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Star Wars General Discussion Thread

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Quiver said:
With Phasma, I am legit disappointed she didn't come back for the third film. I mean, she seemingly died off-screen in the first movie, only to be revealed that No, I'm actually fine.

So why NOT bring her back in the third film and complete the recurring motif? This is a franchise that loves it's cyborgs and mutilated bodies, and Phasma already had a cool, marketable image.

I guess what I'm saying is, they could have gone full-Vader with her in the third film and they didn't. I mean, if you brought her back, then at least Finn has a specific enemy he can take on, while Poe get's Admiral Only-Here-For-The-Finale or a dogfight or something.
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A fair point - I inclined towards pitting Finn against Knights of Ren, but I now have an urge to do a story which involves a cyborg Phasma, borrowing a lot from Phasma's End.

Now I just need to work out what else would go in that story. Probably some more of Rey and Finn supporting each other in battle, as that's one thing I really wanted more of.

Actually, just more of Finn and Rey being proper friends is high up on my wishlist.
 
SGTschlock said:
Ah yes, very bold. Finn was always destined by unconditional force election to be redeemed and become a rebel. All the other child soldiers are filthy reprobates who can go and die :p

It's a semicatchy one liner, but its silly to think it really explores the implications of the Storm Troopers as slave soldiers.
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It's more than either of the other movies gave you. Certainly that's not something you're pulling from that scene.

bluntblade said:
But now we know it was just the Force steering him to Canto Bight or whatever, so he could carry out his ordained purpose and kill Stormtroopers.
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Is this something from the third movie that I missed because it was awful and should be ignored? Because it was awful, and should be ignored. You are not bound by the concept of canon. It's fake. Let it go. Kill it if you have to.
 
Night said:
Is this something from the third movie that I missed because it was awful and should be ignored? Because it was awful, and should be ignored. You are not bound by the concept of canon. It's fake. Let it go. Kill it if you have to.
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It's the thing that his conversation with Jannah establishes before Abrams panics that we've sat down and talked for a full minute so Rey goes water skiing.

Finn and Jannah say that their experiences are exactly the same and that when they were ordered to fire on the civilians, a "feeling" stopped them. Same goes for all Jannah's company.

Which also serves to tell us there's no redeeming any other Stormtroopers and it's OK to wipe out every enslaved soldier whom the Light Side of the Force didn't choose. No matter what a TLJ deleted scene says.

Again: Abrams doesn't care about his heroes making choices, not really. Everyone moves according to a predetermined plan. Which is what I mean when I say that Abrams and Johnson actually disagree on the fundamentals of what makes a hero. In Johnson's take, it all comes down to choice. For Abrams, heroes are anointed and chosen, which is why every time he has a hero act reluctant or Refuse The Call, it rings false and feels contrived. In Rey's case this happens twice.

I've just realised that I haven't even watched TLJ since TRoS came out. Like, maybe when I've got Resurgence and Reckoning fully posted I'll be motivated to do so, but the way it's continuing to draw so much hate and almost all the blame for TRoS just bums me out.
 
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bluntblade said:
I've just realised that I haven't even watched TLJ since TRoS came out. Like, maybe when I've got Resurgence and Reckoning fully posted I'll be motivated to do so, but the way it's continuing to draw so much hate and almost all the blame for TRoS just bums me out.
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This is probably a serious mistake if you're trying to write an actual sequel rather than simply Yet Another Shallow Reconstituted Star Wars Runoff.

But that conversation is both you reading remarkably heavily into something, in that this matches no other portrayal of the Force ever (even at their most crazed only a few EU characters came close to something so like an Evvangelical "special leading" from God) so no matter what anyone in-universe says it sounds wrong, and fuck Rise of Skywalker generally speaking.
 
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Night said:
Is this something from the third movie that I missed because it was awful and should be ignored? Because it was awful, and should be ignored. You are not bound by the concept of canon. It's fake. Let it go. Kill it if you have to.
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I should stress that I rebelled hard against the predestination thing in my own take. Finn should be defined by his choices and the example he sets to others, in my view.
 
So a thread in Spacebattles main has gotten me thinking about that old chestnut "how to fix the sequel trilogy"

And my basic idea is to set it up as an inversion of the Prequel Trilogy. Whilst the prequel trilogy was about an aged chestmaster manipulating a young man into falling to the Darkside and causing massive death and upheaval using an army of Troopers, the sequel trilogy should be about a young person helping an older* man back into the light, while the forces of evil are foiled when their army of Troopers peacefully lays down their arms.

