What's the point of this trilogy?

You complain about an overarching vision without having the whole story complete. Also complaints do exist for the PT and OT. Maybe because I have been a fan since I was 10 and walked into a theater back in 1977 and have been hooked since. Hooked so much that I made constant trips to public library looking at Microfiche finding articles from magazines, newspapers and fanzines seeing that yes indeed people complained. Follow @jere7my on twitter he loves to dig up old newspapers, fanzines, etc. showing just this stuff.

 

Complaints exist for sure, but since particulary for the OT the data is limited to a few fanzines with a few dozen articles, there isn't much that can be said about fan perception at that time, whereas today we're talking about thousands of reviews, articles and videos, and so you can today much better gauge fan perception with respect to positive, and negative aspects of all three trilogies.

 

Or it is just much easier to gauge and is inflated, sometimes simply to make money. Just because you couldnt easily measure it before doesnt mean it is more or less prevalent then before.

 

I'd agree that we can't necessarily say that quality has stayed consistent across the board (though I'd absolutely argue, at times, in favor of the ST over the OT), but I also think that in general fans have just gotten... more critical, without really having equally gained the skills with which to form their critiques.

And I'm sure the internet is a huge part of that- it's why Star Wars is far from the only series for which this is a problem. Heck, it's exhausting to try to enjoy anything in any fandom these days without people beating down the door to tell you why you're wrong.

I think the OT would've been pretty badly picked apart if it was released in today's internet culture, and the PT would've been even more relentlessly mocked.

 

I never know what people mean by that idea of grey... If by grey you means "morally ambiguous" a la Game of Thrones I'm not on board with it. In SW I like good and bad clearly differentiated. However, if by grey you mean a story where wrongdoing is portrayed as a bad choice and redemption as a way to repair the damage of wrongdoing, I'm on board. I would like children to learn that.

For me the decision to root the mythology of SW in history is an inspired one. After all, this is what George Lucas intended in the PT, showing that the Republic and the Jedi the OT was so nostalgic about were imperfect. the ST is going a step farther: Not only the Republic and the Jedi are imperfect, they have also caused damage by being too proud and complaisant. And this is nothing postmodern or meta about this: There are children's stories that deal with this kind of misguided pride, like the Emperor's New Clothes, in which cynicism and scepticism are celebrated... Constraining SW to Jedi who are always right is doing a disservice to what GL started in 1977 and mauled over for so many years after. SW deserves to evolve and have different morals lessons in its stories.

 

It is not about being always right.For me it is about staying true to what has been established, and if you deviate from it, properly develop such deviations. The ST trilogy significantly alters Luke's character, the way the Force works, and handwaves it away with some throwaway lines about how the Jedi are screwups, and the light balancing the dark, just like they just pulled an Empire 2.0 and another wannabe Sith Lord from behind the curtain without so much as an explanation. And they did all that in the interest of franchise extension, not because it made any narrative sense from the perspective of the existing six part saga. Just have the classic characters ultimately fail in their goals, and have the new characters redo what was done in the past with some modern tweaks. It needed to look like old school Star Wars for the masses to make it easily marketable, and so we got more Empire vs rebels, more Jedi students turning bad, Tatooine 2.0, R2-D2 2.0, a bigger Deathstar, the AT-AT 2.0, X-wings, and tie fighters, etc, rather than a truly original story in an original setting, building on what has been established before. It's not that it's terrible, but we've all seen it before, and it has been done better in the past.

 

I don't really understand what's causing all this dissatisfaction:

1. Is it the fact that Luke is introduced as a fallen hero?

It is so hard to accept that it suits the story of TLJ to have Luke as a Jedi who had fallen victim of his own hubris and done wrong? What's so bad about people "altering"? These things happen. Experiences change people. It is call life, and stories, even archetypal ones, need to relate to life... If not, what lessons can we humans learn from them?

2. Is it that Luke's change has not been explained?

But this is not Luke's story.... He is a secondary character who supports the story of the main ones... We don't need to give detailed and chronological exposition of a secondary character. Screen time and evolution needs to be given Rey, Kylo and Finn, not to Luke.

3. Is it the "disrespect" for the Jedi?

But surely we know, because of the prequels, that the Jedi were not always that great... the Skywalkers in particular... and Luke is a Skywalker...

4. Is is that the new characters and the new situations resemble too much what came before, compelling so many fans to overuse that tired "whatever 2.0" parallel?

