Favourite Sequel Trilogy film?

You described my feelings to a T, @Viper78 !

Exactly! And you really hit the nail on the head with your comment about the last scene in TFA. If they knew all along that Luke wasn't Rey's father and that he could care less about the lightsaber she brought him --- WHY IN THE WORLD HIGHLIGHT IT SO DRAMATICALLY IN TFA??!!?? That made absolutely no sense. It implied something to the fans at the conclusion of the film that was a complete misdirect and a slap of cold water in every fan's face.

I can't believe Lucasfilm and Disney could have been so callous on purpose. I suspect the answer is that JJ and no one on the TFA film crew had any clue what Rian Johnson had in store for it.

 

Considering how many fans were enraged at Luke not appearing until he did, I think it's safe to say that the producers had a fairly understandable reason for having them meet at the end. Having them not meet doesn't help the perceived timeline issue either. Since they would have to meet in their first scene in TLJ anyway. Or would Johnson have made out that it still took a while to find Skywalker in spite of having the map? I doubt it.

 

A few reasons:
First, it was a call to action. Rey's final scene can be a callback to Leia's message to Obi-Wan in ANH - a plea for help from a young girl who needs her hero. (I do think this was a deliberate manipulation on Leia's part. She knew the message, knew what Rey needed, and knew Luke's mindset, so she sent one person who needed a master to someone who needed an apprentice and some idealism in his life. But that's all head-canon.)

Second, it was (later) used to highlight how out of touch everyone is with Luke. It's like the scene in comedies or dramadies, where the absent parent or grandparent comes in baring gifts for our cast or main character...and the gifts are things said character liked when they were FIVE. Life has happened, stuff has happened, the character has changed - so too with Luke.

Third, this WAS a slap in the face, an intentional one. It's a commentary on everyone who places an idealized version of the character and symbolic meaning of heritage on something that really shouldn't have that intent. In-world, it's a symbol rejecting the symbol, because at the end of the day, he doesn't believe in what it means anymore. In our world, it's telling us that we've been focusing on the wrong aspects of the Jedi. We've been focusing on the Jedi as these Bad Mamma-Jamma warriors who come in to save the day and look good doing so. Luke even mocks this concept. (And ironically lives up to it, yet does so his way, the Jedi way.) But those focuses led to the Jedi being destroyed. "Wars do not make one great." "We're keepers of peace, not soldiers." TLJ has some great meta-commentary for old-school fans and gatekeepers, frankly. "The Sacred Texts" aren't even subtle! I don't agree with everything, but the Luke stuff is just perfect.


I've said it before and will say it again, TLJ's Luke is JJ's fault 100%. JJ was the one who came up with the story about Luke abandoning everything. JJ was the one to destroy Luke's goals and future from ROTJ and was the one that made Luke retreat to an island. JJ was the one to drop all of these hints about who Rey could have been. RJ was the one who had to make this history believable.

Why would a broken Luke, who saw everything he built and believed crumble before his very eyes, a Luke who spent FIVE YEARS hiding and in isolation, just turn around because a girl shows up to his doorstep holding a lightsaber that he didn't use for longer than one he did? One that, he now seemingly knows, killed children when his father turned? One that cost him his hand? Even if this girl was his daughter, wouldn't her being there simply be another mark of shame for him? He'd have to overcome that shame, alongside the shame from failing to relaunch the Jedi (JJ's fault), from failing Kylo and the dead apprentices (JJ's fault), and from abandoning his sister. (JJ's fault.) He'd have to come around to believing in the Jedi again and willingly enter the fight again, putting his DAUGHTER, at risk. Frankly, Rey being Luke's daughter sounds nice, and it probably would be nice (well, better than what we got in TROS), but it doesn't fix what was in TFA, nor would it fix TLJ. From where I'm standing and my admittedly limiting writing and storytelling experience, it'd compound Luke's psychological issues, not alleviate them. Issues that JJ gave him.

