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once-upon-a-reblog · 8 hours ago

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Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Thought Dump (part 1?)

The original sin of these movies is and was always going to be the decision to simply revert the universe back to the status of A New Hope - a powerful empire and a plucky resistance - without explanation. Everyone talked about how derivative The Force Awakens was but there wasn’t nearly as much chatter about the fact that it simply erased all of the victories of the original films and left us to wonder about how and why.

The return of the Emperor in The Rise of Skywalker made the failure complete; with that, truly nothing that happened in Return of the Jedi mattered. It’s a bizarre thing to have so utterly destroyed all of the positive outcomes of the beloved original trilogy.

As I keep telling people the story of the 9 Star Wars films is truly incredible when seen from a bird’s eye view; it’s like a Lars van Trier version of a fantasy franchise. It’s called the Skywalker Saga and yet the story of the Skywalker family is one tragedy after another. Shmi Skywalker is attacked by Sand People and dies in agony. Padme Amidala is force choked by the love of her life and dies in childbirth. Anakin becomes evil, commits immense atrocities, and dies sacrificing himself to save his son. Han Solo’s marriage to Leia falls apart, he lives a dissolute life as a smuggler into his senior years, and then is killed by his own son. Luke fails as a Jedi master, retreats from life, and lives a life by all accounts embittered and lonely, apparently never having known love. Leia’s relationship with Han collapses, she watches her rag tag Resistance be reduced to a small handful of loyalists, then dies trying to save her son - a son, the final Skywalker, who was not saved, but who rather died to save his love, and never went on to happiness or to start a new generation of Skywalkers. This is bleak, bleak stuff, and I’m amazed more people aren’t talking about it.

The prequel trilogy spent a ton of time talking about bringing “balance” to the Force, and it is stated directly that when a Jedi rises, a Sith rises to meet them. The Last Jedi plays with this cyclicality through Kylo, Yoda, Luke, and even DJ. There are feints towards a new perspective in that movie - when Kylo tells Rey to let the past die and get beyond Jedi vs. Sith, it hints at a new, more mature direction for Star Wars that rejects moral binarism and accepts the shades of grey that are inherent to human life. But, nope, even TLJ can’t go through with it entirely, and Rise of Skywalker abandons any interest entirely. Which should invite the question: if a Sith always rises to match the Jedi, and now Palpatine is dead, won’t there just emerge a new Sith to fuck with Rey? Won’t the cycle continue forever? Again, an unsettled ending that seems unwilling to engage with the broader themes of the source material.

Plenty of people have complained about this but it bears repeating: the retcon to make Rey Palpatine’s granddaughter reinforces one of the most obnoxious themes in the franchise, which is that greatness is genetic and that to be someone special you have to be the child of someone special. This is terribly inegalitarian and undemocratic, and worse, it happens for no plot purposes whatsoever. I’m serious: what does Palpatine being Rey’s grandfather do for the plot? What does it change? To put it another way, which of Rey’s actions would have been remotely different had that twist not occurred?

I’m biased, sure, but I have to say: it was clear to me from the first viewing of TFA that Ben Solo was being set up for redemption, and the romantic chemistry between Rey and Ben was clear and obvious throughout TLJ. I am deeply confused by people who say there was no setup for that arc.

I’m not gonna belabor the point but the sidelining of Rose in TROS is just pathetic and despicable. When she started getting harassed, the screenwriters should have immediately said, “Right. She becomes even more prominent in the next one.” Instead they Jar Jar’d her. What total moral cowardice.

JJ Abrams: “I don’t think that people go to Star Wars to be told, ‘this doesn’t matter’”… so why did you erase the entire original trilogy, asshole?

Much has been made of the poor plot sense of the Poe-Holdo plotline in TLJ. Specifically - why didn’t she just tell him the plan? Why hold out and refuse to inform him even during a mutiny? Well, that could have made perfect sense had they included a spy for the First Order on the command ship. That would actually explain how they’re tracking the Resistance through hyperspace, and would have provided a clear dramatic reason for Holdo to keep secrets - she can’t share her plan because there are spies about. Instead, she is secretive for no reason and there’s no real explanation whatsoever for tracking through hyperspace.

Speaking of Holdo’s plan, the idea that the pursuing First Order simply wouldn’t be looking for a big cloud of transports as they fled to a nearby planet just seems… unbelievable to me.

As others have mentioned TROS goes out of its way to reference the fact that Stormtroopers are child conscripts who are branwashed from birth. This would seem to suggest some sort of “Stormtrooper uprising” plot, which would actually be something cool for Finn to do that fits in with the character that’s been established. And yet… no. He and everyone else slaughters Stormtroopers by the thousands with seemingly no remorse.

What’s up with those thousands of Star Destroyers that the Emperor has had chilling underneath the crust of a planet for, I don’t know, years? Decades? Are they magic ships? If they’re regular ships, who built them? And who crews them? Are those thousands of people really just chilling in underground Star Destroyers for years?