It is obvious that Kennedy, Kasdan , JJ and RJ were trying to find the essence of SW through the aesthetic and the themes. Copying elements was part of the process of transitioning to a new SW. It makes sense to me that when you're rooting something in an established universe you are at first cautiously conservative and take many elements from it, at least before you slowly deviate and present character and story with your own spin: ie. "altered" Luke.

For me SW is the OT. I've seen the PT and I have read a bit of the EU material, even some Skywalker ancillary material, but that's not SW's for me and for perhaps the most casual viewers. Being in the SW universe for me means revisiting aesthetic and storytelling of the OT, at least as a starting point, and that's what the ST absolutely had to do, as a genuine reprisal of the original story, incorporating the original characters in the new one. That there are other avenues to explore in the SW universe? No doubt. But that is not what the ST was set to do.

5. Is it that Disney is revisiting SW to make money?

That should not be a shock to anyone... That's why Lucasfilm and KK are there, to protect the saga, mainly from the current money making" Marvel" fever, to be custodians of the property and respect it. I think they are doing a good job, learning as they go along and being perhaps a bit too cautious in what they cover story wise. Intellectual properties need care, and for what I hear the old canon, now legends, had a lot of absurdities that cheapened the OT (GL was the first one to criticise it) and Lucasfilm, wisely, don't want to go in that direction. Yet.

 

You can alter characters, but in fiction these alterations have to be earned through storytelling, and character development. A flashback that boils down to Luke's now different somehow, doesn't cut the mustard for many people given the history we've experienced with the character.

Given the amount of screentime Luke gets in TLJ, and the fact that the entire story in part revolves around him coming back to be a legend once again, Luke is definitely one of the main characters. However, TLJ is not in some vaccuum. It is meant to be the 8th chapter in an ongoing story, where Luke has been one of the most important characters. Given the amount of time we've spent with this character, if his character is radically changed, in my view we deserve to know how, and why. The ST treatment of Luke is equivalent to having the PT end with Anakin becoming the hero of the Clone Wars, and than have him be Darth Vader at the start of the OT, with some flashback explaining, o yeah Anakin got seduced to the dark side somehow, the details of which don't matter.

The main difference between the gap between the PT, and OT, and the gap between the OT and the ST is, that there logically very little happens in terms of important events or character development between the PT, and the OT. It is supposed to be one story, and so time passes, characters get older, and in the case of Luke and Leia grow into adulthood, after which an important event gets the story started again. You don't just ommit important events, and character development from a story, but that is exactly what the ST is doing. It ommits an entire trilogy of events, and character development.

1) We've seen some Jedi make mistakes in the PT, yes. However, we also know the order successfully guarded peace and justice for over a 1,000 generations. So, I think there's little to suggest the Jedi order itself is deeply flawed, as is suggested in TLJ, just that a few individual Jedi may have strayed too far from their origins, and had become arrogant, complacent, and too entrenched in the political system.

2) It seems odd to suggest, that Luke is somehow destined to not be that great, because of his lineage, when the entire saga up till the ST has revolved around the concept of choice. People aren't destined to be good or bad. They choose to be good or bad, no matter their lineage. Being good actually takes a lot of work, dedication, and discipline, while being bad is the easy path, another theme that was sadly jettosoned by the ST.

It's not just that they used the OT as a starting point. It's that both entries of the ST have been completely driven by OT plot beats, and visuals; TFA by literally recycling much of the same story, while TLJ also recycles much of the same story, but tries to be clever by going in the same direction as the OT for 80% of the ride, and then jerking the wheel in a different direction, as if that counts as original storytelling. So, for me there's too much recycling of old story threads, and plot points, while most of the new elements are severely underdeveloped in the service of "subverting expectations". To make matters worse, pretty much all of what the classic characters had achieved was undone, or devalued, only to have a new set of characters come and cover the same ground. The new characters were introduced at the expense of the classic characters, and a lot of people don't like that.

No, it's not that Disney is revisiting SW to make money. It's that they and Lucasfilm are seemingly incapable anymore of coming up with original content. The ST sadly fits very well into the trend of new adaptations of classic stories, like The Lion King, Aladdin, and such. Filmmakers get a big budget, and limited time to create something that at best is the same meat, with different gravy.

 

I kind of 100% disagree that Disney is "incapable" of creating original content. I don't think that's really worked since The Force Awakens, which admittedly echoed a lot of ANH.

Is the ST using a lot of the aesthetics of the original trilogy? Sure. They're, you know, in the same galaxy after all. I actually kind of like that in the ST we see how the Clone Wars and GCW have kind of stunted growth, and both factions are using variations of what came before.

