.

Bringing back Palpatine could have been interesting if it forced the protagonist to do something new to win. Anakin gave into his fear of loss. Luke pulled back from that and was willing to die for the Jedi way. Is that the choice? Turn evil or die? Episode IX could have had Rey work to figure something new out. The deus ex machina of "all the Jedi" and reflecting lightning with two lightsabers definitely ain't that.

Michael Arndt has talked about the idea of philosophical stakes as central to a strong ending: that the protagonist should be fighting a thematic battle as well as a physical or emotional one. If the ST has philosophical stakes in its ending, they boil down to: 1) does being the descendant of evil make you evil too? Well we already saw with Luke the son of Vader that no it doesn't necessarily. 2) "How'd you do it? Defeat an empire with almost nothing." "We had each other. That's how we won" - again we already saw this, and anyway it is so reductively simple here that it's meaningless. I wanted to see our heroes build something new, which is what Lucas's ST supposedly would have been about. That's much more difficult. "Winning is easy young man, governing's harder" so to speak.

I wrote an article about philosophical stakes and TROS, and I turned it into a video too:



And I made a video about how Episode X could fix some of these problems:

 

It is a really bizarre strategy. I don't think TLJ was made in response of TFA's criticisms though because I don't think there was enough time. TLJ began production only two months after TFA was released. I could see TLJ being Rian Johnson's response to what he saw as an over-reliance on OT nostalgia in the TFA script. That still doesn't explain why Disney had an about face on their strategy in their greenlighting of both Abram's and Johnson's visions for the ST likely before TFA was even released. I didn't like TFA, but I was in the minority and it more or less succeeded in uniting the fanbase after the PT division. And then they follow that up with possibly the most divisive Star Wars film ever. Did they really think TLJ wouldn't be divisive?

 

From what I remember (maybe this was just a rumor but i thought I read it was official) didn't LFL have to ask RJ to add in more Rey, Finn and Poe scenes to his script because they realized that their protagonists were actually - SHOCK FACE - popular with audiences. Poe was supposed to die off, but due to how awesome an actor Oscar Isaac is, they kept him in. So at some point, that news trickled down to RJ, who had to rewrite whatever he was already doing.

How does that even happen? Why would you need to tell your second writer-director to add in more scenes of characters you just invented. Why wouldn't you already have him making the story about them?

And then on top of this, Rey, Finn, and Poe are largely written very differently than what we got in TFA. Rey was naive and ends up in love with Kylo. Finn was back to being a coward who needed to make a choice. And Poe was just a hot head pilot who can't follow orders. The script forgets what they just endured 24 hours before, when each one basically saved millions of lives. I'd even question the three arcs even making any sense within their own stories. Finn's is largely pointless. Poe's doesn't make sense. And Rey is turned into a second protagonist behind Kylo Ren.

It's like RJ didn't actually read the TFA script, or even watch the movie until way later in his own creative process. But in any case, it certainly wasn't in response to any public TFA criticisms.

 

Wasn't there a whole Blood Diamond Caper story that was originally part of the Canto mission. I thought that I once read that RJ asked if he could cut all of Canto out of the movie, because at some point he didn't like it, and LFL said no because they already built the sets.

I can't tell what was rumors or not at this point. But...I still to this day, don't think TLJ was as smooth as they played it. RJ finished production way ahead of schedule but I don't think that means it was all smooth sailing.

 

I can certainly believe that what's on screen isn't that different to Johnson's first draft, because it certainly doesn't feel like a script that's been agonised over, and whipped into a finely honed piece of work. It would explain the real lack of momentum in the film, the superfluous scenes/dialogue (Canto Bite for one), and the fact that not one character in the film actually accomplishes anything... except from perhaps Kylo, who kills Snoke and becomes supreme leader. The dichotomy for me is that I quite like Johnson... he has an 'independent filmmaker' vibe to him, he was willing to take some creative risks and he was obviously on point for writing and directing it... but man, TLJ is such a huge misfire in terms of implementation/delivery. The pacing is all over the place, sub-par MCU type humour undercutting every other scene etc. etc.