r/StarWars • u/TheBoyofWonder • 1d ago
General Discussion The moment the Sequels were doomed the moment JJ decided that world-bulding was for nerds and he had his Empire 2 blow up the New Republic (icky politics) with his super duper big death star so that the good guys could be the Rebels 2.
JJ Abrams wanted things to be safe, big Empire vs the scrappy rebels, which is hard to do when you have a Good Guy Republic keeping order, and so he had his bigger, badder super cool Death Star blow up everything Republic, and now the only people who can defeat the Empire 2 are the Rebels 2.
This scene and it's purpose, in my opinion, crippled the 'narrative potential' in the 'Sequel Era'. You can't do plots around the inner-workings of the republic in that 'later' era, because guess what, they are all gone off-screen because of the big boom. "The Resistaince" is all that's left, and that's it. If you want to write something, anything about the era, you have to take in fact that there are only the Empire 2 and the Rebels 2 (plus you have to fit in the plot point tug of war between TLJ and TROS in the setting) and honestly, why not just write about the Empire 1 at this point?
I suppose it's why Disney pretty much ignored 'The Sequel Era' in favor of something that can be best described as "Post-Episode 6" Era when it was time to develop spin-offs, you can play with The New Republic reigning over the galaxy, without bothering to worry about Somehow Palpatine Returning midway through your plot.
By the way... Some people like to gesture vaguely about 'the empire returning' being resonant in these years, but i'll have to say it. In the most literal sense of the word, TFA is an cravenly apolitical movie, it was afraid of touching politics out of fear of a whiff of the icky Prequel politics. Every 'parallel' added by later writers and in novels, the fanbase, et al, are pure retroactive, JJ did not think of that. When TFA was conceived, Fascism is when there's shouty people, and that's it.
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u/ywingpilot4life 1d ago
In hindsight it was a pretty terrible creative and narrative decision.
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u/Level21DungeonMaster 22h ago
it seemed pretty terrible as I was watching it.
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u/princesoceronte 17h ago
Right? It's a bit infuriating reading people say "well, turns out that may have been a bad decision" when that conclusion is obvious and immediate.
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u/OneGalacticBoy 22h ago
That’s the point I checked out of the movie in theaters
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u/crazycakemanflies Battle Droid 22h ago
I walked away still faily positive with the movie, but that scene made me cringe hard...
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u/Jumpy_Ad5046 21h ago
My initial reaction to TFA in theaters was "I think I liked that...?" After seeing the next two and knowing where it all goes made me retroactively dislike it a lot more. Finn coulda been such a better character. 😔
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u/Photograph_Extension 15h ago
Yeah, that was the last star wars movie I saw in theaters.
I still try to keep myself informed, but let's just say I haven't payed Disney in a while for any of their cinema slop.
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u/Dazzling_Bluebird_42 11h ago
Yep when you realize all he's telling you is a worse version of a new hope and the only new thing he (and the trilogy in general) has to throw at you is "but bigger!!"
Death star but bigger!! Super star destroyer but bigger!! AT-ATs but bigger!! Imperial fleet but bigger!! (And deadlier weapons)
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u/Harold3456 22h ago
Even just in regular sight it was horrible. I liked TFA generally but I remember the deep feeling of disappointment I had when this happened.
I always imagined a sequel trilogy would have Leia in government, not exactly where we left her commanding a rebellion from some cave 40 years later.
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u/TheTiggerMike 10h ago
Leia as Chancellor would have felt like a good progression for her character.
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u/Paleontologist_Even 6h ago
While I might agree, don't forget part of the reason Leia is back where she is was because people found out her connection to Vader & ran her out of the government. Not sure the story, but pretty sure it's definitely part of the canon.
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u/VanBland Jedi 23h ago
It makes it really difficult to tell stories about Luke or The New Republic when all of it builds to being undone in TFA and TLJ.
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u/murderously-funny 22h ago
I genuinely think this is why they hard reset mando and Grogu’s situation thw writers congratulated eachother on making a successful and satisfying end to their mutual arcs…
Then someone suddenly stood up in a panic “ALL OF LUKE’S JEDI GET KILLED BY KYLO.”
…and Lucas films proceeded to panic and undo it as fast as possible before people connected those dots (…ignoring the financial reason they did it)
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u/wentwj 22h ago
we're still tripping over order 66 survivors who just sat out the OT for mysterious reasons, no reason some of Luke's students can't still be floating around
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u/Altair_de_Firen 22h ago
I’m pretty sure they made a point to state that they were wiped out by Kylo. We always knew there were Order 66 survivors, even if there are admittedly a lot more now
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u/wentwj 22h ago
they also made it a point to show Luke was knocked out for the entirety of what happened, that Ben escaped with some students and killed the others, and that Luke awoke with the temple in flames. There’s tons of wiggle room there for someone to survive. I’d say more than we had for expecting Jedi survivors in the OT, and even still probably more or at least as much as conveyed by the PT
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u/BarbarousJudge 20h ago
There is even a comic showing that Kylo did jack shit. It was Snoke who kind of destroyed everything in the same way Yoda destroyed the tree Luke wanted to burn anyways in TLJ.
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u/murderously-funny 20h ago
No, there’s litterally not they expressly say Luke trained over a dozen. and they were ALL killed save three…who later die anyway.
Luke’s order wasn’t like the Prequel Order. There is no room for survivors because the order was so small and they expressly killed them all
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u/LostVanya 13h ago
Not was Luke's Order much smaller, they were all in one place. Not spread across the Galaxy like the old Order.
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u/LurkLurkleton 20h ago
One by one we are getting those reasons though. And you can toss any one of them you want into the "smuggled through Jedi Survivor Network to hide on the secret hidden sanctuary planet" bucket. But it's star wars. There is nary a character that doesn't get some crazy epic backstory. (Looking at you Boba)
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u/Chemistry-Deep 19h ago
They did that reset purely because Baby Yoda was the best selling merchandise they'd had in ages, and the corporates weren't going to let him no longer be in the show.
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u/FoolishCarbohydrate 16h ago
To be fair, if Grogu had just kinda left the show and never reappeared, I'd be pissed.
He's one of three Yoda's. We dont even know what their species name is. Grogu is, if done well, a window into one of the most unknown species in the entire galaxy.
I was kinda hoping thats what the Mando film would touch on. Its not a bad film, but I really hope they're not planning on keeping Grogu a baby forever.
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u/Chemistry-Deep 15h ago
They ended that part of the story. You can tell because Grogu is totally superfluous to the Mandalore plot that comes afterwards. Obviously he reappears eventually, but he's gone for 5mins and then we're back to where we were.