* Obviously not as much older than Palpatine was to Anakin, since Adam Driver is still playing Ben
 
Wasn't that the OT in essence?

I honestly don't know where I'd have started a new trilogy, but even though I love TLJ it's increasingly soured for me because I feel like it has Rian Johnson having to do a heap of things that the first film should have done.

I would say that I wouldn't have gone with a Palpatine reskin at all. There are other kinds of Dark Side wielder, any of which we could've used. Heck, that was part of the appeal of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren - the Black Knight archetype, and an unstable, aggressive warrior who would favour being the frontline commander. And maybe... maybe have Rey be one of the apprentices in the New Order (which honestly is the one reveal I'd have happily taken in addition to or instead of her being no one)? It's something we never got to see because most of the things that would be meaningfully different after RotJ are either gone with TFA starts out, or are done away with in the narrative.
 
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bluntblade said:
Wasn't that the OT in essence?

I honestly feel don't know where I'd have started a new trilogy, but even though I love TLJ it's increasingly soured for me because I feel like it has Rian Johnson having to do a heap of things that the first film should have done.

I would say that I wouldn't have gone with a Palpatine reskin at all. There are other kinds of Dark Side wielder, we could've used. Heck, that was part of the appeal of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.
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1. No, Luke resists the temptation to turn. In the inversion, the bad guy is turned.
2. I'm not too hard on TFA because I think of it like a three act structure. The first act sets you up to think that the film is gonna be one thing, then the next act introduces the twist and reframes everything. The issue with the IRL trilogy is that TROS tried to undo the twist
3. Agreed on Palpatine
 
Ah, I see what you mean.

My main issue with TFA is that I'm seeing the Abrams problems in it - my gripes with Finn's half-arc, Rey's purpose being mostly to be mysterious (and that comes largely through other people looking at her from afar and going "wonder what's going on with her?", Palpatine's repacking of the mystery box in IX being only the most obvious example) and the lack of a real spotlight on the state of the Galaxy, all seriously impact the subsequent trilogy.

I recognise that had IX stuck the landing I probably wouldn't care... but IX didn't and exposed all the failings of VII.
 
Jcogginsa said:
That's fair.
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This also adds to how much the hate for TLJ irks me - because I can see Johnson having to expend a ton of effort to, say, tweak Rey's central question to mean that she is looking to uncover her origins (as opposed to Abrams just foisting a reveal on her through dialogue), digging in to what happened in the context of that one line about the one student destroying it all and getting Finn on board with the Resistance when not much has happened to change his stance from "just being here for Rey." But no, conventional wisdom is that he ruined the characters.

Which... sigh. Fine.
 
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bluntblade said:
I honestly feel don't know where I'd have started a new trilogy, but even though I love TLJ it's increasingly soured for me because I feel like it has Rian Johnson having to do a heap of things that the first film should have done.
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This is kind of an issue of hypothetically revamping the ST. With it not being outlined in advance, and with the series waffling over how much respective focus the new and old heroes should get, its really difficult to come up with sunstantially constructive revision without essentially starting everything over from scratch. Once you're at TFA ending with so little of the trilogy built up, continuing and concluding the ST was always going to be difficult.

I hindsight TFA had a lot of the same problems that Phantom did as an opening act. It's built around focusing attention on things the director imagined were important to that particular film, but ultimately didn't lay a good groundwork for a trilogy. Like TPM being 80% filler built around Anakins seperation from his mom, but leaving his character with no development with Padme or Obiwan, leaving the next movies playing catch up. Similarly, TFA's mystery boxes, unfocused plots with minimal character interaction and cliffhanger ending left the ST in a similary awkward position of all subsequent movies playing catchup.
 
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SGTschlock said:
This is kind of an issue of hypothetically revamping the ST. With it not being outlined in advance, and with the series waffling over how much respective focus the new and old heroes should get, its really difficult to come up with substantially constructive revision without essentially starting everything over from scratch. Once you're at TFA ending with so little of the trilogy built up, continuing and concluding the ST was always going to be difficult.

