Disney have to bring in shows that take place prior to the sequels because their only attempt at anything extraneous to the movies within the “sequel era” was Resistance which went over poorly.
When it comes to the sequels, it’s that Spider-Man meme of Abrams and Johnson pointing at one another over who ruined what more. Abrams started a very basic, formulaic trilogy that had very clearly intended plot points; Rey was going to be the hidden of child/grandchild of Luke, Kenobi, Qui-Gon, whomever, Finn was going to be this Trooper-turned-Jedi character we’d never seen before, and Poe was going to follow a Han Solo archetype. Rian decides that this is banal (it was) and throws out everything that was loosely started in TFA to “subvert expectations”, which would have been fine if Rian had started the trilogy.
Asinine as the rehashed plot of TFA was, Rian shouldn’t have taken the project if he had no intentions of following through on those loose plot points. Instead, TLJ has no connection to TFA and is a horrible second entry point in a trilogy. I would have welcomed the idea of Rey being a complete nobody and that the strongest Force-user is just a random person, not connected to the Skywalkers, but TFA didn’t allow for that. TFA shoe-horned this trilogy into unoriginal, simplistic storytelling, and you can’t suddenly throw out everything that was setup and offer nothing in its place.
TFA set us up with a ton of questions to be answered: what was Rey’s connection to the Skywalkers, how will Finn become a Jedi, what did Luke create following RotJ and why did he abandon it, who/what is Snoke, how did this First Order come to be and gain power after the end of RotJ… TFA opens the door, with the intention of the second act answering all these questions, and the third act showing good prevailing over evil once again. TLJ, however, doesn’t bother to answer any of the questions or expand any of the new characters presented to us. Then in comes TRoS like a wrecking ball, trying to make connections back to TFA and failing hard as it reverts everything that TLJ reverted.
In short, Disney figured they’d bought the golden goose and all they had to do was just sit in on the nest to rake in the billions, but forgot you need to actually feed and nurture the damn thing. They gave two hack directors no boundaries and then stood with Shocked Pikachu face when they produced a hacked up story.
What Disney need to do is just claim that the “end” of the Skywalker saga is part of Legends, recast Luke, Leia, and Han and give us something that resembles Heir to the Empire, or create something entirely original, so that we have an actual sequel to the OT.
I love your post and how you hit the nail on the head with a lot of things.
I think the biggest downfall of the trilogy, even bigger than the whole pissing contest between 2 directors, is the lack of a cohesive plot outline for the trilogy. No idea if they even had a creative bible or something, but were the sequels even written out as a whole trilogy in the first place? It seemed like each movie was written in isolation from one another rather than having some outline of the story beats and character arcs unfold over the course of 3 movies regardless of the actual writing and directing done. It’s a shame too because we get to see some really fuckin cool shit from the sequels never play out, like the Knights of Ren, Finn being Disney’s take on Kyle Katarn, Poe potentially being a more war hero kind of take on the Han Solo archetype, Rey being a Palpatine and her struggle with the Dark Side, Kylo struggling with a pull to the Light Side, a jaded and bitter Luke, exploring the idea of some people supplying both the good and bad guys in a war… like, there was so many cool things they introduced, and then they either wrote it out in the worst possible way like with Luke’s character assassination in TLJ or the idea got ruined or tossed aside in the next movie like Snoke and the Knights of Ren.
I think one reason people aren’t so keen on the sequels is because of how much potential the sequels squandered for… honestly, I can’t think of any reason. And I don’t think Disney will ever say the sequels are non-canon and do what you mentioned at the end; at best, we’ll either start to go back to the High Republic era, or we’ll go far enough into the future that the sequels wouldn’t matter for the story - and the sequels would be canon, but never spoken of outside of maybe a reference here or there.
I think one reason people aren’t so keen on the sequels is because of how much potential the sequels squandered
When it comes to rage over the sequels, this is exactly it.
There was so much they could have done with the little bits that they did give us, but then they went nowhere with any of it…mainly because they never decided on a cohesive outline for the overall story. It’s like a tale of piss-poor project management; no one is at the helm and everyone on the ship is too busy doing their own thing to notice that the ship is sinking.
I think what also gave the sequels a bitter taste was how criticisms were handled within social media, both by Disney and the fanbase. If you didn’t like TFA, “well you just hate that the lead is a lady!” If you didn’t like TLJ, “well you’re just too simple to appreciate Johnson’s brilliance!” If you didn’t like TRoS, “well here are 15 tweets and a Fortnite message that explain the movie better, and you only hate it because you never realized that Star Wars was always a small world!” Instead of taking note about the criticisms of TFA and ensuring that the subsequent films were stronger and cohesive, Disney ignored everything and let it flounder.
There was so much that could have been done and yet, it was all just left to rot. And now, all Disney have are the shows to keep the IP alive altogether.
What Disney need to do is just claim that the “end” of the Skywalker saga is part of Legends, recast Luke, Leia, and Han and give us something that resembles Heir to the Empire, or create something entirely original, so that we have an actual sequel to the OT.
This will never happen.
What they have the opportunity to do is skip over this part of the timeline completely and jump into the future with an adult Grogu. If they don’t they’re idiots. Wait, shit…
That’s honestly what they should have done from the start. They’d already erased all the EU, so they could have gone 500 years in the “future”, and made something entirely original.
