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

That would have been immeasurably superior in every conceivable way. The problem with the direction Lucasfilm/Abrams took was that they wanted separation from the previous films, in that they wanted new 'young' and 'sexy' characters, but they weren't willing to take any risks whatsoever. As a consequence, TFA is a totally vanilla film (IMHO), in terms of its concepts, themes, characters and situations. There's tons of creative ways they could have set a sequel directly after ROTJ, if they had so desired, one of which is by not having Luke, Leia and Han in the sequels at all... but of course TPTB wanted to denigrate the OT3 in order to show how much better the new heroes were.

 

There were so many ways to tell stories set after the OT. The ST which is essentially a reboot is the one that should have been set a few hundred or a thousand years later and have it be the cycle repeating or something. They even could have told a story set 30 years after TFA and had it been interesting.

Set up Snoke as a new player that turned the ashes of the empire into the First Order in the Unknown Regions. Let him be someone that deserves to be a legitimate threat to the New Republic.

Don’t destroy the Republic we have had hours of entertainment about its fall and restoration just sweeping it away on one stroke in TFA was just terrible you want to blow up the capital and cripple it sure but to just wipe it out.....

Actually dive into the fall of Ben Solo so we can get a true redemption arc. Don’t destroy the Jedi i think it would have been far more interesting to have had Rey been one of Luke’s surviving students that worked with the Resistance but also wanted to find her Master who went in search of ancient lots about the Unknown Regionsand just exactly what type of threat Snoke represents. Having a dichotomy between Kylo and Rey right from the start would have been great.

Essentially just don’t make an inferior remake of the OT with incredibly bad storytelling across three films so much so that it’s like we have 3 separate movies that each belong in a different trilogy.

 

Although I liked the first two sequels, I can't help but think it might have been interesting if the sequels 'flipped' the plot trope of the OT - instead of a 'bad' totalitarian regime and a 'good' rebellion, the rebels were the bad guys, against the New Republic, but things weren't quite so black and white.

 

Agreed. If you look back throughout history, some of the most brutal regimes are born from 'revolution' and civil war... So it would have been very interesting to see a 'Galactic Alliance' (or New Republic) turning sour. It's of course a challenge to make these things fundamentally different to what was depicted in the OT/PT, but I do believe there was some mileage in showing a 'New Republic' not being the thing Luke and Leia envisioned it would be.

 

Yes, an insurgency. Like ISIS, with Kylo Ren leading them as a fundamentalist. I too thought this would have been a better angle.

 

Or better yet it started out that way and then because of what happened during the Republic as well as the Galactic Civil War the former "seperatists" systems rise to power and make things harsh and brutal on core systems that supported the Empire and make this a slow gradual insidious change and have the galaxy on the verge of repeating now the GCW but the Clone Wars except instead of being manipulated it's all out in the open and the Jedi and others are trying to keep this New Republic from falling within the first few decades

 

Yes, and I like the sequels. But we all wanted to know what happened with Luke, Leia, and Han. This series could have still filled in gaps while making the main story about the 3 new leads, but we were given almost no backstory about what happened between the two trilogies. I can't believe they chose to give us almost nothing.

 

Problem is, movies deal with big events. So if years between ROTJ and TFA were only about building up to the big event but not the event itself, if they did small scale stuff such as chasing the remnants of the Empire, trying to pacify crime lords, training the new Jedi, etc, that stuff was less likely to be in movies. Now they have streaming shows which are the right medium for those smaller scale adventures. or it would take another PT where 3 movies have a span of over a decade so that the last movie could be the payoff of all the build-up that came before. Which they didn't want to do.

 

That can't really be used as an excuse, as Abrams et al aren't doing an adaptation of an actual historical event. It's up to the writers to determine where the drama is... and how events unfold. And unfortunately (IMHO), they chose to focus it on a meaningless relationship between Rey and Kylo, Luke being a dick and Palpatine being magically resurrected with a 'Sith battle fleet' at his command. As it stands (in terms of the internal history the ST has created), the real drama is about why the New Republic failed to an extent that Leia left it, what led Ben to be so disenfranchised by the coolest parents in the galaxy, and what would make Luke (the most powerful and positive force for good in the galaxy) turn into a complete ass. That's where the emotion and drama is in this story, and they chose the most derivative and unimaginative elements to focus on.

 

I think for the movies you have to have large conflics like the clone wars and galactic civil war. So they had to be at war at least with someone and tradegy would happen.

 

But that's too like PT. That's why they picked part of the story that was the most like OT. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying that's how their minds work.

