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Does anyone else feel that the new films ruined the ending of ROTJ?

Discussion in 'Original Trilogy' started by VOODOO, Jan 8, 2018.

  1. Darth Derringer

    Darth Derringer Rebel Official

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    This takes the discussion all the way back to the OP: It lessens the dramatic conclusion to the OT because we learn later on that the Emperor wasn't defeated afterall.
    Soooooooooo....using your rationale, Marvel should bring back Thanos again rather than impress the audience with a new villain like Kang?

    It's no secret that JJ brought back Palpatine because he was in a storytelling pickle because Johnson killed off the trilogy's bad guy early. We can play mental gymnastics to explain it storywise. But the truth of the matter is that when you've got to come up with a new Big Baddie for the concluding film of your trilogy, bring back the Emperor made some sense -- although it's yet another example of SW creatives recycling the same old same old.
     
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  2. eeprom

    eeprom Prince of Bebers

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    Wouldn’t “the dramatic conclusion to the OT” be lessened regardless by the sheer fact that it’s no longer the actual conclusion anymore?

    Palpatine’s defeat rests in his failure to achieve any of his goals. He wanted to crush the Rebellion, enforce absolute authority, and corrupt Luke Skywalker. He didn’t do any of those things because of the efforts of our heroes. He failed. He was defeated.

    What the Rebellion wanted was to save the galaxy, not kill the Emperor. It did that. What Luke wanted was to save his father, not kill the Emperor. He did that. Good still triumphed over evil. That's still a victory. That still matters.
     
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  3. Use the Falchion

    Use the Falchion Jedi Contrarian

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    That's a loaded question IMO, particularly by the time the ST was announced.
    By that time, we've had decades upon decades of extra stories, some of which lessened the OT's conclusion, others which benefited from it. We also had enough time for most of the bad to sink into obscurity and a lot of the good to stay relevant. But at the end of the day, none of this was the big screen, and all of it was subject to retcons and levels of continuity.

    Then, the PT complicates things even farther, because the PT's story recontextualizes the ending of the OT into something else. No longer is it just Good vs Evli or redemptive love saves the day, it's now a story with a mythological element. And THEN GL canonizes aspects of it to further reinforce the mythological aspect of the story, parts of it directly opposing what the extra stories meant and have done.

    And then the PT gets a massive resurgence right around the time TFA and R1 come out, retroactively changing people's minds and feelings about the PT and thus how it relates to the OT.

    You bring of all of that history and those feelings into the ST with you, and it creates a mess of emotions and expectations and thoughts. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the "dramatic conclusion of the OT" had already gone through periods of being lesser and greater for decades by that point, but nothing that couldn't be reversed if the writers or fans didn't like it. But now we have something canon, something set in stone, and that changes things and feelings. It's now "real," (as if the other stories weren't) and I think that officiality lessens the conclusion. Well, that and the fact that people like originality* and things that feel like things they like, as you mentioned earlier.

    It's like the OT was a fire behind a glass. It's safe there, but you're safe from it. You can use candles (EU material) if you want, but the main source of light in the room will be the fire, and its inspiration on other sources of light can't be understated. But now someone has broken the glass and wants to expand the fireplace, and it feels as if the house may burn down.

    ...and now I'm losing my own point, so I'll step back out.


    That's part of the problem with bringing back a villain like Palpatine (and part of the problem I have with Rey and Kylo's relationship in TROS). Palpatine was so thoroughly defeated by the end of ROTJ that he's no longer a credible threat, at least not to me. We the audience don't fear him and the characters don't really react to him. So he's just there to move things along and to be a physical manifestation of an allegory, but never a character or a threat.

    That's probably why people liked Snoke and were upset that he was killed off. You've got mystery, a villain that feels like Palpatine but seems to have learned Palpatine's lessons, and someone who even in the face of defeat, doesn't seem defeated. And then Kylo offs him without any of that coming into fruition.