Maybe TLJ echoed some aspects of previous movies, but I honestly think it's kind of silly to say that it's a copy of anything that's come before.

 

I would have been ok with that. In fact, I would have been ok with no prequels whatsoever. Back story is no story. Luke had the exposition his character needed in TLJ. I actually think his character should have been even darker.

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 7, 2019, Original Post Date: Jun 7, 2019 ---

Luke became arrogant and complacent. He admits it in TLJ. He also, as his father did, made the wrong choice. I’m not saying that Luke is destined to be like his father, merely that the potential is there if he chose to go in that direction, and, as it happen, in that Jedi hut he did.

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 7, 2019 ---

There are a lot of original things that are not “underdeveloped”. Kylo Ren is a wholly original villain in the saga, fleshed out and controversial. There is a stormtrooper, faceless in the OT, who has a complete arc. The sequence with Han Solo, the rathtars and the gangs is completely original, so much so it almost seems to belong somewhere else. The idea that Maz introduces in TFA that conflicts repeats itself is sophisticated and new too to the saga. Force communication has evolved in the ST, as seen in chats between Kylo and Rey. Those scenes forwarded the plot and the character’s immensely. The theme of learning through failure is also new. Lightspeed tracking is new, Leia’s force powers are new, the Canto Bight aesthetic is completely new too... I could go on. TFA and TLJ feel like SW due to the many similarities with the OT, but I think we would be unfair and disingenuous if we did not admit the many original ideas introduced by both JJ, RJ and the other writers.

 

I mean, even if you dislike TFA and TLJ, no one can argue that Rogue One and Solo (and Rebels) aren't original content.

I disagree here. I think that if Rian had reduced the Canto Bright stuff to focus more on Luke's backstory and Rey's training, it would have been a much better movie.

 

I agree that the Canto bight sequence should have been reduced to give Rey and Luke more time together, but I would have wanted it to give more background to the character of Kylo and more insight into Rey's past in Jakku, not to find out more about Luke.

 

Like that old man told Neo in the Matrix: "The point is...there is no point."

 

Denaerys turning into the mad queen apparently is also a concept by Martin, but there is a big difference between a concept, and its execution. The concept of Luke's exile is fine, just like Denaerys turning into the mad queen, but it's how we got there that's the issue. What RJ should have done, is give Luke (and the viewer) a reason to sneak into Ben's room, and act the way he did. He could have had Ben intentionally hurt one of Luke's students. This could explain why Luke is shaken, and not himself in that moment. He should have had Luke attempt and fail to redeem Ben, and stop Snoke, that would explain why Luke would go into hiding, not believing he can contribute anything anymore, rather than have Luke just give up, and abandon his friends and family, while Snoke and Kylo are still at large. Having Luke believe leaving two wannabe Sith Lords free to wreak havoc is some sort of solution, makes him seem pretty dumb, especially since he could just end the Jedi, and die after stopping Snoke and Kylo, or get killed in the process, in which case the Jedi would end anyway.

 

It explains why he went into the room, not why he forgets his Jedi training, and would flip out about a vision, he should know might not come to pass, especially since he faced real danger, and evil in the past, and overcame them.

1) Obi-Wan and Yoda attempted to stop Sidious, and Obi-Wan went to confront his fallen apprentice, which Luke didn't even attempt after he lost Ben to Snoke.

2) Sidious controlled the galaxy at that point, and the Jedi were being hunted down. Obi-Wan and Yoda were in mortal danger, and were attempting to ensure the Jedi religion would survive. When Luke gave up, the Republic still controlled the galaxy, so the conditions were much more favourable to Luke, but he still did nothing, and allowed things to spin out of control.

3) Yoda and Obi-Wan didn't just give up, and set on a rock to die. They waited until more favourable conditions arrived, the first victory of the Rebel Alliance, to mount a counter offensive. When they were asked to help, they did, and trained Luke to follow in their footsteps, unlike Luke who just plainly refused to do anything.

 

Mistakes can be made, but it's about what you do about it, that counts. Luke just ran away, abandoning everything, leaving the galaxy at the mercy of Snoke, and the FO at a time when they were stil vulnurable. That does not fit with his character. Luke may have had his flaws, but he was never one to lose hope, and just hide on a rock when the world falls apart around him. This was not his first major setback. This is the guy, who after his entire world fell apart, when he discovered the man who inspired him to become a Jedi, his father, turned out to be an evil monster, a monsrer who ultimately mutilated him, came back to not only become a Jedi, but redeemed his father.