fixing last jedi with one logical change....leia on ah-to

This trilogy isn't perfect, but it's a long way from failing. JJ would have to really drop the ball in the final film for most people to consider it a failure.

Luke Skywalker is my favorite character, but Rey's journey is far more interesting. In many way, Luke was a weak protagonist in the OT. Han Solo was the super star of that trilogy even though Luke was our protagonist.

 

Yep. I remember The Last Jedi well. I just watched it today and it stands on its own very well.

 

It might have removed a certain degree of focus from Rey, but I don't think it would be to the detriment of the story. Rey would still obviously be our main protagonist. She would still be learning and growing, and we would still want to know where she would end up next.

I also don't agree that Leia would be useless on Ahch-To. It was Leia's hologram that convinced Luke to train Rey, and I doubt the real Leia would be any worse for that. Secondly, if I recall correctly, Luke's first use of the Force in TLJ was to reach out to Leia. She means something to him, in a way that "Rey from nowhere" doesn't. Thirdly, although this may just seem like fan service to those who are "finished" with the OT group, having Luke, Leia, and Chewie all in a scene and able to mourn Han Solo properly would be pretty awesome.

 

On the contrary, I would argue that this trilogy actually isn’t failing, but a lot of fans are irritated that someone other than Luke, Han, and Leia is at the forefront of these films. (That’s not a jab at you, either, I’m just making a general statement.) I think the focus is on the larger story at hand, but at the end of the day, the original characters are supporting characters now, and even though their stories are progressed, the focus has shifted to the new characters. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Rey and Kylo Ren are arguably the most important characters in the Sequel Trilogy, just as Luke, Leia, Han, and Darth Vader were in the Original Trilogy. It’s no different. The old characters still have a place in this story, but the focus isn’t primarily on them. They’ve had their stories told. For the new characters’ stories to progress at all, I think there needs to be more of a focus on them.

Also, I’ve gotta say, when it was first announced that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm, I assumed the original trio would have a smaller role in the Sequel Trilogy than what they’ve had (and I’ve talked to others on this forum that also had that mindset). Their roles are more significant than just passing the torch, so I’d say we’ve been pretty lucky so far. I’m not saying the Sequel Trilogy is perfect, but I don’t think it gets enough credit.

In regards to Rey, I personally love the character, and I really don’t think the story of The Last Jedi was solely focused on Rey. To be honest, she actually kind of becomes irrelevant during the last part of the film. She’s absent for most of the Battle of Crait, where the focus is on Luke, Poe, Finn, Rose, Kylo Ren, etc. So, I don’t think the progression of the new films’ storylines is exclusive to one or two characters.

 

I agree with all of your points. It would have been far more interesting/dramtic to see Leia + Luke interact on the island. Also, it just seems more logical that Leia would be the one too seek out her brother rather than some stranger.

 

I agree with this completely. The Last Jedi is basically about Luke, but I'm not sure that RJ even had a choice based on the plot of TFA. TLJ is a high wire act balancing the four new leads (Poe, Finn, Rey, Kylo) with Luke's story. This is why I'm excited about a new Star Wars series disconnected from the Skywalker Saga. There's just too many characters and it's difficult create a compelling narrative.

 

Its easy 2 love a character who haves no flaws.

 

I think Michael Arndt's comment about his experience writing for the new trilogy wonderfully summarizes the struggle:

And that is the entire problem that every writer has faced with the new trilogy; on one hand, you're trying to launch a new group of heroes (even Lucas was interested in this), and on the other hand you're trying to fade out the old heroes.

While each movie contains three acts, each trilogy's films each serve as one act for the arc of that trilogy, and each trilogy also serves as one act of the entire Saga.

The current trilogy is really trying something that I can't recall actually ever truly having been attempted in cinema history: it's trying to cross-fade a 3rd act of one story with the 1st act of a new story.

We're trying to wrap up Luke, Han, and Leia's (and Anakin's) story while simultaneously kick off Rey, Poe, and Finn's (and Kylo's) story.

It's incredibly challenging to write a 3rd act and a 1st act as the same act.

All of the traditions, expectations, and lessons gear you as a writer (and an audience) to want to focus on the heroes of the first 2 acts.
Now, the prequels didn't have this problem as the 1st act because it was about re-contextualizing the 2nd act (4, 5, 6) through showing us characters who were in the 2nd act, but who took second and third fiddle to our principle heroes during the 2nd act.
But the prequels still had to mind the 2nd act's heroes by reinforcing their story through the story of the 1st act, as prequels do.
So the protagonist of the 1st act became the antagonist of the 2nd act, and a balance was inherently achieved by re-positioning the principle protagonist of the 1st act as the antagonist of the 2nd act, and then making the remaining principle heroes and antagonists of the 1st act supporting roles in the 2nd act.
So the focal point of the 1st act naturally moved out of the way of the focal point of the 2nd act.