    *Originality combined with nostalgic feelings and not at the expense of the past experiences, to be more accurate. That's part of the reason things like My Hero Academia has historically been regarded as Naruto's sequel over the actual sequel Boruto, or why The Dragon Prince is sometimes liked more by fans of Avatar: the Last Airbender over the actual sequel The Legend of Korra. Boruto and Korra felt like and made decisions that influenced how people feel and perceive their predecessors, where as MHA and TDP can be just as original and get away with it.
    Miles Morales as Spider-Man is another semi-decent example. They killed off Ultimate Spider-Man to make way for Miles Morales and that made waves to big that people who don't read comics were talking about how they were killing off Peter Parker for a new Spider-Man; but they never actually killed off the mainline 616 Spider-Man. People didn't have to sacrifice one to get the other. In roughly 2018, Marvel tried a new diversity initiative for their comics and replaced nearly all of their frontrunners with women and POC versions of the characters. Iron Man was now Riri Williams, Wolverine was now Laura Kinney (although she had been in that role for years by that point), Thor was now Jane Foster (the comic run that Thor: Love & Thunder is partially based off of), and so forth. These weren't bad changes, but the initiative failed because they sidelined old favorites instead of making room for both.
     
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  4. Martoto

    Martoto Force Sensitive

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    From a certain point of view, the end of ROTJ is diminished by ANY further episodes even if Palpatine isn't involved. If the climax to the saga is about overcoming a presumably greater threat than the Devil. But the saga continues therefore you have to accept that the devil wasn't definitively beaten. He was beaten. (The alliance was not wiped out, Luke did not turn and he was not destroyed). Just not conclusively. Because that task is one for the next generation.

    The ease of Palpatine's dethronement makes it easier for me not to get upset that he could still influence events decades later. It was a thrilling end to a movie and a trilogy in 1983. The significance of Palpatine being conclusively vanquished never really impacted me then. Thanks to him being a marginal character for most of that trilogy. And the three prequels didn't really enhance my appreciation of there supposedly being no more Palpatine ever at the end of the "complete" saga in 2005.
     
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  5. Sheddai_Lightkeeper

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    That's exactly it. Tyrants are mortal, but the psychology that produces them is not. Every a-hole in history repeats the same pattern that comes from inside of all of us.
     
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  6. kuatorises

    kuatorises Rebel Commander

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    Star Wars was never about "Anakin". You can argue Episodes 1-3, which Lucas wrote many many years later are, but this crap where certain fans try to pretend the entire series (at that point) was about the rise and fall of Anakin, simply isn't true. The OT was never about that. Ever. You don't watch those movies and think, "Wow, what a great redemption story." Luke is the protagonist, not Vader. And his redemption isn't a major point of the whole series, it only pops up in the last hour of ROTJ.

    Lucas is the same guy who wrote his own sequel trilogy and then famously pouted Disney didn't use the scripts after he sold the franchise to them.

    To answer your question, no. Not for me. Nothing was invalidated. The Empire lost and ceased to exist. Sure, there were remnants in Mando, but they were nothing. The First Order drew inspiration from them, but are a new group. The heroes defeated the forces of evil, but this new trilogy was decades later. Things change, evil always exists.
     
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  7. madcatwoman17

    madcatwoman17 Rebel General

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    George Lucas himself said that SW was actually Anakin's story.
    --- Double Post Merged, Sep 21, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 21, 2022 ---
    I'm glad for you, that you see it like that, as you can still love and enjoy the entire saga...but not for me. Sorry.
     
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  8. Lord of the Rens

    Lord of the Rens Gatekeeper & Avatar Maker

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    The preponderance of evidence suggests that what G. Walton Lucas really meant was: Star Wars became Anakin's story....
     
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  9. kuatorises

    kuatorises Rebel Commander

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    The OT was NEVER about Anakin, I don't give a blast what that miserable old hack said. He says a lot of things. All you have to do is watch the damn movies. The OT was never AnAkIN's trilogy. This is a notion pushed forth by prequel/Clone Wars diehards. You wanna say that era is about him? Go ahead. But the entire saga is his story? No, that is patently false.
     
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  10. Lord of the Rens

    Lord of the Rens Gatekeeper & Avatar Maker

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    The SAGA clearly belongs to immortal-Darth Sidious, the death cheater and Master of GFFA meat puppets.
     
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  11. eeprom

    eeprom Prince of Bebers

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    If you look at the original trilogy as its own self-contained story, yes, it is totally Luke’s journey and his father is an artifact of that narrative. If you look at the completed hexalogy as one large story though, then it becomes more Anakin’s journey and Luke is an artifact of THAT narrative.

    Lucas certainly has a perspective he’d like the audience to view it from. But that doesn’t mean you have to. That’s really up to you.
     
