Did JJ Throw Himself Under a Bus?

Yes, but did it need 'rebooting?' Did they need to destroy Vulcan for example? I have to say I'm not a 'Trekkie' but my brother and his friends are, and they were genuinely upset at Vulcan's destruction.
Abrams seems to have a need to put his signature on things so to speak, which is fine. But ...does he have to wreck them?

If DLF had wanted the new SW trilogy to be about new characters, then why not set it centuries into the future, and leave the Skywalkers in the past? Why make such a point of destroying the family bloodline. Terrio and Abrams claimed the ending was 'hopeful' and 'satisfying'....but no matter how you dress up Rey, the fact is the original heroes are all gone and so is their last living relative....and they died because of Palpatine, whom Anakin sacrificed himself to destroy.
It's as if the entire Skywalker saga was for nothing.....and I find that sad.

 

Yeah Trekkies be crazy sometimes "Spock dies, you die." Someone wrote to Nic Meyer before Wrath Of Khan was released. Vulcan is just a planet. It did not wreck the franchise. Sounds like your brothers just don't want a reboot. Well, they can take it or leave it. It's as simple as that. It's not being forced on them. They're not being asked to drop anything in its favour.

Besides Vader, and Kenobi and Yoda supporting in it, the original trilogy has new characters from the trilogy that precedes it (story wise). And the OT isn't really about them. The sequel trilogy and the the OT have almost the exact same relationship character wise? I don't see how following a convention established between the first two trilogies constitutes "wrecking" the franchise.

If you're just referring to choices which you had or have a different preference for, it might be wise to use a different expression from "wrecked the franchise" to describe them.

 

Let me just say my brother has never sent death threats to anyone.

 

Ever time I see people complain about JJ's Star Trek...

 

Forewarning: I don't frequent around very much currently, so I may not reply back.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Good points!
But....if you look at the OT as a whole, then the signs were there from ESB. Yoda saying 'there is another'. Leia sensing Luke through the Force. And of course the 'I am your father' big reveal.

TROS changed everything from TLJ, without any foreshadowing at all, and the more you look at TLJ and TROS the more the changes seem not like story progression but the director deliberately cocking a snook at his predecessor - even down to the snide 'Holdo manouvre' comment.

ESB hinted that Vader might very well be Luke's father. Rey Palpatine was sprung on us unexpectedly.
There was absolutely NO SIGN of FS Finn throughout the whole of TLJ.
And let's face it...Lando, the new major character, had plenty of screentime and played important roles such as helping the Han rescue and leading the attack on the new Death Star. He wasn't reduced to one line because 'some fans disliked him', like poor Rose Tico.

TROS was two parts deliberate retcon of TLJ, and it showed glaringly. ROTJ continued where ESB left off. It also tied off all the loose ends.

In short it rounded off the OT nicely. Watching TROS seems more like a continuation of TFA (apart from the reylo kiss) that you could watch without seeing TLJ at all. To me that seems nothing but petty. And as one youtuber pointed out, 'almost vengeful'.

 

Force sensitive (like, obvious Jedi material sensitive) Finn in TFA is in the viewer's mind more than anywhere else. I can see the appeal. And there's nothing wrong with wanting it in future movies. It's up for grabs. But the fact that JJ still didn't fulfill that wish in TROS is a reflection of the fact that he knew he never set it up in TFA. If he had, then there would have been a more conspicuous effort in TROS to deliver this. But instead it was sort of coyly hang in the air.

Two people discovering their force talents and having them nurtured in tandem is a story that the GFFA could and should explore. It's perhaps overdue. But the sequel trilogy was not designed to accommodate this. From George's original ideas, it was one (reluctant) master and one pupil again and that carried through to Abrams & Kasdan who introduced the defecting Stormtrooper. At not point though did Abrams or Kasdan choose to complicate this with making Finn another Jedi in the making. Not for this story anyway.

Something that was discussed by all involved, through all three sequel movies, was the democratisation of the force. Finn is part of that concept.

 

"That which is asserted without proof...." etc.

 

I really loved TLJ and TROS is one of my least favorite Star Wars films, but I don't feel like it was a retcon. The biggest change was Rey's lineage. I wouldn't call that a retcon any more than I'd call Vader being Luke's father a retcon. JJ has a great talent at recycling old ideas so that's what he tried to do with TROS. It worked very well for TFA. Not so much with TROS. Again, I feel like this doesn't get enough attention... the last film was in trouble as soon as Fisher died. Trevorrow couldn't get the story to work without her and JJ's attempt failed as well. Leia needed more of a presence in the 3rd film for the entire story to work better. More Leia probably would have meant less backstory for Rey (which wasn't needed) and more development between Ben and his Mother which would have made his turn a lot more easier to believe.

