Saga What does the ST add to the saga?

What does the sequel trilogy do to earn the titles "Episode 7" etc? How are the story and thematic ideas of the saga not concluded in Return of The Jedi? What does the ST add to the story?
Yes, the OT can stand without the PT, but IMO the PT (for those of you that take issue with the execution, I am also talking about the concept) enriches the OT by having Luke's father's story be similar to Luke's, but with an ending where Luke turns to the dark side. It makes you watch the OT in a new context. For example, if you watched the saga in chronological order, you might think that Luke could actually turn to the dark side even more than before the PT, since Anakin's big turning point was when he disobeyed his master to save his mother, just like Luke disobeyed his master to save his friends. It just makes the end of Return of The Jedi so powerful when Anakin's ghost appears, and you feel the rush of emotions that come with understanding that Luke saved his father by doing what his father could not. This was present before the PT, but with them, we can actually think back to moments like the "Padme's Ruminations" scene when we watch the last scene of RotJ.

What does the sequel trilogy do to justify saying that Return of The Jedi is no longer the conclusion to the saga? Because in my opinion, the story was over. Luke had overcome, Anakin had been redeemed, and the galaxy had been liberated.

Sidenote: the only post- RotJ content i've ever read that actually enriched the saga enough to be an "Episode 7" was Dark Empire. Specifically the finale where Luke talks about why he turned and what he learned about his father and the dark side of the force. THAT felt like a sequel that justified its existence.

Second sidenote: Darth_Nub shared a thought that i've had as well, and that is that the ST is more of an alternate sequel to ESB than a sequel to RotJ, and that's just embarrassingly unprofessional from Kasdan and JJ that they decided to film their Episode 6 fanfiction and pass it off as a sequel to Episode 6. (Which is why, in my opinion, the ST doesn't feel like a true continuation- it only respects two of the six movies that came before it.)

 

Huh? The Sequel trilogy does more to tie the prequels into the overall story than the Original trilogy does.

 

I don't agree, I feel that
1. The OT inherently ties into the PT by being the resolution of the story.
2. The ST ties into the PT *in meaningful ways* very little. Take my Dark Empire example above. The PT didn't even exist when Dark Empire was written, yet it is a better resolution to Luke's relationship to his father (the main character of the PT) than anything the Sequel Trilogy does. Question: Why hasn't Anakin spoken to Kylo Ren or Luke yet? Answer: JJ dislikes interacting with the PT.
There are more references to the PT in the ST, sure (since the PT didn't exist when the OT was made), but they are failing to mine the TREMENDOUS dramatic potential of things like Anakin's ghost.

 

............

 

I understand what you're getting at. But I don't see the PT and the OT as one unbroken saga. Anakin's fall is the PT, but going into ANH puts Vader squarely into the role of hired muscle used by the big bad to focus on a new hero. Yeah, we know that he's Vader's son, but:

1) That renders the reveal in ESB moot.
2) That makes Vader even less sympathetic since he's torturing and attempting to murder his children.
3) Ruins Luke's Farmboy origin by inserting him into a similar role Anakin was in during TPM.

So, while we do get a resolution for Vader in the story, we don't get an actual continuation of Vader's story, with the PT retroactively making several major plots in thr OT worse.

I actually saw a great breakdown of the trilogies somewhere:

PT = The Fall
OT = The Rise
ST = The Legacy

While it doesn't directly continue the story of Vader, it does tie the series together by showing how the previous two trilogies have affected the next generation of characters. Poe and Rey grew up in the shadow of the heroes of the Rebellion, while Luke fell into the pitfalls of the Prequel Jedi Order. He literally talks about how they were tricked by Sidious in The Last Jedi. Kylo aspires to be like Vader without understanding his journey, which the audience understands from having actually watched that journey for ourselves.

Question: Why are you here making this thread? Is your question genuine, or is it just a vessel to talk about how you don't like the Sequels? Because we have plenty of those you can jump in on if that's the case.

 

1. The reveal becomes Luke finding out the truth. Dramatic irony.
2. It's ESB that does that (if you think that your point is true). Also, Vader was pro-Holocaust from the very first movie.
3. I don't understand. Luke is still a farmboy. And again, it's an OT movie that does that (if you think your point is true).
And even if you are just arguing that knowing where Luke comes from when starting ANH ruins it, I totally disagree and don't see how it would.

The whole "legacy/meta" aspect of the ST to me reads as an admission by the filmmakers that they didn't believe that they had the chops to make the next ESB, so they tried to make a movie about that inferiority complex instead.

