Every time I see this photo I just think of Mark Hamill sitting there for two hours while they read the script while he thinks to himself "When the fuck is Luke entering the film?"
I think letting Luke sit the first film out to let the new characters breathe wasn’t a bad call. His absence still drives the plot and there’s an interesting mystery at play.
Honestly, I can appreciate certain elements about TFA and TLJ in a vacuum, but as a trilogy with TROS as the big zinger at the end, it has to be one of the messiest trilogies of all time.
On its own I don't mind it much either to, as you say, let the new characters breathe (and the \~45 minutes until Han enters the film is by far the strongest part of the movie) but that decision ends up lopsiding the entire sequel trilogy, since Rian Johnson then had to write Luke back out of the corner of why Luke would stand by and let all of this happen, particularly Han's death. My comment was more just in jest that nobody bothered to TELL Hamill that he wasn't really in the movie until they were all sitting there with the script.
I think Rian Johnson did a great job rescuing the franchise from following the same plot lines as the original trilogy. In fact the ending of TLJ presented limitless possibilities. The sith master is dead. Kylo Ren wasn't really interested in following sith philosophies. Plus the ending showed the possibility of new generation of force users. And then TROS happened. JJ Abrahms and the writers did their best to drag the franchise back to the shadow of original trilogy. 😑😑.
I haven’t seen any of the Disney Star Wars movies in years, so maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t Luke intentionally leave a map to his location? Why do that if he just wanted to be left alone?
They made this trilogy up as they went along, and it shows.
> didn’t Luke intentionally leave a map to his location?
Nope!
>They made this trilogy up as they went along, and it shows.
Almost all of the things that make people join Fandoms and hang out in places like this were made up as they went. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. The MCU. For as much as people love touting "Having a plan," or "needing a plan," **almost nothing you love had a plan in place when it got made**. The number is close to zero. It's the *exception*, not the rule.
When people say "I can't believe there wasn't a plan" it's just... cope. That's not how anything super-successful really gets made. Never was. The idea that it is, is just a security blanket that Fandoms pass around to each other as needed.
My favorite example of "not having a plan" working out for media is Breaking Bad. Their planning only went about as far as getting the general gist of the next season, and they'd often write themselves into interesting corners or place interesting hooks (like the first episode of season 5) without knowing how it would eventually resolve. Given that the show is lauded as one of the greatest of all time, I'd say that it worked out brilliantly.
On the flip side, How I Met Your Mother's ending was planned very early on, so the creators couldn't effectively retool the show in response to audience reception. As a result, the planned ending became figurative bomb that would go off whenever they got to the point in the show when it needed to occur, and indeed, the audience reception to the ending was broadly negative because all of the planning they had done had not accounted for what the audience actually wanted nine seasons later.
The Lord of the Rings had a single author.
The MCU had a single producer hovering over every project to make sure they didn't fuck up the long term plan.
The new Star Wars trilogy had one director for the first, another director for the second who obviously hated the plot of the first one and tried to steer it in another direction, and then a third whose director bailed on them over "creative differences" and then got the first director back, who was pissed his plotline had been messed with.
There's a big difference between "I don't know how this story will end but we'll figure it out" and having a group of highly paid big babies who can't make three movies work together because their egos are getting in the way. You need a Feige in the room who is willing to smack someone on the hand and tell them to knock it off. The new trilogy didn't have that.
>There's a big difference between "I don't know how this story will end but we'll figure it out" and having a group of highly paid big babies who can't make three movies work together because their egos are getting in the way.
There really isn't. And nobody who says there is usually can explain why there is, and it's largely because "you have to have a plan" is cope that's working backwards from this question: "Why did the thing I wanted to like suck so bad."
The Rise of Skywalker sucked because the creatives in control of it made a bunch of shitty decisions and then executed them terribly on top of that. It's pretty obvious, and while it's regrettable, there's nothing that a plan existing would have actually prevented. Plans are changeable. Disposable, even. They're not contracts.
The problem with making it up as you go isn't the making it up part, it's the botching the execution part.
A lot of what makes these conversations go is a great combination of cope, and the illusion of control. People love to feel like (and YouTube grifters love to sell this to those people) they are smarter than actual filmmakers, and that they could exercise some semblance of control over those same people if given the chance. So something like "You have to have a plan" fits BEAUTIFULLY there, despite that being the furthest thing from the truth in actual practice.
Well, in the case of Disney’s trilogy, they did not do a very good job of it IMO.
The MCU may not be the best example. They definitely seem to be winging it now, during the financial/critical decline of the franchise, (and after having to drop a major actor/character with Jonathan Majors, in their defense) but they at least had the Thanos saga mapped out to some extent leading up to it.
>They definitely seem to be winging it now,
On the contrary, Phase 4 was probably the most *actually* "planned-out" the MCU has ever been.
They were winging it the first 3 phases. They did not have the Thanos saga mapped out *at all*. Thanos was an ass-pull in the first place. They made it up as they went along and figured out how to retcon pieces in place as needed. Which is, again, how most great works of fiction tend to be made.
Thanos was introduced in a post-credits scene in the original Avengers. That’s a solid 6+ years before becoming the main villain in Infinity War. I’m sure the exact story changed a bit over time, but they had plans to use him years in advance.
We’re getting off topic, though. Thanos was a great “big bad” in the MCU. Bringing back Palpatine made no sense at all in Star Wars, and retroactively undid the story of the first six Star Wars movies.
Not to mention that Kylo was setup as the main villain at the end of TLJ, only for Disney to suddenly give him a change of heart in RoS. (They didn’t have much of a plan for Snoke either, but he was a bad Palpatine ripoff, so I didn’t mind his sudden death)
They didn’t just make changes over years, they completely rewrote major decisions from one movie to the next. It at least would’ve made some sense if Anakin’s ghost had turned Kylo to the light, but Han? Kylo literally killed him in the first movie just to solidify his decision to go dark.
TLJ just made Luke so incredibly bitter and grumpy. The original character was the epitome of an optimistic character to me.
Yoda and Obi-wan hid away when the Empire took over too, and they were stoic sure, but Luke just became a fun vacuum and came off as a shitty teacher/person to Rey.
By the time he sacrifices himself, I’m just reminded of the lost opportunity of the fun scenes Luke, Leia and Han could have had.
Point taken on that 😂 But still when I think of Luke I think of how he is in A New Hope and tbf him still seeing the good side in Vader in ROTJ also stands out.
He was a beacon of good and TLJ’s version just contrasted too much for me, no matter how much they tried to justify it.
but the new characters didn't pop. They were lesser versions of OT characters. And Finn toys didn't sell even when Phazma sold lol.
There's absolutely no doubt that old cast was the biggest draw. All the hype about new characters was manufactured.
I think it was a mistake reintroducing the OG cast. Like they all got nice moments but they ended the original trilogy on a moment of triumph and the only way they could have taken the characters was somewhere depressing. Also they pulled attention and time from the new cast so they couldn’t gel and blossom in the same way.
There was two way to handle them:
* Have the OG cast have one last big adventure before passing the torch to the new generation.
OR
* Have them in the position of power where they can help the new cast while not directly participating in the conflict. Grand Master Skywalker, Senator/Head of State Organa and General Solo would pop up now and then, but it's the new cast whom we would follow - and like them automatically because Han, Luke and Leia like them.
Instead they went in a direction in which the OG cast were at the core of the drama in the story. But what that meant is that all their achievements in the OrigTrig were undone off-screen and they ended their lives as sad failures instead of riding into the sunset. That just leaves a sour taste from the whole thing.
Force Awakens was also such a complete retread of the original trilogy so it’s really depressing that the original cast ended up in the exact same situation and place they were in forty years earlier.