However, the Sequel Trilogy doesn't have this inherent freedom. It must show the principle heroes of the 2nd act, give them a closing act, and not turn them into antagonists, while simultaneously moving those 2nd act heroes into supporting roles, introduce and launch a new generation of heroes, and create a correlative relationship between the 2nd act heroes and the 3rd act heroes whole-cloth because the 2nd act didn't supply any context to inherently support any new 3rd act heroes what-so-ever, unlike the relationship between the 2nd act and the 1st act which inherently supported each other.

And this isn't something that is caused solely by Disney. This was something that Michael Arndt was wrestling with even when Lucas was still at the helm and hadn't even started the idea of handing off to Disney, as much of the TLJ skeletal frame (we now know) was inspired in concepts from a treatment for what Lucas was thinking for Episode 7, and Arndt just could not find a way to make what Lucas was talking about work.

When Abrams and Kasdan came on, there were piles of notes and whiteboard materials and no clear headway towards how to pull it all into something that made any level of sense; just Arndt sitting there shrugging and metaphorically saying, "Hell if I know guys..."

It's easy to say that the 3rd act should be exclusive to the heroes of the 2nd act, and wait until a new trilogy to launch new heroes, but the reality is that the actors hardly could pull that off, and further if you wanted to keep Star Wars alive beyond this trilogy in a large way, then you actually need to get your new assets in and on the table at the same time as your big icons are on the screen or else the spin up of the new character after the final Skywalker trilogy would have a far less attendance by simple default of it being an "other" with no known relation. It would have been a very risky business decision to slice them apart.
As to first consideration of the above, regarding the actors, Harrison Ford could swing it (though you'd have to be prepared for hospital bills which come with his movies more and more now days), but you have to remember that every time he shows up to another Star Wars film, his primary talking point is how soon can his character be killed because he repeatedly sees no reason for Solo to still be running around (and hasn't seen any reason since A New Hope).

Hammil could still pull off a good show, but you'd have to scale that action down quite a bit as he's not exactly high up on the acrobatic action combat of the new millennium; especially at just over 65 years of age.

As for Fisher, she's a hell of an actress, but action was looking a bit unlikely for her physical capability, and unfortunately, if the 2nd act heroes were the principle heroes of this 3rd trilogy, then you would really be in a pickle at this point with Leia.

So you would have to dial the intensity of what you were writing way back if you focused on the 2nd act heroes.
It probably would have been a mess, if we're to go off of what Arndt has discussed.

I'm not surprised that Disney's solution was to just throw everything out and start over from a fresh angle. If you're looking at a bunch of material that talented folks, to include Lucas, had been working on for years and yet no one had gotten even beyond a very simplified treatment and some bits of concept art and when you ask how the script was looking as a possibility, the already involved folks start reaching for the pain medicine...that doesn't look very promising.

Now keep in mind, on top of all of this, Disney et. al. team are still bothering to try to keep the chiasmus narrative structure running through all of this mess...personally...I find it simply amazing.

I'd really like to see anyone do everything that's been accomplished and come out with something better.
It's not good enough to say that some aspect doesn't matter, toss it out and write what you think is better.
No. You have to meet all of the requirements and make a better story than what's been put down.

If someone here can, then they sure as hell shouldn't be posting on this forum.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Sounds like you have it all figured out.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It's odd to me that a dead character briefly mentioned in Revenge of the Sith is somehow the key to what should have been the ST. What's even better is while the vast majority of people enjoyed the film there's this idea floating around that the movie was a disaster. The Last Jedi doesn't need to be fixed.

 

Good points here. Plagueis provides the needed push to move this toward a definitive end to the Skywalkers rather than the meandering we now have. They may find another suitable way of doing this but I have many doubts it will be done in a way that we will remember.

 

I think what's happening is that for the first time, there are two Star Wars universe paths and there's a bunch of fans of one of those paths and they seem rather upset that realities from that universe aren't being employed and that instead a different universe is being built; one they see as less nuanced and less interesting than the universe built out of a bit over a decade of media content spanning multiple platforms of delivery.

Unfortunately, unlike Star Trek, where it's just a matter of science fiction wand waving and you get parallel universes to do both at once, Star Wars is (so far) only able to pivot and deliver that other version based on that different tangent of material if it rebooted the ST, wiped it out, and started over.

I don't see that happening, considering that EU was parked as legacy, re-branded Legends, and removed from canon.

I especially don't see a reboot back to an EU reliant path as the main saga run since the return isn't that great due to that alternate universe path requiring nuanced familiarity that Disney isn't seemingly interested in requiring of the general audience (which is probably a good idea, because I'd really find it entertaining watching a general audience dumped smack in the middle of an EU reliant tangent of knowns), so unfortunately (fortunately?), we're probably just going to see these kinds of expressions as a regular mainstay to Star Wars now.

Maybe Disney can figure some way to satisfy this section of the fanbase, but I'm not expecting that to happen. I think the opportunity for whatever universe would have been possible as tangent from that once built path is gone.
Maybe Disney will make someone Force-hop realities and reboot up the other universe tangents in some way of attempting to unify the two realities due to some paramount threat to the Force's structural integrity...no clue?

