The Sequel Trilogy - A Mess? Or a Masterpiece?

[Dismal_Bliss]

This topic is inspired by @Darth Cognus comment in this thread, but I didn't want to go off-topic over there.

What is your overall take on the sequel trilogy? The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker.

For me, there was an overall lack of cohesiveness. I did enjoy TFA very much, and was delighted to see Star Wars return to the big screen. However, TLJ really disappointed me. Then Rise of Skywalker was decent. The problem was that there seemed to be no shared vision, or outline, for all three movies. You can tell that the same person behins TFA was also behind ROS and I think the foundation laid by TFA intentionally set up the events and reveals in ROS. It's episode 8 that leaves me scratching my head. A different person was in charge of that episode and it seems like he made it up as he went along and had no regard for episode 7 at all.

Then the original guy comes back to write episode 9 and not only has to complete his vision, but also do damage control with what happened in episode 8. As a result, there was too much to pack into episode 9 for it to make perfect sense without supplementary information/lore or reading between the lines.

What do you think?

 

[Darth Cognus]

Completing my trilogy, just so I can link my sequel take and not feel the urge to go on about it.

So first off, swapping the director in the middle was terrible. Rian Johnson either was not provided an outline or he scrapped it, I don't recall which. However I don't hold JJ faultless. He's very good at making mystery boxes: see TFA. Frankly I thought TFA was strapped of creativity but whatever. But he's dreadful at finishing them. TLJ put the trilogy in a difficult position but TROS didn't need to be as disjointed, unprofessional in handling its predecessor and utterly unsatisfying as it was, for me and no doubt a good number of people.

TFA used 'safe' choices in setting up its context. And even there I wasn't attracted to Rey, Kylo, nearly any of them, but I thought Finn had some potential and I wasn't hugely bothered about Snoke despite him being a palps wannabe. Room to grow. I wouldn't call 2/3rds of the prequels bangers anyway.

TLJ went off and did its own thing. Now here's the thing: if Rian had his standalone film and put some of the essence of TLJ into that, I think it would have gone better. However it was not a fit for the trilogy. Things went off the rail and while very pretty I found the movie to be a mess. It totally detached my interest from the cast. Finn was wasted, Rey had to one-up the rest of the series for no good reason, I still didn't care much about Kylo (but there could have been potential in exploring him as a villain on his own terms), and you can skip Rose and Holdo. The Holdo Manouver was a cheap thrill at the expense of universe logic. Like many other decisions made in this trilogy after basic thought, it raises too many questions.

If TROS was the original guy completing a vision then his vision wasn't very good frankly. It was a macguffin infused fetch quest with endless contrivances to get to the next thing and oh yeah palpatine somehow returned. The dude took over the republic and ruled the galaxy for a bit, let him retire. As much as I wanted to see elements of TLJ out I think TROS handled them badly, on top of adding stupid bits of its own. The entire last fight sequence with the magic fleet pulled out of palp's crusty buttocks was silly. Rey Skywalker is an offense even the Sith can't make up. I don't like TLJ but I think TROS was the worst, demonstrating an abysmal lack of vision and care.

Regardless if Rian ruined JJ's vision or not (I think the vision was dubious in the first place), the outcome is the same. Stinky.

In any star wars context there is room for mercy if the experience sells. Now I know the sequels sold to some, and TFA sold to many. But I felt the absence of George Lucas. I know he took a lot of crap especially after the prequels. He was never perfect at making everything fit a straight line. He liked to present himself as having one vision from the start but it did change as time went on. Honestly, that's okay. I still liked the outcomes and I give extra credit for the original creator. His sequels would have been different from expectations and probably still subverted the Expanded Universe, but even the roughest outline of what he may have thought seemed like it had some pep to it. The sequels brought nothing new to the canon but problems. They were made because this is the era of remakes and sequels and not striking it out with new IPs. The best I could imagine for their circumstances is that they'd have been tolerable but uninspired. But their handling was ultimately downright incompetent and a black spot on the galaxy. No doubt the reason Lucasfilm itself does anything they can to avoid touching them and is looking at every era before where they haven't crippled things.