It’s another classic example of not understanding the dramatic stakes, by the way. Whatever problems the First Order has had, an enormous advantage in scale of ships and weaponry has not been one of them. Adding even more Star Destroyers to the enemy’s fleet doesn’t raise the stakes for the audience because the Resistance was always hugely outgunned.

Chewie’s dead… no he’s not! C3P0’s mind is gone… no it isn’t! Really, really unimpressive stuff, you guys.

Why is there a general that suddenly outranks Hux? Everything we’ve seen up until now suggests that Hux is the top-ranking military officer. Did Kylo Ren promote somebody else just because he dislikes Hux so much?

They did Hux dirty. He was an entertaining character who deserved better than being shot as a traitor by a glorified extra. And what exactly was his plan, as the spy? How does freeing Poe and Finn and Chewie advance his objective of getting rid of Kylo Ren?

Just in general: giving your audience what they think they want is always a losing game for a creator.

[Reddit manchild voice] “I wanted a training montaaaage! Where’s my training montaaaaage?” Jar Jar Abrams: OK here’s a obstacle course sequence.

Lots of people have talked about fan service in regards to these films; others claim that fan service is a vague term. Well, if there’s ever been an example of fan service, Chewie getting that Battle of Yavin medal is it. There’s been absolutely no setup in the new trilogy for it; it doesn’t connect with TROS’s plot or themes; it exists solely for fanboys to feel like they’re being catered to. That’s fan service and it sucks.

For a set of billion-dollar movies that are meticulously crafted by an entertainment juggernaut, there’s some real sloppiness with the scripts. In TLJ Luke says that he’ll give Rey three lessons, then only gives her two without explanation. In TROS Finn twice is about to say something to Rey (which Abrams says was meant to be that he’s Force sensitive), then the thread is never picked back up. If you’re not going to pull at these strings, cut them off; a little editing would made a lot of sense.

God, that fucking Sith dagger. It appears to be an ancient artifact and yet it describes the position of a star base that was blown up 30 years ago. Its little extender thingy points right to where Rey needs to go despite the fact that she’s standing in a seemingly random position. The Death Star is a ruin that would surely be eroded and collapse from the pounding waves but nothing has moved in 30 years. What a crock.

I mean, the explosion visuals in ROTJ very clearly show the Death Star exploding into dust, yet there’s huge parts of it intact here.

Why would Lando shoot a crossbow? What?

It’s true that Lando has very little to do but I’m cool with him being involved in a “getting the band back together” way.

On the other hand - in TLJ the Resistance puts a call out for help to all systems and literally no one shows up. This plot point is even referenced in TROS. In TROS they put out the call and half the universe shows up. Why? What’s the difference? Why that immense change in the span of, what, a year?

I just don’t buy Snoke as someone who would be a puppet. Everything about his character screams independence and lust for ultimate power, to me.

You might say that Snoke was simply a shell controlled by the Emperor and that Hux/Kylo/Rey were just talking with Palpatine through that shell. But that brings up a plot hole: we are told that Palpatine is alive, knows about Rey, and desires to turn her to the dark side. So… why does Snoke order Kylo to kill Rey? What if he did? Wouldn’t that have ruined Palpatine’s plan?

“Luke and Leia knew you were a Palpatine” is so pointlessly stupid. Why did Luke very convincingly act like he didn’t know who the hell Rey was, then? Why wouldn’t Leia tell them? How long have they known of her existence? Were they aware that there was some super-powerful Force user on Jakku and do nothing? None of it makes any sense.

OK my personal #1 nitpick. When Kylo flies his ship at Rey in the desert… what is he doing? He’s already stated that he wants to turn her, and he clearly has the hots for her, so why would he attack her? And if he’s attacking her… why didn’t he attack her? With his lasers, I mean? What can possibly be gained by just flying his ship at her, especially considering that he knows the strength of her abilities? The answer, of course, is that he’s not doing anything sensible; he’s just flying his ship at her because it makes for a good visual for the trailer. Which, OK, fine. It’s just dumb.

What would I give the trilogy? Hmmm. TFA is, I dunno, fine. It’s dumb and it’s safe and it’s cynical in how it manipulates its audience, but it’s entertaining and fine. TLJ is the best of them and introduces some really interesting new plot possibilities and thematic ideas, which the series desperately needed. Unfortunately it pulls back on most of its provocative insights and ends up back in the old binary universe/Jedi vs. Sith framing, which undercuts its fine performances and wonderful weirdness. TROS is, I’m afraid, not good. It’s a tangled hodge podge of ideas and themes that don’t really go anywhere and seems like exactly what it is: a team of people desperately trying to bring a big unruly beast of a series under control long enough to end a phase of it while offending no one. The result is both frenetic and overlong, obsessed with satisfaction and yet unsatisfying. There are tons of cool visuals and neat ideas in it, and I do love Babu Frik, but ultimately the movie’s a failure. But we’ll always have that kiss.

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