Luke forgave his father. Leia could forgive her son. It's a really powerful arc that just didn't happen and would have made the ST a lot better.

 

Fisher's absence aside, Rise is very cohesive with the previous films in my opinion. Honouring the choices made before it is not a problem in TROS. It feels like a movie that needed at least two more drafts to do what it intended to do, so that it wouldn't feel so much like a movie that's discarded at lot of internal story material (which may have been very good, or not) during production and in post in order to leave only what mattered to the conclusion of the trilogy and of the saga.

 

Post TLJ, there were a lot of angry people on SM, most notable the 'fandom menace', who bitterly complained about everything from Rose Tico to Luke tossing his lightsabre, and there has been speculation that they 'influenced' DLF, hence TROS spending so much time changing RJ's work and the foundations he'd laid for Episode IX. And I agree, Carrie's untimely death threw a major spanner in the works.

But...there are things in TROS that had nothing to do with Carrie's place in the story. Such as making Rey a Palpatine, virtually erasing the Rose Tico story, including the possible Finn/Rose love affair, making Hux a Resistance spy , introducing new characters that served very little to the continuation of the story. But...
The biggest clue to me that they were 'retconning' TLJ came with this:

Apparently quite a few fans were livid at Luke being 'depicted' like this, and made their displeasure known.

Then in TROS we got this:

 

I see this cited from time to time and this could just as easily been in a Rian Johnson version of the story. It's not a retcon. The Luke at the start of TLJ isn't the same Luke at the end of TLJ. Luke catching the saber is perfectly in line with the story. It's one of my favorite bits of the film because it ties so nicely to TLJ.

Also, the meat of the JJ's story was pitched almost the same week TLJ was released. I'm sure they made adjustments, but much of it was determined before any fan reaction. I feel like most of the "JJ retcon" narratives come from people who either didn't understand the film or the timeline of production.

According to JJ much of Rose's content was tied to Leia footage that ended up not working. Again, the biggest problem the film had was Leia.

I agree with this... they needed more time and this is on Disney for forcing the film's timeline when it's clear more time was needed. My biggest gripe with the trilogy format is it puts so much pressure on the 3rd chapter to tie everything up cleanly. I kind of hope they move away from this format and tell interconnected, but individual stories.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't believe JJ regarding Rose. I think her character was reduced because someone, somewhere...didn't like her.
This was a film that went through endless reshoots, and therefore easily could have fitted her in somewhere. I particularly disliked how at the beginning of the film, Poe and Finn has a weird alien...thingy....as a mechanic on the Falcon. It could have been Rose. That would have been a good place to 'put' her character, so to speak.

Off topic.....I really wonder why they chose to make 'ghost Luke a scruffy character with wild hair when his 'Force projection' was pretty dapper - maybe for the same reason Obi Wan's Force ghost looked like Obi as an 'old man' instead of the rather hot MacGregor version!

 

Apparently there weren't that many. Keep in mind there was very little time to get this film made. Pretty much the biggest changes to the film were in regards to how it started (according to Hidalgo) in terms of Kylo/wayfinder stuff.

 

If they got Adam Driver to recite his lines in his own closet then they must truly have been flying without a net!

 

The movie clearly got seriously whittled down in production and in post and that meant it jettisoned many of the things that some viewers would be checking off like screen time and direct involvement in the plot to ensure that character reflected the importance that TLJ was perceived to have given them and was assumed that episode IX was obligated to uphold.

JJ still found time to honor Holdo's heroism and ingenuity by explaining the rarity of such a tactic succeeding once let alone ever again. (Which was already demonstrated by Finn's futile gesture on Crait which Rose disrupted in the nick of time to enable him to fight another day instead of dying needlessly)

Rose and the other rebels intelligence efforts just weren't needed in the final cut but where apparently deemed important or desirable enough to JJ that they spent a not inconsiderable amount of time and money writing and shooting it. Pretty convoluted and expensive way to "retcon" something if you ask me.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 29, 2021, Original Post Date: Sep 29, 2021 ---

And its still unnecessarily convoluted. In my opinion.

 

Nah, the only people going under a bus, were the ones who were so staunch in there beliefs, read rumours, span them them to there own headcannon. Then when it didn't go their way, spat the dummy out had a paddy and rolled under the wheels. Toxic environment unfortunately.

 

I remember reading the 'leaks' and thinking:
'No way! This has got to be fake, it's so awful!'

I was wrong....

 

Which leaks?

 

The whole plot of TROS got leaked months before the movie was released:


Almost everyone disliked the plot leak and claimed it's fake. It wasn't...