Rant on planning

We all know there was no plan for the OT, but that's not the criticism here.

The OT was never planned as a trilogy BUT the ST was! This is the difference. They knew, they will make three movies. So, better planning was needed.

Using the OT as excuse for the lack of planning of the ST is nonsense. The OT was made 40 years ago. Times have changed.

Especially in the age of TV series you need a plan and an united vision.

 

It was definitely released. I bought and read it from a discount bind at my local convenience store in the late 80s. (I want to say it was even translated into Norwegian, but I'm not entirely sure about that). It's a cute little story that doesn't fit the OT canon at all, and I seem to remember (although this is 30-odd years ago) that the characterizations are a bit off, but I sure liked it

 

Fun fact, the mud-planet of Mimban first appeared in Splinter of a Mind's Eye Good times...

 

And it's likely true that the PT was more thoroughly planned out than the OT and ST, yet its storytelling turned out rather flat and still managed to create inconsistencies with the OT.

 

Even if true, the franchise itself wasnt nearly as big with all the content than it is now or 20 years ago.
The fact that they didnt plan this thing from start to finish, is just baffling.

 

As a big PT defender, this is so true. It's like George completely forgot to re-watch his original movies and write down all the references that the OT mentions that would take place during the time frame of the PT.

I honestly wish that they would of kept one director to do all 3 movies whether it was going to be JJ, RJ, CT or someone else. My big wish is that I wish they would of kept George Lucas on board for the ST then part ways after it. I wish we would of gotten his treatments instead. Lets just hope that Disney/Lucasfilm learn from their mistakes with ST and go on to make better movies.

 

Because the claim of the PT being planned isn't true either. George Lucas wrote from movie to movie. This can be seen in the making ofs.

 

By "planned," I meant he definitely had in mind an ending to the trilogy that he was trying to reach.

 

That was the case for the ST as well, Like for example- there was always clear that Kylo gets redeemed and dies at the end.

 

I suppose that's true for Kylo Ren's arc because that was the inevitable conclusion. But I wonder if Palpatine's return was truly intended when they started this trilogy, because there's scant little evidence for it in its first two chapters.

 

At one point Colin T said that he never thought about bringing back Palpatine, so there's that.

 

And I do remember one of the criticisms of ROTS was that it was too rushed and nobody believed Anakin would turn so easily and quickly. People even reasoned that AOTC should have been Ep. 1 either giving more time for Vader to be Vader or for Anakin's turn to be explained during the Clone Wars....which, sort of eventually happened in a way with the show.

 

I don't want a fully planned series.
There are too many moving pieces for that to work either.
The PT was fully planned and it had to make certain benchmark moments or else it'd fall apart.
When the story wasn't working with audiences, it was kind of too late. The gears were set in motion. It was what it was.

The issue with the planning or lack thereof with the ST comes down to the final entry. A lot of things in it feel thrown in because they "needed" to be there. Not because they were earned or important.

As @BobaFettNY21 said, the rushing of Anakin to Vader feels off because at some point in writing ROTS, it feels like it dawned on George that "Oh blast, he has to be Vader, like yesterday."

A simple plan of "Han gets ep7 so Harrison can be done, Luke will get the middle film which is usually the emotional crux of a series and Leia gets the triumphant finale" is absolutely thrown through the ringer because of unforeseen tragedy. And you now have to recover. You can't make it work with your hired writer/director and move on to a different pair and it feels wholly disjointed from the last film at times.

If the plan was rigidly put in place before by one set of writers, then it could have been way worse.

Have a rough outline, I feel like they certainly did for the ST being the fall and redemption of Ben Solo and the start of a new era of Jedi who aren't all terrible, and I think you will be fine.

 

And yet, despite its disjointed nature, the ST still feels like it hangs together. TFA is a mapquest to find the first Jedi temple and Luke Skywalker. TRoS is a mirror, a mapquest to find the Sith homeworld and a resurrected Palpatine. As for the saga itself, episodes 1 and 9 feel like movies that stand apart from the other films in their respective trilogies, and both feature the word "Phantom" in the title or opening crawl. A neat coincidence, or everything proceeding as someone has foreseen?

Add it all together, and my takeaway is that Rey is the one who ultimately brings balance to the Force, a Palpatine who chooses to identify as a Skywalker, thereby ending the Jedi/Sith conflict that both bloodlines have come to be synonymous with. The Skywalker lineage has ended with Ben Solo's passing. And as a Jedi, Rey should refrain from having children, meaning the Palpatine bloodline will die with her, too.

That's not exactly where I thought we'd end up, but, for an apparently unplanned trilogy, that's not too shabby.

 

@bferr1972 Amazing post....I love the "coincidences" (are they?) or ties between movies like "Phantom" in both crawls.

By the way, is that the last opening crawl (in TROS) we will ever see in a SW movie???