The Star Wars thread - "Chewie, we're home." - The Bear and Badger

superflyninja

Again sidestepping arguing the toss about TLJ, can we at least agree that wiping the board and trying to take SW in a different direction in middle movie of the final trilogy in the overall trilogy of trilogies was a terrible move? I wonder what if any, vision RJ had for the last movie to follow? Has there been any press about it?

EDIT Damn you @ram making similar point to mine but in a much more eloquent way!!! *Shakes fist*

davyK

RedDave2 wrote:

Yeah that is a huge problem with TLJ that is often missed in all the other issues. It leaves no threads dangling .

Say What now? The New Order is being run by Kylo, no longer Snoke. The Youth has fully taken over at the end of Jedi.

Throughout the 3rd trilogy I had no feeling that the First Order was being run by anyone. Felt very small and parochial. Totally underwhelming.

Of course there was the fleet mass in Ep.9 but little else signified any scale, scope or direction of the First Order....felt like Teacher had left the room and kids were messing about.

RedDave2

I don't think that it's necessarily a huge problem for a middle movie to have huge changes to be honest. Empire brought a lot of new things to the table. But last jedi also has a tonal shift which is probably the biggest problem. The third part could have easily focused on the new order crumbling under kylos manic leadership and the new resistance rises to beat them, all the while sowing the seeds of the weapons dealers behind the background to be the next big bad. There was plenty to work with, but the response to last jedi was poor so they tried to Start again.

Ultimately, as a trilogy it sucks because there is no consistent feel to the three movies nor an overall arc to link them all. They all feel like separate movies but they also all have incomplete narratives within them.

mistercrayon

Empire is pretty depressing at the end and i would suggest keeps things as open to change as last Jedi. You can draw the parallels - Darth and Ren are on the UP and Rey and Luke have a vague sense that they have a chance but it’s still up in the air.

It’s a shame though that return of the Jedi came in and pretended the first film didn’t happen. What a retcon!

LivDiv

Both follow the classic story arc where the end of act 2 has the "Everything is lost" moment.
It happens a lot, The Matrix trilogy does it, iirc LotR does it as well. It happens in more films than not.

It is the details TLJ fails on.
Compare Luke and Rey.

Luke ends the second movie with his dad going from a perfect vision of a hero in his mind to the ultimate villain. He was defeated in combat because he was too head strong, too wrapped up in emotion, signs of the dark side. He had the vision of himself being Vader and in the final scenes he is having a robotic arm fitted. He is physically and mentally flirting with becoming his father, falling to the dark side of the force.
Will he fall? Will he have the strength to defeat Vader, will his emotions even allow him to? There is still so much to tell.

Rey was on a search to find who her parents were. Kylo told them the were nobody. So what do you do with that? You can retcon it or just drop the lead character's entire motivation.
She doesn't get defeated, isn't tempted to either side of the force.
Isn't trained to be one or the other or anything else.
Her arc ends in TLJ and she is the main character. There is nothing left for her to do in TRoS. Sure she can continue to fight the First Order and Kylo but her character arc is complete. She may as well be fucking Plo Koon.

I can do this for most of the main characters. This is what I mean when I say it left nothing open, no threads dangling.

RamSteelwood

Agree there Liv.
Empire leaves you desperate to find out what happens next, what's true etc.
TLJ left me with nothing of interest. It wasn't a case of "OMG I can't wait to see what happens next", I was left with a very weird "well what on earth are they meant to do to follow that to make it remotely interesting or exciting or related to what we've had so far?"

mistercrayon

I was listening to a podcast today about empire strikes back - Retronauts - and the mans impression on it was that empire only retrospectively gets good appreciation for what it did.

LivDiv

It came out 6 years before I was born so that's all I got.

RamSteelwood

Lucas allegedly hated it. Didn't know what to do with the story which is why he got Kirschner to direct it, and didn't like the end result. Thought it would flop.

Kow

So basically Lucas had fuck all to do with Empire. Figures.

RedDave2

LivDiv wrote:

Both follow the classic story arc where the end of act 2 has the "Everything is lost" moment. It happens a lot, The Matrix trilogy does it, iirc LotR does it as well. It happens in more films than not. It is the details TLJ fails on. Compare Luke and Rey. Luke ends the second movie with his dad going from a perfect vision of a hero in his mind to the ultimate villain. He was defeated in combat because he was too head strong, too wrapped up in emotion, signs of the dark side. He had the vision of himself being Vader and in the final scenes he is having a robotic arm fitted. He is physically and mentally flirting with becoming his father, falling to the dark side of the force. Will he fall? Will he have the strength to defeat Vader, will his emotions even allow him to? There is still so much to tell. Rey was on a search to find who her parents were. Kylo told them the were nobody. So what do you do with that? You can retcon it or just drop the lead character's entire motivation. She doesn't get defeated, isn't tempted to either side of the force. Isn't trained to be one or the other or anything else. Her arc ends in TLJ and she is the main character. There is nothing left for her to do in TRoS. Sure she can continue to fight the First Order and Kylo but her character arc is complete. She may as well be fucking Plo Koon. I can do this for most of the main characters. This is what I mean when I say it left nothing open, no threads dangling.