I mean, JJ apparently was able to read the first draft of TLJ, so he knew what RJ was going to do. I don't think he agreed with it, but given that JJ ended up just remaking ANH and ROTJ in TFA and TROS, part of me wonders how derivative JJ's ideas for the ST would have been, and that's part of why RJ didn't use anything from JJ. Instead, RJ went back closer to George Lucas' vision of an ST Luke.

They invalidated decades worth of OT stories, erased fan-favorite characters, and then went clout-chasing in terms of directors. And then AFTER TLJ, they killed of Leia instead of retiring her or replacing her out of some weird sense of "no one does it like the first," despite them not really caring about long-dead actors if it suits their need. (Luke's death doesn't mean too much since he's a Force Ghost and can reappear any time necessary...except for when you're trying to appeal to the Chinese market, which apparently has a thing against ghosts.) I can believe it.

Ultimately, as JJ didn't care about the following films. He focused on his film, and created a darn good one while he was at it. Easily the most rewatchable, since nothing of note, interest, or risk happens in this movie. It's just a fun film. But therein lies the problem. KK's approach to making the ST focused on what was exciting for the filmmakers, and she used the Round Robin approach to attract the young, trendy filmmakers. To me, that's focusing on the wrong crowd. Instead of making a cohesive film with directors whose styles and teams can work well together, she focused on what THEY wanted, which has led to massive problems and bad luck in nearly every Star Wars.*

TFA, as I've said before and will no doubt say again, was great for the franchise and terrible for the story. It simply redoes what the ANH (and ROTJ...and TPM) did. Doing so allows older fans to get to know the new characters and younger fans to experience the "Star Wars experience" for the first time, which is brilliant, but neither pushes the story forward in an interesting way. TFA made choices that it never thought it'd have to deal with the consequences of (who Rey's parents are, who is Snoke, how Luke will react to being found and why on earth did he not sense Starkiller Base blowing up 5-7 planets, what will happen to the Resistance since the First Order knows where they are, and how can a timeskip occur given that we just ended on one of the biggest cliffhangers in the franchise), so blaming RJ about answering those questions feels misplaced, at least to me.


*TFA was under a massive crunch (Disney's fault, not KK's) and had some pretty bad luck.
Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, director of 2010's Monsters and 2014's Godzilla) was saved by the second unit director Tony Gilroy in reshoots, since Edwards was so enamored with working on Star Wars that he didn't really have a cohesive story.
TLJ (Rian Johnson, director of Brick, Looper, and some of the most praised episodes of Breaking Bad) was actually delivered on time, under budget, and with minimal leaks, but it caused a massive amount of controversy with the vocal section of the fandom.
Solo's reshoots nearly doubled the expense of the movie, and it because the first Star Wars flop in history.
Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World), Josh Trank (Chronicle), Lord & Miller (21 & 22 Jump Street, the Lego Movie), and Benioff & Weiss (Game of Thrones) all left Star Wars due to "creative differences." Some went on to do better things, like Lord & Miller with Into the Spider-Verse. Others...not so much, and it was a good thing that they left, like Benioff & Weiss and probably Josh Trank.

 

I don't think anything could beat TFA for me- both from my anticipation on the night of its release, as well as how it holds up now. It's a simple film, but effective.

TLJ was more interesting, but it's an experience that I've unfortunately let become marred by the ceaseless online discourse- though to be honest, it really probably is the better film.

TROS isn't even close.

 

THIS! ^^^^^

 

Technically, George Lucas came up with that and Arndt, during the transitional hand-off to Disney after Lucas sold, said it was a bad move to introduce that arc as the first movie introduction as Lucas was originally planning because he felt that the first movie out of the gate should be a romp celebration because if you have a gloomy disillusioned Luke right out of the gate everyone will show up with big smiles and then just feel like someone turned on Kenny G at the dance club.

Thing is, he was right. The other thing was, Lucas doesn't care about that stuff. If someone tells Lucas that something unconventional won't work, you can almost be assured that he'll double down on it all quiet at the time and do it anyway, and later go on about it in interviews explaining why he did it for varied array of philosophical reasons he's ran through his mind since then.