I hindsight TFA had a lot of the same problems that Phantom did as an opening act. It's built around focusing attention on things the director imagined were important to that particular film, but ultimately didn't lay a good groundwork for a trilogy. Like TPM being 80% filler built around Anakins seperation from his mom, but leaving his character with no development with Padme or Obiwan, leaving the next movies playing catch up. Similarly, TFA's mystery boxes, unfocused plots with minimal character interaction and cliffhanger ending left the ST in a similary awkward position of all subsequent movies playing catchup.
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That's an interesting comparison and I'm uncomfortable with how well it fits.

The trouble with redoing TFA is that my storytelling instincts just demand a sense of how the setting now works, that sort of thing. Give us proper clarity on the macro and the micro.
 
I'm still deeply skeptical that the core failing of the ST was a lack of planning - the OT was made up on the fly and worked out pretty well, while the PT was (ostensibly) planned out from the start and we all know how that went. Nerds fetishize the idea of everything being "planned out" because it sounds cool, but there have been plenty of successful series that took things entry by entry. The MCU (if you genuinely believe they planned it all out I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you), the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, Mission Impossible Films, the Fast series, etc. have been successful despite a lack of a Master Plan.

Honestly it just keeps circling back to TROS being a pile of garbage. If IX hadn't faceplanted at the finish line and had actually taken the time to continue the character's arc that were set up in TLJ, the ST would be seen as much more successful. Instead, TROS is focused on actively undermining its predecessor and just arbitrarily chucking things at the screen to keep people interested. There's no attempt to give the story or the character's any kind of arc, instead it's 50% crowdsourced Reddit theories and 50% BAM ZOOM WOWEEE ISN' THIS FUN? mindlessness.

No joke if Colin Trevorrow had been moved forward with DotF we'd be singing a different tune. DotF is far from perfect, but it reads like an honest attempt to move the ball downfield. You'd still have the lingering Reddit crowd who are upset we didn't get a powerpoint presentation detailing Snoke's origins or sixth-rate YouTuber's trying to push dumbass rumors, but we wouldn't be the position of having a Star Wars trilogy that ended by steadfastly refusing to say, well, anything.
 
The OT had Lucas working on it from beginning to end even if empire strikes back had a different director and while he's not officially listed as a writer on empire strikes back he was still involved in the writing including writing three of the films drafts after the first screen writer died forcing a need to hire another screen writer and was involved in many other aspects of the movie, it was Lucas's vision from beginning to end even if he did change things as he went along.
 
The bigger problem than a lack of a plan for the trilogy is that two out of the three films were chopping and changing their plans up to the last minute.

Arthur Frayn said:
Honestly it just keeps circling back to TROS being a pile of garbage. If IX hadn't faceplanted at the finish line and had actually taken the time to continue the characters' arcs that were set up in TLJ, the ST would be seen as much more successful. Instead, TROS is focused on actively undermining its predecessor and just arbitrarily chucking things at the screen to keep people interested. There's no attempt to give the story or the character's any kind of arc, instead it's 50% crowdsourced Reddit theories and 50% BAM ZOOM WOWEEE ISN' THIS FUN? mindlessness.

No joke if Colin Trevorrow had been moved forward with DotF we'd be singing a different tune. DotF is far from perfect, but it reads like an honest attempt to move the ball downfield. You'd still have the lingering Reddit crowd who are upset we didn't get a powerpoint presentation detailing Snoke's origins or sixth-rate YouTuber's trying to push dumbass rumors, but we wouldn't be the position of having a Star Wars trilogy that ended by steadfastly refusing to say, well, anything.
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The pace feels too frantic to muster the gravity of a finale too. There's lots of chasing, but you never feel it build in the way that Fury Road does because the action only ever translates to temporary reversals. The heroes never get a meaningful triumph like Minas Tirith, or a huge loss except for Leia (who we knew couldn't play a big role anyway, died in a confusing, limp manner and didn't fall to enemy action).

Abrams and Terrio would have done much better to just revisit the other two sequels, and look up some other series closers beginning with Return of the King. And some non-franchise epics for that matter.
 
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Alane1 said:
The OT had Lucas working on it from beginning to end even if empire strikes back had a different director and while he's not officially listed as a writer on empire strikes back he was still involved in the writing including writing three of the films drafts after the first screen writer died forcing a need to hire another screen writer and was involved in many other aspects of the movie, it was Lucas's vision from beginning to end even if he did change things as he went along.
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Lucas literally fought Kershner every single step of the way, to the point of having screaming fights in front of the crew. He was minimally involved with a lot of the major creative decisions, and actively fought several of the most iconic ones (he thought Han saying "I know" was dumb as fuck and kept insisting Han say "I love you too"). There's a reason why he brought in a ringer for Jedi and basically ghost directed the film, and even then he wasn't the Singular Visionary - he had a team of writers, producers, and editors refining his ideas into something that actually works.