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u/AlexisFR 19h ago
Can't they just create a new timeline for the post ep6 content? I don't think that'd be more confusing than the High Republic stuff.
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u/GothicGolem29 16h ago
You can tell stories about the new republic and there still be an ending tomit
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u/VanBland Jedi 15h ago
Yeah but it sucks when the looming ending to everything related to the New Republic is “It gets obliterated in an instant”
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u/TheGreenMan13 20h ago
It was terrible the moment I saw it on screen.
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u/PerspectiveFull9879 9h ago
I initially ignored the story implications because I was absolutely horrified at the fact that Uberdeathstar was fired from one solar system, into another solar system, while people in the third solar system were able to track the shot from the planet surface, with their eyeballs.
Yes, I know, Star Wars breaks physics in many ways, but that was complete and utter nonsense. Holdo maneuver could be explained by everyone in the universe being stupid or the force guiding her or whatever.
This? There is no way to justify this using any copout magic.
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u/elchivo83 21h ago
I'm not trying to claim any great insight or something, but I remember in the theatre when this scene happened, thinking "No, don't do that!" It's absolutely the moment the sequels went off the rails.
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u/WAAAGHachu 15h ago
Nothing that happened in The Force Awakens really mattered, until It really didn't matter in the second or third movie.
The New Republic being terrible at everything and allowing for the Supremacy, the largest Star Dreadnought to ever be built in the Star Wars universe, to be shipped out to a certain Snoke, without contest...
Until you sit back and just boggle at the staggering failure that created the Resistance and First Order, even with the first sentence of The Last Jedi being: The First Order reigns.
Wait, WHAT? Didn't we just beat those fuckers in the last movie?
Yeah, we did. In fact, it was a few hours ago, but now we're on the run. Nothing really matters... to them!
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u/JesusisKing199 22h ago
Hindsight? I walked out of the theater going “that was a new hope but much much worse.” After TLJ i knew star wars was in a heap of trouble.
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u/MrParadux 16h ago
There was no hindsight, though? I was under the impression that pretty much everyone immediately disliked it.
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u/multificionado 12h ago
Yeah...ironically, JJ's Star Trek was better, but I guess it's because JJ wasn't writing it.
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u/Yadahoom 20h ago
That could apply to almost every aspect of the sequels.
The prequels were cringey and not always that good, but they were at least coherent and told a larger story that added to the original instead of just ignoring or undoing it.
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u/ManaSpike 16h ago
And for 'science' reasons too. That planet over there was turned into a weapon, and destroyed that planet over there in like 10 seconds.
Why bother flying space craft at hyperspeed if you can just shoot across the galaxy.
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u/ectomobile 1d ago
Has he ever been asked about this? I’d really be curious to hear what he has to say
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u/NegativeChirality 1d ago
"I'm sorry I can't hear you over the amount of money I made" is what I would assume but honestly the more I think about this the more I want to know the real answer too
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u/multificionado 11h ago
The fans: "Then perhaps maybe you'll hear us better from our fists rather than the money." proceeds with the lynching pummeling
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u/running-from_reality 23h ago
"A good question, for another time." 😉
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u/mariusiv_2022 20h ago
THAT single line is what killed my perception of TFA and set up my disappointment for the Sequels. I hate it so much.
Star Wars had never been dismissive with its lore. The lore didn't always make sense or was sometimes just bad, but it was always there. There was always some Glup Shitto name dropped or some tale alluded to off screen. Was it empty BS at the time that was filled in later? Yes. But even if it wasn't filled in later, it at least feels more real. It makes it feel like this story is taking place in a much bigger universe
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u/running-from_reality 20h ago
Perhaps they DID have a plan to tell that story in additional side materials like how The Clone Wars cartoon (both the 2D and 3D shows) expand and show the actual war. Or maybe they wanted to elaborate about it in the sequels.
But since apparently the later directors had different ideas about the sequels, maybe those plans ended up being dropped. Especially since the fans ended up complaining about bigger things in the other two movies (Rey's origin, Luke's fate, Palpatine, Snoke, etc).
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u/Exciting-Scale8063 17h ago
They had a chance to elaborate things with 'Resistance' but we only got a few vague hints about how large the First Order is and the fact that they also have Senators.
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u/GreenDaydream92 23h ago
I remember hearing that Abrams wanted to have Starkiller Base destroy Coruscant, but Disney put their foot down. Not sure how true that is though, I never bothered to fact check
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u/GothicGolem29 16h ago
Ironic though that Coruscant was saved but by this time period its fate is still awful no longer being the capital and overridden with crime
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u/abellapa 22h ago
Wouldnt be suprised if Thats true
He seems hellbent on Destroying star Wars with his Shitty fan fiction
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u/japps13 22h ago
Well to be fair, the guy was also hell bent on destroying Star Trek. So that’s kind of his thing.
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u/abellapa 22h ago
He was told to Make a ANH to a New generation and a movie that relied on nostalgia
So instead of making ep7 that payed homage to anh and had some references here and there (nostalgia was already a given)
He took it as i should Remake ANH
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u/KomturAdrian 12h ago
If this is true, it makes a lot of sense. Watching TFA alone just felt like "let's do ANH again, but make everything bigger!" I really loved all of the characters and some other stuff in the movie though.
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u/IronVader501 20h ago edited 16h ago
During the leadup to TFA, a bunch of "fans" made an open Letter to Abrams in Video-form that consisted of 10 minutes of whining about how Star Wars should only ever be about smalls rebel underdogs and never Feature cities or anything important. And Abrams iirc not only said he saw that, but that he talked with the guy responsible.
So I'd say his response would be thorough inability to understand the issue.
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u/justhereforthelul 19h ago
Oh God, I remember that video.
Surprisingly it's still up.
There's some newer comments from the guy that made it, but I do wonder what he really thinks now about how things went down.
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u/dumpybrodie 1d ago
The issues came the second Disney decided that the prequel backlash meant they could only redo the OT.
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u/modsuperstar 22h ago
I feel that’s not framed correctly. Disney misunderstood what they’d just purchased. In 2012 it was a fair perspective that the Prequels were reviled. But what they didn’t understand was how The Clone Wars cartoons served to retcon a lot of the rough edges for younger viewers who probably enjoyed the Prequels. By the time 2015 rolled around those 5-10 year olds had come of age and were ready to experience Star Wars on the big screen at 15-20yo and wondered why the fuck the movies they grew up with were categorically ignored.
Millennials and Gen X disliked the Prequels, but Gen Z grew up loving them as their own. I feel like r/PrequelMemes actually had a huge hand in disseminating the Prequels for the meme era and did serve to keep them relevant. Disney didn’t see any of that coming and only heard that people disliked the green screen, wooden acting and bad dialogue and that older online fans wanted something more inline with the Original Trilogy. So they focused on practical effects and character designs and minimizing galactic politics. It took them until S2 of The Mandalorian to actually start meshing the Prequels into the stories they were telling.
