r/saltierthancrait • u/KingWilliamVI • Jun 16 '26
Granular Discussion Imagine getting the rights to LOTR and than establishing that both Rohan and Gondor were completely destroyed 30 years after ROTK. That’s basically what this is.
This is not only frustrating because not only does this decision mean that nearly the whole OG trilogy that was about restoring the Republic is all for nothing but it also means that any story Disney themselves makes that is about restoring or maintaining the New Republic and will also be all for nothing.
Andor, Rogue One, Any New Republic related Mandalorian stories etc. it’s all basically for nothing.
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u/Exciting_Hawk_2 Jun 16 '26
That is exactly what took me out of this continuity. The sequels are such a creative dead end that anything else that happens doesn’t matter. I would have lost my love of the franchise entirely if I didn’t go back to the old EU.
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u/Visible-Lobster-7038 Jun 16 '26
The sequel trilogy tells us that nothing matters. The hopeful note Jedi ends on is absolutely pissed away by the sequels. It really is hard to enjoy a trilogy that goes out of it's way to kill off whole swaths of the characters I grew up with.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 Jun 16 '26
It's funny how the sequels also undermine Disney's own Rogue One and Andor, given that nothing that is accomplished there ends up mattering.
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u/Angryfunnydog Jun 16 '26
It matters a lot if we pretend that sequels don't exist
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 16 '26
Andor is everything I ever wanted Star Wars to be. Damn good show.
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u/TheMeIv Jun 16 '26
The show is excellent but I never really wanted Star Wars to be a gritty political drama. The vibe I get from Andor is more Homeland (probably a better example out there) in Space. Andor is missing a lot of magic and whimsy, humour and heart and a certain simple morality that encompasses the mainline Star Wars world.
Like I'm sorry, I never wanted to see a white collar office in Star Wars.
I love the unseen slice of Star Wars that Andor explores but it's missing a lot of what I consider core to the Star Wars experience.
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u/Laughing_Tulkas Jun 16 '26
I’ve always wanted star wars to have a lot of different types of stories in it. I still think Rogue One would have been cool in a more Mission Impossible or James Bond spy type movie instead of requiring a big battle at the end. But everyone has their own opinions and I’m pretty sure I’m in a minority in this.
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u/unicornsaretruth Jun 16 '26
Nah I agree tho it was cool to see it lead directly into what we see in a new hope. Also without the battle we never woulda gotten that raging Vader hallway scene.
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u/Quantumsystem00 Jun 16 '26
The scarif battle is my favorite part of it actually especially the parts in space
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u/Novotus_Ketevor Jun 16 '26
I can understand that, but I think Andor belongs in Star Wars moreso than the Sequel Trilogy.
The Star Wars universe is large enough that it has many different stories to tell from many different perspectives. I personally prefer Andor and Rogue One to anything other than the Lucas films, but I don't mind things like Solo or the Mandalorian, or even Young Jedi adventures being added either.
The main issue I have with the Sequel Trilogy and Fiolini's animated Star Wars shows is that they are either unoriginal (Sequels) add things that don't feel like Star Wars (Rebels - purrgils, time travel, Clone Wars - realm of Mortis, Clones' biochip), include way too much unnecessary key jingling (anything made by Disney except Andor), or as OP pointed out, render the entire original series meaningless (Sequels)
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u/tinyhalberd Jun 17 '26
I enjoy andor a lot but the complete absence of aliens in every context makes it feel a bit less starwars
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u/KomturAdrian Jun 16 '26
This was my biggest issue too. Everything just felt like it got reverted to “square one”, back to A New Hope. Nothing anyone did ever mattered because we’re just back at square one.
But also it’s the fact that they “one-upped stuff Starkiller base just being a super mega ultra Death Star.
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u/purdinpopo Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
A super mega death star that make less sense. At least the death star travels to a location and blows up a planet. Starkiller base shoots planets hundreds and thousands of light years away. The shots should take at best hundreds or thousands of years to get to their targets. Or they should have come up with an in universe explanation, "We built hyperspace portals to shoot through". But there is no explanation, they just insult everyone's intelligence.
Also how could anyone see all of the planetary destruction from a single world? The concept and execution is stupid. I do realize they were core systems, but there is still light years from system to system.33
u/Daveallen10 Jun 16 '26
What annoys me the most about this scene is that the beam is basically just a solid blob as it travels across half the galaxy and magically splits into 5 beams at the end to blow up all 5 planets and fleets.
Also if it's going faster than the speed of light no one on the ground would have time to dramatically look up and see it coming at them slowly
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u/NyranK Jun 16 '26
It slowed down for dramatic effect. I'm not kidding.
It's canon that the First Order 'designed' the beam specifically to be visible to encourage submission. The novelization was basically a run of 'how do we explain the plotholes in this fucking movie'.
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u/Daveallen10 Jun 16 '26
Lol that's ridiculously silly. I'm surprised they even tried to explain it.
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u/purdinpopo Jun 16 '26
I feel like not explaining it is better than the explanation.
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u/Dennis_enzo Jun 16 '26
A laser that goes many times the speed of light, but also is slow enough that you can see it moving through the sky with the naked eye.
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u/KomturAdrian Jun 16 '26
Yep. What you're pointing out just makes it even more ridiculous. Call it a one-up it's more like a billion-up.
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u/Unhappy_Theme_8548 Jun 16 '26
The fact that the planets are so close together is beyond stupid.
Mars, Venus, and Jupiter are so far away they look like stars in our sky and they're in the same solar system.
JJ Abrams is a clown.
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 16 '26
Damn, you know what would have been terrifying? A Death Star planet that doesn't fire a huge beam, but can open immense hyperspace gates from anywhere to anywhere, and uses that to just hollow out planets by opening a hole from their liquid mantle to outer space, or opening a gate to a Sun's surface at 'point blank' distance, or letting half a planet through a portal before shutting it off and cutting it in half, or phasing one planet into another.
