Ball Dropped

Because he knew that if Luke appeared before the end, he would have absolutely taken over the story and presence. And I think he was absolutely right. The moment Luke enters the movie, it either becomes all about him or he makes everyone else feel incompetent. Or both. Therefore, making Luke the focus of the story without making him an obstacle by having him be the Ghost was a solid choice IMO.

Now, did I want to see the Big 3 + Chewie (and Lando) all onscreen together at the same time? Absolutely! But frankly, I don't think this trilogy was the right place for it. Our heroes needed to have reunited long before the ST, and them not reuniting here is a sad thing made even more bitter by Carrie's passing; but I don't think it was a wrong choice either.

At the time, indeed. Since then, the MCU has doubled Star Wars in sales and overall popularity. In a sense, the MCU is Star Wars' legacy in the same way that Mando is Boba Fett's legacy.

 

The more and more I look back on the force awakens the more and more I'm just absolutely flabbergasted that they went in the direction they did. They obviously went for a nostalgia vibe with the world-building, plot and aesthetic, yet they missed the biggest nostalgia pull off all by missing the chance to have the 3 main stars of the original trilogy reunite. I could understand it if they were saving it for a later episode but they killed Han so that wasn't happening. It is also not like they had this well mapped out plan which would only have worked if they had of kept them separate, as we have found out since there was absolutely no plan for the story of the new trilogy.

It retrospects though its not the reuniting the big three isn't, why i find force awakens less and less appealing as the years go by. Now Force Awakens is like the memory of a Christmas eve, it teases all these great presents and mysterious of what could be inside, then when Christmas day comes you realize the people wrapping the presents spent so long choosing the wrapping paper and positioning the boxes under the tree they forgot to put anything in the boxes. Now that film just feels like a load of empty boxes with pretty wrapping. It is like so many of JJ Abrams works, no one remembers how exciting the start of the series of Lost was, everyone remembers that the writers just set up a load of mysteries that didn't go anywhere and never got answered, it exactly the same with the sequel trilogy.

 

I just wanted to see Luke's fully established Jedi Academy (even if it was just for a short second). Why couldn't they just show Ren destroying it? TFA should of been exposition heavy since it's been 30 years since we last saw the characters. Regardless what anyone thinks, TFA needed it. There's no excuse on teasing the viewers who Snoke is 2 different times in the film and tease who Rey was 3 times in the film. They should of gave us the answer to either one in the first film. I honestly find TFA to be a worser film than TLJ

 

Great post.

The reason they didn't give us answers was because of two things,

1. They didn't have any answers. One thing that has become very clear is that they had some vague ideas as to who Rey may be and who Snoke maybe, but that's about it, nothing concrete, no firm plans other than lets put them in the film present them as a mystery to get audiences intrigued and the rest can be figured out later.
2. Mysteries sell tickets, getting fans speculating is the best marketing tool going, present a mystery fans by into and you will have them queuing round the block to find the answer, which is exactly what happened. Studios know this, JJ Abrams especially knows this he has made a career out of this kind of storytelling, get the audience hooked with a good mystery. The problem comes when you don't have a good payoff to the mystery, if you set something up then don't provide a payoff that lives up to the set up then you will make your fan base extremely angry. Which is again what we have seen. The sequel trilogy didn't have well planned out answers to the mystery's posed by force awakens, Last Jedi went with the subversion tactic, basically telling the audience that there wasn't really a mystery at all, then Rise of Skywalker kind of went with a kind of convoluted answer that wasn't really planned out, beyond some vague ideas that maybe Rey was a Palpatine in between the talks about here being a Kenobi and who knows what else.

I would hope that studios would learn from this and understand if they set up questions mysteries, they have a responsibility to their audience to have well thought out answers/ pay off's to the things they set up. Unfortunately, I don't think writers/studios will learn as mysteries are such a great way to get audiences hooked and get people talking as it's a proven way to get success.

 

I think writers may learn, but studios...yeah, probably not...

 

Just my conspiracy theory, but I imagine that we would've gotten the Big Three reuinted at some point in the third movie, if Carrie hadn't tragically passed.