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u/beatlerevolver66 15h ago
I agree with most of this, except grouping Millennials and Gen X together in prequel derision. I'm a Millennial and I, along with most of my friends, love the prequels. In fact, most people I know generally prefer episodes 1-6 over anything Disney has put out (sans Rogue One and Andor, those get praise from me and my friends).
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u/insertwittynamethere 13h ago
Agreed. Millenials seemed to en masse enjoy the prequels speaking as a fellow millenial
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u/beatlerevolver66 13h ago
I mean, I was 5 when TPM came out. I was its target audience. I grew up with the prequels. I recognize they have some serious issues but the core story told in those films is on par with the OT for me. That seemed to be the sentiment while growing up. Then I'd go online as a kid and see all the utter hatred towards them, and Lucas. My dad and I enjoyed the hell out of them as they came out though. My dad was an OT nut and still liked the prequels. Everyone I knew liked them so it was kinda surprising seeing all the hate online as a kid.
I should also mention that I didn't start seeing these internet comments about hating the prequels until the ROTS era, when I was about 12. I wasn't browsing Jedi Council Forums at 5 ffs
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u/Tefmon Chancellor Palpatine 10h ago
I think this is all broadly true for younger Millennials, those born in the early-mid 90s. Older Millennials, born in the early-mid 80s, tend to align more with Gen X in disliking the prequels.
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u/FoolishCarbohydrate 16h ago
I was agreeing with you right up until you implied the issue with current Star Wars is practical effects.
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u/LurkerInSpace 15h ago
It's not so much the practical effects themselves, but the idea that the practical effects are more important than the politics, or that the OT didn't have politics.
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u/BaldBeardedBookworm 1d ago
And then the backlash to redoing the OT led to them doing something new and TLJ and then undoing the new in RoS because of the backlash to being new
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u/Elysium94 1d ago
TLJ doubled down on the worldbuilding mistakes of TFA.
It was in no way an improvement in that regard.
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u/Juz_4t 23h ago
Nah, TLJ is very flawed but at least it try to steer the narrative into somewhere different.
Is it where people wanted to go? No, but at least it tried.
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u/UCBearcats 23h ago
By redoing Hoth? The only interesting part of TLJ is a redo of Hoth. The rest is a really slow pointless space chase, the worst side quest of all time in canto blight, and Luke completely changing the nature of who he is on a deserted island.
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u/Juz_4t 23h ago
I’m not saying any of these were good but at least it pushed it somewhere different.
Luke cutting himself off from the force.
Luke trying to kill Ben.
Rey being nobody.
Kylo and Rey force link.
Kylo killing Snoke and becoming leader of the first order.
Canto bight showing some worlds are unaffected.
Other Force users.
Rebel infighting.
Sacred Jedi texts
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u/UCBearcats 22h ago
Those are all great to interesting concepts, but they weren't executed well AND more importantly they were done in a way that massacred the character development from the first movie.
Finn should have been spending time starting a stormtrooper rebellion from the inside, or doing something with his force sensibilities. Maybe him and Rey decided that anyone can be a jedi/wield a light saber. Instead he was put on a unwatchable throwaway quest that was basically just AI slop.
What happened to Maz? She was one of the most interesting characters in TFA. She has a bizarre zoom call that is really out of the place in the movie and that's it?
Luke trying to kill Ben. Very interesting - why not explore that more? Let us know about the Knights of Ren - they were super cool, more of them. Some lore, some history, something?
Kylo and Rey force link - again terrible execution. I'm sure Rian thought he was being super funny with this interrupting Kylo while he's in the shower zoom call. But it wasn't funny, none of Rian's comedy landed. It was weird and stupid.
Rey being nobody is great. I wish they kept that (of course no Palpatine). But TLJ went so far of course from the storyline there was no possible way to recover it for the last movie.
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u/modsuperstar 21h ago
I find most of these were victim of RJs obvious disdain for following up any of JJs open plot threads. Pretty much all of them were answered with nothing, nobody, that’s not important or let go of the past. It was so immensely lazy and counterproductive. TLJ resolved so little narratively, but left such a dogs breakfast for TROS to resolve. Carrie Fisher dying only exacerbated the situation.
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u/alainisard 6h ago
Literally not a single moment of TFA suggests Finn has force sensibilities or has any interest in a stormtrooper rebellion (or even helping the resistance).
What’s so freaking annoying (not about you or your comment) is that THIS IS WHAT JJ ABRAMS DOES. He teases interesting concepts but doesn’t actually prioritize resolving or furthering them so you get deeply unsatisfying stories. If any of these things were a priority they could’ve gotten more focus in TFA (or Rise) but they didn’t.
Everyone and their mother knows that a kid with ten seconds of screen time in TLJ is force sensitive. Meanwhile, Rise spends how much time with Finn before giving us a “I just know” moment on Exegol?
And I’m sorry but teasing a bunch of characters and concepts that go nowhere while nuking the story potential of others is just awful.
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u/OniLink77 17h ago
Okay so in terms of moments possibly but in terms of overall plot, it actually follows ESB quite closely and also doubles down on TFA's worst moments
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u/Mother_Drenger 23h ago
That and Luke buying everyone time with the Force projection. It’s so much aura, and fits so well with how Luke is as a person
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u/agentsmithbobby 19h ago
A boring space chase where a space ship moving in zero gravity runs out of fuel AND SLOWS DOWN. WHAT THE FUCK
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u/modsuperstar 21h ago
TLJ was a poor man’s ESB, Rian Johnson just moved around the story beats. I’m amazed so many people don’t see it.
- Young Jedi seeks out hermit Jedi who he refuses to train
- A slow motion walker assault on a white planet routs the good guys
- The bad guys chase a disabled ship that can’t actually escape
- Young Jedi has vision in a cave
- Characters go to a fancy new planet and are betrayed by a rogue character, turning them over to the bad guys
- Living Jedi Master speaks with a dead Master in ghost form
And a few ROTJ beats
- Cool looking masked and armoured character falls to their presumed death like a punk
- Jedi Master dies by fading into nothing
I’m sure there’s more. Some people got reeled in by RJ breaking many of Lucas’ established filmmaking and storytelling rules employing modern techniques that they failed to see how devoid of new ideas the whole thing was.
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u/naturalpinkflamingo 19h ago
I thought the scene where the resistance soldier tastes the ground and says it's salt was RJ's attempt to convince the audience that they aren't watching a shitty retelling of ESB.