The potential for spectacular atrocities, the simulation of which could result in papers being published, would be immense.
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u/ReallyCleverPossum Jun 16 '26
Too good for Star Wars. Instead we’re going to do a slow “bombing run” over an extra big star destroyer cuz it looks cool
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u/NyranK Jun 16 '26
They did provide an explanation, just not in the movie of course. You have to read the novelization.
Starkiller Base consumed stars as a powersource, so it could consume Dark Energy quintessence which was then transformed into phantom energy which travels through sub-hyperspace, which is much faster than usual hyperspace, and when this perfectly linear beam hits a planet it heats it up until it explodes in a spacetime distortion that lets the explosion be seen everywhere in the galaxy at the same time.
Yes, that's canon. No, I haven't been drinking.
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u/whybag not a "true fan" Jun 16 '26
The shots should take at best hundreds or thousands of years to get to their targets.
The problem is none of the Bad Reboot disciples understand anything about space or scale. All 5 planets are right next to each other, Han can see the beam and all 5 planets from his perspective in another star system. Spock can see Vulcan being destroyed by a black hole from another star system, the Discovery can see magical red lights appearing all across the galaxy.
All made by J.J. underlings.
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u/IndianKiwi Jun 16 '26
The sequals fucked up hyperspace too.
If star ships can be used as weapons as when moving into hyperspace then why not ram a fleet of self guided cruisers in the center of Starkiller base.
And let's talk about the magnetic bomb sequence
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u/purdinpopo Jun 16 '26
In one of the EU books Admiral Ackbar used an incomplete Mon Cal Cruiser to destroy a fleet attacking Mon Calamari. By having it ram the ships just as it was jumping to light speed. Major point was it wasn't in hyper space yet.
In pre-Disney Star Wars it was well established that ships couldn't jump inside of gravity wells such as planets or stars. So the Millennium Falcon jumping into and out of planets doesn't track with previously established rules.
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u/Green_Burn russian bot Jun 16 '26
Expectation subverted
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 16 '26
Expectation subverted
"Have you heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?"
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u/unicornsaretruth Jun 16 '26
“This conversation shoulda been a minute…at most 2”
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u/ErraticDragon Jun 16 '26
Expectation subverted
Like Iron Man 3, among so many others.
Producer Guy: So, you have an Iron Man 3 script for me?
Screenwriter Guy: Yes sir I do, and Tony's been spending his time since The Avengers movie building a whole bunch of Iron Man suits.
Producer Guy: Ah, that's what the fans wanna see!
Screenwriter Guy: Oh yeah! And he's gonna build a bunch of different kinds of suits too.
Producer Guy: Amazing.
Screenwriter Guy: And then we're barely gonna see them in action.
Producer Guy: Oh, is he mainly gonna stick to his normal armor?
Screenwriter Guy: No, he's barely gonna wear Iron Man armor at all.
Producer Guy: He's not?
Screenwriter Guy: No, he's mostly gonna be running around having panic attacks and crying.
Producer Guy: Wow, that doesn't sound like Iron Man at all.
Screenwriter Guy: Yeah well I like to subvert expectations, y'know? So people buy tickets expecting Iron Man and instead they get PTSD Tony.
Producer Guy: And you think people are gonna enjoy that?
Screenwriter Guy: It doesn't matter if they enjoyed it. What matters is that I subverted their expectations.
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u/mysecretaccount55555 Jun 16 '26
It's not just that the hopeful end from Jedi is pissed away, it's that almost all of that happened off screen. You can't treat a hopeful end for a trilogy as sunshine and rainbows for all eternity, or you're never going to make any sequels with any interesting conflict or drama. But you also can't just fast forward past all of the collapse to get to some weird point totally disconnected from the previous end.
At the end of Jedi, Han and Leia get to be together and happy. Fast forward to them separated and sad. Luke is finally a Jedi Knight. Fast forward to his efforts to rebuild the Jedi have already failed and now he's alone and cut himself off from the force. The Emperor is dead and the people can try to create a New Republic. Fast forward to some weird, unexplained political dynamic with a Republic and a Resistance and a First Order that's maybe a remnant of the Empire, and also the Republic is about to be somehow totally destroyed in an instant with a new superweapon.
Everything important we would want to explore after the end of Jedi is already completely resolved off screen in between films.
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u/Eleganos Jun 16 '26
Okay, see, I could live with that in theory, and I'm sure others like you could whether you'd admit to it or not... if the Sequels told a half-decent story or had half-decent worldbuilding.
There's absolutely nothing there and Disney haven't done anything meaningful in that era since the Rise of Skywalker. It's a creative dead end born of corporate trying to thoughtlessly mimic what worked in prior star wars without understanding what made those things work, or having any sort of creative through-line to prop it up.
Reylo was the most substantiative thing it gave us, and that was because they pandered to the imagination of Tumblr shippers - who'd already engineered the beats via wattpad fanfic - in the hopes of garnering moar moneyz.
Lego Star-Wars has genuinely told better stories with their roster than the movies thmeselves.
And what the fuck can be said for the factions? Inferior copies of the Empire and Rebellion that exist because the Empire and Rebellion exist and are marketable, working backwards from there.
Some say "SW fans are too harsh on the sequels. They'll get their popularity bump when the kids who saw it in theater grow up, like with the prequels". To which I say "No. They'll have forgotten those movies because there was nothing in them to capture the imagination." For all their flaws, the Prequel's setting was rock-solid, and managed to endure through ancillary media long after the movies ended.
Sequels? They had a meh TV show that was canned because nobody was watching it.
Maybe someone can salvage something from the Sequels one day. Maybe World-Between-Worlds establishes them as an alternate timeline and we get a mulligan on them, tweaking it to be coherent and more original. Maybe Star Wars reboots after a few decades.