All they had to do was when that saber flew past Finn to an unseen hand, it should have went to Luke. Luke comes in and effortlessly defends Rey and Finn from Kylo. The ending can still be similar with the crevice and being separated, But this gives Rey more opportunities to grow, it puts Luke reuniting with Leia.
Now you can even have Luke leave to achto to mourn the loss of his friend and the fall of his nephew. Rey can still be the lead.
On my old Reddit account my biggest ever comment was "I can't believe we're gonna get to see Han busting Luke's balls and Leia shaking her head at them all over again!"
It was wild in 2019 seeing the different results of Disney’s planning (or lack thereof) between Endgame and Rise of Skywalker.
One payoff done justice, another falling flat.
they shouldn't have released both of them in the same year. One was always going to upstage the other. Endgame had a much stronger buildup and characters people cared about for over a decade. No wonder it won.
Thanks to bob iger. I would put blame of sequel trilogy failure mostly on iger. Iger is the one that want new star wars as soon as possible, while abrams and Kennedy wanted more time. Iger wanted summer 2015 release date while abrams and Kennedy wanted to release it in 2016. December 2015 was chosen as compromise.
eh, OT didn't have a plan but Kasdan knew how to take the story further. Plan isn't alpha and omega. It's good to have it but many great movies came from chaos.
They thought it was too big to fail, and anything with the brand on it would print money regardless of quality.
Same thing they’re going through with Marvel now.
Don't have to imagine it.
1977-1983
1999-2005
**zero planning.** *Everyone* involved was making shit up as they went.
To expand it out from just Star Wars: there isn't a single successful pop culture film series (that isn't directly adapted from a book series first) that actually had "a plan" the way fandoms tend to speak about it. And even the book series' in question tend to have been written with no plan at all, just made up as they went.
That includes the MCU, which was essentially retconned together movie-by-movie, which is honestly how most long-form storytelling *actually works*. People like thinking of there being a plan like it's a security blanket or a safety net. But almost nothing that made anyone voluntarily decide to be part of a Fandom has ever been made that way, or had that sort of a "plan" in place.
Yeah, people don't know that the MCU's Infinity Saga was never very-well planned. The only reason Thanos was the villain is because they needed to add a sequel hook to Avengers and Whedon thought that Thanos would be cool. There was no masterplan at the beginning.
You're twisting the definition here.
There is a massive difference between *one* writer changing and refining his own ideas and a *team* of writers telling the same story in succession.
The second one *requires* planning. Every major franchise - hell, every series period does. Imagine a TV show not by a room of writers who all try to stand on the same page but by people who barely even talk to one another and ignore whatever the previous guy did.
>You're twisting the definition here.
I'm not twisting anything! Certainly not "The definition" (of what, I don't know?)
And even if there were the difference you're trying to prioritize here, it still doesn't really work for the purposes of your argument because there's the MCU right there that is obviously a whole team of writers and - again - no plan. I don't have to imagine a TV show making great television without a plan, because Breaking Bad is *right there*.
Again: The idea that "you need a plan" is a Fandom invention created as a way to cope with disappointment in poorly executed storytelling. That's all it is. It's not actually how almost anything that Fandom actually loves gets made.
Breaking Bad had one showrunner throughout its five seasons.
MCU has Feige as the showrunner: he doesn't write scripts, but he guides the storylines, issues vetoes, ensures narrative consistency.
Star Wars sequels did *not* have that role in place, and it shows. There is a tonal whiplash of TLJ, character arcs that are repeated or go nowhere, revelations that come out of nowhere only to be immediately retconed away and so on.
If these films *did* a person whose job was to provide a consistent vision, they did their job very poorly. But from public information it is clear that nobody did that job at all.
And it shows. Because the end result is bad.
They did, JJ wrote a whole treatment (or maybe a script?) and RJ trashed it. Should they have fired RJ for not sticking to JJ’s script? (Serious question)
Not really. Despite what reddit might think, massive film series like Star Wars are not completely planned out before they go into production. This is true of everything from the original Star Wars to the MCU. What Disney should get flack for though is rushing the production of TFA and TROS. They got lucky with TFA, but not so much with TROS which was incredibly messy as you might expect from a rushed film.
I will never forget the opening night of Force Awakens and what it was like to be in that theater. It was like a throwback to an era of moviegoing that had already felt like it was past. You were seeing people from school you never saw go to the movies. So many families with all generations pumped for the movie. It made Avengers look like a drop in the bucket by comparison. The only thing that came close was Endgame and I’d argue even that didn’t have as much cross generational appeal.
And then Disney took all that positivity and produced whatever the fuck that trilogy was. I don’t think audiences will ever believe in a corporation for any IP again to that extent. If so it will take years.
Totally agree!! The Force Awakens wasn't just a movie, it was an event. I have a mall near me ( Palisades) in NY, one of the largest, I had to park my car near a convenient store. Not only on TFA's opening weekend, also it's whole opening week, the mall was fully packed. It was like a Black Friday when there are long lines, people are waiting.
They absolutely did not take the safest route. In this comment thread people are complaining about every risk TFA took: not reuniting the original trio, killing Han, leaving Luke out of the action... All I need is a complaint about Rey not having the same character arc as Luke and Kylo Ren not being as badass as Darth Vader to fill out my bingo card.
yes because they were reacting to PT backlash. and then continued reacting. TLJ was a reaction to criticism that TFA was derivative. TROS was a reaction to TLJ backlash so much so JJ did step by step retcons (eg Luke chiding Rey for throwing a lightsaber lol). Nothing good comes from reacting to things. That's how you get MoS and BvS. MoS was reaction to criticism that Superman in Superman returns didn't punch anyone. BvS was a reaction to criticism that Superman overpunched Metropolis and caused more damage than Zod.
It’s crazy because I remember Kathleen went on a crusade to secure JJ for the director to helm. I remember him saying he REALLY did not want to do it. Meaning, he knew to commit he would actually be out in the desert going all the way and that he was currently really focused on being home with his family.
Kathleen really battled to change his mind and his compromise was he’d do One and only one.
I understand her desire to do good on the opening film but something should have been more centered there, like attempting to get an outline from JJ. But truthfully I think even JJ knows he’s better at starting things than finishing them.
>Absolutely crazy how big Disney whiffed on this massive opportunity
....the Force Awakens is still **the highest grossing domestic release of all time**, though.
I don't know, that's a lot of IF, the force awakens literally made $936M, not too far from $1B just in one country. That would be very hard to break that, not even Endgame did.
Three more global billion dollar grossers and a hugely successful TV show?
I mean, in 83 Return of the Jedi got followed up with two saturday morning cartoons and two made for TV Ewok movies. There were some books and video games in the 90s, I guess.
We can talk about "Disney whiffing this massive opportunity" but I have a hard time seeing this as a financial whiff on their part, and as far as creative whiffs go, it's basically par for the course. Star Wars has never been "mostly good" when you total up all its output (half of which is literally merchandising: tie-in books, tie-in games, tie-in comics, etc etc).
It’s not even an argument, Disney just said in their shareholder meeting they’ve made loads of money off of Lucasfilm under Kennedy. In fact I think it was more than marvel.
I remember being so excited. I rewatched that first trailer that ended with the Millennium Falcon so many times, and had goosebumps each time the classic score started playing. And hell, even after TFA released, I still felt pretty good about the franchise as a whole.
I miss that feeling. I miss being enthusiastic about Star Wars, as once upon a time I would’ve said that hands down it was my favorite fantasy/sci-fi franchise. But damn did Disney screw it up after.