I'll probably revisit and refine this as time goes on.

 

[Al]

I may be an outlier, but I enjoyed all of the sequels. But then I thought that The Phantom Menace was decent too. Duel of the Fates is just a beautiful piece of music and the choreography to go with it was sublime. Sure it had some rough edges, but it was a chance to see where all these iconic characters came from.

However, the sequel trilogy. I think we're spoilt because we are comparing them to the original trilogy and that's - I'm not gonna say it's unfair - a real hard act to follow. It's taking some of the most popular and beloved movies which has spawned an entire ecosystem of lore and trying to do them justice. It was a nigh impossible task.

I also feel that a lot of the complaints about the sequel trilogy come about due to an entire expanded universe which people have spent decades invested in. With one fell swoop it was determined that all those stories which I loved as a kid were written off as 'no longer canon'. What? HOW DARE YOU!

Only Lucas’s six films (the original and prequel trilogies) and The Clone Wars (both the series and animated film) would be carried over into the new canon, while hundreds of comics and books and a few beloved games were now considered “Legends” of the Star Wars universe—not technically canonical, but immensely enjoyable stories set within the same universe.

That's a truckload of movies and stories which were thrown on the proverbial bonfire of progress. And I lot of people were not okay with that.

Enjoying the sequels seems to me to require someone to be okay with there being a Star Wars multiverse. If the other Disney franchise, Marvel, can do it...

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

Interesting viewpoints. I appreciate both of your comments.

I am not familiar with the Expanded Universe (now Legends). I am only familiar with the main movies.

I suspected Rey was a descendant of Palpatine, but I did not expect to see Palpatine. I thought that was terrible. If he was behind things, they should have made that more clear in 7 and 8.

My big beef with 8 was that I was really digging this battle between Luke and Kylo Ren, and then it was like "suprise!" the whole thing is fake. Luke really isn't there, and then passes away from the effort.

I felt cheated, lol.

 

[Al]

I am not familiar with the Expanded Universe (now Legends). I am only familiar with the main movies.

View attachment 97The EU is where Grand Admiral Thrawn came from. Timothy Zahn wrote three books over three years from 1991 to 1993; Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command. Thrawn was the antagonist.

Zahn said: "I think it’s because [Thrawn] was so different from any other villain we’d seen in Star Wars to that time. Most Imperials seemed to follow the “hit it with a rock” school of thought regarding opposition. Thrawn, in contrast, used strategy and careful planning and usually managed to be two or three steps ahead of the New Republic. Readers like their villains to be a challenge to the heroes because that forces the heroes to bring their best game to the field. The more clever the opponent, and the more difficult the fight, the more satisfying the victory."

The books were set five or so years after Return of the Jedi. And were superior, IMO, to the sequel trilogy. These would have made excellent movies.

 

[Darth Cognus]

The EU also had the unenviable honor of resurrecting Palpatine immediately after his death in ROTJ; the Dark Empire comics. Brought him around a bit using clones and essence transfer, and then buried him again. They weren't very popular from what I recall and hardly referenced outside of that but it's interesting to mention.

The EU had a lot of sometimes contradictory, even shovelware content, but plenty of gems such as the Thrawn series. A sequel trilogy would have a broad pool of lessons, what works and what doesn't to draw from Legends. Heck, it was in need of some cleanup. But here we are. I wasn't really attached to post-ROTJ content - I've only fully consumed a handful of stories and I probably won't ever finish it all - so it's no skin off my back, but I do think it's disappointing to put so little to use.

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

A sequel trilogy would have a broad pool of lessons, what works and what doesn't to draw from Legends.

That's exactly what came to my mind when you said this....

The EU also had the unenviable honor of resurrecting Palpatine ... They weren't very popular from what I recall

Yeah, if the Star Wars fandom booed the idea in the books, then it shouldn't have swiped that bad idea and put it in the movies, lol.

In 7:TFA I thought Snoke was going to be the Palpatine equivalent (TFA stole a lot of elements from the previous films). So when he got suddenly axed for no good reason in 8, I was surprised. But everything in 8 was a (unpleasant) surprise, lol.