There's virtually no way to know at this point for certain, but I get the sneaky suspicion that Lucas was going to challenge convention again (as he did with every trilogy due to being an experimental filmmaker at his core), and start the trilogy off with Act 2 (the sour note) and then work back up from there - possibly along the lines of 2, 3/1, 1/3. This guess is based on the OT being Act 1, 2, 3, the PT operating backwards with Act 3, 2, 1, which leaves no room for Lucas to put Act 2 in the middle anymore if he was going to stick to his typical approach and "not do the same thing again" artistically and given that the original treatment reads very much like a second act far more than a first act.
Which is why Arndt advocated for the change, and everyone else agreed, and Lucas said they were making things for the fans.

That leaves only three options for Lucas' typical artsy approach: Act 2, 1, 3, or Act 2, 3, 1, or Act 2, 3 & 1, and 1 & 3.

Given his discussion about the arc for Luke being to start out all disillusioned and grumpy and by the end successfully starting the Jedi up again and Leia takes up the Chancellor role after battling a remnant uprising of Imperial sympathizing galactic thugs taking things over, and Luke dying somewhere along the way, I'm sort of guessing that ends us wrapped up around with an order of Act 2, 3/1, 1/3.

That is, Act 2, then Act 3's of the past as the overtone with Act 1's from the past acting as narrative thematic harmonies, then Act 1's of the past as the overtone with Act 3's of the past acting as narrative thematic harmonies.
Meaning, you have a big Parade Ceremony with Leia standing on the dais as in ANH, blended with Palp's on his dais as the ruler in TPM while simultaneously likely Luke would be there all smiles like ROTJ, but now he's the ghost you get to have a Mentos moment with as the fireworks go off, all reprising the ROTJ and ROTS's "death" of Anakin in the "birth" of Vader - might have even gotten a chummy moment of Luke throwing a sappy arm around his young looking dad as they looked on in ghost mode.
...which also inversely "rhymes" (as Lucas liked to call it) against Palps' dias taking of power in the 3rd act (which was the first act thematically), and the final reunification of Skywalker where once torn apart back at TPM when Anakin left - severing the familial rift deep from that point onward. Yada, yada. 'I like circles' - paraphrase of Lucas.

So yeah... they didn't do anything close to this kind of approach, and even if Lucas had stayed - all that would have happened is a lot of people would have yelled at him about how terrible he was and how bad the movies were.
He even said that's part of why he was selling and ditching - he was straight up tired of people telling him he sucked for making these movies (which has been going on since ROTJ, the PT was nothing new).

I'm sure Arndt pointing out the problem as he saw it (regarding fan reception) with starting with Luke all on a grouchy Gran Torino downer in the first movie, tickled at Lucas a bit - reminded him of the nightmare he was about to set out upon yet again (something he seemed pretty good at making himself forget between trilogies and then suffer all over again and swear up and down again after each).

Anyway...sort of a ramble, but point is - Lucas already had the Luke abandoning everything idea. If JJ's to be classed as a hack on that particular idea in some manner, it would be taking someone else's idea and using it rather than creating his own idea.
But that seems a strange thing to level at someone when a vast majority of people simultaneously level criticism at JJ, et. al. for not sticking to Lucas' plans.

As Lucas was well aware - you're screwed either way with these movies.
George Lucas in 2012: "Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Typo, this was supposed to say, "Padme on her dais as the ruler in TPM".

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I'll start by ranking the trilogies...

1 - Original
2 - Sequel
3 - Prequels

For the sequels I'd go:

1- TLJ
2 -TFA
3 - TROS

I really love the first two films. The Force Awakens does an incredible job introducing us to new characters even if it plays it too safe. I'm still not a fan of Kylo/Han sequence. Carrie''s death really makes that choice even worse because there's no Leia/Ben Solo confrontation in the entire trilogy. This is the biggest issue with the entire thing and the only way to fix it was to recast the actor. They didn't so the final film is missing an obvious narrative choice that's building for two films.