@Fredrik Vallestrand yes, they have to insert War into movies because that's the brand name. Marvel can do without war because their brand is anything superhero but SW is very much limited by Star and Wars. There has to be some star hopping and there has to be some large conflict, war or similar.

 

Rebuilding the Jedi is not “small scale”

 

My biggest regret is I got invested in these films.
I loved Kylo's character. I identified with him in many ways (apart from the patricide, but my dad was a great father!).
I liked Rey, particularly in TFA.
I liked Finn, I thought the idea of a stormtrooper turning'good' was interesting - I like 'shades of grey' characters. One of my favourite films is Princess Mononoke, which deals with that in spades.
I liked Rose, her kindness to animals, and the fact that she was an ordinary person with a big heart, rather than a Princess or Force sensitive.
I was willing to forgive the ANH similarities in TFA, because I liked the new characters, and wanted to see what they did next.
I loved TLJ. Yes, I loved the Reylo scenes - it is allowed, just as you're allowed to hate it! But I also liked that it showed the Resistance as less than perfect, and I honestly thought this would be expanded upon in IX.
TROS is one of the most disappointing cinematic experiences I've ever had - if not THE most disappointing. All the possibilities TLJ hinted at were ignored. Something fresh and different was sacrificed for a third rate rehash of ROTJ. But most of all, they killed off Ky!o, wasted Finn, ignored Rose and deified Rey. The entire saga threw away three fascinating and complex characters and completely ruined the other one by trying to make her into Miss Perfection.
As a clinical depressant I walked out of this film feeling thoroughly and utterly miserable. Never thought it'd happen with Star Wars. And I never thought it'd happen with a Disney film either.

I guess I've grown too old for the franchise. Time to forget it.

 

If we look at the ST and the three films not discussing quality or anything. TFA started everything, TLJ threw away alot of TFA and then TROS threw a lot of TLJ. Each film feels like they are in their own version of the ST and barely even connected. After TLJ and Rian deciding not to continue it was quite clear that TROS was going to be a giant mess.

 

To make money.

 

Like all SW movies.

 

I went we should all just "Learn to let go". The good thing about TFA kind of being a reboot is that it is very easy to ignore in everything pre Luke's temple being destroyed such as The Mandalorian. I hope Mandalorian season 2 keeps away from the sequels, I do not want to see the First Order. I believe the Imperial group in the show is a separate entity, the ST already had multiple Imperial groups anyway with the First Order and the Final Order. As for the post sequel stuff that'll probably just be books/comics so it will be easy to ignore as well.

 

yes it is. Luke worked with about dozen of students who really had no dark siders to fight. So there was no story until Ben fell to the dark side. basically what fans didn't like about PT. jedi sitting on Ikea futons biding time till Anakin destroyed them. One massive arena scene where they fought a bloodless battle against battle droids notwithstanding.

 

Mandalorian and future shows in this era won't ignore the sequels, lol. most of the people making those love at least one of them and won't ignore.

 

I self medicate by writing fanfiction on my computer. I'll never post on fanfiction.com or AoA. I write it purely for myself.
I'm pretty sure it's utter ****, but it's great therapy!

 

SAME. I've rewritten the prequels and I just finished VII at the end of last year.

 

That is one of the biggest mistakes of the ST, with Rey never participating in Luke’s Academy.

One of my biggest issues with the ST is the lack of positive legacy for the Academy. It’s legacy can be described in two words.....death.......evil. A little bit of good returns when Ben comes back, but with his death complete extinction of that era of Jedi.

But if at least Rey was a surviving student (with preferably more Jedi training later with Luke) of Luke’s Academy it’s legacy will live on in a positive light.

It could help by her having a close relationship with pre-grumpy Luke. Explain some of her skills with the force. Better explain her want to save Ben Solo from the dark side. The whole becoming an adopted skywalker is also improved since she has spent more time training under a skywalker then she did in the ST.

 

The phantom menace says hello.

While it’s understandble for films to focus on large scale galactic conflicts, it’s not a necessity.

I would have preferred an Episode 7 to be set before all out war breaks out amongst the New Republic and First Order.

Also the High Republic is coming, a period of galactic scale peace, but still with room for smaller conflicts. Maybe we will never get a film in that era, but even so, their are other time periods with large wars absent that a new film can be set in.

I highly doubt Disney will make a rule that new Star Wars films can only be set during galactic scale wars.

 

A trilogy has to has large scale conflicts. And TPM should have started with the clone wars.