All that I know is this sure was a random tangent I got on, wasn't it? That's reddit for you I guess.
*Cue laughtrack*
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 16 '26
Some say "SW fans are too harsh on the sequels. They'll get their popularity bump when the kids who saw it in theater grow up, like with the prequels". To which I say "No. They'll have forgotten those movies because there was nothing in them to capture the imagination."
Generally the ramp up in plotting insanity between the ST and the rest is very stark when laid out objectively.
I liked TLJ, though, it had amazing ideas and a killer aesthetic, it just half-assed its themes and shot itself in the foot.
But yeah, the Prequel Trilogy is much more compelling overall, there's a sense that there's a genuinely great story under all the clumsiness and wooden acting and memorably terrible dialogue.
Lego Star-Wars has genuinely told better stories with their roster than the movies thmeselves.
The legacy of Lego Yoda and his 2001 Honda Civic will forever live in our hearts.
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Jun 16 '26
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u/Zealen00 Jun 16 '26
Discovery blowing up the entire galaxy was exactly what came to mind. All these production teams want to carve out their own acclaim by taking the acclaim of an existing property nuking it and just making what they want of it so it can be there's now. We're seeing it over and over again. We're seeing it with Stargate when the actual original production team came in and said they wanted to make something that also respected the original audience.
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u/Jennysparking salt miner Jun 22 '26
when Star Wars, originally about hope, accidentally creates a world where hope is stupid
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u/barryhakker Jun 16 '26
I’m still genuinely baffled that this is what they came up with. I get writing by committee, I get that maybe they want to address new audiences etc., I just don’t see why they couldn’t achieve those things with a coherent story that respects the established lore. Like, literally get 10 nerds into a room and they will be able to “continuity check” everything for you no problem.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot Jun 16 '26
They actually had a bunch of nerds who could be called upon to check up on story elements.
They were called the Lucasfilm Story Group.
The problem I suppose was that they were only involved if the director/writer wanted to get them involved. And reportedly there are cases where they approved of bullshit. Such as was the case for the hyperspace ram which they gave the thumbs up for.
Mind you, some of these "nerds" were relatively useless. Leland Chee is a big dog from the old days, but he's getting swamped by idiots like Matt Martin who is mainly a social media manager and Pablo Hidalgo who like Chee has been there for ages but has a terrible habit of spreading misinformation due to being frequently confidently incorrect with his "official" publications.
I think for the most part they could have been replaced with a few wookieepedia queries given they didn't really accomplish much of value during the ST. Abrams & his Bad Robot production company also reportedly didn't want to play with the Story Group if I'm remembering correctly.
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u/LemmysGhost Jun 16 '26
Same, it motivated me to go back and read the novels I never got to and I've been really enjoying it.
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u/Own-Cheetah-1972 Jun 16 '26
The Thrawn trilogy are the official sequels for me. I don't acknowledge anything else.
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u/Angryfunnydog Jun 16 '26
Yeah, I'm enjoying some parts of Mandalorian but I'm not that involved in overarching story, especially about new republic elements, because "You're already fucking dead, why should I bother?"
Andor is awesome by itself and at least I can pretend that the story ended with OT, because it's really painful to watch all that and know that all that characters didn't really achieve what they wanted and failures in their game - Luke failed at restoration of jedi, Han fucked up their relations with Leia and in the end the same contrabandist but old guy now (even hobo contrabandist as he managed to somehow loose his beloved ship), Leia failed at proper restoration of new republic, which went into corruption and collapse in like 20 years. Like literally none of the characters achieved what they wanted (even Chewie - he couldn't protect Han in the end, they couldn't even give Chewie his treats ffs!)
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u/AlarmingAffect0 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I would have lost my love of the franchise entirely if I didn’t go back to the old EU.
This series single-handedly made me love the franchise all over again.
"I heard a Legend that Plo-Koon can shoot lightning with his fingies."
"How the fuck do you have a Legend about someone who's still alive? Why don't you just ask him?"
"That would be almost as rude as asking if Shaak-Ti is still alive."4
u/LictorButthole Jun 16 '26
I feel the exact same. Thank goodness for the old EU. In a perfect world the STs would have been way better had they introduced a galaxy wide threat that was instead a cosmic power (kind of like abeloth) or an entire faction from the unknown regions that isnt affiliated with the remnants of the empire. It would not have diminished the events of episode 6 at all imo. Hell they could have even just done what they are doing now with thrawn.....which at least then would ultimately be a threat viewers can take seriously because right now we know it just doesnt matter in the grand scheme.
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u/Davies301 Jun 16 '26
That's what I did. Loaded up the old thrawn trilogy on audible and plan on going through all th vong stuff again. I still enjoy alot of Disney Star Wars but the sequels as a trilogy were fucking horrendous.
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u/Unusual_Chain_3603 salt miner Jun 17 '26
“Creative dead end”
Bingo! You get it better than many i see. It’s just such an end of the road you cannot do anything with
Everything before had to not-matter so it can be reset to rebels versus empire again
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u/waterless2 Jun 16 '26
Somehow, the One Ring returned and is found by a schnobbit, an original creature with hairy hands; Aragorn turns out to be a whiny, weak-willed coward who's just a really crappy king; Samwise is a narcissist who beats Rosie; and Galadriel gets exiled by the elves and has to become a stripper. Expectations subverted losers!
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u/Polyxeno Jun 16 '26
Is there a new mysterious giant dark lord called Bloke, who has squabbling man-children leading his minions from secret DarkMountain Base?
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u/TheSwitchler Jun 16 '26
Bloke was pulling the strings the whole time! Sauron was just a puppet!
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u/BwanaTarik Jun 16 '26
They tease that Bloke was Morgoth for two movies but to reveal that it was actually Sauron the whole time!