So let me get you straight. Because Kylo, the main villain, tells the hero something - thats it, must be true? I mean, regardless of Rian Johnsons approach that is a very easy thing to write around. Hell, the series got around Luke snogging Leia in Empire only to reveal its his sister in the next movie.

Edit: shit , there's a better example - Obi tells luke the story of Vadar in the first film and its kinda torn up for the Empire script.

But even if we take what Kylo said as fact, there is still an arc - both Rey and Kylo have thrown off the shackles of both Sith and Jedi by the end of the movie. The most obvious arc for me was to see who would create a new way to harness the force (and possible unite other force users) Rey having known Parents and being special was exactly the point of what last Jedi was trying to break down.

If you didnt like that direction, no problem. But I could easily have put togehter a plot to follow on some of the threads from Last Jedi. Poe growing into being an actual general from his experience was an obvious one. Finn feeling disillusioned with both the new order and the rebellion which are just fighting a petty war for the profit of others. Pretty certain that as Rian at the time was down for a trilogy, he must have had a few ideas of where he was going with the plot himself.

Funkstain

that's pretty much how I feel about TLJ. There was ham-fistedness and odd decisions a-plenty but in terms of interesting arcs / storylines for the saga to go to, that surely wasn't a problem.

I thought that maybe Johnson was taking some of his ideas from the extended universe stuff that explored a lot more grey in between light and dark sides. You have to admit the sudden turn that Jedi and Sith go through - a massive leap from "conflicted" to "child killer", for example, or from "planet destroyer" to "I love my boy so much" - is awkward, no?

LivDiv

For the most I would say those are new arcs or directions to go in. Which is fine but not what a third movie in a trilogy should be doing.
Bearing in mind this is a Star Wars saga movie so you have to fit those storylines in around lightsaber duels and space battles.

The most obvious arc for me was to see who would create a new way to harness the force (and possible unite other force users)

How do you start and conclude that in 2.5 hours within the limitations of the expectations of a Star Wars movie, while also making enough of it to fill that time? Bearing in mind you will still have to retcon the last act of TLJ where Rey says no and Kylo goes crazy.

It isn't a conclusion to a 3 movie arc it is a totally new one.

mistercrayon

His point about empire still stands though. The original trilogy is really a 1 + a duology.

The last Jedi sets up Rey vs Kylo Ren for the grand finale and Rise of sky walker creates a mess of its own making by bringing in a deus ex Machina (but the reverse of that).

It’s also got some good undertones to exploit: the ostensibly heroic lineage of kylo Ren turns extremely sour vs the hope from nothing of Rey. Being good isn’t about lineage. Burn all Jedi books - the dogma is toxic. those are exactly the themes set up in the original film. (Force awakens)

RedDave2

LivDiv wrote:

For the most I would say those are new arcs or directions to go in. Which is fine but not what a third movie in a trilogy should be doing. Bearing in mind this is a Star Wars saga movie so you have to fit those storylines in around lightsaber duels and space battles.

The most obvious arc for me was to see who would create a new way to harness the force (and possible unite other force users)

How do you start and conclude that in 2.5 hours within the limitations of the expectations of a Star Wars movie, while also making enough of it to fill that time? Bearing in mind you will still have to retcon the last act of TLJ where Rey says no and Kylo goes crazy. It isn't a conclusion to a 3 movie arc it is a totally new one.

So we've gone from no threads to work with to too much to fit into a single movie (bearing in mind most movies manage complex plots within their single 2 hour run time). Bearing in mind a lot of movie 'trilogies' arent really trilogies. They are a single movie which had huge success and this leads into a sequel where, maybe, there is more joint up thinking. I dont mean to imply that there isnt some thought towards a second or third part in a movie series from the begining but you have to focus on getting the first movie out and being a hit.

I think the key problem is expectations and I dont think any star wars movie is ever going to be able to deal with the fan base. Its gotten bigger than anything a movie could do. I understand getting hyped for something but the star wars fan base is surely impossible to please - JJ would have been better just trying to make a better movie than Jedi rather than trying to fill the plot holes.

Going back to your point: Harnessing the force in a new way could easily, easily, be covered in a single film. It could be the key that allows Rey with a demoralised and now decimated rebel force to overcome the numerical odds of the New Order. Ren is the heritage but like most royalty, its been perverted through a twisted form of religion and interbreeding. Rey is the new approach, the proof that to master the force doesnt require a specific training. It ends the series with an overall theme of out with the old, in with the new, this is not your fathers star wars.

monkey

Star Wars, afaik, pretty much invented the standard movie trilogy. Then, with the prequels, established it as the model going forward for Hollywood franchise-based money printing. Now you only get films made that can generate at least two other movies.

There’s nothing to say one of these series can’t change direction mid-stream. And Star Wars is hackneyed old nostalgic garbage for the most part. So re-invent away imo. But doing it mid-story is probably tricky and would need to be done right. Not by getting separate people to write their own bits and mash it together.