What i'm getting at any time I post about the ST is
1. Why in heaven above did they go the route they did, out of every option out there
and
2. Why some people defend it, when IMO the sequel trilogy films so far are what I would define as "quite plainly straight up bad". Not "in my opinion", but so *plainly* bad, like an "Alien Resurrection" type of misfire.

 

Yeah.

In your opinion.

I like the Sequel Trilogy. It's fine to not like them. It's less fine to portray them as objectively bad with no redeeming qualities that no one can enjoy. Because one of those in an opinion, and the other is opinion held to the eronious position of fact.

 

I knew you were going to jump on the wording there. I'm trying to get at the idea that the level of quality of the ST, to me, is not like, say, Temple of Doom, where some like it and some don't and that's fine, but something more like Alien Resurrection where almost everything feels off kilter in a bad way.
It doesn't mean that there aren't moments or lines here and there in the ST that are quality (For example, I like the scene where R2 plays Leia's message for Luke in TLJ. In fact, the whole Luke plot in TLJ would be awesome in a less pants-on-head nonsensical galactic status quo/general trilogy plotline.)

 

Because i'm really sick and tired of talked down to by condescending fans that feel superior to me because I like the Sequel Trilogy, and I hear the typical "They're objectively bad movies" by said people very frequently.

Like I said, you're free to not like the movie.

But I will speak up when someone says it's objectively bad.

I understand that you weren't saying this as per your clarification. But also understand that this exact type of thread appear on a weekly basis, and having the same type of "Think piece about why the Sequels are bad masked by a question" threads get very tiring to see over and over.

 

I understand. Just to clarify my clarification, I DO think that the ST is objectively bad, but doesn't mean that there aren't a FEW well done moments. (Those moments are mostly in TLJ though. TFA has only a single good scene, and that's when Rey takes a drink of water and slides down the dune, set to that beautiful music.)
I admit that my initial post might have been doing a bit of what you describe, but I was not doing it solely (or even mostly) to jab at ST fans, it's more to try to understand what possessed JJ to make the movie he did.

 

In my personal opinion, the Sequel Trilogy has not done much to justify its existence as part of the Skywalker Saga, especially as a sequel to Return of the Jedi.

Not having a Skywalker as the main protagonist was a big mistake, as was leaving Luke out of the story until Episode 8. Rebuilding the Jedi Order and discovering new things about the Force would have been the best direction to go in. However, who the antagonist should be is another problem entirely. Palpatine was the overarching antagonist of the first six films so introducing anyone new would have been really off-putting and lessened the ST's feel as part of the overall saga. That's why I think that Darth Plagueis or someone from the past would have been the best option but we all know how that turned out.

Ultimately, I find the ST to be far too small-scale and disconnected from the rest of the saga for me to consider it part of it. I-VI tell a complete story. VII-IX seem like more like a tacked-on appendix at this point.

 

(Is it considered tacky to like only posts that you agree with in a thread that you made?)

 

It doesn't really matter what posts you like. Just as long as you always like at least 500 posts of mine that I make per day. That is the toll for posting on here.

 

You have to pay the troll toll to get into the forum's soul.

 

That's a pretty good way to put it. Certainly to me to the ST does not feel like it follows the I-VI continuity. I just find its whole foundation too shaky to buy into. Never developing the new Republic eradicated any impact of seeing it destroyed. And seeing everything default back to an OT setting just makes me want to watch the OT. Luke's situation is the only thing that makes me feel like decades have passed, and that whole story rather falls apart when I have a very difficult time seeing Kylo and the First Order as a legit antagonistic presence.

 

In its current form (as opposed to the intended form that Lucas provided them with)? Nothing. It either repeats what has been done or completely tarnishes the established concepts, themes, style and artistic consistency of the previous six movies (and sometimes it does both at the same time).

 

This.

This. It seems murky, confusing. It's difficult to see how the story continued from Episode 6. I am not sure what it "adds" to the saga, so much as what it is telling in the first place. You put it well.

 

The Alien: Resurrection analogy rings true for me.

AR was the first film in the series to abandon the verisimilitude established by Ridley Scott; however disparate Aliens and Alien 3 in specific approach, both replicated the almost oppressive emotional reality of the source material. The fourth film, on the other hand, was set instead on the larger-than-life, downright fantastical dimensions of the comic-book (no surprise, as Joss Whedon was a writer).