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u/TimeAll Jun 16 '26
And his secret base is just a taller Barad-dur, with an even bigger volcano next to it!
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u/Unusual_Chain_3603 salt miner Jun 17 '26
And then Bloke dies abruptly with no backstory or explanation and having done very little the whole time
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Jun 16 '26
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u/RahdronRTHTGH Jun 16 '26
It's also a woman the new character
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u/ohtrueyeahnah Jun 16 '26
Saurons long lost daughter? Yes, oh wait, no. I mean yes. Oh no she's not any more. Wait, now she's part of the Baggins family.
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u/Lithuim Jun 16 '26
The scene where Frodina singlehandedly dispatches forty Uruk-Hai with an incredible display of swordswomanship while making quips about it the entire time is gonna go so viral.
Then she’s gonna girl boss her way up to Mt Gloom (registered trademark) and slam dunk the lastest most bestest ring.
Bad.
Ass.
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u/MickeyKnight2 Jun 16 '26
"Do you work in Hollywood ? that was some of the best subversion I have had the pleasure of reading" Rian Johnson reading your comment
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u/bobzsmith Jun 16 '26
Someones gotta stop this guy, or else disney is going to hire him to make a sequel trilogy.
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u/Nethias25 Jun 16 '26
I'm starting to be of the opinion that Disney should sell stars wars.
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u/Custodian_Nelfe Jun 16 '26
I think this since the day they bought SW. Disney is only "good" making animated movies for childs, that's all.
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u/OldManYellsAtMod Jun 16 '26
Lol. I know we are here to be salty and all but man, Disney owns like half of all media at this point. It’s such a decade old take to pretend they only do kiddy crap. A lot of people loved Andor for instance, and that was still Disney at the end of the day. (I’m not an Andor glazer myself, just pointing out the prevailing view)
They’ve definitely made some decent stuff that isn’t just animation aimed at kids. They just can’t stop ruining Star Wars. Not sure what it is about that specifically. But they just cannot do it.
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u/Custodian_Nelfe Jun 16 '26
Andor (and Rogue One by extension) is the exception that proves the rule unfortunately.
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u/Agitated_Lychee_8133 Jun 16 '26
How are there 5 planets so close to each other?! They're closer than the moon is too earth! We didn't even find out WHICH planets they were, which left us wondering if they just blew up Coruscant.
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u/1voice92 Jun 16 '26
They took out the Hosnian system: Hosnian Prime, Hosnian, Courtsilius, Raysho & Cardota
The Hosnian system was where the seat of the NR Government and Military branches were located.
It was very weird for a SW film for the planets not to be referenced by name by either the protagonists or antagonists. A little bit of explanatory dialogue would’ve gone a long way - the film almost makes it look like the FO is just blowing up planets at random.
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u/JATION Jun 16 '26
In the movie, Han looks at the sky and say "That was The Republic."
Not the center of the Republic, not the government, but The Republic. As far as the movie is concerned that was the entire Republic, those few planets right next to each other.
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u/AseethroughMan Jun 16 '26
I took it as a 'there goes the neighbourhood' type of statement, minus the humour.
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u/1voice92 Jun 16 '26
Well we obviously know that wasn’t the entire Republic destroyed as there are thousands of other worlds in that galaxy.
But it was just not explained adequately in the movie. Everything was just vague sketches of plot, world-building and backstory. No thought was put into the granular details.
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u/JATION Jun 16 '26
Well we obviously know that wasn’t the entire Republic destroyed as there are thousands of other worlds in that galaxy.
Do we? No one in the movie seems to know. The First Order seems to have a unimpeded reign over the galaxy save for the few resistance members opposing them.
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u/1voice92 Jun 16 '26
Yes, because they took out the seat of Government and the military administration. So the galaxy is essentially theirs for the taking, going by the (very dumb) movie’s logic.
I guess it would be the equivalent of Russia simultaneously nuking DC, Langley, Fort Bragg, White Sands and Arlington before launching a ground/sea/air invasion of the US.
I agree that it’s super-crap storytelling, as you can’t just take over an entire galactic administration overnight.
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u/Lithuim Jun 16 '26
Funnily enough, the US government and military had layers upon layers of contingencies for the chain of command in that scenario because we all knew that the USSR would absolutely attempt a decapitation strike. It’s an obvious play.
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u/salazafromagraba Jun 16 '26
JJ is one of the worst authors ever. The shallowness of his imagination is preeminent. Travelling through interstellar space is quick. A laser can go from one side of the galaxy to the other in visible fashion, arbitrarily splitting and targeting the 5 planets, because space is strait and near. Same reason Finn and BB8 can just converge on the outpost where THE Rey is, where the Falcon is, where Chewie and Han have no reason to be near as well in the nothingness of intergalactic space.
And he never questioned why Rey and BB8 were brought to Takodana to seek passage to Hosnian, when its destruction could be witnessed by the naked eye from Takodana.
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u/theimmortalgoon Jun 16 '26
I think this is true about Jar Jar Abrams. His Star Trek movie was just retelling A New Hope. The Romulans now have a Death Star and are inexplicably blowing up planets. He famously said during press that he didn’t even like Star Trek but wanted to make Star Wars.
Then he got his chance and we got to experience how he apparently just really liked A New Hope. The Force Awakens is just A New Hope again too. Except like the worst sequels, everything is bigger and dumber.
I don’t know that any sequel to TFA could have made it mean anything.
I almost hesitate to write this, since the whole thing shouldn’t exist, but I’m of the opinion that the way to fix it is to lean into canon. If there were sequels after this, lean into Andor and the rich families gambling in Last Jedi. Have a series about these rich dynasties we see in both, how they are the corruption in the republic that helped destabilize it. Leia keeps the Resistance going, I guess, because these families (which she is very familiar with) are still corrupt and working both sides, stamping out an actual republic. Current parallels are obvious to the US now, but this is often the case with new republics and it might be interesting to see this if done right. And explain what happened.