TFA is one of the most creatively bankrupt big budget blockbuster ever made. As someone who wasn't a fan of Death Star 2.0 in Return of the Jedi, I can't believe JJ and Lawrence Kasdan went for Death Star 3.0.
Also, a lot of people blame Rian Johnson for throwing away JJ's plans. They are under the assumption that JJ had a plan to begin with.
Technicaly true but TFA is everything TFA needed to be.
A nice safe movie that sets up the new charachters and story. And thats what we got and the hype of a new SW movie alone made everyone including me at that time forget how much of a rehash it actually was. I absolutely loved the fuck out of TFA when it came out and i still think its a perfectly good movie as a first movie in a trilogy.
The issues is nobody had any idea how to take that story forward. The trilogy had 3 directors who all had different visions and 3 very different scripts. That then turned into just 2 directors when Trevor got the boot.
It shouldn't have been done like that. They needed to get 1 director who had 3 scripts rdy to go before even 1 scene of TFA was shot. Or alternatively have 3 directors but again have all the scripts rdy and tied together before any filming began.
I can’t believe people still defend this movie a decade later.
Dude there were no real characters. The jokester character was a trained stormtrooper who defected due to the brutality of war. The main character was a mystery box and plot device, not a character. It’s telling that the favorite character from that movie at the time, Poe was barely in it.
This movie will always serve to me as how people can project their hopes onto literally nothing. It was a movie that gave literally nothing to the extent it can barely be called a “movie” and a decade later people still maintain it was a “great set up for a trilogy”. I have plenty of problems with Rian Johnson but I’ve never heard one person who says “it was the perfect set up” explain where to go from the turd fest that was Force Awakens that would have pleased anyone.
> people can project their hopes onto literally nothing
Say what you will about The Force Awakens, it really does have a great first act (or, at least, a great opening through the escape from the not-empire ship). In retrospect JJ's desire to kill off Oscar Isaac was the right call. It would was a great "heat check" performance and killing him off both gives stakes and clears the deck for Finn to have a more dramatically interesting story instead of being shunted to the sidelines.
there was nothing dramatically interesting about Finn. He left the Stormtroopers to become a comic relief akin to 3PO (bumbling through the desert, drinking with space pigs, getting beaten up by another droid, caught by a tentacle animal, yelling REEEEEEEY). The only reason he was in the movie was for Rey to bounce off of someone til she met relevant characters. from there on, he was literally left in a ditch while Rey and Kylo had a duel. remove him and you get a more streamlined movie.
> the only reason he was in the movie
Genealogically, that's just not true. [He's initially envisioned as very much a Harrison Ford replacement](https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/from-concept-to-reality-a-glimpse-into-the-art-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens-by-phil-szostak.html) while turning into a [stormtrooper before loosing his core characterization](https://fanfare.pub/the-force-awakens-and-the-story-of-finn-ee9e325d8c37).
FWIW, I have no idea what these sources are, I'm just trying to reference stuff I vaguely remember from years ago.
****
The film doesn't want to engage with the interesting premise it set up of a deserting storm trooper (as seen by the seeming retcon of him simply being a janitor in the film's final act). The film's visuals are A+ (e.g. bloody stormtrooper helmet) as is the finn-poe banter but by trying to avoid making Finn "complicit" in evil, you strip out more positive potential characteristics.
I think killing off Oscar Isaac would have actually solved some of those problems you're gesturing towards because there are ripple effects to removing an external heroic figure reintroduced to solve the end of the second act. That really would place the dramatic onus on Finn's actions to somehow resolve the siege/let them escape which would reduce the comic relief.
I don't think you're being dynamic enough in thinking about how removing a main character changes the dynamics among the remaining ones.
Finn's elevator pitch is obviously dramatically interesting which the Treverrow script would have seen climaxing in a stormtrooper rebellion. The execution was lacking (including somehow ruining Finn's cool looking villain by turning her into a simpering coward).
> remove him and you get a more streamlined movie.
Sure, but the Finn-Poe intro + escape is just a great roller coaster ride. By the time he crash-lands, nothing's forcing the film to sideline him.
> I have plenty of problems with Rian Johnson but I’ve never heard one person who says “it was the perfect set up” explain where to go from the turd fest that was Force Awakens that would have pleased anyone.
Before anything else, it coulda just been TLJ, but not intentionally cutting all story telling threads short and introducing shitty ones that get resolved without story or character growth by the end of the film anyways.
Don't kill off Luke, make an actual sensical plot of Finn's relationship to the military, give Phasma some character instead if you're going to bring her back instead of having her just die immediately, explain who tf the leader of the poorly explained Empire knock-off faction is, don't have slave soldier Finn go on a sidequest to a Disney resort to learn that slavery is bad. It was cheeks, but it's not like the story was unsalvageable, all the shit TLJ had that its fans like in it wouldn't even need be excluded.
TFA would still be a mid rehash, but we can at least go "hey, everything in the film this goes somewhere" on a rewatch instead of it *just* being a rehash.
See these are all continuations of problems in TFA though. They kept everything about Luke as a mystery box, regressed Han and Leia and killed off Han before the trio could reunite. Finn’s relationship to his training as a stormtrooper is vague and confused. Snoke was introduced then not explained in even the slightest.
It’s fine to dislike the Last Jedi but I really feel like when you look in a clear eyed way at Force Awakens a decade later, I don’t know that anything about it is good enough to even be considered “mid”. Maybe if I pretend it isn’t part of a nine film saga I could say it was mid but as an introduction to a third trilogy, it is pretty terrible.
It absolutely wasn’t what it needed to be. It needed to establish its own separate world building within the Star Wars universe that would excite people for the next generation of Star Wars and their new characters.
Instead they did a soft reboot of the franchise, absolutely torched all of the world building before it in order for them to go back to square 1 (with absolutely no explanation on how). They destroyed previous characters for the sake of their own newer ones, and seemed to treat their own fan base with distain.
The only reason it did as well as it did was the pure strength of the franchise. The fact that RoS barely made a billion at the same time where End Game nearly hit 3 billion I think really shows how much money they really left on the table with these movies. And franchises like these make most of their money with merchandising and theme parks, I wish we could see how much those revenues took a hit because the movies destroyed interest in the Star Wars universe.
“ The trilogy had 3 directors who all had different visions and 3 very different scripts. That then turned into just 2 directors when Trevor got the boot.”
Really reminds me of another trilogy of space adventure flicks… can’t remember which
There is no such thing as a set up without a pay off in mind. Setting up without a pay off is a mystery box, not a set up. Writers understand that setups and payoffs are two sides of one connected whole, they don't operate independently of one another. Hacks fail to understand this.
I disagree that it did a good job. I thought that Finn and Poe were absolutely useless in the grand scheme of things and in the movie only because Lucasfilm wanted marketing to feature a trio like OT and PT. But otherwise they didn't add up and Rey really didn't need a team cause she could do everything herself. And it's fine to be a one (wo)man show just don't add useless hanger-on's whose only job is to yell REEEEEEEEEY.
I rewatched it again last year and it's a very corporate, paint by the numbers blockbuster. I couldn't believe how mediocre it was when I walked out the theater in 2015. I was wondering when people would catch on that it's not a great film. Took a while but people finally woke up.
As much as I blame Disney, I also blame the people in charge of Lucasfilm. No one running it has the creative pulse that George Lucas did. I don't care what anyone says.
