SPECULATION How can J.J. make this a satisfying trilogy for the majority of fans?

Interesting, most of what you're suggesting is building off of what JJ setup in TFA, not what TLJ did. Wonder what that means???

 

Everything hinges on effective writing. That means several of the points raised against TLJ can be included if done correctly. I think Raney's video review, which is shared in one of the threads, explains some ways.

Finally, the same applies to other films in other franchises, including Star Trek and Alien.

 

I can't say that I really would care to see most of the things you listed. The Knghts of Ren for me are a must. I'll seriously be disappointed if we don't at least get a couple scenes with them fighting Rey or wrecking through a band of rebels. But other than that and maybe some Luke Skywalker, I just don't believe any of that would serve the narrative we have been given, and would be nothing but shoe-horned in fan service that would be obvious plot twists that would be a little to much on the nose for the wrong reasons. I have faith that JJ will come up with something very cool, and yet will honor the narrative that Rian moved forward.

But the one item on your list that I disagree with the most is Rey's parents HAVING to be someone related to the main cast of the other trilogies. Rian's choice to have her be 'no one' was the main point of his entire film. Hero's can come from anywhere, and the Force can choose who it wants to carry out it's will. She may not be related to one of our favorite antagonist or protagonist, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have many of their same traits and abilities.

And besides, who were the parrents of Yoda, Windu, Kenobi or Palpatine ? As far as we are aware, they were no one. Yet they became powerful force users and played integral parts in this story from a GFFA. Let's face it, if the force only had off-spring of other powerful force users to pick from to create it's balance, the pickings would be pretty small.

Either way, it sure is fun to speculate isn't it?

Cheers!

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 27, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 27, 2018 ---

This! I think having some characterization of at least one or 2 of the Knights of Ren would be great. After all they helped Kylo destroy the great Luke Skywalkers Academy(at least that's what's speculated based on Luke's story to Rey) and fought and killed (murdered perhaps) the remaining students.

 

LOL. I was driving today and thought of this, not sure if anyone else has suggested it or not. What if Broom Boy joins the rebellion and reveals to them his mother was in hiding with him before she died, and that she was part of a school where everyone was massacred? That she survived the massacre of students while pregnant with him, and went into hiding on Canto Bite where she took a job until she got sick and died, leaving Broom Boy an orphan.

I bet we could get the Skywalker name to continue that way. The kid is the perfect age to be Luke's son that he didn't know about. Set him up for X-XII to be about him in another decade.

 

Something I'm looking for in IX is the reunion of Rey and Finn as a team.

In TLJ, the force (Rey) and the war (Finn) are completely disconnected and the Jedis are shown as space-Jesus that the Resistance look at in awe, waiting to be saved. Obviously the force wielders have always been special but in TFA, the pair showed how relevant are the two sides for each other. For example the starkiller base fight showed Finn protecting Rey as much as he could until she could protect him.

JJ should make the heroes work together, each with their own strengths : from that point view, I did not like at all how TLJ separated the two protagonists from TFA and in fact I think he failed quite badly at developing this two stories with equivalent quality and respect.

 

While it does annoy me the amount of time that both Abrams and Johnson spend on going "whose the girl?" "whose her parents?" "who are you?" .... just for the answer to be a daughter of junkers. I mean i went in to the film fully expecting them to go down the route they did and even expecting it it still felt a little flat after all the build up, and im not talking fan buildup, im just talking on screen build up.
However now they have done it i just want them to move on, put all the build up down to bad planning and slightly dodgy film making and get on with it. I don't think thier needs to be a genetic explanation to her powers, I mean if where going by what we've seen on screen Palpatine was always portrayed as more powerful then Anakin Skywalker, and he was always meant to be the chosen one and their was no genetic explanation their, plus Kenobi was never portrayed as a the most powerful Jedi so been his granddaughter wouldn't explain her power and it would be really hard to come up with a convicing way in which she is a Skywalker now. I can also put the kenobi line from the force awakens down to it been Abrams as the director he's renowned for doing stuff just becuase he thinks it would be cool rather then having a meaning behind it and while in many cases that sort of thing drives me mad, you can justify this as simply her hearing past jedi's as she awakens to her Force Powers.
I do think however their needs to be a bit more explanation into the Light rises to meet the Dark explanation i mean its an ok start but seemed a bit off considering it was Snoke giving the speach about Kylo and Rey when he was obviously more powerful then both.

