What's the point of this trilogy?

^Perfect. Literally condenses all my feelings on the matter.

The world and setting these new films have created are woefully unoriginal, and feel disposable and hollow. The creativity, progression and expansion of the Star Wars universe that spanned all six previous films literally stops with the ST, to where it doesn't even feel like a legitimate member of the family.

It just feels like we're going backwards, not forwards. Barely anything is being created, just recycled.

EDIT: Lol, I'm "clouded" for having an opinion. Okay, then.

 

@BobaFettNY21 I agree with the core of your point.
I’d only argue that Kylo is not replying his grandfather mistakes.
He’s doing the opposite ones.
Attachment vs family members vs to get rid of his family.

However... the ST may very well be the story of how a legacy is not a matter of blood, but merit.
Choices.
The heirs may be those who don’t have the right blood, but the right values.
I guess, hope, it is indeed the theme.
I like it.

That said, I still find many aspects lacking. The world building, politics etc... I agree with @Darth Wardawg on that.
And the OP asked us to try to figure out many other things.
One of which is the state of the galaxy.

We’ve got an Empire with OT, a Republic failing in ST, but we don’t know what the resistance wants.
A new new Republic like the one we never got the chance to see (post ROTJ), or like the one we saw in the PT?
Or something else entirely? In the latter case, what exactly?
It’s not that each and every democratic country, is ruled the same way.
Not to mention the difference between a confederation of states and a federal state.
And among the very same chategories.
We may even find exemplum... of elected monarchy.
So vast is the spectrum of possibilities.
It’s a pity IMO that we’ve got no insight about it so far, just because that’s SW too.

 

Did we know what the Rebellion wanted, other than something other than despotic authoritarianism?

 

I'm pretty sure the rebels didn't want "despotic authoritarianism."

And the simplicity of the OT plot doesn't mean you just keep repeating that simplicity. That works for that saga. But you need to move forward and build a more complex story or, again, what's the point?

 

They did build one, with the prequels. And it either annoyed fans or still wasn't specific enough about what was so bad about the Republic. Taxes? Corruption? Pretty standard stuff.

 

Answer is no. But I get the OT as the story of how the Empire failed.
The PT as that of how the Republic did...
And we see how them operated respectively.
And above all, we now know that galaxy history.

 

It's about re-defining the force as a power not limited to the dogmatic and exclusive Jedi and SIth dichotomy and moving on from its problematic past.

 

The Rebels built that? The Republic built that. Not the rebels. I know I'm being a bit sarcastic perhaps, but terms do matter.

I would suggest that the problem with the Republic was two fold, exploited quite nicely by Palpatine, is the disagreeable nature of democratic governance.

1. You see it explained in the discussion between Padme and Anakin in AOTC. He says that someone should make them all agree and do what needs to be done (I'm paraphrasing).
2. The Jedi themselves. They were a religious-monastic order dedicated to peace and justice, yet they became the enforcement arm of the Senate and the Republic itself. Bad idea Jedi.

Anyway, the Republic itself built the empire. By Episode III you see it mentioned when Mace Windu speaks to Palpatine early in the film. Palpatine said they Senate would vote to continue the war. He had been given an extreme amount of "emergency power" as noted by Obi-Wan. So I would totally disagree. The rebels had no part in building an autocratic dictatorship.

 

Yep. Pretty standard stuff.

 

And compare that to the ST.... Empire 2.0 with a bigger weapon, bigger ships.... Rebellion 2.0... To quote Han Solo, "Didn't we just leave this party?"

I admit, I'm hopeful that JJ and CT can deliver on the story and make this worth it, but as of now it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels like a cash grab. I keep mentioning the MCU, only because that is what supposedly LFL wanted to do with the ST and the nu-cannon books. Instead it feels unbelievably ad-hoc. As @Darth_Nobunaga said earlier, it feels incredibly disposable and unoriginal. Say what you want about the PT and the OT, disposable and unoriginal? Not really.

The more I think about it, the more I think they should have done what BOTH DC and MCU do: mine the existing literature to tell familiar stories, but simply improve them. 30 years after ROTJ? Do the New Jedi Order, but change things up so it's not simply taking the books and making them into films. Heck, at one point the First Order was supposed to be like the Nazi's hiding out in Argentina and the Resistance was supposed to be an agency of the UN searching for them. THAT sounds interesting and original.

 

Well...they are.

And they are doing the 'Munich' type actions of hunting down Imperial leaders in the Aftermath novels. Even hiring bounty hunters to get them. It's awesome.

 

No they aren't. They are Nazi's circa WWII. Been there, done that. Unoriginal. Boring. Same thing as the OT. But I'm going to leave at this as we are just going to go back and forth and achieve nothing.

 

So the Imperials didn't lose, escape somewhere and hide out for a long time? Ok.

And apparently we're still fighting nazism today, so it makes more sense than even JJ would have imagined, unfortunately.

 

Okay, so apparently I should have been far more detailed.

After WWII some Nazi's escaped Germany. Not many. Some. Last time I checked they didn't come back and take over the world. If they wanted to follow that plot line, then have elements inside the Alliance assist the imperials in their escape from the galaxy. Have them hide out on sympathetic worlds. They could have then had the imperial remnants hunted down. Instead we got a rehash of the OT. It's not a rehash in the way of them following the whole ring theory would make it feel. It is simply an unoriginal rehash. They could have followed through with the analogy, but instead we got... Whatever this is.