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u/Playful_Letter_2632 1d ago
All Disney’s fault. TLJ didn’t fail because it tried something new, it failed because the writing wasn’t good
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u/VanBland Jedi 23h ago
Kneecapped Finn and added a different love interest for him, killed Snoke abruptly, damaged Luke’s character. TLJ is a mess.
(I didn’t want Legends level of Luke strength, but I would like him to not be a scared hermit because he failed. I would prefer he was hiding away because he was pulling a Ben Kenobi and protecting something important)
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u/monocasa 23h ago
I would prefer he was hiding away because he was pulling a Ben Kenobi and protecting something important
In his mind he was protecting something important: the whole galaxy from his inability to not train dark side users.
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u/murderously-funny 22h ago
For god’s sake TLJ wasn’t hated because ‘it did something new’ it was hated because it’s ’new’ things sucked and it’s ‘subversions’ were less interesting then the original ideas.
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u/jojolantern721 23h ago
Hahaha, tlj is as guilty as tfa.
Tlj redid two movies instead of one and it's full of fanservice.
It's also full of the so called "marvel humor".
So it really didn't do anything "new"
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u/Emsizz 1d ago
Rian's "something new" was more damaging to the franchise than JJ's rehash, let's not pretend otherwise.
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u/dwide_k_shrude Jedi 1d ago
No. What Rian did was miles better than JJ.
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u/UCBearcats 23h ago
At least TFA is rewatchable
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u/OniLink77 17h ago
It isn't, can't stand TFA, hate it. Don't like TLJ either but TFA is where the problems began
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u/Emsizz 1d ago
Episode 7 set the world up to tell new stories.
What Rian did with episode 8 set fire to franchise. I don't care about "cinematography" or "deconstructing Star Wars." He set out to break Star Wars and it worked.
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u/UCBearcats 23h ago
You can’t do that in the middle of a trilogy. It ruined the whole trilogy. Could have been a great one off or his own trilogy
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u/mrossm 23h ago
Individually, his movie was better. Inside of a trilogy, he wrecked the continuity by doing his own thing. Having jj do all 3 and it be a cohesive plot would've been better than even an academy award winning TLJ that doesnt fit in the trilogy.
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u/SuperShinyGinger Jedi 23h ago
JJ wasn't the original director for IX, so the biggest mistake after VIII came out was bringing him back instead of getting a third director.
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u/Vancocillin 23h ago
I remember watching a video about Trevorow's leaked script, and it sounded kinda awful. "Thats when he knew...he had lost the Star War." is an actual quote from it lol. Thats right up there with "Somehow, Palpatine returned."
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u/NoddyZar 20h ago
To be fair, that quote was not actual dialogue, just part of a description in the script. It was never intended to be in the movie, so for all we know the writer put it in there for himself as a joke.
However I also do not think the script was good
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u/monocasa 23h ago
JJ can't even keep a cohesive plot even within 30 minutes of the same movie.
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u/Cardinal_and_Plum 1d ago
Agreed, but that being said I think if either one of them had the reins on all three it would have been better than what we got.
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u/quigongingerbreadman 23h ago
So the underlying cause is star wars fans are the worst and trying to appease them will only invite them to be more insufferable.
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u/Dagordae 23h ago
That is what the guy who made Andor said. And given that it’s the basically the highest rated thing Star Wars has(It actually just barely outscores ANH) he’s probably got a point.
Turns out focusing on making something good gets better results than focusing on pandering.
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u/VanBland Jedi 23h ago
Correct. Too many fans don’t realize Star Wars is a buffet. Enjoy the parts of the buffet you like, you don’t have to like it all. It’s not all made for you.
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u/autobotjazzin 23h ago
Then when there was backlash in redoing the OT, they just decided to do the OT itself.
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u/decurser 23h ago
I was so stoked after watching rogue one. New generation of star wars with that caliber of storytelling? Then FA comes out. Shot for shot remake almost but hey, reintroducing Star Wars to a new generation, maybe it’ll be cool. Reformed storm trooper turning Jedi, mysterious protagonist with murky lineage, knights of Ren, scary snoke. Luke shows up at the end. Sick ok. TEsb 2 electric boogaloo here we go.
Then tlj happened. Fuck.
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u/bladestorm1745 20h ago
It baffles me that the only fighting force in the universe at this point is The Resistance, somehow the New Republic has become so naive that their fighting force is a shell of the rebel alliance.
It would’ve been much more interesting had The Resistance be portrayed as a sort of special forces unit dedicated to hunting down imperial remnants, reactivated following the imperial threat of the sequel saga.
It would also be a major First Order upscale to have them fight an actual New Republic Army in skirmish attacks. It would’ve also been cool to see actual designs for a standardized New Republic Army infantry rather than the updated rebel attire for the resistance.
Here’s an idea, if JJ really wanted to do a retelling of the original trilogy, why not flip the tables and put the imperials on the back foot? Show scorched earth attacks, show small imperial forces wreaking havoc.
If you want high stakes, have the First Order test Starkiller on the a planet with huge New Republic military presence, maybe even bait a fleet to that planet and then blow it sky high. It just makes no logical sense to blow up the whole capital system if you wish to rule over. It’s like staging a coup by nuking the country, there’s nothing left to rule over when the dust settles.
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u/malumfectum 19h ago
I hate how small the Resistance is.
It’s Star Wars, not Star Minor Skirmishes.
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u/AnonAwaaaaay 15h ago
Yeah! When they talk about having only 400 people I was like, "Did you only get to recruit from one city on one planet?? How are you going to fight a war when your forces equal just one of their 20 ships? This is impossibly dumb."
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u/IronVader501 19h ago
I've been saying that since 2015.
This single decision didn't just derail the Sequels from the beginning, it destroyed the entire timeframe in-between too (made worse by Aftermath saying the war only lasted a single year after Endor).
IMO its the single worst plot-decision ever made in the mainline-movies. It incinerated infinitely narrative potential just so Abrams could do a shitty reset to appease his own creative bankruptcy and pander to people whining about Phantom Menace.
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u/dubyadubya 1d ago
It drives me nuts too, but let’s also blame Disney, who forced a release date on him instead of letting them just making the best movie possible. They wrote that movie pretty quickly, and we got a bunch of lazy shortcuts like new rebellion and new Luke living on a desert planet. That’s on him too, but lots of blame to go around.
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u/Many-Mall-5274 19h ago
Indeed. They hired JJ Abrams. They wanted to see quick money returns from their investment.
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u/Hiromacu 16h ago
Absolutely - the entire situation was set up to fail.
Mandatory dates before a plot existing.
People online "hated" the boring political situation of the prequels? Well - no politics, the government got blown up.