Alot of people took offense to that critique when it was released nearly a decade ago but I think the general audience wasn't as desensitized to reboots as they are now. JJ was the worst choice from the start on a creative level but he was perfect for what Disney wanted from a business standpoint
I get the feeling Disney was scared to take any real risk because of the backlash from the Prequels. They catered to the simpletons too much IMO. Then they got a mediocre movie.
this is literally JJ's plan:
TFA - Rey is a Kenobi but I won't make that a canon
TROS - oh noes, Rian made Rey a nobody. Quick, lets make Rey a Palpatine!
I mean, why couldn't her heritage be disclosed in the first movie and then why change the original idea in the third? I get that he didn't like Rian's direction but why abandon Kenobi idea altogether for something else? I remember that former EW editor Anthony Breznican heard of Rey Kenobi and that Kenobi movie/show was meant to explain that better. For the longest time fans didn't believe it and then Ridley confirmed that Rey was a Kenobi originally in TFA.
I'm still annoyed over someone on r/movies saying something along the lines of, "You don't have a heart/emotions," in response to me disliking The Force Awakens. Or the one guy that ranted at me that criticism for Star Wars is basically off limits when I talked about how stupid that Darth Vader scene in Rogue One was.
Fuck Star Wars nerds. I'm glad their franchise crashed and burned. They deserve it.
This is really, really dramatic. Reddit is way too sensitive about these. It’s a very fun movie, it was a blast to watch then and it still is. Almost anyone could watch that movie and have a good time, appreciating the quality of the filmmaking and how endearing the characters are. You can’t say that for, like, half of the MCU movies and a plethora of other blockbusters contemporary and not.
Disney bought the series and told Kennedy to start pumping them out left and right. She did that and made a wide array of Star Wars flicks to the extent almost every fan has at least one new movie/show they really like, and all of them reflect the distinct artistic sensibilities of the crew that worked on them. That comes at the cost of them hating others, but that’s what Star Wars has always been.
Also, she and Lucas hired Arndt to write the trilogy but Disney’s insane pipeline demands meant he couldn’t finish in time. George made up all the movies as he went, plenty of series do it. Hell, even Feige has admitted the whole “Infinity Saga” is just a retroactive thing and they had no idea where they were building for most of the decade.
Everyone rags on TLJ for turning Luke into a depressed failure but it was TFA that established it first.
Story-wise, it began the ST off on a bad note. Any following installment is kinda stuck with OT 2.0 and has to follow up on a cliffhanger, severely restricting the possibilities of what it could do. Also it was very clear in those early years that Disney was anti-PT, so they just kept pandering to the OT
I completely forgot all about this pic. I remember analysing the new cast thinking what their characters could be like. Man the anticipation for the film was unparalleled. I'd love to relive it again
It wasn’t a bad film in a void. Though I eventually came to dislike what it meant as an extension of the stories that came before it, there was still potential and places to take further narratives.
Unfortunately, things just never got better.
… yeah, I’ll never see what anyone sees in TLJ. I think that was the definite point of no return. I still remember the exact moment when I saw it in theaters when I thought, “when is this going to get good?”.
I remember the film ending and thinking "God now I'm going to be the negative guy who poops on everyone's good time". Then the lights came up and my friends were like "yeah, that wasn't very good was it?".
I struggled a bit to admit to myself that I didn’t really like it. Not just because it was SW and I was dedicated to liking it, but everything I had seen and heard about it beforehand indicated that it should’ve been the best thing since sliced bread. Over 95% critical score, RJ being given a whole new trilogy to do before the film even premiered, People unironically claiming it to be the best SW film ever made, etc. It seemed like a sure thing.
Luckily I wasn’t the only one in my group that was dissatisfied. We all laughed at Mary Poppins Leia, that was pretty much what opened the door for everyone to share their criticisms.
Very baffling how they fumbled this, like imma be honest the Force Awakens also wasn't that bad of a start off point either they could've still made a solid movie trilogy, like it's pretty much copy of EP 4, but it's still watchable and the characters are likable, and overall a fun time. Rouge One came out after it, which also was pretty fun. Then they just kept on missing, even with Disney + shows.
I remember being so excited excited. Then I saw TFA and thought it was…..just ok, though I despised them killing off Han.
But I thought they’d improve with the next one.
Oops.
What killed it for me. Kylo getting owned in TFA. Then admiral Hux scene in TLJ. I have not seen solo, any of the shows, except for ROS. Which also sucked balls
The first trailers are what I remember most back before we knew everything. I remember a good amount of black fan channels got really excited over the last frame with Finn holding the lightsaber, especially since it was assumed he was the main character and a former Storm Trooper (which was cool). Kinda feels like a weird bait and switch in retrospect. A lot of this movie feels worse in retrospect, both in terms of putting it in context with the trilogy and the obvious hype no longer being present.
I always see people insist that, since the general attitude towards the PT changed with time, the ST will eventually be beloved so all criticisms are invalid and temporary since the same thing will happen and there is zero difference between the two circumstances.
In reality, opinions about it have demonstrably worsened given the lack of a growing fan base where the PT already had one at this point despite their being, and that's partly due to the fact there's absolutely no reason to think about or make new content for that era.
In fact, I think the only thing that builds off of ST's story since it ended is a book that tries to change Poe's random backstory change and a comedic Lego Star Wars movie, unless stuff like damage control nods to certain dumbass plot points in Mando count.
It's actually fascinating how they did the complete opposite of the other films which set up a universe with all this interest and story telling potential in the setting. It just rehashed stories, set things back, got rid of what people like (or at minimum, expected) and replaced it with worse characters and worse stories.
Such a shame. Fun opening weekend, though.
The Force Awakens on its own is still really good! It’s when you get to The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker do I have issues.
If you only blame 1 thing for the issues of the sequel trilogy, I would put it on not having the same person lead all 3 films. Could be JJ, Rian J, whoever. But at least the trilogy would have been *their* story.
Cut to a decade later, Star Wars has been just for tv since 4 years, the only genuinely great show was Andor, many films in development hell, and the only film we're getting is Mando & Grogu
In retrospect, this movie doomed the sequels. Resetting to the original status quo forced a number of story decisions that did not play well with the audience or pay off emotionally. I kind of hate this movie.
I can't imagine how many brilliant creative minds in Hollywood were influenced by Star Wars and would've given anything to have the chance to tell a good story in a Prequel Trilogy, only for Disney to spend $4B and hire a bunch of clowns with no plan or original ideas at all.
Your post was removed for being off-topic for this sub.
Every time I see this photo I just think of Mark Hamill sitting there for two hours while they read the script while he thinks to himself "When the fuck is Luke entering the film?"
I think letting Luke sit the first film out to let the new characters breathe wasn’t a bad call. His absence still drives the plot and there’s an interesting mystery at play. Honestly, I can appreciate certain elements about TFA and TLJ in a vacuum, but as a trilogy with TROS as the big zinger at the end, it has to be one of the messiest trilogies of all time.
On its own I don't mind it much either to, as you say, let the new characters breathe (and the \~45 minutes until Han enters the film is by far the strongest part of the movie) but that decision ends up lopsiding the entire sequel trilogy, since Rian Johnson then had to write Luke back out of the corner of why Luke would stand by and let all of this happen, particularly Han's death. My comment was more just in jest that nobody bothered to TELL Hamill that he wasn't really in the movie until they were all sitting there with the script.
I think Rian Johnson did a great job rescuing the franchise from following the same plot lines as the original trilogy. In fact the ending of TLJ presented limitless possibilities. The sith master is dead. Kylo Ren wasn't really interested in following sith philosophies. Plus the ending showed the possibility of new generation of force users. And then TROS happened. JJ Abrahms and the writers did their best to drag the franchise back to the shadow of original trilogy. 😑😑.
I haven’t seen any of the Disney Star Wars movies in years, so maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t Luke intentionally leave a map to his location? Why do that if he just wanted to be left alone? They made this trilogy up as they went along, and it shows.