The Last Jedi is a triumph. It also tells a familiar story, filled with nostalgia, but does it in a way that isn't obvious. The entire throne room sequence is the highlight of the entire saga as far as I'm concerned. Biggest issue is the next film drops the ball. Luke's incredible moment should have played a part in the galaxy rallying around the Resistance, but JJ spent more time finding lines for friends of his he wanted in the film. The sequel trilogy is kind of an inverse of the prequels. 2 great films followed by a dud. The prequels were two duds and an okay finale.

What's the lesson? No more trilogies. Just tell a serialized story.

Overall though the sequels were a success. Fans are hungry for more stories about Rey/Finn/Poe and BB-8. After the prequels I just wanted to forget about Star Wars for awhile.

There's no doubt in my mind people would have hated Lucas' take on the sequels. TLJ is probably the closest thing we got to something Lucas would have done. It's not surprising that Rogue One/The Force Awakens were universally received. They didn't really attempt anything new. Some fans don't want anything new.

 

I had the exact same thought going through my head when Kylo (my favourite) was killed off at the end of TROS....because prior to the film's release Abrams was asked what his fate was, and he replied: 'I think you'll find it pretty fun'.

 

Umm. Luke's reappearance in the trilogy was a dramatic moment no matter what the circumstances were. It's debatable if it really is all that dramatic. It's definitely suspenseful. It's only really "dramatic" in the sense that the audience's anticipation of Luke Skywalker's return was greater than just about anything else in the movie. TFA suspended that moment leaving us to wonder what will happen next. We would have to wait until the beginning of the next movie.

I fundamentally don't subscribe to your logic that a dramatic/suspenseful cliffhanger ,pausing Luke's reintroduction, could only have been justified by the "revelation" that he is Rey's dad and him enthusiastically taking the saber. Not much of a revelation or suspense if the audience already knows what is coming next is it? Certainties aren't what you would call dramatic. Are they?

 

Umm, it sure wasn't after TLJ came out.

 

As a (former) reylo I wanted a Kylo/Rey romance so initially was glad that she wasn't Luke's daughter.

But post TROS...I can't help but wonder why she wasn't - what was the point of making her no blood relation to the Skywalkers when they intended to kill off Ben Solo anyway (according to both Abrams and Ridley), and Rey's destiny was to be a space nun? And they chose to make her a Palpatine instead?

The presence of Jannah and Zorri hints strongly that there was no intention for a Finn/Rey or Poe/Rey 'lurve' story (as did Ridley's 'Rey doesn't need a boyfriend' comment), so Rey was not going to end up a Skywalker by marrying Ben ( as we reylos thought would happen).

So...
Why not make her Luke's long lost child?
The more I think back on TROS the more I'm convinced they really had no idea what they were doing. The whole film seemed as if they were making it up as they went along! Their only clear goal was to retcon - or ignore - TLJ. The rest was a huge mix of dozens of various ideas that seemed to change as they went along.

 

Oh?

I thought we were having a discussion. Not just flexing.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 22, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 22, 2022 ---

Arguments con the plot developments that we got are rather undermined by immediately offering preapproved outcomes like who Rey’s parents should be.

Regarding Rey’s actual parents. We are told they weren’t evil in spite of the father being the issue of
Palpatine (somehow). And Rey herself is not evil. She doesn’t need to be related to Luke or not related to Palpatine in order to be at least nominally sympathetic.

Despising her on those terms is simply NOT a critique of the quality of writing. It is simply a reaction not getting a preapproved outcome. In many cases the motivation is transparent. Petulant and spiteful.

 

I'll admit it was a kneejerk response and not one of my finer posting moments here. But quite frankly, there's not much to say in response to a poster who actually opines, "its debatable if the ending of TFA was all that dramatic."