I agree they have to make Kylo more threatening, we've had two films of temper tantrums and is he good is he bad .... he's even been portrayed as weak times, It doesn't feel like he is a big strong menacing villain going into the last film of the trilogy who are Heros have to defeat.
Im not sure i want them to bring back the mask i kind of like the have seprated him from Vader, but i agree they do need to make him seem utterly unreddemable in the first act.
What id like to see happen is maybe ste the film a few years in the future and have Finn and Rose having had a kid and have Kylo kill it and Rose. I didnt really buy the Rose Finn romance, but this would be an intresting route to go.

Yep 100% agree Hux became a comedy character in the last Jedi, just have Kylo off him he's annoying and seems to think he is acting in a pantomine

Agree again they have to add some more villains, brining in the Knights of Ren as trained foce users some of whom where also at lukes temple would give Rey a real threat.
Personly what i'd like to see happen is in the space between the two films having Rey (with the help of Luke and the Jedi texts) train a new band of Jedi, and you could have an awesome showdown in the final act of the film between the new Jedi and the Knights of Ren, multiple lightsaber vs lightsaber battles are somthing weve never seen on film before so that would be cool.

Yeah Luke needs to be more then a cameo, seeing him as a force ghost training new jedi would be good to see.

Yeah i agree with this i mean so many people for so long have dreamed of seeing Luke Skywalker on screen as a fully fledged jedi Master in his prime, and the fact we didn't get that is obviously one of the reasons so many people disliked the last Jedi, so if they could find away to do something like this that fits with the story it would be great! But it has to fit with the story and not feel its just their for fan service.

While i prefer the idea of CGI Leia to recasting, i don't think the technology is their yet to have the emotional subtlety needed to pull of what would be needed from the role in episode 9.
Theirs no way of doing the Leia situation well, for me like id said before i would have this film set a few years in the future, and have the film start with Leia funeral have the new order attack maybe and have Kylo Ren and the knights of Ren do some like killing rose and possibly Finns kid.

Again like with the Rey parents i think now they have made this choice of killing him off they have to stay with it and i really don't want to see him transfer his consciousness into any one it would come across as a bit naff. If we are gonna have Snoke in the film the only way i would do it is as a evil force ghost appearing to Kylo Ren and maybe even Rey. It would also leave open the possibility of a force ghost battle between Luke and Snoke... i dunno if that could be pulled of in away that didn't seem silly though.
What ever happens I do think we need more about Snoke and the first order, the way they have done it so far seems so lazy. Return of the Jedi ends with the Emporer dead and the Empire defeated The Force awakens Starts with a group who look exactly like the Empire back led by a guy who looks like a rip off of the Emporer.... and their has been zero explanation, and no doing it in the books wont be good enough.
Give Snoke and the first order a goal other then been bad and have that play a part into where snoke came from and what was his and the new orders end game.

 

My basic idea:

Star Wars Episode IX: Prophecy of the Whills

In episode 9 I'd like to see Rey convene on some sort of trippy force plane with a jedi council of all the force ghosts. Luke sends Rey on a mission to a kyber crystal cave, either on jedha or illum, in order to get a new crystal for her lightsaber because Anakin's has been damaged. While she's in the crystal cave Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke, and Anakin appear to her and it's revealed that Rey's powers are in fact Anakin's reborn, and she was chosen because she reminds him of the good he saw in people he loved and has hurt. Padme, his mother, Luke, even himself...Make Rey's parents refugees from Naboo. Over the years of Imperial rule the planet has become a terrible place and they fled, becoming nomads and scavengers. Eventually they end up at a desert planet and leave Rey essentially in servitude to Unkar Plott...She reminds him of the woman he loved and also himself. He was the chosen one, but he failed the galaxy. Now he sees the mistakes he made continuing in Ben Solo and through the combined power of the old masters, the strength of the chosen one has been awoken inside of her to right his wrongs, etc, etc. Have full on extended cameos for Liam Neeson, Hayden Christiansen, Ewan McGreggor, Mark Hammil, Yoda, go for it! And I'm not even a prequel guy.