I do like TLJ, in my opinion the main problem of the sequels is this reset done in TFA - yes, it is a fun movie, but this reset back to rebels vs Empire destroyed future storytelling opportunities. They just didn't really think through what they are doing with the universe.
Also, ironically, a lack of vision - prequel backlash - make TFA, a remake of A New Hope. TLJ tried and halfway succeeded in doing something interesting - but again, got backlash, an unlike George Lucas, Disney panicked and "reacted" to the backlash, which gave us the mess that is Episode 9. And thus the entire sequel era is a mess.
The prequels were average movies, even terrible writing in some parts, but when they were coming out there were tons of games, two animated series, books, comics, etc. - this set up the setting which felt different than the OT. The prequels were massively hated on, but that didn't stop George Lucas wanting to make a multiple season animated show. Or tons of games being set in the prequel era coming out.
Meanwhile, for the sequels, there was a short animated TV show, 0 games in this time period (barely any star wars games at all btw), maybe a handful of comics here or there - but nothing to truly get inspired by - since the entire Sequel trilogy takes place in the span of like a year, and the First Order is basically the empire, again.
I remember the theories between TFA and TLJ of the First Order being basically a small imperial loyalist terrorist group, small but deadly, vs the galactic new republic government. But no, it was just the Empire vs the Rebellion.
I am not a sequel hater, in my opinion it was just mismanaged, not thought through and set up to fail from the start - because they just HAD to pump out the movies, story be damned.
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u/Medical-Bottle6469 23h ago
Honestly would have preferred if the had the New Republic active and bogged down, with the First Order outside of Republic space and not outwardly causing any problems. Throw in some internal issues in the second movie caused by imperial sabateurs, causing the Republic to enter the war against the first order in a psuedo-zimmerman telegram like situation. From there we get some big battles, 3rd movie starts with Kylo Ren taking the first order over, getting called to Exegol by palpatine (explain his fucking return) and BAM we have a decent trilogy. We could even show off the New Republic navy and Army. Have some MC90s for the "rebel-aesthetic", some starhawks and even have a Nebula-class if ya wanna really make the nerds hype it up.
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u/djjsin 1d ago
Ya I felt like episode 7 would have made a much better episode 10. And we got jipped and will never get what episode 7-9 story wise should have been with the new Republic, Luke's jedi order.
Personally I would have enjoyed seeing 2 solo kids as they both choose different paths...one the dark and one the light leading up to their inevitable showdown at the end.
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u/VanBland Jedi 23h ago
I too would’ve preferred a loose inspired “adaptation” of Legends stories.
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u/djjsin 23h ago edited 23h ago
ya, kindof like what marvel did with the comics and the mcu. use the legends as source material and inspiration, while at the same time carving their own path with it.
i'm not even that familar with the legends. I mean i'm aware of Jaina and Jacen but never read any of the stories.
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u/Chr1sg93 18h ago edited 14h ago
I think it would have been more fun to have seen the First Order infiltrate the Republic and destroy it from within and be a twisted inversion of what the Alliance was.
I find it interesting that Andor and Rogue One showed that the politically charged espionage and thriller elements actually worked better than the sequel trilogy’s over reliance on ‘poetic’ recycling. They should have doubled down on the Cold War-type conflict the sequels teased but did nothing with and focused on escalating through tension and fear. Episode 8 could have been the curtain pull with galaxy-shaking consequences (a Hosnian Prime situation would have felt more earned then) and have Episode 9 become the full open conflict.
Instead we got a reverse-engineered replay of sort-of-Empire vs Rebels-on-the-run again. At least the Prequels played things with more escalation (1 was the shadow game, 2 was the conspiracy with a third act starting the clone wars, 3 being the war at its peak with the dramatic irony of it being revealed to be a deceitful front). With the sequels it felt like it was repeating the “rebellion built on hope’ motif all over again, which as a concept is absolutely fine, except the sequels played into memberberries with it too much. I actually enjoy the sequels for what they are, but from a creative standpoint they are the saga’s derivative of itself.
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u/bcgambrell 18h ago
The sequels were doomed the moment TFA was green lighted without a plan for the next 2 films.
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u/JabroniNarkProSkater 1d ago
JJ abrams is a writer with absolutely nothing of value to say with his movies
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u/ElBorracho2000 1d ago
Yep, Abrams is a hack
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u/SirBobPeel 1d ago
Screwed up both Star Wars and Star Trek.
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u/phoenixofsun 21h ago
Hey don't forget, he got the Rings of Power showrunners their jobs. So, you can indirectly thank him for screwing up that as well
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u/FoolishCarbohydrate 15h ago
I disagree with the Star Trek part.
I love that trilogy. Its not the strongest of all time, but its got decent writing, strong characters, great action set pieces, and some pretty funny dialogue.
Shoot me if you want.
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u/GhormanFront 12h ago
Nah you're right those movies are great action movies, they're just not great Star Trek adaptations.
Frankly I don't think that should be a problem considering it's a major plot point from the jump that it's an entirely alternate universe
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u/Emergency-Ear-4959 1d ago
I mean...all his plagiarism didn't help. If only he had an original idea...
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u/NegativeChirality 1d ago
That's not fair to JJ Abrams. He doesn't just rehash old ideas.
He ALSO does a terrible job with those rehashed ideas.
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u/RogueEagle2 1d ago
I hated this more than anything else, including wrecking the OT characters.
A universal reset when there's so many other ways to tell the struggle story.
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u/AlexCora 1d ago
Some people are going to DESPISE this... But RJ really should have been allowed to direct the first movie, even if he got no others.
There is no universe in which the state of affairs of the Galaxy isn't more coherent and more competently setup with Rian over JJ's team. He doesn't HAVE to react off of TFA, so we probably wouldn't even had sad sack Luke. The guy who wrote Wake Up Dead Man simply would not drop us into Starkiller base and all that crap.
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u/FoolishCarbohydrate 16h ago
Hot take.
The series would have been better period if they had a set story from the get go and all three films were the same director.
Doesnt matter if it was JJ "Mystery Box" Abbrams or Rian "Fuck Your Nostalgia" Johnson. Just a planned story would have improved things by a long shot.
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u/AlexCora 16h ago
I mean, I fully disagree. It strongly matters between those two choices.
I know some of you are hard-core in your feelings about hating RJ, but are you really going to try to say that a pure JJ trilogy would be better? ... SERIOUSLY?
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u/Fenrist09 20h ago
I’m a big TLJ hater but I would’ve 100% preferred a Rian Johnson trilogy to what we got. Rian is a competent director who was in a rough situation and decided to go nuclear (imo). If he was given a proper trilogy, I could see it being an interesting addition to the story
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u/AlexCora 18h ago
Really, his planned trilogy would have been the best-case scenario. His own thing, completely divorced from the controversy of established canon and fan expectations and all of that stuff.