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  12. Martoto

    Martoto Force Sensitive

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    "From the Adventure of Luke Skywalker: The Anakin Skywalker Story"

    "It's really about Richard Nixon...."

    "Whatever idea George comes up with on any given day, that becomes the original idea that he always had from the beginning..."
     
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  13. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    There's a difference regarding cinema of what a movie is about.
    There's what a movie is about during its:
    writing
    production
    editing
    reception
    tenure
    adaptation

    At each stage a movie is involved in, it changes what it means, but changing what it means doesn't mean that any prior meanings suddenly stopped existing or being true either.

    Eventually a movie becomes true for all truths it has ever been, even where those truths in meanings contradict each other.

    And that's because after reception, a movie is no longer privately owned in its understanding. At that point a movie becomes a truth in part by its understanding between the audience and the movie.

    This is why David Lynch doesn't prefer to divulge what his meanings for his movies were all that much; because in so doing, it says what the movie isn't and he sees movie meaning as in the audience's domain - not simply the creator's domain.

    Now, that's one extreme side of the perspective.
    The reality is that it's muddy, messy.
    We're human. There's no clear cut answer on such things.

    At one point, the original trilogy was definitely not about Anakin. That reality didn't exist in any collective understanding of the movie. That was not their reality.
    As such, for a very large score of people, that still is not their reality because that was not the experience of the movies.

    There's some understandable reasoning to this. If someone came along and made a Superman 1978 prologue which contextualized Superman as a penitent psycho serial killer gone hard-core straight edge do-gooder to correct the errors of his interim past, and this was done because there were notes by Richard Donner for his original story plans of the movie series, no one who watched the 1978 movie and had that experience around that time would accept the idea that Superman 1978 is a movie about a penitent psycho alien serial killer turned boy scout.

    Yet at the same time, Donner (in this imagining) had intended that to be what the story was about, but just hadn't gotten around to finishing the series so that everyone could know that within due time before its cultural endearment of identity became iconified.

    There's no real right answer here, which is why everyone keeps arguing about it.

    Lucas is right because it's his movie. It's about whatever he says it's about.
    The audience of each cultural experience is right because that's the identity it became known for and embraced as during a particular time.
    And everyone involved on the movies at each varying stages with their varied quotes of what they were told, and how they identified with the movies are also right because that is what the identity was to them at those moments in time.

    Art doesn't really get to be one thing.

    I'm not saying this for nothing. This is now my job. I work in the industry. I'm writing a paid movie with a development team.

    One of my mantras that I say so much that I'm planning to print it out and hang it above my desk is, "Always watch your metaphors".

    And it's because of this. I know that whatever a movie puts on the screen becomes reinterpreted by the audience and that there's overlap between what was intended to be the meaning and what is understood to be the meaning, but there's also non-overlapping sections as well. And furthermore, those boundaries are not permanent - they move like tied lines over the timeline of society.

    The point is, you can try to control the interpretation of your art, but at a certain point, regardless of what you say, people will say Wrath of Khan is Star Trek and you will find out how very wrong you were when you, the originator of the art, claimed, "This film will not be accepted as being genuine Star Trek", in your nine page letter to the producers.

    Everyone can argue about what Star Wars is or isn't, but there's no singular Star Wars.
    To claim what Star Wars is, you have to use a qualifier beforehand.

    For example, when I discuss with people about what is or isn't Star Wars, I erect the framing of Star Wars as a form of artistic expression.
    That is, what I evaluate Star Wars as being Star Wars is by examining what Lucas was doing in terms of craft and art and attempting to accomplish as an artist back at the onset, and what similarities continued throughout his endeavor over time.

    That is, what is Star Wars as an arts project to the artist? What is it that it allows them to do, what were they trying to do with the medium and craft as a mechanic, and does this current addition show indications of attempting to follow those same qualifiers?

    If yes, then in this perspective, it's Star Wars. If no, then it's not Star Wars.

    I'm not here interested in arguing this perspective - that's not the point.
    The point is in example.
    With something so culturally vast, and really with so many movies out there, you have to really supply some qualifier for assessing the charge of what is or isn't the reality of a movie's truth before you can discuss that topic.

    There is simply no absolute position of truth regarding movies, or art.
    All art requires axioms for discussing identity and truth.