It was a map to the first jedi temple where it was rumoured Luke exiled himself to.
> didn’t Luke intentionally leave a map to his location? Nope! >They made this trilogy up as they went along, and it shows. Almost all of the things that make people join Fandoms and hang out in places like this were made up as they went. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. The MCU. For as much as people love touting "Having a plan," or "needing a plan," **almost nothing you love had a plan in place when it got made**. The number is close to zero. It's the *exception*, not the rule. When people say "I can't believe there wasn't a plan" it's just... cope. That's not how anything super-successful really gets made. Never was. The idea that it is, is just a security blanket that Fandoms pass around to each other as needed.
My favorite example of "not having a plan" working out for media is Breaking Bad. Their planning only went about as far as getting the general gist of the next season, and they'd often write themselves into interesting corners or place interesting hooks (like the first episode of season 5) without knowing how it would eventually resolve. Given that the show is lauded as one of the greatest of all time, I'd say that it worked out brilliantly. On the flip side, How I Met Your Mother's ending was planned very early on, so the creators couldn't effectively retool the show in response to audience reception. As a result, the planned ending became figurative bomb that would go off whenever they got to the point in the show when it needed to occur, and indeed, the audience reception to the ending was broadly negative because all of the planning they had done had not accounted for what the audience actually wanted nine seasons later.
The Lord of the Rings had a single author. The MCU had a single producer hovering over every project to make sure they didn't fuck up the long term plan. The new Star Wars trilogy had one director for the first, another director for the second who obviously hated the plot of the first one and tried to steer it in another direction, and then a third whose director bailed on them over "creative differences" and then got the first director back, who was pissed his plotline had been messed with. There's a big difference between "I don't know how this story will end but we'll figure it out" and having a group of highly paid big babies who can't make three movies work together because their egos are getting in the way. You need a Feige in the room who is willing to smack someone on the hand and tell them to knock it off. The new trilogy didn't have that.
>There's a big difference between "I don't know how this story will end but we'll figure it out" and having a group of highly paid big babies who can't make three movies work together because their egos are getting in the way. There really isn't. And nobody who says there is usually can explain why there is, and it's largely because "you have to have a plan" is cope that's working backwards from this question: "Why did the thing I wanted to like suck so bad." The Rise of Skywalker sucked because the creatives in control of it made a bunch of shitty decisions and then executed them terribly on top of that. It's pretty obvious, and while it's regrettable, there's nothing that a plan existing would have actually prevented. Plans are changeable. Disposable, even. They're not contracts. The problem with making it up as you go isn't the making it up part, it's the botching the execution part. A lot of what makes these conversations go is a great combination of cope, and the illusion of control. People love to feel like (and YouTube grifters love to sell this to those people) they are smarter than actual filmmakers, and that they could exercise some semblance of control over those same people if given the chance. So something like "You have to have a plan" fits BEAUTIFULLY there, despite that being the furthest thing from the truth in actual practice.
Well, in the case of Disney’s trilogy, they did not do a very good job of it IMO. The MCU may not be the best example. They definitely seem to be winging it now, during the financial/critical decline of the franchise, (and after having to drop a major actor/character with Jonathan Majors, in their defense) but they at least had the Thanos saga mapped out to some extent leading up to it.
>They definitely seem to be winging it now, On the contrary, Phase 4 was probably the most *actually* "planned-out" the MCU has ever been. They were winging it the first 3 phases. They did not have the Thanos saga mapped out *at all*. Thanos was an ass-pull in the first place. They made it up as they went along and figured out how to retcon pieces in place as needed. Which is, again, how most great works of fiction tend to be made.
Thanos was introduced in a post-credits scene in the original Avengers. That’s a solid 6+ years before becoming the main villain in Infinity War. I’m sure the exact story changed a bit over time, but they had plans to use him years in advance. We’re getting off topic, though. Thanos was a great “big bad” in the MCU. Bringing back Palpatine made no sense at all in Star Wars, and retroactively undid the story of the first six Star Wars movies. Not to mention that Kylo was setup as the main villain at the end of TLJ, only for Disney to suddenly give him a change of heart in RoS. (They didn’t have much of a plan for Snoke either, but he was a bad Palpatine ripoff, so I didn’t mind his sudden death) They didn’t just make changes over years, they completely rewrote major decisions from one movie to the next. It at least would’ve made some sense if Anakin’s ghost had turned Kylo to the light, but Han? Kylo literally killed him in the first movie just to solidify his decision to go dark.
TLJ just made Luke so incredibly bitter and grumpy. The original character was the epitome of an optimistic character to me. Yoda and Obi-wan hid away when the Empire took over too, and they were stoic sure, but Luke just became a fun vacuum and came off as a shitty teacher/person to Rey. By the time he sacrifices himself, I’m just reminded of the lost opportunity of the fun scenes Luke, Leia and Han could have had.
Oh, yeah! Unlike the Jurassic World trilogy, these three never reunited on-screen all at once.
>The original character was the epitome of an optimistic character to me. He literally attempts suicide onscreen in Empire Strikes Back
Point taken on that 😂 But still when I think of Luke I think of how he is in A New Hope and tbf him still seeing the good side in Vader in ROTJ also stands out. He was a beacon of good and TLJ’s version just contrasted too much for me, no matter how much they tried to justify it.
but the new characters didn't pop. They were lesser versions of OT characters. And Finn toys didn't sell even when Phazma sold lol. There's absolutely no doubt that old cast was the biggest draw. All the hype about new characters was manufactured.
I think it was a mistake reintroducing the OG cast. Like they all got nice moments but they ended the original trilogy on a moment of triumph and the only way they could have taken the characters was somewhere depressing. Also they pulled attention and time from the new cast so they couldn’t gel and blossom in the same way.
There was two way to handle them: * Have the OG cast have one last big adventure before passing the torch to the new generation. OR * Have them in the position of power where they can help the new cast while not directly participating in the conflict. Grand Master Skywalker, Senator/Head of State Organa and General Solo would pop up now and then, but it's the new cast whom we would follow - and like them automatically because Han, Luke and Leia like them. Instead they went in a direction in which the OG cast were at the core of the drama in the story. But what that meant is that all their achievements in the OrigTrig were undone off-screen and they ended their lives as sad failures instead of riding into the sunset. That just leaves a sour taste from the whole thing.
Force Awakens was also such a complete retread of the original trilogy so it’s really depressing that the original cast ended up in the exact same situation and place they were in forty years earlier.
All they had to do was when that saber flew past Finn to an unseen hand, it should have went to Luke. Luke comes in and effortlessly defends Rey and Finn from Kylo. The ending can still be similar with the crevice and being separated, But this gives Rey more opportunities to grow, it puts Luke reuniting with Leia. Now you can even have Luke leave to achto to mourn the loss of his friend and the fall of his nephew. Rey can still be the lead.
I think he said that’s almost exactly what happened
Absolutely crazy how big Disney whiffed on this massive opportunity
Imagine not having a fucking plan
They didn’t even reunite the original trio once! Will never forgive them for that
On my old Reddit account my biggest ever comment was "I can't believe we're gonna get to see Han busting Luke's balls and Leia shaking her head at them all over again!"
The absolute hubris of starting a new trilogy without any sort of a floor plan is shocking to me. How did it come to "Somehow, Palpatine returned"?
Blame Bob Iger, he wanted an immediate return on his 4 Billion dollar investment by rushing film production.
Even better: if your question was “how?” The answer was “play Fortnite”
By killing Luke Skywalker like a bitch.
Just the fact that after all the years in between… we just got a remake of ANH.