But, like you’ve noted…these are the same people who greenlit a film with the exact storyline of ANH.
![[SWSW] Clearly...](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/09343564-a72f-447b-92e4-0913d00c7ec6.jpeg){kind=link}
Disney have to bring in shows that take place prior to the sequels because their only attempt at anything extraneous to the movies within the “sequel era” was Resistance which went over poorly.
When it comes to the sequels, it’s that Spider-Man meme of Abrams and Johnson pointing at one another over who ruined what more. Abrams started a very basic, formulaic trilogy that had very clearly intended plot points; Rey was going to be the hidden of child/grandchild of Luke, Kenobi, Qui-Gon, whomever, Finn was going to be this Trooper-turned-Jedi character we’d never seen before, and Poe was going to follow a Han Solo archetype. Rian decides that this is banal (it was) and throws out everything that was loosely started in TFA to “subvert expectations”, which would have been fine if Rian had started the trilogy.
Asinine as the rehashed plot of TFA was, Rian shouldn’t have taken the project if he had no intentions of following through on those loose plot points. Instead, TLJ has no connection to TFA and is a horrible second entry point in a trilogy. I would have welcomed the idea of Rey being a complete nobody and that the strongest Force-user is just a random person, not connected to the Skywalkers, but TFA didn’t allow for that. TFA shoe-horned this trilogy into unoriginal, simplistic storytelling, and you can’t suddenly throw out everything that was setup and offer nothing in its place.
TFA set us up with a ton of questions to be answered: what was Rey’s connection to the Skywalkers, how will Finn become a Jedi, what did Luke create following RotJ and why did he abandon it, who/what is Snoke, how did this First Order come to be and gain power after the end of RotJ… TFA opens the door, with the intention of the second act answering all these questions, and the third act showing good prevailing over evil once again. TLJ, however, doesn’t bother to answer any of the questions or expand any of the new characters presented to us. Then in comes TRoS like a wrecking ball, trying to make connections back to TFA and failing hard as it reverts everything that TLJ reverted.
In short, Disney figured they’d bought the golden goose and all they had to do was just sit in on the nest to rake in the billions, but forgot you need to actually feed and nurture the damn thing. They gave two hack directors no boundaries and then stood with Shocked Pikachu face when they produced a hacked up story.
What Disney need to do is just claim that the “end” of the Skywalker saga is part of Legends, recast Luke, Leia, and Han and give us something that resembles Heir to the Empire, or create something entirely original, so that we have an actual sequel to the OT.
I love your post and how you hit the nail on the head with a lot of things.
I think the biggest downfall of the trilogy, even bigger than the whole pissing contest between 2 directors, is the lack of a cohesive plot outline for the trilogy. No idea if they even had a creative bible or something, but were the sequels even written out as a whole trilogy in the first place? It seemed like each movie was written in isolation from one another rather than having some outline of the story beats and character arcs unfold over the course of 3 movies regardless of the actual writing and directing done. It’s a shame too because we get to see some really fuckin cool shit from the sequels never play out, like the Knights of Ren, Finn being Disney’s take on Kyle Katarn, Poe potentially being a more war hero kind of take on the Han Solo archetype, Rey being a Palpatine and her struggle with the Dark Side, Kylo struggling with a pull to the Light Side, a jaded and bitter Luke, exploring the idea of some people supplying both the good and bad guys in a war… like, there was so many cool things they introduced, and then they either wrote it out in the worst possible way like with Luke’s character assassination in TLJ or the idea got ruined or tossed aside in the next movie like Snoke and the Knights of Ren.
I think one reason people aren’t so keen on the sequels is because of how much potential the sequels squandered for… honestly, I can’t think of any reason. And I don’t think Disney will ever say the sequels are non-canon and do what you mentioned at the end; at best, we’ll either start to go back to the High Republic era, or we’ll go far enough into the future that the sequels wouldn’t matter for the story - and the sequels would be canon, but never spoken of outside of maybe a reference here or there.
When it comes to rage over the sequels, this is exactly it.
There was so much they could have done with the little bits that they did give us, but then they went nowhere with any of it…mainly because they never decided on a cohesive outline for the overall story. It’s like a tale of piss-poor project management; no one is at the helm and everyone on the ship is too busy doing their own thing to notice that the ship is sinking.
I think what also gave the sequels a bitter taste was how criticisms were handled within social media, both by Disney and the fanbase. If you didn’t like TFA, “well you just hate that the lead is a lady!” If you didn’t like TLJ, “well you’re just too simple to appreciate Johnson’s brilliance!” If you didn’t like TRoS, “well here are 15 tweets and a Fortnite message that explain the movie better, and you only hate it because you never realized that Star Wars was always a small world!” Instead of taking note about the criticisms of TFA and ensuring that the subsequent films were stronger and cohesive, Disney ignored everything and let it flounder.
There was so much that could have been done and yet, it was all just left to rot. And now, all Disney have are the shows to keep the IP alive altogether.
This will never happen.
What they have the opportunity to do is skip over this part of the timeline completely and jump into the future with an adult Grogu. If they don’t they’re idiots. Wait, shit…
That’s honestly what they should have done from the start. They’d already erased all the EU, so they could have gone 500 years in the “future”, and made something entirely original.
But, like you’ve noted…these are the same people who greenlit a film with the exact storyline of ANH.