I'd wager that the vast majority of SW fans who enjoyed TFA were watching and rewinding the last five minutes of the film over and over and over again once they had their own copy of the film. I sure did.

Everything about the end of TFA was crafted to be highly dramatic for its audience. It was the storyline itself: the anticipation of seeing Luke Skywalker again...it was the majestic setting of Skellig Miichael...the emotional soundtrack as Rey climbs up the mountain...the 'Obi-wan-like' appearance of Luke when she reaches the summit...the emotional look on Rey's face as she pulls out Luke's lightsaber and offers it back to him...the look on Luke's face...and the dynamic, circular aerial shot of the two of them just before John Williams' soundtrack crescendos into his iconic end credits music.

Admittedly, all art is subjective, but pardon me if I'm not inclined to 'argue' this point further.

 

I didn't 'despise' Rey until TROS, I then despised what they made her into. I don't like supercilious judgemental characters, especially female characters, and I never have done. It isn't particular to SW and Rey. I've felt the same about other female characters, and said so.

 

It milked the audience's basic anticipation for seeing Luke Skywalker, the search for whom the entire plot of the movie was based on (although he also functioned as a maguffin). In a way it was the purest form of fan service as it lavished a fair amount of screen time on a non-payoff as the movie ends virtually at the the moment his rueful face appears on screen.

Absence of Luke for the entire film where EVERYONE is looking for him + Luke appearing in the last two shots = Drama (for Star Wars fans)

Calling all the bets laid on who was connected to who and in what way at that moment, when the movie itself barely provided a slither of concrete intrigue as to how Rey fit in with Han and/or Leia and/or Luke and/or Obi Wan and so on, is just not warranted, or invited by the film. Those were things that were 99% the projection of fans trying to get ahead of the curve. (I remember people stating that it was all obfuscation and that she must be Palpatine's descendant as the complete absence of any reference to him was too conspicuous.)

Surely you're not suggesting that Luke and Rey having ambiguous looks of emotion on their face as evidence of one particular outcome.

There's just no basis for claiming that the end of TFA dramatically promised the imminent answer to all those questions in TLJ. None. And definitely didn't need the specific revelation of Rey being related to Luke in order for the drama of that scene to be justified.

The ending of TFA would have been just as dramatic for the audience if Chewie went to Ahch To on his own, and he was the one that climbed the steps and found Luke perched on the cliff.

Absence of Luke for an entire film where EVERYONE is looking for him + Luke appearing in the last two shots = Drama for Star Wars fans. Rey and her parentage are totally besides the point in that scene.

It's a "what will happen next?" shot. But not like in a game show where they ask the question and then make you wait till after the commercial break to see if the contestant's guess has won them the grand prize.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 22, 2022, Original Post Date: Sep 22, 2022 ---

Yeah I know this is your argument. But you are basically describing spite.

Rey was ok until there was an outcome for another character that you didn't want so you've changed your mind about everything prior to that. She only became supercilious and judgmental once the writers gave Kylo/Ben a relatively noble death (unlike the one he gave his father and to family friend Lor San Tekka, and almost gave to Finn).

You're perfectly entitled to have emotional response to actors and the fictional characters they portray. Even a vicarious relationship with them to an extent. That includes love and hate. But attempting to rationalise your responses in this way, or apply those rationales as some sort of critique of the writing, really doesn't convince anyone or attract sympathy. I don't think it helps you either.

 

Rey was ok until the final scene of TLJ; I do not like seeing a woman on her knees before a man, even in fiction, but I also don't like the reverse. If one is seen as fine and the other not, it's hypocritical.

What I liked about Rey was the fact that she was flawed...but TROS elevated her into some sort of 'goddess' that everyone adored, because 'she was Rey'....from her miraculous ability to cure the dying, to the way everyone seemed to fall in love with her and be in awe of her - I actually liked the scene where she argued with Poe, it was a breath of fresh air among the syrup.

In any case, we all defend and rationalise our faves here, it's only natural. It's part of being a fan.