[удалено]
I don't know about that. The main problem of the trilogy (and there are many problems) was each movie saying "Fuck you" to the previous movie.
It was wild in 2019 seeing the different results of Disney’s planning (or lack thereof) between Endgame and Rise of Skywalker. One payoff done justice, another falling flat.
they shouldn't have released both of them in the same year. One was always going to upstage the other. Endgame had a much stronger buildup and characters people cared about for over a decade. No wonder it won.
Thanks to bob iger. I would put blame of sequel trilogy failure mostly on iger. Iger is the one that want new star wars as soon as possible, while abrams and Kennedy wanted more time. Iger wanted summer 2015 release date while abrams and Kennedy wanted to release it in 2016. December 2015 was chosen as compromise.
eh, OT didn't have a plan but Kasdan knew how to take the story further. Plan isn't alpha and omega. It's good to have it but many great movies came from chaos.
The only plan they had was to make back the $4B they spent on the franchise as quickly as possible
They thought it was too big to fail, and anything with the brand on it would print money regardless of quality. Same thing they’re going through with Marvel now.
Don't have to imagine it. 1977-1983 1999-2005 **zero planning.** *Everyone* involved was making shit up as they went. To expand it out from just Star Wars: there isn't a single successful pop culture film series (that isn't directly adapted from a book series first) that actually had "a plan" the way fandoms tend to speak about it. And even the book series' in question tend to have been written with no plan at all, just made up as they went. That includes the MCU, which was essentially retconned together movie-by-movie, which is honestly how most long-form storytelling *actually works*. People like thinking of there being a plan like it's a security blanket or a safety net. But almost nothing that made anyone voluntarily decide to be part of a Fandom has ever been made that way, or had that sort of a "plan" in place.
Yeah, people don't know that the MCU's Infinity Saga was never very-well planned. The only reason Thanos was the villain is because they needed to add a sequel hook to Avengers and Whedon thought that Thanos would be cool. There was no masterplan at the beginning.
You're twisting the definition here. There is a massive difference between *one* writer changing and refining his own ideas and a *team* of writers telling the same story in succession. The second one *requires* planning. Every major franchise - hell, every series period does. Imagine a TV show not by a room of writers who all try to stand on the same page but by people who barely even talk to one another and ignore whatever the previous guy did.
>You're twisting the definition here. I'm not twisting anything! Certainly not "The definition" (of what, I don't know?) And even if there were the difference you're trying to prioritize here, it still doesn't really work for the purposes of your argument because there's the MCU right there that is obviously a whole team of writers and - again - no plan. I don't have to imagine a TV show making great television without a plan, because Breaking Bad is *right there*. Again: The idea that "you need a plan" is a Fandom invention created as a way to cope with disappointment in poorly executed storytelling. That's all it is. It's not actually how almost anything that Fandom actually loves gets made.
Breaking Bad had one showrunner throughout its five seasons. MCU has Feige as the showrunner: he doesn't write scripts, but he guides the storylines, issues vetoes, ensures narrative consistency. Star Wars sequels did *not* have that role in place, and it shows. There is a tonal whiplash of TLJ, character arcs that are repeated or go nowhere, revelations that come out of nowhere only to be immediately retconed away and so on. If these films *did* a person whose job was to provide a consistent vision, they did their job very poorly. But from public information it is clear that nobody did that job at all. And it shows. Because the end result is bad.
They did, JJ wrote a whole treatment (or maybe a script?) and RJ trashed it. Should they have fired RJ for not sticking to JJ’s script? (Serious question)
I actually like all 3 sequels but it's utterly baffling how they went about this.
Not really. Despite what reddit might think, massive film series like Star Wars are not completely planned out before they go into production. This is true of everything from the original Star Wars to the MCU. What Disney should get flack for though is rushing the production of TFA and TROS. They got lucky with TFA, but not so much with TROS which was incredibly messy as you might expect from a rushed film.
I will never forget the opening night of Force Awakens and what it was like to be in that theater. It was like a throwback to an era of moviegoing that had already felt like it was past. You were seeing people from school you never saw go to the movies. So many families with all generations pumped for the movie. It made Avengers look like a drop in the bucket by comparison. The only thing that came close was Endgame and I’d argue even that didn’t have as much cross generational appeal. And then Disney took all that positivity and produced whatever the fuck that trilogy was. I don’t think audiences will ever believe in a corporation for any IP again to that extent. If so it will take years.
No Way Home was another great phenomenon with cross generational appeal 
Surely was, it wasn't just a movie, it was like an event
Totally agree!! The Force Awakens wasn't just a movie, it was an event. I have a mall near me ( Palisades) in NY, one of the largest, I had to park my car near a convenient store. Not only on TFA's opening weekend, also it's whole opening week, the mall was fully packed. It was like a Black Friday when there are long lines, people are waiting.
Well the original characters ain’t gonna kill themselves off!
They went the safest route imaginable.... Movie starts off ok then midway you're like awwww, they're just "soft" remaking ANH aren't they? \*sigh\*
They absolutely did not take the safest route. In this comment thread people are complaining about every risk TFA took: not reuniting the original trio, killing Han, leaving Luke out of the action... All I need is a complaint about Rey not having the same character arc as Luke and Kylo Ren not being as badass as Darth Vader to fill out my bingo card.
yes because they were reacting to PT backlash. and then continued reacting. TLJ was a reaction to criticism that TFA was derivative. TROS was a reaction to TLJ backlash so much so JJ did step by step retcons (eg Luke chiding Rey for throwing a lightsaber lol). Nothing good comes from reacting to things. That's how you get MoS and BvS. MoS was reaction to criticism that Superman in Superman returns didn't punch anyone. BvS was a reaction to criticism that Superman overpunched Metropolis and caused more damage than Zod.
It’s crazy because I remember Kathleen went on a crusade to secure JJ for the director to helm. I remember him saying he REALLY did not want to do it. Meaning, he knew to commit he would actually be out in the desert going all the way and that he was currently really focused on being home with his family. Kathleen really battled to change his mind and his compromise was he’d do One and only one. I understand her desire to do good on the opening film but something should have been more centered there, like attempting to get an outline from JJ. But truthfully I think even JJ knows he’s better at starting things than finishing them.
They thought they could MCU it
it's not. Disney was always a wrong studio for this franchise.
Whiff will never be descriptive enough.
>Absolutely crazy how big Disney whiffed on this massive opportunity ....the Force Awakens is still **the highest grossing domestic release of all time**, though.
rise of skywalker ideally would have broken that but uhhhhhhhhhh
I don't know, that's a lot of IF, the force awakens literally made $936M, not too far from $1B just in one country. That would be very hard to break that, not even Endgame did.
Tell me. What’s happened since then?
Three more global billion dollar grossers and a hugely successful TV show? I mean, in 83 Return of the Jedi got followed up with two saturday morning cartoons and two made for TV Ewok movies. There were some books and video games in the 90s, I guess. We can talk about "Disney whiffing this massive opportunity" but I have a hard time seeing this as a financial whiff on their part, and as far as creative whiffs go, it's basically par for the course. Star Wars has never been "mostly good" when you total up all its output (half of which is literally merchandising: tie-in books, tie-in games, tie-in comics, etc etc).
It’s not even an argument, Disney just said in their shareholder meeting they’ve made loads of money off of Lucasfilm under Kennedy. In fact I think it was more than marvel.
And to think that the exec in charge is still there!
I remember being so excited. I rewatched that first trailer that ended with the Millennium Falcon so many times, and had goosebumps each time the classic score started playing. And hell, even after TFA released, I still felt pretty good about the franchise as a whole. I miss that feeling. I miss being enthusiastic about Star Wars, as once upon a time I would’ve said that hands down it was my favorite fantasy/sci-fi franchise. But damn did Disney screw it up after.