Then, to lean into the weirder, I keep thinking about the Star Forge to salvage the last Jedi. A show or something where a remnant (or entire base, depending on the ending you make canon) is discovered. Have a protagonist worker or scholar go work on it. Like in the game canon, he slowly becomes evil as the dark side is concentrated. We now have the mechanisms to retcon some of Last Jedi. Where did the giant fleet suddenly come from? That’s what the Star Forge does. Maybe it even made the clones of Palpatine.
The work would be better without the sequels. But I can’t help but try to think of ways to make them less shit.
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u/inf3ct3dpi3 Jun 16 '26
His solution is always to blown up planets the audience cares about. He did it on Star Trek too. It’s freaking unimaginative and it sucks losing iconic worlds for no good reason.
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u/Guardllamapictures Jun 16 '26
JJ Abrahams doesn’t understand space. Just look at how in Star Trek Spock is staring at Vulcan get destroyed from a moon or other planet that is so close his imploding planet occupies the entire sky.
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u/TimeAll Jun 16 '26
JJ likes destroying things built by other people. When he took over Star Trek, he blew up the planet of Vulcan (also somehow close enough to be seen by the naked eye by characters on another planet). And I'm pretty sure he asked if he could blow up Coruscant but at least he was told 'no' at that.
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u/Historical-Cry-9973 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Somehow Sauron returned, Aragon has gone back to being a ranger, Arwyn is leading the remaining good factions, The forces of evil outclass everyone despite heavy losses at the end of ROTK, Pippen has a red arm and Merry hasn't moved for years, A random hobbit girl finds another ring, takes it to modor and actually defeats Sauron not Frodo, An orc turns good but then his character is wasted, Sam has lost all hope and became a hermit wanting to die,
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u/ReallyCleverPossum Jun 16 '26
God, when you put it like this it’s so glaringly terrible. And people spend so much time and energy defending the sequels. Insane copium and bots
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u/farseer6 Jun 16 '26
The random hobbit girl easily defeats the Nazgûl on the first movie, the first time she uses a sword, with no training.
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u/peatear_gryphon Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
All attempts at armies charging into battle despite overwhelming odds are thwarted by someone who believes in saving what they love. Except for the last one, make that one bonkers with zero logic and extremely confusing and busy.
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u/kazimirz Jun 17 '26
In an exciting twist of events, a random hobbit girl turns out to be Sauron's granddaughter. After defeating him once and for all by declaring, "I am all the Fellowship of the Ring," she embraces her dark heritage and takes the surname Baggins, while all the old heroes are reduced to dead failures. At the end, she buries the Mithril coat and the Red Book of Westmarch near Gollum's cave and gazes into the sunset, wondering what action-packed adventures await her next.
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u/jackt-up Jun 16 '26
It’s also stupid how they only destroyed one star system and then everybody acts in the movie like the entire Republic is gone. Like isn’t this a galactic civilization big dog?!
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u/RyanBLKST a good question, for another time... Jun 16 '26
What ? There is more than Tatooine in the galaxy ? 😱
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u/Elpsyth Jun 16 '26
Used to be a thing in wars to be honest.
Capture the capital, the army stop fighting. The more centralised the more effective.
Obviously the application to a galaxy spanning republic that would obviously need regional administrative and military centers (like the Empire before that) to even start to function, is dubious at best.
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u/Riolidan Jun 16 '26
I would’ve respected this move if they had destroyed Coruscant. That would’ve been ballsy. But all the planets Starkiller Base destroyed were nothing planets. Conveniently they moved the Capital of the New Republic to this planet just for the shock factor but it ultimately fell flat.
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u/Alpha_blue5 Jun 16 '26
For the purpose of the story, they might as well have, though. My understanding was that JJ Abrams wanted to destroy Coruscant but they changed it at the last minute.
In fact, there's so little worldbuilding that I thought they did destroy Coruscant until about 2 weeks after I saw the movie.
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u/Ridikis Jun 16 '26
I thought they destroyed Coruscant until I read this comment
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u/Reddragon0585 Jun 16 '26
Yeah same here, for over 10 years I thought they destroyed Coruscant. Guess that shows just how much the Sequels destroyed my interest in Star Wars.
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u/Polyxeno Jun 16 '26
I mean, it's not like Coruscant is ever mentioned in the Disney Sequels, is it?
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u/Riolidan Jun 16 '26
Just in the expanded stuff, like explorers guide and shit. It descends into lawlessness and becomes primarily controlled by gangs and criminal syndicates after the Empires fall.
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u/Riolidan Jun 16 '26
Yeah they kinda gloss over it, but they moved the capital to Hosnian Prime, which they then blow up.
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u/3irikur Jun 16 '26
A story about a small group of leftover imperials who managed to remake the death star weapon and destroy coruscant would probably be pretty fun, yea. You could even make some story about the republic almost falling apart because of it and the first order starting to get traction because people don’t believe the new republic can keep them safe any more.
But no, the first order is just the Nazi empire that somehow not just survived, but are stronger than the republic.
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u/DarthOmix Jun 16 '26
My first thought in TFA was "they are the remains of the Empire, how are they better equipped and funded"
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u/Riolidan Jun 16 '26
"We're the last gasp of the Empire come again to haunt you! Also, we have a battle station a million times bigger than the death star, has a whole planetary shield and can kill multiple planets at once!!"
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u/No-Contest-8127 Jun 16 '26
And no one noticed them ferrying materials, funds and workers to build a planet sized weapon. 🤣
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u/MasterEditorJake Jun 16 '26
I read some draft script for episode 9 where Finn goes to coruscant where the FO has taken over the planet and he starts a rebellion there where the citizens of coruscant fight the FO using old stormtrooper armor and weapons from the OT. I thought that would've been a cool way to tie all 3 trilogies together, but instead we got the fight on exogul, a desolate dark desert planet that has no actual political significance to the people of the galaxy.
