Current Events > The new Star Wars trilogy is such a terrible set of movies

(+) Yeah! (+)

Disney really should never have given their middle movie to someone who once famously said that he didn't want to make a movie that everyone loved, he wanted to make a movie where half the audience loved it and half the audience hated it. He gave them exactly what he promised. It was also dumb of Johnson to completely toss the three movie outline notes that Abrams gave him and I have to imagine at least some of his "twists" were explicitly designed to destroy that outline out of some weird creative temper tantrum. Dude was a troll and successfully trolled the entire franchise and then went on to make knives out which proves he's perfectly capable of making a movie and just chose not to.

I honestly don't think he's any more at fault than Abrams.

If you think about it, Abrams gave him nothing to work with. The Force Awakens was almost literally just a retread of A New Hope. It had nowhere to go except "the dark, subversive sequel" route like Empire. And you can't just do another Empire. So instead TLJ was sort of an anti-empire.

I don't think it's unreasonable to say he's more at fault for the tonal inconsistency when you had one director managing the tone of the movie before and after his who also gave him a detailed outline of things he was planning on carrying forward. Johnson could still have told his story without seemingly going out of the way to kill every single dangling plot thread from the first movie for no reason other than to laugh at the people who had fan theories over them.

And it's not necessarily wrong in doing so, given that a common theme in the tangential Star Wars lore is that the Jedi are self-defeating in their obsession with tradition and a humanity-crushing moral code. They essentially create the need for the Sith, who embrace their emotional needs.

It rejects Rey's past. It rejects the "rogue hotshot pilot" motif with Poe. It rejects a deliberately set-up villain in Snoke. It (literally) destroys the Jedi's foundations in order to upend the table of the SW universe in an attempt to rewrite what SW is.

None of that is necessarily bad, except it doesn't work as a sequel to a movie that explicitly embraced and celebrated those things. It's a middle film for a trilogy that wasn't actually made, and it stands out as perplexingly obsessed with rejecting the first film

I don't think it's unreasonable to say he's more at fault for the tonal inconsistency when you had one director managing the tone of the movie before and after his who also gave him a detailed outline of things he was planning on carrying forward. Johnson could still have told his story without seemingly going out of the way to kill every single dangling plot thread from the first movie for no reason other than to laugh at the people who had fan theories over them.

I agree. But I'd argue that it truly went off-the-rails with RoS doing the same exact thing to TLJ.

You can almost justify "weird tonal shift second film" by having a third film that fuses the two themes. But that's not what Abrams did. RoS was just... so obnoxious.

I honestly though the themes of the second film would lead to a conclusion where Kylo and Rey realize that there is no point in favoring "light" or "dark" because it leads to an imbalance in the Force that breeds conflict. Rejecting your emotions can make you blind to your feelings and the empathy of others, and allowing your anger and fear to take over robs you of your objectivity.

But yeah that didn't happen.

It wouldnt surprise me if they wash away the Sequel trilogy. It did what it needed to do, make money. Disney was too eager to get out new content.

They could easily say its a timeline that might have been. Daisy, John and Oscar arent going to go back to it anytime soon anyway. Its a dead end story telling wise.

Disney has shown they are not only capable at producing chars from the the OG via CGI but are actively doing it more.

Make the Sequel trilogy the bad future they want to prevent. Gives so much room to grow for the franchise with the future not having to lead to the first order and TFA. Disney could even unify the cannon and say that legends is another timeline.

Disney seems to be intent on not embracing all of Star Wars. Where Favaru and Filoni are and it shows.

Yeah, I can agree with that. Separately I found the movies enjoyable (Rise of Skywalker to a lesser extent) but together they suck as a cohesive trilogy. It's not like the entire original trilogy was planned out ahead of time, but they were somehow able to make that trilogy cohesive enough to be enjoyed as a group.

The dead speak! The galaxy has
heard a mysterious broadcast,
a threat of REVENGE in the
sinister voice of the late
EMPEROR PALPATINE.

As many problems as the PT had, Lucas at least knew where the plot was going and how he was tying things together.

Apparently you can thank Rian Johnson for throwing out Abrams notes on where to take the story in last Jedi. Just said fuck it and did his own thing with very little consideration.

Apparently you can thank Rian Johnson for throwing out Abrams notes on where to take the story in last Jedi. Just said fuck it and did his own thing with very little consideration.

The frustrating thing is that I totally appreciate Rian's viewpoints and what he was trying to do for the franchise (which is why I'm willing to give a Rian-directed trilogy a shot), but doing it in the middle of a damn trilogy that wasn't his to begin with was a mistake.

I actually very much appreciate what he tried to do with the second film, but I don't think it was a very well made movie. One of the problems I had with it, perhaps the biggest, is that Holdo has nowhere near enough character development to justify the smug unwillingness to tell anyone what's going on while the rebellion is crumbling around them. Watching the film, I actually thought it was possible she was a saboteur. So I wound up agreeing with Poe, Finn and Rose. I found it pretty disconcerting that the movie goes to great lengths to chastise those characters for not following her plan. I certainly wouldn't have followed her plan.

I'm sure that wasn't his intention as a director, but coming into the movie with zero knowledge, and given the limited information I had about her, I could only conclude that her actions were irrational. Although that did not turn out to be the case, hindsight is something the characters don't have. I'm not so sure it was the goal of the director to convey that kind of message, but nevertheless that's how it panned out to me.

I honestly don't think he's any more at fault than Abrams.

If you think about it, Abrams gave him nothing to work with. The Force Awakens was almost literally just a retread of A New Hope. It had nowhere to go except "the dark, subversive sequel" route like Empire. And you can't just do another Empire. So instead TLJ was sort of an anti-empire.

But TLJ was not the right kind of movie to follow TFA.

I forget, was there a specific reason she didn't share her plan with an main character? Clearly other people were in on it.
Maybe Poe's plan would have succeeded with her support, but she didn't even seem willing to open discussion to two war heroes.

Fuck JJ Abrams

I forget, was there a specific reason she didn't share her plan with an main character? Clearly other people were in on it.
Maybe Poe's plan would have succeeded with her support, but she didn't even seem willing to open discussion to two war heroes.

If there was a reason, it wasn't conveyed clearly or rationally.

No it was just bad writing all around. And she beyond not telling him the plan. She didn't tell him that plan existed. Poe literally did nothing wrong. And why did people have to stay on the other ships say they blew up. And hell how can they go ship to ship without being noticed. I hate that movie so much.

No it was just bad writing all around. And she beyond not telling him the plan. She didn't tell him that plan existed. Poe literally did nothing wrong. And why did people have to stay on the other ships say they blew up. And hell how can they go ship to ship without being noticed. I hate that movie so much.