Maybe one day fans of this style will do what Star Trek fans eventually did over time and start booting their own fan film series and find some satisfaction that way?

All I can say for now is that fans of this other path will likely experience frustration and disappointment for at least a while because the current development position is one that doesn't seem to have interest in that other version of the Star Wars universe.

If I was a fan of the other universe, I'd probably just sit back and watch the new films on streaming or VOD when they come out, and not bother with a bunch of them and just wait for something to swing back the way that I like my Star Wars. That's what I did through most of the 90's Star Trek...and aside from the recent films, what I still do with the series. Heck, that's what I did with the EU.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Lucas is really the one to blame here because he pretty much disregarded those books. All that world building was pretty much ignored by Lucas. So I'm not sure how Lucasfilm was every gonna make that work.

 

They were likely never going to make that work.
He probably would have dumped it just as Disney did if his comments on the EU are anything to go off of.

Personally, I'm with Lucas here, but for different reasons.

I don't really read fiction that often. Outside of Terry Pratchett, which my wife asked me to read to her nightly, and has been an enjoyable bonding experience for us, pretty much everything I read is non-fiction.

I mean, my Kindle contains the following:

• A statistical study of the interdependence of solar wind parameters
• Alexandria and Her Schools; four lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh
• Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and spontaneous pneumothorax possible causal relationship
• Ancient Epistolary Fictions. The Letter in Greek Literature
• Astronomy: Astronomy For Beginners - Black Holes, New Galaxies, Worm Holes and more - 2nd Edition
• Basic Mixing Techniques
• Discrete Scale Relativity
• EVIDENCE FOR INTERMEDIATE BLR OF REVERBERATION-MAPPED AGN PG 0052+251
• Galactic Environments of the Sun and Cool Stars
• Hidden In Plain Sight: The simple link between relativity and quantum mechanics
• History of the Septuagint
• Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars: Structural Properties and the Fundamental Plane
• I Ching: The Book of Changes [Translated] [Annotated]
• LIMITS ON HOT GALACTIC HALO GAS FROM X-RAY ABSORPTION LINES
• Lost Civilizations Of Our World: A Stunning Look At The Worlds Ancient Lost Civilizations: What Really Happened And Where Did They Go?
• New varying speed of light theories
• Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century
• On the Origin of Gravity
• On The Radii of Astrospheres
• Owocki - Stellar Winds
• Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality
• Spectral Properties of AGN in 2XMMi
• STAR WARS and the History of Transmedia Storytelling
• Stellar Lyman-alpha Emission Lines in the Hubble Space Telescope Archive Intrinsic Line Fluxes and Absorption from the Heliosphere and Astrospheres
• Stellar Winds in Time
• Studying the Interstellar Medium of H ii/BCD Galaxies Using IFU Spectroscopy
• The Analects of Confucius (from the Chinese Classics)
• The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts
• The Dutch Ship Brederode: Tromp's Flagship
• The Forgotten Kingdom - The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel
• The History of Assyria
• The host galaxy of 3C 279
• THE HVEE C SYSTEM AT GRONINGEN
• The Schager Roos Question (17th Century Dutch Naval History)
• The Sumerians: History's First Recorded Civilization
• WHAT ASTEROSEISMOLOGY CAN DO FOR EXOPLANETS: KEPLER-410A b IS A SMALL NEPTUNE AROUND A BRIGHT STAR, IN AN ECCENTRIC ORBIT CONSISTENT WITH LOW OBLIQUITY
• White Paper-BS.1770 vs CBS meter V2

Aside from there being no fiction in my library, you'll probably also spot a massive lack of Star Wars content. The only Star Wars material in my library at this time was written by affiliates from around here (Ammianus Marcellinus).

My fiction is mainly films and television, and the TV fiction that I watch is dominantly mysteries with some light shows tossed in (e.g. The Good Place, The Librarians).

It tends to be the case, as well, that if more material starts to be produced more frequently for a brand, the more my likelihood of dropping out increases, so even though I did bother to take a peek at the EU, I very quickly dropped it.
I'm just not that kind of consumer, so I don't think I'll ever really be able to directly relate to the EU tangent-based fans.

I suppose the only way that I can is by inverting what happened to the Star Gate film, getting side-railed into a terrible TV show instead of completing the intended trilogy...but that's really stretching a relationship.

I'm just not that kind of consumer. Funny thing is...neither was Lucas, so I don't really think there was ever going to be a future where the EU universe tangent fans were likely to be happy in the end. If Disney hadn't pissed them off, then Lucas would have pissed them off. We already know what his trilogy was shaping up to look like, and it didn't include any of these EU-like tangent relationships. It looked a bit like TLJ, but instead of that being 8, it was 7...so I guess they would have been even more pissed sooner?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Luke's arc is too unlikely with Leia actually there. He could hardly maintain with the hologram.

Of course I love The Last Jedi so what fixes it for you cripples it for me.

I don't object to the "Superman" sequence. In fact I like it.

I'm an original 1977 kid and Last Jedi is my 2nd favorite in the franchise so far so I have to reject the premise.