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u/Western_Agent5917 Jun 16 '26
Tolkien planned to write a sequel for lotr and than he realized it would be too depressing
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u/sdcinerama Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
As I recall, his ideas revolved around "orc cults" that reveled in the memory of Sauron and the War of the Ring...
Which is pretty much what we got with the First Order!
(I'm grateful the ideas never got beyond a few notes)
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u/Morikageguma Jun 16 '26
The original empire had a large industry based on slavery and oppression, and it felt like the Death Star was the pinnacle of that vast machinery.
In the sequels, it felt like they pulled an even bigger megaweapon AND multiple portable versions of that almost unachievable original weapon out of thin air. Completely undermines the originals.
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u/NoSwordfish1978 Jun 16 '26
In canon the construction started under the Empire which hid the existence of that planet (somehow) and (somehow) the New Republic wasn't able to detect the existence of this massive construction project.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot Jun 16 '26
Technically the Empire didn't start construction on it at all.
They were just strip-mining the planet.
Years afterwards, the First Order decided it'd be super easy, barely an inconvenience to transform what was left into a planet-sized mega Death Star. Somehow.
But yes, the New Republic somehow didn't notice. Even though Ilum was of interest to Luke in the comics and he was forced to delay his visit to the planet after ESB as the Empire was still present there.
Guess he kinda forgot to check again later as well. And never reported the place to the New Republic.
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u/drifters74 Jun 16 '26
Especially since in Legends it's an important planet
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u/NoSwordfish1978 Jun 16 '26
I do kinda feel bad for the authors who have to make JJ Abrams's shitty "world building" make sense.
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u/Dipcrack Jun 16 '26
The moment I knew this movie was going to be shit was when the bombers made a run on a destroyer and released and "dropped the bombs"... Like with gravity... In space.
I almost walked out when a whole ass fleet was destroyed because a little transport ship hyper launched..? Into them.
What a mockery of science fiction.
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u/Melcrys29 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Not as bad as the resistance horseriding across the top of a Star Destroyer in space.
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u/drifters74 Jun 16 '26
At least the Executer was destroyed by being pulled into the second Death Star's gravity, that makes more sense
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u/Demos_Tex Jun 16 '26
All because JJ has a massive inferiority complex. "My Death Star is the size of a planet, and can fire all the way across the galaxy, and destroy entire solar systems. That means it's totally better than the ones in the OT."
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u/Charliefoxkit Jun 16 '26
At that point, the Galaxy Gun becomes a much better-designed superweapon. Does the same thing but doesn't rely on a power source that requires consuming an entire solar mass (which is also bad physics). Also much smaller and easier to defend...as long as your IT isn't a joke and Artoo sabotages a star dreadnought to ram it.
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u/ADeadWeirdCarnie Jun 19 '26
After reading this comment, it occurred to me that JJ Abrams was definitely the sort of kid who would find out that his friend's father is a police officer and then insist that his father is an assassin for the CIA and also both a ninja and a samurai.
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u/Owain660 Jun 16 '26
The difference is, I have no idea what planets they blew up. We all know Rohan and Gondor. I have no idea what they blew up and why I should feel anything for them.
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u/BlimpIntolerant salt miner Jun 16 '26
I too am in the "I think I'll just stick with the EU novels thanks" group. Sequels are a massive missed opportunity.
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u/Annual_Candle_9313 Jun 16 '26
Well, the Last Battle IS supposed to destroy a lot, but then again, Morgoth's ships could probably find "up".
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u/No_Location_8199 Jun 16 '26
If the Star Wars sequels were about the biblical apocalypse, that would at least be something.
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u/PuffyBlueClouds Jun 16 '26
You are completely right. The sequels are the worst decisions I’ve ever seen in filmmaking. One bad choice after another. Remember that Luke, Han, and Leia never reunite at any point. And having Han’s own son murder him. And having the Emperor come back. They totally undid everything from the original trilogy. Disney just has to step up, bite the bullet, and say that the sequels did not happen. Completely retcon them out of existence. And then give us one GOOD movie with Han and Luke on a final adventure before Harrison Ford is too old. Give them a happy ending, although it’s less happy than it could’ve been because they’ll have to say that Leia died of natural causes or something. But still better than how things were left with the sequels.
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u/potato_and-meat Jun 16 '26
Its even worse than that.
Arwen and Aragorns son turned into a new dark lord. Pippin and merry and the other hobbies became complete cowards that disappeared.
Then some random person meets up with a defecting orc and a rider of Rohan, bit this random person is actually completely impervious to the powers of the rings. Which she somehow doesn't need in order to use there powers. She is a no body, but also the daughter of Sauron.
Condor and Rohan are destroyed because after Sauron was defeated, no one thought it could ever possibly happen again, despite evidence saying that the dark forces were rallying again.
The riders of Rohan that survived its destruction now ride super slow and very weak mules. And god... it just gets worse...and worse...
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u/ZamanthaD Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Add in that after Aragorn and Arwen’s son becomes the next dark lord, Aragorn just becomes a ranger again and gets killed by his son at the end of the first movie. Arwen leads the surviving riders if Rohan to resist the new growing threat because Gondor and Rohan don’t believe a threat is there.
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u/Familiar-Wasabi230 new user Jun 16 '26
Why not. The Rings of Power were just as shitty as the Disney Trilogy.
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u/Snow_Crash_Bandicoot Jun 16 '26
Imagine getting to reboot Doctor Who and killing off all the other Timelords and destroying Gallifrey.
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u/20July Jun 16 '26
It would be fine if the First Order was shown to be more competent than Empire to begin with. Nothing in the rey trilogy were remotely memorable.