And imagine how much better of a payoff that would be- after not only about 35 years, but even an entire trilogy of being separated. Would've been well worth the wait- sadly, it wasn't possible.

 

Force Awakens is a wonderful movie. Honestly top three Star Wars for me. Even though it had its share of fan service, I really appreciated that it didn’t lean on old characters.

In retrospect, the fact that we never saw the big three together again is a big disappointment. Especially since it’s no longer possible. I think that’s a legitimate disappointment.

But no hate for JJ please.

 

Apparently Kennedy and Abrams wanted the release date pushed back so that they could work on the film/story some more and Igger said no. Disney wanted a quick recoup of their investment. And let's not forget that the last time that they tried to advance the story and broaden the universe with the PT there was a huge hue and cry.

As to not seeing the main cast together, I think that LF recognized that train had already left the station and that kind of sequel should have been made much earlier when the cast was still relatively young. Who wants to watch a film about a bunch of 50+ geriatrics? Hopefully they won't make that mistake with the current cast.

 

It wasn't about the big 3. If the big 3 had been hanging out together it would've ended up about them

 

I don’t disagree that the time for a direct sequel with Luke, Han and Leia as the main stars had come and gone, but if you were going for nostalgia which they clearly were, not having those 3 on an a brief adventure together within the films seems odd. Like I said if they had great plan for the trilogy that didn’t allow it, but they didn’t. So seems very odd.

As for story yeah by all accounts Abrams wanted a longer delay to get the script right, I do still have serious doubts whether even if he had been given another 5 years he wouldn’t have gone down the mystery box route, and I would still have doubts as to weather he would have planned it out better, having watched Alias and Lost big mysteries are what he does and he rarely plans out what the mean. He uses mysteries to get audiences sucked in, and in fairness to him he does it better than pretty much anyone, but he rarely provides a well planned out answers, and normally his endings become a convoluted mess. so would he have done it in Star Wars when he wasn’t due to direct the rest of the series? Seems unlikely.

 

I too would have loved to have seen the OT cast altogether on screen again, as a final tribute to the OT, but as another poster here pointed out this was the story of the next generation.
Unfortunately...the 'next generation' was killed off.
With great respect to Finn and Rey fans, this was the Skywalker saga, so it should have been Ben Solo's story. Or they simply could have made Rey a Skywalker. Instead, Abrams essentially replaced Lucas's iconic family with his heroine, and to add insult to injury - he made her a Palpatine.
If he'd wanted to make a film about two non Skywalkers why not a spin off film, like Rogue 1, or a tv series like Mando? Rian Johnson got so much flak, but if anyone ruined the Skywalker saga it was Abrams and Terrio. Johnson developed the characters, gave everyone a role to play, and I personally loved Luke's story arc....his final scene with Leia was especially poignant considering Carrie's sad untimely passing.

The problem with Disney is they have become too bloated...it happens a lot with big corporations; they end up buying everything and quality drops in favour of quantity. To me, TROS had all the hallmarks of a film that was rushed, not properly thought out, and eventually came across as DLF wanting to hurry up and get rid of the family created by Lucas so they could move on with their new projects.

The Skywalkers deserved better, and so did their fans. They did not have to bring the saga to such a nihilistic ending. Because it is nihilistic, despite all the waffle about the 'name' living on. The 'name' wasn't important in the first place, Leia took the name Organa, Ben was a Solo. What mattered was the bloodline. The Skywalker saga was all about blood, and family.

'You cannot deny the truth that is your family.

 

This was an issue that screen writer Michael Arndt was fighting long before JJ signed on to direct.

The thing about Episode VII is that's not really a sequel. Each trilogy centers on new characters. Essentially Disney wanted a reboot of the franchise that was down bad after the prequels. People can warm up all they want to those films, but they weren't received well and even now they're widely mocked. If anything The Force Awakens ignores the prequels and leans too heavy into nostalgia and yet... people still are complaining they wanted more memberberries.