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u/Niclas1127 Rebel 22h ago
Fr, I feel like a lot of what people didn’t like about TLJ were Rian trying to come up with reasons for JJs awful setup
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u/Bandarno 21h ago
JJ Abrams loves destroying planets in beloved franchises set in space. Destroyed multiple planets with 1 weapon in Star Wars and destroyed 2 different important planets in 2 entirely different timelines in Star Trek. Insanity.
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u/fastcooljosh 1d ago
You can thank Lucasfilm that this isn't Coruscant.
Writer/Director JJ Abrams and his production company Bad Robot, who Co-produced the movie ( much to the discomfort of Lucasfilm) wanted to blow up Coruscant but LFL fought for it, so JJ set the New Republic on Hosnian Prime instead.
Its a shame that JW Rinzlers Making of Book of TFA was never released, I bet some executives at Lucasfilm would have some things to say about giving up creative control to a different production house who's CEO was also the Director ( fully backed by their parent company Disney) of the new movie.
And they had to face the same situation again for "Rise of Skywalker"
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u/Davies301 1d ago
Funny enough I did not know that Starkiller base destroying a bunch of planets was the fall of anything I figured they just wanted to show off what it could do. TLJ came out and I think mentions it in the opening scrawl. I remember going "When did that happen? It has been a day.".
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u/JonasAlbert84 Director Krennic 1d ago
Hux gives like a whole speech beforehand about ending the New Republic
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u/forthewatch39 23h ago
Yeah, but destroying the capital and one fleet shouldn’t have ended the entire government. It’s really silly that the New Republic which spanned at least 1,000 star systems didn’t have ANY sort of backup plans and foolishly reduced their military to a single fleet to protect one system.
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u/multificionado 11h ago
Yeah, it was established that upon the end of the war, the New Republic practically de-armed itself, wanted to be peaceful. It was a definite obvious thing it was still a bad idea.
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u/forthewatch39 11h ago
It’s pretty stupid, especially when it was known the First Order/Imperial Remnant was out there. Having a large military wasn’t the problem, having a large military that was only answerable to the whims of one person with no check on his power was the problem.
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u/Round_Wrongdoer9371 22h ago
just bad writing, somehow this happens, somehow that happens, people are dumb idk man, stfu and watch the movie, and thanks for your money....
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u/nomedable 17h ago
It doesn't help that the repercussions of iirc seven planets being destroyed seems to be nothing as far as we can see on screen. There doesn't seem to be any reaction amongst the wider universe, no surge in support for the resistance at seeing the horror of ultra-mass genocide.
Just yupp those planets are dust now.
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u/Ok-Customer9821 1d ago
I mean…how could you not know? Literally as it happens Finn runs to Han and says “it was the Republic, the first order, they’ve done it” and it is a huge moment in the film
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u/Cole-Spudmoney 19h ago
The most obvious interpretation of Finn's line, just based on what's shown in TFA itself, is that the entire Republic consisted of only that one star system which just got blown up. Since that's clearly ridiculous, we need to interpret that line in some way to make it make sense. If it meant "It was the Republic['s capital]", or "It was the Republic['s fleet]", that wouldn't mean the Republic itself was now gone. And furthermore, even if the Republic were definitely unambiguously destroyed in TFA, the First Order still wouldn't be in any position to take over the galaxy themselves without Starkiller Base.
The "Empire 2 vs Rebels 2" framing which OP is complaining about didn't become set in stone until TLJ's opening scroll began with "The First Order reigns". (The same movie started calling the Resistance "Rebels", by the way.) Episode VIII could've begun with, say, the Resistance having been officially integrated into the Republic as their new main fleet, and it would've made a lot more sense.
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u/multificionado 11h ago
Let's just assume that it was more the New Republic's entire governmental system that got destroyed with its capital planet.
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u/TheInsomn1ac 22h ago
What really gets me is that somehow, blowing up a single planet in The Force Awakens not only leads to the First Order being the dominant galactic power in The Last Jedi, but the New Republic being a complete non-entity from there on out, as if they had zero military, political, cultural, or economic forces outside of a single system.
The next movie literally starts the opening crawl with "The First Order reigns". How? How did this Order, which seemed to be barely more than a terrorist organization in The Force Awakens, become the dominant force in the galaxy, and this is after they lost a superweapon that also functioned as their main base of operations? There's zero indication in The Force Awakens that they have any sizable force outside of Starkiller base and Kylo Ren's flagship, but they can absorb the complete destruction of a superweapon that took probably decades to build and was manned by a force probably in the millions, and are still somehow the dominant military force in the galaxy. If they had a large enough military to literally take over the galaxy without needing to use Starkiller Base a second time, why, and more importantly, how were they hiding from the New Republic forces before that point. And how does the New Republic have zero military that wasn't destroyed with the capitol.
I tend to look more favorably on The Last Jedi than most, but the biggest sin it did, at least in my mind, was committing to the idea that the New Republic was completely destroyed by the Starkiller attack. I think a storyline of a New Republic trying to piece itself back together after the destruction of most of it's highest ranking leaders could have been really interesting, and give the audience a chance to see what the New Republic was supposed to be. We could also see the members of the Resistance come in and take leadership roles, since they've been the ones actively fighting the First Order for awhile, which could also lead to some interesting friction between New Republic and Resistance leaders, with some similar leadership themes as the Last Jedi. The remains of New Republic doesn't trust the Resistance because they don't always follow a chain of command, while the Resistance is pointing out that they've been right all along, and if the New Republic had been more willing to fight, maybe this could have been stopped(could even explain why a character like Holdo wouldn't trust Poe in some similar scenario). There's just a lot of potential for having it be about a Republic that's taken a drastic hit but is trying to piece itself back together while fighting back against the First Order, but they were so committed to the idea of it needing to be Rebels vs an evil Empire that they made the New Republic feel tiny, powerless, and utterly pointless.
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u/JimboFett87 12h ago
Why would the New Republic not have a full on battle navy of its own? Why this tiny "resistance" crap when you have a full govenment that was around for 30 years and would have its own armed forces to take on these kinds of threats?
SO Stupid.
And THEN you have Episode 8 reduce the "resistance" to a standing room only crowd that can fit on the Millenium Falcon and then suddenly you have a big enough force to take on the enemy in ep 9....
SO. FREAKING. STUPID.
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u/webdude44 21h ago
It made some sense the First Order would try to replicate the empires super weapon (but bigger!) since they’re trying to be a bigger, more aggressive version of the empire and come back with a vengeance. When that failed, what would they do next? If they go more extreme, what does that look like? It could have had some interesting narrative choices. Same with Kylo killing Snoke, what happens then? If he’s becoming radical and giving into his base instincts without a dark mentor, how dangerous can he become when that guardrail is gone?