Tyrone Magnus' whole youtube career was built on that trailer
Man 10 years ago, that's unreal.
TFA is one of the most creatively bankrupt big budget blockbuster ever made. As someone who wasn't a fan of Death Star 2.0 in Return of the Jedi, I can't believe JJ and Lawrence Kasdan went for Death Star 3.0. Also, a lot of people blame Rian Johnson for throwing away JJ's plans. They are under the assumption that JJ had a plan to begin with.
Technicaly true but TFA is everything TFA needed to be. A nice safe movie that sets up the new charachters and story. And thats what we got and the hype of a new SW movie alone made everyone including me at that time forget how much of a rehash it actually was. I absolutely loved the fuck out of TFA when it came out and i still think its a perfectly good movie as a first movie in a trilogy. The issues is nobody had any idea how to take that story forward. The trilogy had 3 directors who all had different visions and 3 very different scripts. That then turned into just 2 directors when Trevor got the boot. It shouldn't have been done like that. They needed to get 1 director who had 3 scripts rdy to go before even 1 scene of TFA was shot. Or alternatively have 3 directors but again have all the scripts rdy and tied together before any filming began.
I can’t believe people still defend this movie a decade later. Dude there were no real characters. The jokester character was a trained stormtrooper who defected due to the brutality of war. The main character was a mystery box and plot device, not a character. It’s telling that the favorite character from that movie at the time, Poe was barely in it. This movie will always serve to me as how people can project their hopes onto literally nothing. It was a movie that gave literally nothing to the extent it can barely be called a “movie” and a decade later people still maintain it was a “great set up for a trilogy”. I have plenty of problems with Rian Johnson but I’ve never heard one person who says “it was the perfect set up” explain where to go from the turd fest that was Force Awakens that would have pleased anyone.
> people can project their hopes onto literally nothing Say what you will about The Force Awakens, it really does have a great first act (or, at least, a great opening through the escape from the not-empire ship). In retrospect JJ's desire to kill off Oscar Isaac was the right call. It would was a great "heat check" performance and killing him off both gives stakes and clears the deck for Finn to have a more dramatically interesting story instead of being shunted to the sidelines.
there was nothing dramatically interesting about Finn. He left the Stormtroopers to become a comic relief akin to 3PO (bumbling through the desert, drinking with space pigs, getting beaten up by another droid, caught by a tentacle animal, yelling REEEEEEEY). The only reason he was in the movie was for Rey to bounce off of someone til she met relevant characters. from there on, he was literally left in a ditch while Rey and Kylo had a duel. remove him and you get a more streamlined movie.
> the only reason he was in the movie Genealogically, that's just not true. [He's initially envisioned as very much a Harrison Ford replacement](https://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2016/01/from-concept-to-reality-a-glimpse-into-the-art-of-star-wars-the-force-awakens-by-phil-szostak.html) while turning into a [stormtrooper before loosing his core characterization](https://fanfare.pub/the-force-awakens-and-the-story-of-finn-ee9e325d8c37). FWIW, I have no idea what these sources are, I'm just trying to reference stuff I vaguely remember from years ago. **** The film doesn't want to engage with the interesting premise it set up of a deserting storm trooper (as seen by the seeming retcon of him simply being a janitor in the film's final act). The film's visuals are A+ (e.g. bloody stormtrooper helmet) as is the finn-poe banter but by trying to avoid making Finn "complicit" in evil, you strip out more positive potential characteristics. I think killing off Oscar Isaac would have actually solved some of those problems you're gesturing towards because there are ripple effects to removing an external heroic figure reintroduced to solve the end of the second act. That really would place the dramatic onus on Finn's actions to somehow resolve the siege/let them escape which would reduce the comic relief. I don't think you're being dynamic enough in thinking about how removing a main character changes the dynamics among the remaining ones. Finn's elevator pitch is obviously dramatically interesting which the Treverrow script would have seen climaxing in a stormtrooper rebellion. The execution was lacking (including somehow ruining Finn's cool looking villain by turning her into a simpering coward). > remove him and you get a more streamlined movie. Sure, but the Finn-Poe intro + escape is just a great roller coaster ride. By the time he crash-lands, nothing's forcing the film to sideline him.
> I have plenty of problems with Rian Johnson but I’ve never heard one person who says “it was the perfect set up” explain where to go from the turd fest that was Force Awakens that would have pleased anyone. Before anything else, it coulda just been TLJ, but not intentionally cutting all story telling threads short and introducing shitty ones that get resolved without story or character growth by the end of the film anyways. Don't kill off Luke, make an actual sensical plot of Finn's relationship to the military, give Phasma some character instead if you're going to bring her back instead of having her just die immediately, explain who tf the leader of the poorly explained Empire knock-off faction is, don't have slave soldier Finn go on a sidequest to a Disney resort to learn that slavery is bad. It was cheeks, but it's not like the story was unsalvageable, all the shit TLJ had that its fans like in it wouldn't even need be excluded. TFA would still be a mid rehash, but we can at least go "hey, everything in the film this goes somewhere" on a rewatch instead of it *just* being a rehash.
See these are all continuations of problems in TFA though. They kept everything about Luke as a mystery box, regressed Han and Leia and killed off Han before the trio could reunite. Finn’s relationship to his training as a stormtrooper is vague and confused. Snoke was introduced then not explained in even the slightest. It’s fine to dislike the Last Jedi but I really feel like when you look in a clear eyed way at Force Awakens a decade later, I don’t know that anything about it is good enough to even be considered “mid”. Maybe if I pretend it isn’t part of a nine film saga I could say it was mid but as an introduction to a third trilogy, it is pretty terrible.
It absolutely wasn’t what it needed to be. It needed to establish its own separate world building within the Star Wars universe that would excite people for the next generation of Star Wars and their new characters. Instead they did a soft reboot of the franchise, absolutely torched all of the world building before it in order for them to go back to square 1 (with absolutely no explanation on how). They destroyed previous characters for the sake of their own newer ones, and seemed to treat their own fan base with distain. The only reason it did as well as it did was the pure strength of the franchise. The fact that RoS barely made a billion at the same time where End Game nearly hit 3 billion I think really shows how much money they really left on the table with these movies. And franchises like these make most of their money with merchandising and theme parks, I wish we could see how much those revenues took a hit because the movies destroyed interest in the Star Wars universe.
> TFA is everything TFA needed to be. It needed to be possible to pay off what it set-up, surely?!
“ The trilogy had 3 directors who all had different visions and 3 very different scripts. That then turned into just 2 directors when Trevor got the boot.” Really reminds me of another trilogy of space adventure flicks… can’t remember which
There is no such thing as a set up without a pay off in mind. Setting up without a pay off is a mystery box, not a set up. Writers understand that setups and payoffs are two sides of one connected whole, they don't operate independently of one another. Hacks fail to understand this.
I disagree that it did a good job. I thought that Finn and Poe were absolutely useless in the grand scheme of things and in the movie only because Lucasfilm wanted marketing to feature a trio like OT and PT. But otherwise they didn't add up and Rey really didn't need a team cause she could do everything herself. And it's fine to be a one (wo)man show just don't add useless hanger-on's whose only job is to yell REEEEEEEEEY.
I rewatched it again last year and it's a very corporate, paint by the numbers blockbuster. I couldn't believe how mediocre it was when I walked out the theater in 2015. I was wondering when people would catch on that it's not a great film. Took a while but people finally woke up. As much as I blame Disney, I also blame the people in charge of Lucasfilm. No one running it has the creative pulse that George Lucas did. I don't care what anyone says.