    This long write-up is to say that Star Wars is about Luke. It's about Anakin... It's about the Droids.
    [​IMG]

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  14. Martoto

    Martoto Force Sensitive

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    "The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe."
     
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  15. Lord Phanatic

    Lord Phanatic Luminous Being
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  16. Jayson

    Jayson Resident Lucasian

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    I'm glad he did what he did. There is literally no other instance I am aware of in cinema history where an artist has carved out a philosophy of film, showcased it in their movie (e.g. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin), and then other artists after them gave their interpretation of the original artist's philosophy by incorporating it into their form while simultaneously attempting to adhere to the original artist's philosophies.

    Lots of filmmakers are inspired by other filmmakers, but never have I seen any, for example, literally try to make a "Hitchcock" movie literally adopting Hitchcockian philosophy of film while making an addition to the Hitchcock library.

    It's absolutely fascinating.

    Cheers,
    Jayson
     
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  17. Lord of the Rens

    Lord of the Rens Gatekeeper & Avatar Maker

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    Not messing around. +1
     
  18. BlueSnaggleTooth9

    BlueSnaggleTooth9 Rebel Trooper

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    No you are not, but I don't agree.

    True.
    Although even just before ROTJ came out Lucas was talking about a new 7-9 that might perhaps be set a couple decades or so later and maybe get into some stuff like the struggles to establish a new republic and how do you bring the galaxy together and end chaos without ending up doing some bad things and the tricky struggles with how to do it without falling prey to becoming the new emperor's yourselves, etc.

    Do keep in mind that Lucas often said stuff like that to quash all the pestering about more movies, especially when he was at a time he wanted to focus on other things or was burned out, etc.

    Also keep in mind that it was not Disney that drove the sequels at all.
    Already Lucas had plans for a new 7-9 after his original 7-9 ideas got partly pushed into ROTJ way back in 1983.
    And then some years after that it seems he had some some thoughts on a different 7-9 that might feature a girl from the farthest reaches with extreme force power, sort of the original "no there is another" of ESB.
    But all the prequel bashing got to him a bit and he was burned out so after the prequels he went back to the there is nothing more to tell (which was both a mix of partial truths and not wanting to deal with it).
    But then he got into it again and drafted up rough 7-9 notes. I planned to do all of 7 himself and then perhaps hand it off for others to finish off 8-9 with some help from him on the side. Disney came into the mix and he also did want to spend more time with family. He sold it to them. They maybe pushed him aside a bit more than he hoped but was still there on the side giving some guidance during early TFA production until the whole deadline issues and dumping Arndt and Lucas going off in a huff, etc. although they had partially pushed aside his 7-9 ideas. They still seemed to draw quite a lot from them in he end, althiugh wheter that was his main 7-9 treatments or his possible secondary idea 7-9 treatments not quite sure. But they cut out most of the deep exploration of the microworld of the force stuff and so on and lots of specific adventures and scenes changed, etc.

    Anyway, the point is, 7-9 were already a 100% thing before Disney ever became involved, so it had nothing to do with their raw greed and wanting to buy up the franchise to create of their own accord, sequels.

    A little, but not really and much less so than the old post-ROTJ EU.
    Had everything in ROTJ not gone down the Jedi would've been wiped out and the Emperor or an even more powerful dark Luke Emperor would've been in tight, direct, all encompassing control still. There never would have been a New Republic and peaceful times for a few decades. It may have been another 200 or 800 or 2000 years before the Empire eventually got overthrown by rebels.

    I'm thrilled they continued! Thrilled we finally got that third trilogy. So much magic and wonder.
    And again it had nothing to do with some evil plot just to boost Disney's bottom line. Sequels were planned before a sale to Disney was even a thing.
    In the end Luke did once more establish himself in heroic lure at the end of TLJ.

    I loved them. So many fantastic things to see in them. Great characters, great emotion, great we got them. And in the end it was a fitting end to the whole 1-6 period.

    I also thought it was cool that we sort of got a lot of the elements of the original original plans for 7-9, some of which got dumped, changed or crammed into ROTJ when Lucas was burned out and wanting to not take another three films to finish off the Emperor. We got one version of the original "no there is another" and girl, alone coming in from the far side of the galaxy with extreme force powers to help take down the Emperor for good, heck even Luke off on his own thing seems to have been a part of the original original early 80s 7-9 plans and various other bits.
     
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