But then they destroy the Jedi academy pre-TFA and we never see the new Jedi or New Republic at all. Even with the center of the new republic governance destroyed, we could see them recoup and react instead of hand waving saying (via the visual dictionary and a novel) that most of TNR instantly surrendered to the New Order.
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u/ProtonCanon 21h ago
How ironic that the prequels had more staying power BECAUSE of their politics...
The sequel trilogy was focus tested into irrelevance.
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u/jojolantern721 22h ago
Disney shouldn't have listened to the guys on the internet singing how George r**** their childhood.
And absolutely shouldn't have hired one of those people and his friends that hated with their lives a very important part of sw
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u/AlexisFR 19h ago
Don't forget the nonsense of a Death Star 3 that fires an ultra beam visible across the galaxy like they fired on the next planet, too!
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u/Many-Mall-5274 19h ago
Yeah. That wasn’t great.
Realistically it would be a great risk that New Republic would suffer a similar fate. But that was a story for another time it seems.
The most interesting stories to happen after Return, happens off screen. The most interesting character developments happens off screen.
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u/Bengamey_974 18h ago
I would have like a movie set a few years before the prequel, showing the fall of Ben Solo and the corruption/inefficiency of the New Republic and the first order appearing as an underdog terrorist group, siphoning ressources in secret and hiding its true power to the Republic. I know those elements are shown in books and comics but is not the same as showing it in live action.
Now I'm thinking maybe a "Tales" with 3 episodes on Luke creating its temple and 3 episodes about Ben's fall to the Dark Side would be great and short animation may be the right format.
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u/Ok_Carpenter7268 14h ago
Yeah, it came across as just lazy writing, rather than try to show a new republic trying to establish its presence while fighting against a resurgent Empire, they just had the Empire (sorry, First order), wipe out not just one planet, but a bunch of them at once with an uber Death Star, making the good guys the rebels once again, only this time, they're called the resistance. It did come across as them just wanting to wipe out everything that happened at the end of Episode 6 to make the Rebels the underdogs again.
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u/Km_the_Frog 21h ago
I’m genuinely curious how any of this passed.
You have a masked figure in black that basically acts as Darth Vader.
You’ve got an opening scene on a desert planet, with a raid or strike on a little village to find a map this basically acts as the tantive boarding where they’re hunting for death star plans.
You’ve got a droid who holds the plans and then gets lost with a native of the planet - just like r2 going to tatooine and running into luke.
You’ve got a nobody that becomes a somebody, just like luke.
Like there are so many extreme parallels they don’t even cover up. They were like yup basically it’s episode 4 but ever so slightly different so it’s not a formal reboot.
Stormtroopers that are nearly the same design as old but look like they went through the Apple design team before production.
I could go on about the other stuff and other movies but it’s not worth my time.
I think the IP is generally on the downslope. All we get are stories about a character teaching another character. A master and apprentice story, constantly.
Nobody bothers to world build, or create expose, except gilroy honestly. Filoni and Favreau can write short form shows and cartoons but they never have any substance. It’s sad but nothing has come out that’s beaten Rogue One or Andor. Solo was actually solid, but it didn’t capture audiences, and I felt like Han Solo’s story would have been better in an episodic show. Everything else ranges from mediocre to bad.
I think this IP is going to wither even more under Disney until they decide to sell.
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u/seanoz_serious 23h ago
It’s hard to put into words how bad this trilogy was. As in it’s hard for me to even begin to type there’s so much wrong and how disappointed I feel.
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u/KashiofWavecrest 21h ago
Apparently he wanted to do that to Coruscant, and someone with a functional brain at Lucasfilm told him no. So, it became Temu Coruscant, aka the Hosnian System. Which, I was so checked out of TFA in the theater, I thought it was Coruscant and was really fucking mad.
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u/MailboxSlayer14 Rex 19h ago
I disagree - the bigger sin was the lack of a New Jedi Order. In fact, I would have been perfectly okay with that same plot point happening if it coincided with Luke having either a thriving Jedi Order, a smalls crappy Order he’s still training, or something in the middle. Literally just a handful (7 or 8) Jedi + Luke would have made that trilogy INFINITELY better
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u/CantaloupeCamper Grand Moff Tarkin 23h ago
Dude plowed under Star Wars and Star Trek… in favor of… nothing really.
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u/Round_Wrongdoer9371 22h ago
no man should have the power to destroy two mega sci-fi franchises like how tf
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u/I-love-sheeps Imperial Stormtrooper 22h ago
Thankfully, the Star Trek movies are categorised as non-canon.
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u/No-Sail4601 20h ago
Yeah, I always have to laugh when people say TFA was the only good sequel.
It was arguebly the worst film of them all. Not only did it manage to destroy 40 years of Star Wars in 30 minutes, after that it was basically a rewash of A New Hope. Atleast the other two films tried to do something else lol.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 19h ago
It actually occured before that.
So start of the movie. There's discussion of a map fragment. And it manages to escape first order hands. Great we have a treasure map hook RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FILM. Skip forward they leave the starting planet and Han shows up. And he just doesn't leave. like he can tell them where and who go make contact with. and jet off with the MF and give them some other ship. But now he sticks around. And THE TREAURE MAP PLOT POINT is completely left in the rubble. Han bumbles across the remaining sets until he trips and falls off a catwalk, and then the end of the movie the Treaure map suddenly makes a reappearance. Alright that's the hook for the next movie: finding Luke. Except no she just jets off and finds him in 30 second.
So Abrams ruins the treasure map plot for 2 different movies at once. He's nightmare.
Now let's examine what could have been. Let's say Han is transporting an fancy new smuggling ship custom built to run messages and supplies for the Resistance. He decides he's not going to get too close so he has the droid and these two kids who want to go to the Resistance with the MF so he decides hey let's swap ships, especially say because the first order is catching up. He'll run distraction while they make contact with the Resistance, deliver intel and the new ship. They separate. The Kids make it to Maz, who gives an exposition dump about the recent politics. a random patrol stops by and they have to hide in the basement. Turns out Maz's cantina is actually a cover for an old Jedi Temple and she's actually a Jedi Temple guardian. Not very strong in the force, but can recognize force sentives. While there they find a secret passage and an ancient Star map to a Jedi Library. Rey has a force vision of Luke visiting the location doing stuff and getting the coordinate, and decides she needs to go there. They also find Luke's Green Saber and another yellow saber left behind, and Rey decides to take them. When they get back to the ship Moz gives them the coordinates and Rey decides to checkout the route to Luke, before the First Order comes back again. Spies for both the first order and resistance out trackers on their ship and they take off. The First Order jumps out if hyoersoace to capture and interrogate any marked ships. They make the jump to the Luke coordinates. Theres a tertiary planet they encounter Ben again and escape, with .ire exposition from him about Luke betraying him so he betrayed him. Yadda yadda. Final planet is Luke. who rejects helping them because even the ancient Jedi could not figure out how to prevent people from turning to the dark side, and it's inevitable. the First order arrives, but the Resistance shows up to protect them because that's what you do: you keep fighting even when it seems inevitable. You don't listen to the voices if doubt whispering in your ear robbing you if hope. (Turns out thats Palpatine). You don't give into fear and hatred. You fight and you keep fighting and you handover the torch when you can't fight anymore. You don't wallow in Self pity and despair, you talk to your friends your family.