In ANH Obi Wan says "if you strike me down I will become more powerful than I have ever imagined." The main thing I want to know from pretty much ALL of star wars is what that means...He can talk and appear as a ghost? Great...What is their true power?? Give the force ghosts a badass name (like those "Whills" we've heard about) and some grand arching master plan and reason for learning to become one with the force...What if the light saber wasn't plucked from some garbage chute on Cloud City, it was reforged through space and time by the mother frakking Grand Council of the Whills? The force ghosts show her how to reforge the blade again. But in order to wield it, she must undergo their trials. You could do some cool stuff like having Rey undertake a trial under each master and learn a different lesson. And since it was happening via the force, it could somehow happen over many years but only a short time to the rest of the characters. Rey comes back as this Jedi who has been trained by all of the greatest masters of the Jedi in different styles for a long time. They show her the faces and memories of hundreds of force sensitives throughout the galaxy and she accepts her mission rebuild the order. They were only able to train her this way by being one with the force and by pooling their energy together to bring her to this place. Through her training, she becomes the most rounded Jedi and learns to see with wisdom beyond what any one of them has. And she learns from their failures too.

However, she becomes jolted back into the real world when she senses that Leia is in danger. She wants to flee to save her, the masters tell her not to go, she goes anyways. Classic. She flies to Leia but arrives a moment to late, and Leia has been assassinated by an agent of Kylo Ren...Kylo's arc so far has been that he is essentially the new emperor now, the actual supreme leader of what used to be the republic, ruling from Vader's castle if you're one of those people. The FO is following him but many are questioning his leadership because hes getting more insane. In Vader's castle, or elsewhere, he has some sort of ancient artifact that he uses to amplify his abilities and control the minds of his soldiers and the leaders of the planets. He orders the KOR continue hunting down the remainder of the resistance, who have been rumored to be growing underground, specifically looking for Leia and Rey. Eventually they find her and she is killed. However, there are several dead KOR on the scene that she took with her...Leia dies a force badass.

Once Leia is killed the Resistance resolves to prepare for a final suicide attack on Kylo himself. They are larger than the end of TLJ, but still a weak force. They attack the FO fleet at Mustafar and Rey and Finn, Rose, whoever, infiltrate the castle to destroy his mind amplifier. Rey confronts Kylo to distract him and the rest of the team goes for the artifact. Epic battle ensues. It's awesome. The artfiact is destroyed and word of the battle spreads across comms throughout the galaxy. Common people join the battle in ships armed in makeshift ways, the remainder of various planetary space forces show up. The battle snowballs in a desparate sort of Rogue One fashion into all out war. Rey defeats Ben on the shores of Mustafar and he is mauled in a Darth Vadery fashion. Rey offers to save him, he refuses, and then she saves him anyways. She drags him back to her ship but he dies along the way...he asks her to forgive him. She does.

Anyways...I'll stop rambling. You can figure out how it'd wrap up from there. The bad guys are defeated once and for all, peace and balance is restored. Rey has some sort of new (not grey) perspectice on the force and expains how it's all yin yang and so forth. The movie ends with her training her new order or setting out to find and recruit the people she's seen in the force (then that becomes a TV show later).

 

It is a satisfying trilogy for the majority of fans. I hope they keep doing what they're doing, because if there's one thing I don't like it is them appeasing a loud voiced section of Star Wars fandom.

 

Up until now it has been pretty satisfying.

 

Alright here goes, I made an account just to post this, the last jedi was a disaster, 47% on Rotten Tomatoes Audience Review Score and terrible sales for Solo which isn't even a bad movie indicate so, and if Lucasfilm finally now understands they're running their business into the dirt, I'm willing to post an idea from just one fan, myself, on my tiny minds worth of what can be done to salvage the plot of the sequel trilogy now that half the characters are killed off and Luke went out like a half villain.

First, we need to get into the fundamental building blocks upon which the Skywalker saga was initially built. Then we need to address what all manner of fans are looking for from this sequel trilogy, hater and admirer alike.

I'm by no means a literary genius, but heres my little idea, not saying this is the best and if Lucasfilm has a better idea that will actually work and bring back the fans then by all means go for it Lucasfilm. I just want a movie we all enjoy.

1 Anakin.

Fans of the prequels as well as anyone who's been faithfully following Star Wars since the Lucas years will recognize the driving point behind the Prequels was that Anakin was "the chosen one".