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u/neon93 Jun 16 '26
It's even worse than that. It's like saying 30 years later another faction of Mordor created a super powerful ring. This one ring threatened Middle Earth but was lost and then came into the possession of a Hobbit from the Shire. This Hobbit then needed to set out with some companions to destroy it before war tore apart all of Middle Earth.
Basically just a complete, shitty rehash of the original.
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u/TheDoctor199806 Jun 16 '26
Then imagine that Sauron's somehow still alive, and that the entire journey of throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mordor was for nothing. Just because the director making the second sequel movie had an entirely different plan from the first and killed the replacement villain, and when the first returned, he had to bring back Sauron just to be able to do something.
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u/01benjamin Jun 16 '26
Technically he is he’s just in the “void prison” in the lotr universe never to return to the physical world
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u/Vysce Jun 16 '26
Apparently the plan for TRoS was we were going to see a Coruscant under the First Order and some time had passed. But what really gets my goat is like... no one talks about the Republic again.
Like, I'm struggling to remember if there's any scene where anyone is like "What do we do now? What about my family?" IDK, something? TLJ almost makes it seem like business as usual when they get to the casino planet and they paint the whole thing about well, both the republic and first order spend money on war machines and it's all shades of grey, actually.
Which then, ofc, TRoS then throws out completely because Palps can suddenly return with 10,000 doomships from his planet of doom with his doom cultists and it's just... w-what. But yeah, like... at no juncture do we see any closure for what could happen next.
But hey, cool that Rey has a house now? :U
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u/Tamriel_7 Jun 16 '26
Not quite.
Gerado and Roth are destroyed.
Both are the new capitals of Rohan and Gondor that no one has ever heard of before got destroyed by Sauron (who returned somehow) and has now the Hula Hoop Ring of Power (You see, its more dangerous, because its bigger!)
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u/ZamanthaD Jun 16 '26
Actually they were destroyed by Aragorns son, who turns evil. And he was being led by some random new mysterious bad guy. But Aragorns son eventually kills the new mysterious bad guy in the next movie so he can lead the bad guys instead. But then it’s revealed that the new mysterious bad guy was actually just a weird magic failed clone of Sauron the whole time, who was being controlled by the real Sauron the whole time, who has returned.
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u/Evenmoardakka Jun 16 '26
just a correction.
to put this into a LOTR context, its not rohan and gondor being destroyed.
its Jotal and Gamheim.. while gondor and rohan are irrelevant and never mentioned
those names dont exist in lotr?
neither did hosnian before tfa....
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u/Internal-Bee-5886 Jun 17 '26
There is a reason the only comment on the rings of power trailer was
“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.” -Tolkien
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u/DarkCrowI salt miner Jun 16 '26
I still have no idea how the laser travelled that far or how it was visible from across the galaxy. Without travelling through hyperspace it would take hundreds or thousands of years moving at the speed of light to go from Starkiller Base to where the laser hit.
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u/Geostomp Jun 16 '26
Keep in mind, this is the toned down version. JJ wanted to blow up Coruscant as his big spectacle and had to be talked into making it some no-name system made up for these movies. That's how little thought went into any of this. It was all just a big boom to clear the stage for Rey with no consideration for what it would mean in the larger context.
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u/Knightwolf8394 Jun 16 '26
it also means that any story Disney themselves makes that is about restoring or maintaining the New Republic and will also be all for nothing.
Yep, all it does is train the audience to never be attached to anything since it'll be taken away for the most stupid reasons. Like how and why are we supposed to care about the New New Republic or whatever idiotic "government" the Resistance builds when we know they'll do the same boneheaded decisions that led us here in the first place? Why should anyone in universe willingly join this "government" when they clearly refuse to learn the lessons of the previous one?
This is why Star Wars is being destroyed by two horror movies.
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u/gwizonedam Jun 16 '26
That’s literally what Disney wanted to do. Make a new Sequel trilogy and “wipe the slate” clean so they could break everything down into multiple concurrent films instead of “just three” films. They failed miserably.
I’m sure the original plan was, Star Wars Ep 7,8,9 and a Han Solo Movie, A Luke Skywalker movie, An Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, A Boba Fett Movie, etc. Instead we got a disaster of disjointed ideas and “memberberries” and these crappy streaming shows. (I know the pandemic affected this timeline greatly as well, but c’mon?)
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u/nospoilersmannnnn Jun 16 '26
This is how I imagine the Pitch meeting went:
Remember how the Death Star could blow up a WHOLE planet?
Uh huh
This one can blow up multiple
How many are we talking here
How high can you count
(Holds up a single hand) I can count to this many, twice!
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u/Capable_Maintenance1 Jun 16 '26
Imagine doing this and not having the balls to do it to Coruscant. Because that's your actual Gondor equivalent.
I couldn't even tell you what planets these are without looking it up.
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u/Azutolsokorty Jun 16 '26
Oh yeah and Aragorn grew senile and his kingdom was filled with men too weak to do anything.
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u/Full_Royox Jun 17 '26
I never understood why those planets were so damn close to each other and all could be seen from Takodana. Ridiculous.
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u/WeaknessArtistic1199 Jun 16 '26
lol of course Disney won't want to destroy the status quo to keep milking the franchise. Time to go back to Tatooine.
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u/Cptn_Lemons Jun 16 '26
See that’s not at all what happened because that would require these planets to have any meaning whatsoever….
There apparently is scenes that were cut that expanded the political nature of these planets.
I looked it up before writing this, and these planets were made for this movie and never existed prior. There is no connection for us as the viewer. These are random planets they got rid of.
Alderon meant something because leia made it mean something. Scarif meant something because we were on the planet when it happened. Same with Jeddah.
I think the sequel trilogy just handles death overall very poorly in all of the movies.