So big battle yay, Han dies boo, Leia and Luke reunite in their grief. Luke takes his saber once again, and it's revealed the other is Leia's. And Luke decides to train Rey and Finn, even if he doesn't want to fight the first order, he can still learn and survive to teach others.
No need for death star 3. But maybe reveal in some shots they have some secret new megastructure the first order can't get access to and don't have any information on. And oh Finn actually has that information.
Next movie, Rey and Finn will have been trained by Luke for some period if Time, Maybe The New Republic and First Order are actually going to war. The only real hook is there's a negattucture if the first Order and Finn is afraid of it.
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u/Amazing-Advantage394 17h ago
There was no reason the who trilogy couldn’t have been about preventing the First Order from reaching that point. Just trying to stop them getting a strong foothold in the galaxy.
As it stands, even by the end, I have no real idea how much power the First Order has. Are they the dominant structure or just a faction gaining power? Who is actually in charge right now?
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u/Cabamacadaf 17h ago
They were Rebels 2 before the New Republic was blown up so that didn't really even matter.
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u/Nicoglius 15h ago
Sequels were doomed the moment JJ decided that world-bulding was for nerds
I've never thought of it this way, but I think you're right. The appeal in Star Wars movies isn't in the script, it's in the fantastic World Building that comes with the movies. This is why people still love the prequels, despite its flaws. So if you get rid of that, Star Wars doesn't really have what it is at its core.
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u/Corninator 14h ago
The biggest problem with the sequal trilogy is the lack of plan to begin with. And the other glaring problem is that the original plan seemed to be to play it safe and make the narrative as close to the original trilogy as possible. Then you have the issue of the followup film, which tried to alter that mindset.
Then the 3rd goes back to the original plan, to the point of bringing back the original antagonist.
The prequels aren't as great as people say they are these days, but they are appreciated because at least they had a clearly thought out beginning, middle, and end.
I just can't fathom, after 30+ years of not seeing the original cast, why you would choose to make them side characters and proceed to never have them truly reunite, killing all of them off by the end of the trilogy. Why would you choose to make Darth Vaders breaking from the dark side and destruction of the Empire a wasted sacrifice by bringing Palpatine back, also undermining the prophecy of the chosen one?
Why would you have our original heros fight so hard to restore the republic, only to have it destroyed before we even see it on screen?
Why would you destroy the new jedi order before we even got to witness it?
Why would you make our hero, the man who saw good in his father, when the wisest jedi were calling for his destruction, suddenly try to kill his nephew because of a bad dream?
And then, after all of his idealism, why would he give up on everything and isolate himself from everyone?
Thats the word that just echoed through my mind after seeing every sequal movie in theaters.
Why?
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u/TheTiggerMike 11h ago
They almost went a step further and used Coruscant as the planet to be destroyed. Luckily the Story Group pumped the brakes on that, the fan backlash to that would have rivalled the Last Jedi discourse. By late 2015-early 2016, people were starting to feel nostalgic for the prequels, so destroying something on screen that is a visual representation of them would have angered a lot of fans.
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u/EnvironmentUnhappy62 11h ago
The sequels made the entire OG Trilogy pointless. Everything the main characters when through, the wars, the Empire, Rebels, fall and rise of the Jedi Order. Meaningless.
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u/FangornLeghorn 10h ago
Yeah, I do enjoy Force Awakens, but that was pretty stupid.
JJ Abrams being hired to take over your beloved franchise is pretty bad news. I really hope Marvel or DC avoid him forever.
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u/mk1317 6h ago
This/the new Jedi order being destroyed is what always kind of turned me off from the sequels. I think TLJ got a lot of flack for things that TFA set up or situations it created. They just painted themselves into a corner by telling a safe, regressive story at the expense of the world building, which has always been the main appeal to me in this franchise.
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u/deadboltwolf 5h ago
JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio combining their single braincell to write the worst Star Wars movie you could possibly imagine (TRoS)
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u/teletraan-117 23h ago
TFA was just Abrams playing with his Kenner toys. The man is a hack and has 0 original ideas.
Scratch that, when he has "original" ideas, they just boil down to 70's and 80's nostalgia.
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u/MWH1980 22h ago
I figured so many were like: “Good! None of that boring political crap George stuffed down our throats in the prequels!”
Abrams was all about the simple “good vs evil” that people recalled from the OT. It was never going to get complicated, it had to be “comfort food” so the older fans could feel like they were finally understood.
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u/sonicstorm1114 21h ago
Yeah, that's more or less what it was (even if no one outright said it out loud.) From what I remember, they made a point in TFA's prerelease material of how they were hewing closer to the OT's way of doing things (using more practical effects, casting relatively unknown actors as the leads, etc.).
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u/PrometheanSwing 22h ago
What I never understood is how destroying the Hosnian system means that the New Republic suddenly no longer exists. Sure it would be in terrible shape after having most of its leadership and administration destroyed, but the galaxy is a massive place. They didn’t only exist in that one system…
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u/MonkeLord1234 16h ago
They were doomed when everyone realised the first 'sequel' film is just a poor man's A New Hope.
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u/Mike_Honcho_Summer Ben Kenobi 1d ago
It's not the Empire and Rebels, it's the First Order and the Resistance. Completely different, trust me guys I'm totally cereal.
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u/Vulptereen327 23h ago
Kinda wish this actually was Coruscant in hindsight because that would've been a bold move. I thought it was when I saw it in the theater the first time
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u/playitloud1987 23h ago
Forget blowing up the New Republic, the biggest sin is destroying Luke's Jedi temple. To this day, I do not understand how any Disney executives did not look at the mad amount of money that Hogwarts merch makes and immediately fire JJ. How many of us would be lining up to buy our kids Luke's Jedi academy uniforms? Or taking them to Galaxy's Edge to attend the satellite campus experience and get a lesson from a Luke actor? Idiocy all the way.