Favourite Sequel Trilogy film?

What's TLF?

 

Oh..that's good ...I thought it was the The Last Fenderbender or something....

 

Personally, I think retconning is possible to do before a story is finished. Indeed, it's done all the time when new people change hands on a story and don't like what came before, or if the creator feels as if they have a better idea than what they previously made. It's just the good ones are heralded as great plot twists and the bad ones are seen as Deus ex Machinas or worse. The end of the story can help put things into a more fitting context, but retcons have just as much to do with the authorial intent as they do with the end effect.

THAT BEING SAID a subversion (or letdown) of our expectations is NOT a retcon IMO. It may feel like a betrayal, but a betrayal isn't always a retcon. To take a Game of Thrones example...which wasn't really my intent when I started out this post:
Jaime Lannister in Season 8 has a nice romantic night with Brienne of Tarth. It's everything Brienne wants after crushing on Jaime hard for at least half of her screentime. For Jaime, this is the climax (heh) of his arc of finally overcoming the control his sister had on his life, both physically and emotionally. But by the end of the show, Jaime goes back to his sister, despite many fans feeling as if the show had a different ending for him due to his arc and foreshadowing. It's a letdown of expectations, theories, and hopes and a betrayal to Jaime's entire character arc to most viewers I believe, but it's not a retcon since there's no retroactive continuity or recontextualization going on.

 

"Brokeback Bran will rule the seven kingdoms...."

"HODOR died for THIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS!?!?"​

 

TLJ doesn't retcon one single thing. Certainly not from TFA.

 

I never thought it did. Johnson was left with a cast of characters no one knew anything about and a story no one had any idea how to continue. He did a good job of developing both. Then for some reason DLF chose to throw everything he did away and allow Abrams to act as if his film had never existed. They are even making sure that the half baked ideas of TROS are set in canon through supplementary materials.

They choose to forget that Johnson's film is the most critically acclaimed of the three. He deserved better.

 

TBF, this isn't new to Star Wars. The PT did this as well, with its many spin-offs and EU materials. It's still doing so. The OT did this as well, long before the PT.

I won't deny that.

Yes, but TFA made more money, and money speaks the loudest. That being said, there are rumors (that I can't find proof of at this time) that Lucasfilm actually went to RJ for Episode IX before they went to JJ, and he refused. Reasons I've heard range from him being tired after TLJ and wanting a break before going back to Star Wars, to him wanting to stick with the original plan and just hand off the movie. If there's even a shred of truth to these rumors, then it looks like Lucasfilm originally prioritized a solid collaborative experience that was ahead of schedule and on budget with no leaks over the money-maker. But at the end of the day, we got TROS instead.

 

In other words Johnson was happy to stick to the plan of different writers handling each film their own way and wasn't concerned about "duelling visions" or the next movie not going in the direction it's "supposed" to or deliver what Johnson set up. Or any of those other figments of people's imagination and plain lies that get used by some fans to narrate the development of this trilogy.

 

I did read that RJ would have done the last film, but it clashed with other projects....apparently DLF didn't want to 'wait' until he was available; they wanted to release TROS in 2019. Three years between each film. This is NOT my 'imagination'.

Whatever, it still begs the question why:
They chose Abrams again instead of finding someone else
TROS was such a 'Frankenstein' of a film....the plot kept changing every five minutes, and Daisy Ridley said in an interview that making her a Palpatine was a 'last minute creative decision.'

What stood out, at least to me, are the scenes where we got false 'jump shocks'...when Rey kills Chewie, then the next minute it's revealed he was on another ship (which appeared at the last moment), Threepio tells everyone he's going to lose his memory forever - then one reboot later he's back to normal! This is such awful storytelling it's embarrassing! It was as if they decided at the very last moment not to get rid of Chewie and Threepio after all, possibly because they wanted at least two surviving members of the OT to continue to make money off, or they didn't want Rey of Light to be so 'dark' ( despite her incredible capacity for violence).

 

I don't know how you can actually believe that. That just seems to be another example of people expecting things to go one way and suspecting that there's been some mistake or late u-turn that can be the only explanation for their instincts turning out to be incorrect.

 

Well, when you look at how all over the place TROS was....how can you blame them? To this day I still find it mind blowing how poorly made that film is ....even the prequels, maligned though they are, had a strong central storyline. Half of TROS didn't seem to make any sense!

 

You might as well have said "Just because..."