Introducing Luke early doesn't work like it worked for Obi-Wan in A New Hope because people have a 40 year relationship with Luke. The goal for TFA was to establish new characters. I'd make the argument there's too much Han Solo in the film, but they were walking a tightrope. These films aren't perfect (no of them are), but they made the right choice here.

 

If there is one thing I've learned over the past few years...it's you can't please everyone.
I loved TLJ, but I know many who hated it. I also love Kylo/Ben...he's become my favourite SW character....but I know quite a few people whose loathing of him actually astonishes me - you'd think he was a real person who had done them a terrible wrong!

Trying to please everyone ...doesn't work. TROS proved it.

 

I agree. I have long said that TFA wrote a check that the ST was never going to be able to cash. This left them with the only options of “stopping payment” and not giving any answers at all (which sounds like what DOTF would have done), or cobbling together as much of a “payment” as they could but not really living up to their promises (which is what TROS did).

I personally liked how TROS tried to give us some answers instead of just thumbing its nose at us, but at least in my opinion, TFA set a course for the ST that was so wrong that there was nothing 8 and 9 could possibly do to recover.

 

Marvel is poop by the way, when star wars gets it's act together, look at The Mandolorian and I bet Kenobi you will see the true power of Star Wars. No I don't think they dropped the ball in TFA, that happened in TLJ, precisley because of the handling of Luke. I get why they left him out of TFA, he would overshadowed the plot. He still did that in TFA and he never appeared. We needed to introduce the new characters. Sure he could have shown up in the final act but that's what happened at the end of TFA anyway. I actually thought the ending of TFA was actually the best ending apart from ROTS. It was badly let down after TLJ played it for jokes. The slinging over the shoulder of the lightsaber under wrote the climax of TFA which effected the watch through of all the trilogy for me. But I still love TFA when it stands on its own.

 

Great post. Yeah completely agree, when you make a film, or story of any kind for that matter, that is obviously designed to get the audience speculating and you only some rough ideas of what the answers are going to be, you are as you say cashing cheques that you don’t know your story can cash.

Add to that you do that in what was the biggest franchise is the world at that point, for a sequel trilogy that people had wanted to see for 30 years, that was going to be picked apart and scrutinised more the any film series in history.

To be honest it would have been a minor miracle if that didn’t blow up in there face and create an angry backlash.

The whole situation was incredibly short sighted by Lucasfilm/Disney.

 

I like the ST. Especially 8 & 9. And I agree with you that no matter the amount of delays I don't think that 7 would have been 'better' (ie. more sophisticated). I just think that with more time they might have put more 'flesh on the bones' for Finn and Ren, so that they would have been a bit more interesting.

This is my 2 cents. Instead of making Finn some bumbling ST who is afraid to get yelled at.
I would have made him a gung ho ST who takes his job super seriously maybe even make him Phasma's buddy. But during the awakening Finn is overcome with the Force and comes to the realization that he doesn't have the stomach for bullying or killing harmless people and runs off, more out of confusion than cowardice. You can still have the same scenes with Rey (and Rose in TLJ) but it would have been him more as an equal. Than some dolt who needs protection. And the course of the films he regains his nerve and channels his purposes towards good.

The village scene where Ren orders the villagers killed are probabilistic and is probably the main reason that LF could not allow him to have a happy ending. I think a scene with Ren arguing with Snoke as to the fact that he did not want kill the people but did at his behest would have worked. And it would have allowed Ren to have a better ending.

And Snoke really needed to be explained better. Or at least given a better reasoning in TROS.

 

I don't disagree with anything you say. There are so many things they could have done better if they had just taken their time and spent a bit longer developing the characters the plot and the world it was taking place in at this point in star wars history. But if you have Abrams as the writer/director he is was always going to go down the mystery box route where story beats happen at a million miles hour so an audience doesn't really have time to process/question them. He has never has been one for planning out stories character arcs at the start of a project.

I'm not an Abram hater by any means, he can do some really exciting movies/shows. but he's not the kind of director who sits down are really goes into the nitty-gritty of a plot. If Lucasfilm wanted to have gone down that route then it would have been better to hire a different Director or a producer/writer to oversea the whole trilogy.