This plot device has been all but shut down by the fact that Rey, who has as of yet been a nobody defeats all of the Skywalkers in battle with ease.
Rey needs to be somebody. Either Luke's daughter, or an incarnation of the Force itself created by the will of the force to counter the creation of Anakin through the Dark Side by Sith Lord Darth Plagueis. Whatever, go crazy, but she has to be someone.

Back to Anakin. Anakin's very name is eerie in its own nature. It refers to the Anakim from the Hebrew Apocrypha. In lost books of non-canoncial Hebrew texts from the Hebrew bible, the Anakim were the sons of Anak, a being whom was the very offspring of fallen angels who had since become literal demons who took it upon themselves to create children with the daughters of men. This gives rise to the races and cultures of people whom the Ancient Hebrews referred to as giants.

There can be no coincidence behind George Lucas's choice for the Chosen One's name and the Hebrew tale. Anakin was created through the Dark Side of the Force, a literal child of the Dark Side incarnate, by Darth Plagueis that would later imbue him with lustful dreams of power and immortality that ultimately turned him onto the path of Darth Vader.

This plot can still be made relevant if Lucasfilm is willing to make their villains threatening and ominous once again. People love Infinity War because Thanos is such a good and threatening villain. We all want to see the next film to find out how the Avengers and Captain Marvel are going to take him down. The same can be done with Kylo Ren.

Whether it is decided Snoke is Plagueis, who manufactured his own death to deceive Kylo Ren into fullfiling Sith prophecy, or if Snoke is insignificant or some other threatening Force User, the original threat of Plagueis behind Anakin's creation can be made imminent.

Episode IX could fast forward 10 years later. Kylo Ren is now a Master of the Dark Side, and like leaks have suggested online, he is obsessed with luring young Force Sensitives to the Dark Side to create an ultimate Dark Side Army. Though powerful, he realizes he will never become as powerful as his grandfather Darth Vader. This leads him to a new obssession.

At some point he learns of his grandfather's origins, that he was a being created through
Sith Alchemy by Palpatine's Old Master. Through a subtle exchange of rapid plot, the problems and criticisms of Reylo, Kylo Ren's weakness as a villain, and his criticism of switching between dark and light, Rey's Mary Sue powers, and fans of Rey who want her to remain a positive female Lead Character while those critical of her character are hereby solved.

Kylo Ren makes it his ultimate goal to recreate his grandfather as Plagueis originally did through Schmi Skywalker. The subject for his sick experiment: none other than his semi-love interest and perversion of compassion, Rey.

This act would render Kylo Ren as sick and disgusting, which he is he killed his father he is not a protagonist, and would eliminate inconsistencies in his character between good and evil. It confirms what we knew about him from TFA: he's a bastard. It also vilifies Reylo which many fans are critical of while keeping it around for people who are still interested in their twisted half romance. Rey, a character now somehow relevant to the Skywalkers, Luke's daughter whatever makes a mistake, out of the goodness in her heart and a faith past romantic partners have had for the Skywalkers, Padme and Anakin etc, she allows the child to be born. Perhaps Finn agrees to help raise the child though imbittered by the atrocious act of Kylo Ren and his unwillingly forced upon Sith Alchemy onto Rey.

Kylo Ren wins, he is threatening, he has his new Vader, whether the child will be good or evil will be the subject of a future of Star Wars films fans will be desperate to see conclusion and closure, and perhaps as Anak was the Father of the Anakim, this child or Rey could usher in a terrifying future where new Ultimate Force Sensitives more powerful than any Jedi before, being descendants of Rey's child, rule, protect, or tear the galaxy apart.

This is just a fan idea, but me being a fan of Lucas's inspirations for Star Wars from spirituality and world religion and myth, this us just one idea of MANY others that could possibly be done. I like this because it drives a plot and has super powered beings similar to Marvel's cinematic universe, but also ties into the original plot devices behind the Original Trilogy and Prequels binding myth and extra human powers into a tale of struggle between good and evil, but there's many was this can be done, it's definitely not limited to my silly idea.

Whatever happens, I just want Star Wars to be entertaining and for this hostility towards the fandom to meet its bitter end because we love Star Wars and the fans are the ones who love and cherish the series, and because of their passions, the fans, both old and new should come first along with a story of conflict between good and evil that is awe inspiring.