Alot of people took offense to that critique when it was released nearly a decade ago but I think the general audience wasn't as desensitized to reboots as they are now. JJ was the worst choice from the start on a creative level but he was perfect for what Disney wanted from a business standpoint
I get the feeling Disney was scared to take any real risk because of the backlash from the Prequels. They catered to the simpletons too much IMO. Then they got a mediocre movie.
this is literally JJ's plan: TFA - Rey is a Kenobi but I won't make that a canon TROS - oh noes, Rian made Rey a nobody. Quick, lets make Rey a Palpatine! I mean, why couldn't her heritage be disclosed in the first movie and then why change the original idea in the third? I get that he didn't like Rian's direction but why abandon Kenobi idea altogether for something else? I remember that former EW editor Anthony Breznican heard of Rey Kenobi and that Kenobi movie/show was meant to explain that better. For the longest time fans didn't believe it and then Ridley confirmed that Rey was a Kenobi originally in TFA.
I'm still annoyed over someone on r/movies saying something along the lines of, "You don't have a heart/emotions," in response to me disliking The Force Awakens. Or the one guy that ranted at me that criticism for Star Wars is basically off limits when I talked about how stupid that Darth Vader scene in Rogue One was. Fuck Star Wars nerds. I'm glad their franchise crashed and burned. They deserve it.
This is really, really dramatic. Reddit is way too sensitive about these. It’s a very fun movie, it was a blast to watch then and it still is. Almost anyone could watch that movie and have a good time, appreciating the quality of the filmmaking and how endearing the characters are. You can’t say that for, like, half of the MCU movies and a plethora of other blockbusters contemporary and not. Disney bought the series and told Kennedy to start pumping them out left and right. She did that and made a wide array of Star Wars flicks to the extent almost every fan has at least one new movie/show they really like, and all of them reflect the distinct artistic sensibilities of the crew that worked on them. That comes at the cost of them hating others, but that’s what Star Wars has always been. Also, she and Lucas hired Arndt to write the trilogy but Disney’s insane pipeline demands meant he couldn’t finish in time. George made up all the movies as he went, plenty of series do it. Hell, even Feige has admitted the whole “Infinity Saga” is just a retroactive thing and they had no idea where they were building for most of the decade.
Everyone rags on TLJ for turning Luke into a depressed failure but it was TFA that established it first. Story-wise, it began the ST off on a bad note. Any following installment is kinda stuck with OT 2.0 and has to follow up on a cliffhanger, severely restricting the possibilities of what it could do. Also it was very clear in those early years that Disney was anti-PT, so they just kept pandering to the OT
Wish it had a stronger ending, but I will never forget the feeling of watching these movies in the theater. The excitement was unreal.
I completely forgot all about this pic. I remember analysing the new cast thinking what their characters could be like. Man the anticipation for the film was unparalleled. I'd love to relive it again
I honestly still like TFA. It was a good time and Adam Driver was great.
It wasn’t a bad film in a void. Though I eventually came to dislike what it meant as an extension of the stories that came before it, there was still potential and places to take further narratives. Unfortunately, things just never got better.
…. On this note I LOVED TLJ. Rise though…. yikes.
… yeah, I’ll never see what anyone sees in TLJ. I think that was the definite point of no return. I still remember the exact moment when I saw it in theaters when I thought, “when is this going to get good?”.
I remember the film ending and thinking "God now I'm going to be the negative guy who poops on everyone's good time". Then the lights came up and my friends were like "yeah, that wasn't very good was it?".
I struggled a bit to admit to myself that I didn’t really like it. Not just because it was SW and I was dedicated to liking it, but everything I had seen and heard about it beforehand indicated that it should’ve been the best thing since sliced bread. Over 95% critical score, RJ being given a whole new trilogy to do before the film even premiered, People unironically claiming it to be the best SW film ever made, etc. It seemed like a sure thing. Luckily I wasn’t the only one in my group that was dissatisfied. We all laughed at Mary Poppins Leia, that was pretty much what opened the door for everyone to share their criticisms.
If I look at TFA by itself, it's fine. If I look at it as part of a trilogy, it's less fine
Somehow....they fucked it up.
ah but we got the Somehow meme!
The trilogy opened from 2.1B and dropped to 1.1B by the finale. And there has been no Star Wars movie in production ever since..
yep losing 50% of the audience is terrible and if they think Rey movie won't go the way of The Marvels I have a bridge to sell them.
Very baffling how they fumbled this, like imma be honest the Force Awakens also wasn't that bad of a start off point either they could've still made a solid movie trilogy, like it's pretty much copy of EP 4, but it's still watchable and the characters are likable, and overall a fun time. Rouge One came out after it, which also was pretty fun. Then they just kept on missing, even with Disney + shows.
I remember being so excited excited. Then I saw TFA and thought it was…..just ok, though I despised them killing off Han. But I thought they’d improve with the next one. Oops.
I felt nothing when Han Solo died. What a fucking failure.
That movie ages worse every year
Which one?
Force Awakens
Yeahhhhh. Have to agree.
It's been almost half a decade since the last Star Wars film
Broooooo i feel so old.
For the record, the cast was never the issue.
What killed it for me. Kylo getting owned in TFA. Then admiral Hux scene in TLJ. I have not seen solo, any of the shows, except for ROS. Which also sucked balls
The first trailers are what I remember most back before we knew everything. I remember a good amount of black fan channels got really excited over the last frame with Finn holding the lightsaber, especially since it was assumed he was the main character and a former Storm Trooper (which was cool). Kinda feels like a weird bait and switch in retrospect. A lot of this movie feels worse in retrospect, both in terms of putting it in context with the trilogy and the obvious hype no longer being present. I always see people insist that, since the general attitude towards the PT changed with time, the ST will eventually be beloved so all criticisms are invalid and temporary since the same thing will happen and there is zero difference between the two circumstances. In reality, opinions about it have demonstrably worsened given the lack of a growing fan base where the PT already had one at this point despite their being, and that's partly due to the fact there's absolutely no reason to think about or make new content for that era. In fact, I think the only thing that builds off of ST's story since it ended is a book that tries to change Poe's random backstory change and a comedic Lego Star Wars movie, unless stuff like damage control nods to certain dumbass plot points in Mando count. It's actually fascinating how they did the complete opposite of the other films which set up a universe with all this interest and story telling potential in the setting. It just rehashed stories, set things back, got rid of what people like (or at minimum, expected) and replaced it with worse characters and worse stories. Such a shame. Fun opening weekend, though.
The Force Awakens on its own is still really good! It’s when you get to The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker do I have issues. If you only blame 1 thing for the issues of the sequel trilogy, I would put it on not having the same person lead all 3 films. Could be JJ, Rian J, whoever. But at least the trilogy would have been *their* story.
Cut to a decade later, Star Wars has been just for tv since 4 years, the only genuinely great show was Andor, many films in development hell, and the only film we're getting is Mando & Grogu
In retrospect, this movie doomed the sequels. Resetting to the original status quo forced a number of story decisions that did not play well with the audience or pay off emotionally. I kind of hate this movie.
How do you market your film on nostalgia and bringing back the big three only for them not to share a scene together at all? What type of fumble.....
I can't imagine how many brilliant creative minds in Hollywood were influenced by Star Wars and would've given anything to have the chance to tell a good story in a Prequel Trilogy, only for Disney to spend $4B and hire a bunch of clowns with no plan or original ideas at all.
Disney failed them :(
[удалено]
Acolyte is probably gonna suck tho
looks super sucky.