 

I'm a Kylo Ren fan - but went into TROS knowing perfectly well what his fate would be. But as a fan of the Skywalker Saga I still thought it would be a great film, and his death would be moving and memorable.

Ten minutes into the film, I started thinking that I wasn't going to like it, but I'd paid an obscene amount of money to see it and was determined to 'see it through'....I enjoyed TFA and thought this would be along the same lines.

I ended up sitting it out purely for Adam Driver and when his character left the building - so did I. One of the most - if not the most - disappointing cinematic experiences of my life, from plot to dialogue to characterisation. The only part where I couldn't see the camera was the scene between Driver and Ford...and that was 'ripped off' from TFA. And this was someone who previously liked the characters of Rey and Finn. Couldn't believe what Terrio and Abrams did with them.

 

Or too burnt out to feel like he'd be the best person for the job. We don't know, so interpret the rumors how you will.

Money, plain and simple. When JJ was hired to direct Episode 9, The Force Awakens had earned Disney more money than any other movie in the company's history. TLJ made a lot of money, but the amount each film was making was declining. Why not bring back the guy who revived the franchise? (When in doubt, the behind-the-scenes big decisions almost always go back to money.)

The fake-outs stood out to a lot of people, and I've personally criticized them on a number of occasions, but I don't think that's the fault of an ever-changing script, it's the fault of movies not wanting to commit to any real, impactful, decisive death. (Outside of the "Redemption Equals Death" story, you know.) The MCU has gotten a LOT of flak for the same reticence and fake-out behavior over the years.

I feel like there are two separate questions here: Why TROS had so much going on, and why Rey was a Palpatine.
The latter was probably JJ and Terio thinking that it'd make for a more impactful story, or that it'd echo Vader vs Luke. (Without understanding what made that encounter in ROTJ so special in the first place...and that it had more or less been replicated in TLJ.)
The former question feels like the answer lies in the plot of the movie and the type of movie JJ wanted TROS to be, alongside his own preferences.

JJ likes his movies to be fast and frenetic. There's rarely a moment of respite or rest, and the ones that do happen don't stay that way for long. You never worry about your attention waning because the next scene is here before you know it. Star Wars, in several ways, is also built on this principle. In ANH, the action scenes are quite fast, varied, and often, and things that should illicit horror or sadness are more or less brushed over a few scenes later. Luke doesn't really grieve the passing of Beru and Owen, because he has a Space Princess to find. We never see Leia mourn her entire planet - let alone her parents - after Alderaan is destroyed. Mere minutes after Ben dies (and a very quick scene of Leia comforting Luke), Luke is blasting TIE Fighters with glee. TROS emulates that sort of attitude, as did TFA. Despite that strategy working in Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Star Trek 2: Khan Boogaloo, and TFA, it didn't work here. But you can't blame the man for sticking with a successful script. (I mean, you can, since he was clearly working with what worked for him instead of what the story needed IMO, but that's whatever.)

JJ also wanted to make the movie HE wanted to make, which wasn't one that naturally tied into TLJ. So, in order to do that, he has to set up his movie on shaky foundation, and that bled into the actual story itself. That's why there are/were comments about how TROS feels like a movie and a half, because JJ has to set things up before the real story can get started.

 

They aren't rumors though. They're just theories.


It was agreed well before he even started shooting TLJ. The policy to hand off to different directors was agreeable to the three directors, two of which didn't want to or couldn't commit to more than one movie. After Carrie died and Trevorrow quit it was offered to him but Johnson was happy to stick with the arrangement they had all agreed on beforehand.

He certainly doesn't at any time seem to have been concerned with the next director not delivering the episode IX that Johnson envisioned.

 

They're theories that became rumors. We don't know what is true since we're not privy to every conversation, so people came up with potential things, possibly based on what they or others heard (theory) and then it spreads (rumor). One doesn't negate the other.

The question of what happened isn't in the source of the rumors, it's why. Was it because he wanted a break? Was it because he wanted a clean hand-off? Or was it because he just got a movie trilogy deal? Personally, I don't really care at this point, since what's done is done, and we'd be going in circles about questioning the motive of something that could just be one or all of these things.

 

I actually watched TROS last night, it wasn't as bad as I remember and after reading The Shadow of The Sith, I enjoyed it so much more. Such a shame we had to learn the story many years after the film release. But yep, it was fun.

 

Hmm. It's kind of like saying the moon was "rumored" to be made of cheese. That's just a theory that becomes popular. Because it's attractive. It's still just making stuff up out of thin air.

A theory is not stuff that people heard. It's stuff that people choose to think.