Surely the main thing in any film trilogy is to get people to want to come back and see the next one. Then in the third part, reward them for their time and money with a big payoff.

The new trilogy only had TFA that did what it was supposed to. TLJ then sliced off all those plot strands. Not only that but it did without any care for anyone that was interested in seeing how they developed. It was insulting really. And it set up nothing. This weapons dealer stuff was nothing. There’s no plot there. Nothing to take forward. The big bad was killed off, leaving a highly defeatable second in command behind him.

Now it’s not impossible to make a decent one-off Star Wars film from that position. What is very fucking hard, imo, is to make a satisfactory end to a trilogy. Going into TLJ I was genuinely interested in where they’d take the story. With tRoS, I had no interest in the story going into it. Because there was no story left to tell.

monkey

The Last Jedi wars will never end.

monkey

It’s complicated though. Snoke was terrible. A two-bit Emperor clone (I don’t mean that in the literal Rise of Skywalker way). It’s not a great loss that we didn’t see a third film where he gets his comeuppance. But what was left when you killed him off?

It’s like being on a road trip, deciding the journey was dull and the destination will be boring. But instead of getting out a map and changing plans you pull into a lay by and torch the car.

mistercrayon

It’s also worth remembering that about half of skywalker was going to places to get a thing so they could get a thing.

RamSteelwood

A trilogy announced without a story, made up of 3 separately created films mostly concerned with riffing off the originals but also trying to create a brand new audience and written with no regard for the episode before or after.
If I wasn't so disappointed by the result I'd almost be impressed it wasn't even worse.

LivDiv

RedDave2 wrote:

So we've gone from no threads to work with to too much to fit into a single movie

Thats not what I said. Anyway you seem far more invested in this than myself so have at it.

EvilRedEye

If either JJ Abrams or Rian Johnson had formulated the entire trilogy, both versions would probably have been pretty good. I think whatever praise and criticism can be levelled at both for what they brought to the sequel trilogy, they were both guilty of focusing solely on their own visions for what the sequel trilogy and Star Wars as a whole should be. It really feels like the work of two creatives working against each other.

LivDiv

I blame Kennedy mostly. She should have overseen the whole thing.

mistercrayon

Abrams was focussed solely on A new hope and return of the Jedi.

RedDave2

LivDiv wrote:

RedDave2 wrote:

So we've gone from no threads to work with to too much to fit into a single movie

Thats not what I said. Anyway you seem far more invested in this than myself so have at it.

Sorry, didn't mean to cause offence. Genuinely just enjoy the discussion on this.

monkey wrote:

Star Wars, afaik, pretty much invented the standard movie trilogy.

I was gonna agree but on a bit of reflection, Im not so sure. Most movies had a big first hit, maybe get a second film which follows on the characters of the first film if not always the plot and then almost an inevitable weaker third film. The closest in aim was maybe back to the future as it has a pretty open ended first film and then 2 films that while individual were clearly put together as back to back movies. (I think bttf 3 was filmed alongside bttf 2). Superman 2 also shares a close production but after that, most films stand alone.

I do agree that its the prequel that really sets the stall out of a trilogy being a heavily linked set of movies. And as you say, it has almost set the standard of making the most of a series, influencing everything from twilight to marvel.

On a side note, while it's a poor trilogy in terms of how it all hangs together, I liked both force awakens and last jedi. I'm certainly not the target audience but I'd watch both movies again.

LivDiv

No offense caused.
I was just finished and was supposed to be concentrating on doing some online training.

RamSteelwood

LivDiv wrote:

I blame Kennedy mostly. She should have overseen the whole thing.

This mostly. If not Kennedy then Disney execs. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of JJ and RJ, it's pretty clear Disney top brass gave zero fucks about the story or property in favour of pumping out movies to make their money back as quick as poss. Which they achieved.

No one will prob every really know just how much JJ and RJ were 'obliged' to hit certain notes and objectives within their films. Even if they did have 100% complete freedom then it's still a complete failing on the executives part that they didn't manage the whole project.

RamSteelwood

mistercrayon wrote:

Abrams was focussed solely on A new hope and return of the Jedi.

Yeah, but let's not pretend TLJ isn't just Empire hacked up, with the Jedi throne room scene bolted on.

mistercrayon

RamSteelwood wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

Abrams was focussed solely on A new hope and return of the Jedi.

Yeah, but let's not pretend TLJ isn't just Empire hacked up, with the Jedi throne room scene bolted on.

Can you elaborate on this?

monkey

Empire Strikes Back - Rebels defending base from Empire on ice planet, Empire then chases rebels around, Jedi training sequences, diversion into exotic mining city, betrayal, light saber fight. End.

The Last Jedi - Space fight, Empire then chases rebels around, Jedi training sequences, diversion into exotic gambling city, Return of the Jedi throne room complete with Sith apprentice killing master to save life of young Jedi, betrayal, Rebels defend base from Empire on salt planet, light saber fight. End.

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