Anyway, good interacting with you.

 

This was an interesting take on the ST I read on social media. I think it is pretty spot on towards how I feel:

It's interesting to me, that while in the past I have strongly criticized the PT, and defended TFA. But after having seen 2/3 of the ST completed I tend to conclude the PT for all its perceived flaws greatly expanded the Star Wars universe and its lore, while the ST in my view has detracted from it. I think TFA tends to be viewed by many as more enjoyable than the PT on the surface. It has likable characters, and it lures us in with nostalgia by echoing the OT. Its failure lies in failing to properly establish and connect to the bigger picture. It alludes to a number of interesting future story threads with Kylo Ren's devotion to Snoke akin to a young man who has devoted himself to a cult leader, the FO more akin to a terrorist organisation hiding in the unknown regions than a mighty Empire, but these ideas are deliberately downplayed to not detract ftom the nostalgia trip that TFA was meant to be. This was a mistake in my view, because it implied the writer of its sequel could just ignore these ideas and mysteries, which he evidently did. The FO became an Empire overnight, the New Republic was wiped out of existence, and the Resistance became rebels, and so the criticism leveled against TFA that it was just rehashing the Empire vs rebels premise was cemented in TLJ. By not providing context for the FO's sudden takeover, and the New Republic apparent ineptitude the ST thusfar greatly diminishes the saga as a whole, because it more or less introduces the idea that some random Force user and a massive army can be pulled from the unknown regions to undo the hard fought victories of the previous films without proper setup or explanation.

So, in my view the ST premise is flawed on a conceptual level, because its intent is not to continue, evolve, and expand on the story and lore established in the previous six films, but to create a time capsule to the OT era, where the building blocks that were used to create the OT are reused and rearranged in such a manner, that it will seem new on the surface at times, where story twists distract from the fact, that at its core these new movies are self-referential to a fault, and extremely limited in their scope.

 

I like this idea, but in my opinion, if this was supposed to be the point of ST, they missed the mark. There is really only one scene that conveys this idea (broom boy) - most of it is focused on a Jedi in training, versus someone who is not technically a Sith but they do everything they can to make him as similar to the Sith as possible. So it's just a retelling of Jedi vs. semi-Sith rather than a story about "The Force is for everyone now."

They could still go further in this direction with episode IX, but in my opinion a trilogy needs to know what it's about from the beginning - not just figuring it out in the third act.

 

I’ve always said and I’ll say it again, The fundamental issue with this sequel trilogy is the lack of direction in terms of the story.

Giving each director free range to do what they want with each character and the story was a MASSIVE mistake. This isn’t the 1970’s anymore, making it up as you go along just isn’t going to cut it with how big Star Wars has come as a franchise.

From the get go they should have had a clear plan as to who or what Snoke is with a fleshed out background story, who Rey is and where they want her to be come the end of the trilogy. Don’t even get me started on Luke. I feel the only character they got right in this trilogy was Han and to an extent kylo ren.

It seems like they have realised the shortcomings and tried to salvage the trilogy by bringing back JJ Abrams, but I feel most of the damage has already been done.

People can say what they want about the prequels in terms of bad acting, annoying characters and lame CGI but you cannot deny its masterpiece of a story telling, world building and character arcs. There’s a reason revenge of the Sith is regarded as one of the best movies ever made in my opinion, up there with return of the king, it was the culmination and climax of a truly special story.

Star Wars started as a cult classic and the direction Lucas took worked back then as nobody really knew what Star Wars was and George Lucas was able to be creative as the trilogy progressed.

I feel now with this trilogy in terms of the story “this is the reason for this because xxx director said so” and not because it fits the world in which the films are based. More so in the last Jedi.

It’s been such a missed opportunity with some great charceters. I get it’s a trilogy and they couldn’t give everyone and everything a backstory but hell this is Star Wars with the amount of lore out there, a quick family action comedy romp just isn’t going to cut it in this age. Hell, make it 2 trilogies/6 movies if need be, if we’re going to be getting more movies anyway why settle for half a dozen disjointed movies with hardly any world building when they could have made these characters in to some really special movies.

 

That is the nail on the head. I've said it a number of times, but I can't believe they decided to make a trilogy of films with little to no idea of where they were going. To take George's story treatments and throw them in the trash, without having something better? Idiocy. I would have taken those treatments and worked them into something workable.

You mention an important point. In 1977 Lucas hit a monster home run with Star Wars. Having no real knowledge of what the "clone wars" were, what the Jedi were, the empire, etc... was cool. It hinted at a MUCH larger world while leaving the possibilities open for himself to go back and fill in the back story at some future time. I'm sure he had an IDEA of what the Clone Wars were. But it wasn't necessary for THAT story.

But trying to do that now? And then not answering the questions raised by TFA? As bad as that was, for me the problem has been the lack of a plan. And you are right, they could have made it a 6 film saga, and told a truly deep and meaningful story. Instead we get a half planned out set of films which don't really fit well together.

Having said that, I'm hoping JJ can somehow tie all of this together into a coherent ending that feels satisfying. I don't buy any of this "it's the end of the Skywalkers" BS. From a marketing standpoint it is good to do that. Heck you need to get butts in the seats next fall, and that is one way of ensuring butts in seats. However, there is absolutely no way they totally END the Skywalkers. They'd be idiotic to do that. Just my opinion, but I could TOTALLY see them coming back in say 2027 and dropping Episode X for the 50th Anniversary.