The Sequel Trilogy, in turns, largely eschews Lucas's vibrant mythopoeic approach and supplanted it with the more frenetic, referential trappings common to modern blockbusters. The prudence of this is subjective, but to me, it doesn't feel much like Star Wars.

Now what does the ST add to the Saga? What does it have to say about moral corruption, the nature of grace, and rebirth? Nothing that wasn't said better in Lucas's sextet, I'm afraid.

 

ROTJ destroyed the big bad guy but not necessarily all the imperialistic attitudes pervading the galaxy by various groups (I think this ties with the idea of the ST being about the legacy left before it). There were people who benefitted from the type of government ran by the Empire and these types would be those who would join or support the FO. For example, Bala-Tik and the female alien who notifies the FO that the droid is on Takodana. Power is not just in the hands of those have it but also those let them have it. Thus, the war against the empire was not finished in the eyes of the rest of the galaxy.

The ST (especially TLJ) is a battle of attitude: On Jakku you have those who stick their head in the sand and just fight to stay alive and thus have no real stake in the war (Rey initially). At most, working, with the FO is more advantageous than using precious resources to fight it and hence you have people like Plutt. TLJ drives this point home when the resistance essentially has been abandoned; the attitude of the galaxy at large is defeated. The empire was around and sadly, people got use to it (Luke was just as relunctant as Rey get involved). Through personal journeys, they gained and hope and optimism. The rest of the galaxy needs to catch up and that is what the resistance is fighting for right now.

 

I loved TFA, and I don't particularly like TLJ but I don't "hate" it either. But I still acknowledge, I would have been just as fine if the ST never existed. IMO it's nice to see a continuation of the story, for nostalgic reasons-and I was curious what would've happened afterwords. Also it kind of makes the progression of events in the GFFA seem abit more realistic. Afterall, it's naiive to assume after ROTJ, everything would be all love and peace, pink marshmallow clouds, butterflies and rainbow unicorns forevermore.

I don't really think the ST is crucial to the telling of the Skywalker saga. But it DOES help expand the universe in general I suppose.

 

I agree. Both sequels still had that unique Alien feel and atmosphere to them, something lacking in Resurrection. Although completely different in style and pacing, both Aliens and Alien 3 still feel like they take place in the same world. Resurrection took things too far. A Ripley clone? That would-be superhero guy who shoots at the ceiling and manages to hit the soldier in the head? That very implausible-looking death scene of the new baby human-alien creature?? No way, the movie simply didn't work for me. Part 4 feels a lot more like the AVP films or computer game than the original Alien. Also, it added absolutely nothing to the saga, which should have ended as a trilogy. And that's how I feel about TFA, a colorful and mediocre action movie, but not really part of the saga, and I never once got a real SW feeling about it. It takes a lot more than Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, lots of TIEs and X-Wings, and a guy wearing a mask to make a good SW movie.

 

The only thing of real significance that the ST has added so far is the bit about learning what it is to be a mentor and “pass on what you have learned”.
I expected that from this trilogy, but I also expected new perspectives on the political situation in the galaxy, as well as a deeper exploration of the Force; fresh points of view that might’ve put the whole Saga in a different light and made the trilogy a fully integrated part of GL’s narrative.

As it stands, it’s mostly just a standalone sequel that doesn’t affect my understanding of the first two trilogies at all.

 

As it stands nothing because we still don't know what is going on or why or what if anything of significance has happened.

Even in terms of new worlds, environments, vehicles and designs there is nothing of progressive value. There are some decent modernized updates.

So at best we have somewhat likeable characters who are doing things for some reasons we really don't know in situations that were deliberately not defined.

It doesn't add anything of significance and on it's own and it's basic understanding of what happened in I-IV is confused and confusing.

Much like Alien IV knew it was an Alien movie the ST are movies that tap into the meta-narrative vibe. In the case of TFA it's actually more sincere in describing that history while TLJ was more outside looking in self referential. All options are severely limited once that initial decision is taken.

At the end of the day though both know they are non-Lucas Star Wars movies trying to carry on from where he left off and can't find it so are repeating what he did when that has already happened.

In contrast is the feel of R1 (and Solo as well) where they are firmly ensconced between Lucas' movies so have all the heavy lifting of the galaxy is done.

Once it was decided that they didn't really want to move forward and progress the story I really don't know what you can do from that.

 

It picks up the thematic threads of Luke passing on his lessons and the philosophical and practical questions that raises.