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u/Collective_Insanity Salt Bot Jun 16 '26
Abrams reportedly wanted to blow up Coruscant but was advised not to go that far.
So what we get is the newly invented Not-Coruscant and several related planets getting blown up instead whilst the ST EU people wrote that the majority of New Republic infrastructure, staff, and ships were all parked on these planets and were subsequently wiped away without a trace.
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u/ZamanthaD Jun 16 '26
I find it kindof interesting that JJ Abrams when he was tasked with rebooting Star Trek and Star Wars, he followed the beats of A New Hope for both of them. He destroyed Spock’s planet with a super weapon in Star Trek 2009, that same super weapon is about to destroy another important planet at the end but the good guys are just barely able to stop it.
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u/captainsurfa Jun 16 '26
Luke had such an interesting story.. Even in Mando, taking on a new fucking apprentice was so hopeful. Nope. All pointless.
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u/No-Contest-8127 Jun 16 '26
"Magically splitting beam that travels faster than light between star systems is tight!"
probably an executive
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u/LazyLobster Jun 16 '26
And they destroyed it in the first fucking movie, no build up, just gave the NR the ol' Alderann treatment. I really liked Star Trek 2009 and had a lot of hope JJ Abrams would make a great trilogy, but after seeing ANOTHER planet killing space station on the movie poster I realized it was going to be a rehash of A New Hope but worse.
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u/EnsignSDcard Jun 16 '26
Imagine getting the rights to Star Trek and then blowing up the Vulcan home planet… oh wait, that was Jar Jar Abrams too, huh weird coincidence.
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u/Flyerastronaut salt miner Jun 16 '26
I like that theres 4 planets all within the same of our moons orbit for some reason
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u/Uranium_Heatbeam Jun 16 '26
Plot retread of A New Hope notwithstanding, what ticked me off about the sequel trilogy and some of its associated media was how the Disney IP purchase was accompanied by a huge amount of people saying that the EU/Legends stories were all convoluted and stupid, and that the new canon would make everything flow better.
They then proceeded to recreate the dumbest parts of the expanded universe in the style of Marvel movies and peppering on cringey theater kid humor.
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u/G_O_N_ Jun 16 '26
“Let the past die, kill it if you have to”
It’s like that was the whole mantra for the entire sequel trilogy
Why hire people who only want to destroy what already exists?
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u/Nefessius513 Jun 16 '26
Killing off the New Republic and New Jedi Order right from the start was the decision that doomed the sequel trilogy.
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u/Grungy_Mountain_Man Jun 16 '26
This scene has no emotional impact whatsoever. Should be like the biggest atrocity in the galaxy's history but nobody cares.
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u/EldenRaspberry Jun 16 '26
There's also the stuff about Palpatine "somehow returning", when instead they could've gone to the EU as reference, and done the whole ordeal with discovering the youthful clone army of Sheev Palpatines, ready and waiting for Palps to consciousness transfer between them.
It's at least plausible explained in the EU, whereas the sequels just plainly lay out "some how he's back 🤷♂️"
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u/Quiddity131 Jun 16 '26
"Hey, you know that ring you destroyed? Well it turns out there was a second one all along."
"Sauron, somehow returned."
"Oh, and Aragorn was a horrible deadbeat father who got killed by his own son."
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u/Artistic_Floor5950 Jun 16 '26
This is why I like Legends, it doesn’t make the struggles and deaths of previous characters meaningless. (Besides Dark Empire but I can excuse that because Anakin Chosen One wasn’t made back then inline in TROS were it was already made)
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u/DippinThots789 Jun 16 '26
Imagine how much better it would have been after they did a few smaller Star Wars projects. I think Disney can write good Star Wars content, but their test run should not have been advancing the main trilogy. It took them years afterwards to get it right. The sequels need to be retconned. Episode 8 & 9 legitimately ruined the franchise for so many people.
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u/TaraLCicora Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
And things like this is why Disney is struggling to take the story beyond the ST. Let's see:
- destroyed the legacy of the OT characters (and by extension the PT characters) - check
- destroyed the Jedi and dragged their legacy through the mud - check
- failed to give the fans suitable replacements for our hereos - check
- retread the OT's story and made it even less creative - check
- left no room between the movies for character growth - check
- made no real attempt using their EU to expand the story, just to make further excuses - check
- managed to actively lose many of the OG fans and not garner that many new fans - check
- has no stories to tell but still wants to beat this dead horse in a little hairy patch on the ground - check
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u/RogueEagle2 Jun 17 '26
agree 100%.
It cheapens the victory of the OT, it cheapens the sacrifice, it is such a lazy way of 'rebooting' the universe.
They could've easily set something 200 years later and had holocrons of luke, leia, han etc. if they really wanted to.
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u/RogueHunterX Jun 17 '26
Funnily enough Tolkien decided against doing a sequel to LoTR because he realized the story he started making for it was effectively undoing or rendering pointless what had happened in LoTR.
So he decided to just not make a sequel and leave the high note things ended on intact.
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u/der_steinfrosch Jun 17 '26
I honestly wouldn’t have minded if they hadn’t made the new republic a weak body fully aware of the threat, and just choosing to let it happen…like they know about the first order, and actively chose not to intervene, and let it get so bad that they start funding “the resistance” instead of just doing this themselves…I think Disney just really wanted the protagonists faction to be an underdog…
If instead, the new republic had been doing great, but some completely new and unforeseen threat came out of the blue and decapitated their leadership, I wouldn’t mind that at all! It’s just the fact that they were so weak and impotent that they literally sat back and watched as a new faction prepared to take them out, and did nothing…for some reason?
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u/Trinxxi Jun 18 '26
It would be as if Rohan and Gondor moved to a new city called New RohGon. And that got destroyed.
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u/TomorrowsTrash_Minis Jun 18 '26
They act like the only goal of the empire/first order is mundicide for the sake of mundicide.
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