Conversely Lucas was in the drivers seat for basically every creative decision on the Prequels and look at how those turned out. The idea that Star Wars sprung purely from Lucas' brain like some kind of pop cultural Athena is some PR bullshit Lucas himself cooked up in the 90's as a part of the marketing campaign for the OT on VHS, the theatrical release of the Special Editions (Fun Fact: Lucas made zero effort to contact Kershner or run the changes to Empire by him ahead of time!), and the Prequels.

And even then...who gives a shit? Again, there is zero evidence that some kind of Grand Master Plan is a benefit to a long running franchise. Nerds just fetishize the idea of stories being puzzle boxes where It All Adds Up and like...that's always been some bullshit thrown out as a marketing ploy. Even Babylon 5, which JMS insisted was a aCtUaLlY a "novel on TV" with all five seasons being meticulously planned out ahead of time was bullshit - huge chunks of the show were rewritten to cover for actors absences, changes in studio heads, costs, etc.

Literally all Star Wars needed was a writer/director combo on IX that made an honest effort to carry the story on from TLJ (which made an honest effort to pick up where TFA left off).
 
If there's one lesson we should all take from this, it's that Yes And/But storytelling is very different to Well Actually storytelling.

Actually, Anakin's depiction in the prequels vs the way he was talked about in IV qualifies as a Well Actually in my eyes. Whereas Filoni's portrayal is a Yes And.
 
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Arthur Frayn said:
I'm still deeply skeptical that the core failing of the ST was a lack of planning - the OT was made up on the fly and worked out pretty well, while the PT was (ostensibly) planned out from the start and we all know how that went.
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The OT had more room to be made on the fly since it was never structured as a cohesive 3 act play. ANH is a standalone narrative, and Empire and Jedi are more a dualogy. That meant ANH didn't have to be burdened with setting up what would be in the next movie, and Empire only had to set things up for 1 direct sequel. That simply is more permissive of doing things on the fly.

And as you said. The PT was only ostensibly planned out in the most barest of senses. Lucas knew it would end with Anakin's fall and a fuzzy notion of some things he wanted, but when they started filming the only solid pre-planning was Phantoms script. Which ended up being actively counter productive to the following films, since it didn't establish the things Lucas needed in those films (like established relations between Anakin and Padme/obiwan). Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith are basically Lucas racing trying to play perpetual catch up. Both in his story, and against the production schedule.

Arthur Frayn said:
Nerds fetishize the idea of everything being "planned out" because it sounds cool, but there have been plenty of successful series that took things entry by entry. The MCU (if you genuinely believe they planned it all out I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you), the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, Mission Impossible Films, the Fast series, etc. have been successful despite a lack of a Master Plan.
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Its worth noting that most of these examples are for more episodic film series. They reference past events and character interactions, and tease future installments, but generally the plots of most of these films are more self-contained. There's usually a single predicament and a new revolving bad guy, and things generally get resolved by the end. Returning things to a kind of status quo. These kinds of movies generally have more leeway to wing it from film to film.

This is different than the PT and ST, which are clearly structured to go together like a 3 act play/epic trilogy. This isnt really the kind of project that's easy to make up as you go along. Cause if you decide you don't like how the narrative is going, you have little time to change it with the freight train of production scheduling for the finale coming behind you.
 
SGTschlock said:
The OT had more room to be made on the fly since it was never structured as a cohesive 3 act play. ANH is a standalone narrative, and Empire and Jedi are more a dualogy. That meant ANH didn't have to be burdened with setting up what would be in the next movie, and Empire only had to set things up for 1 direct sequel. That simply is more permissive of doing things on the fly.
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I don't think this is true. ANH introduces the major characters. TESB would be very different if it had to spend time introducing them. Yes, ANH is a standalone narrative but Empire very much could not stand on its own.
 
SGTschlock said:
Its worth noting that most of these examples are for more episodic film series. They reference past events and character interactions, and tease future installments, but generally the plots of most of these films are more self-contained. There's usually a single predicament and a new revolving bad guy, and things generally get resolved by the end. Returning things to a kind of status quo. These kinds of movies generally have more leeway to wing it from film to film.

This is different than the PT and ST, which are clearly structured to go together like a 3 act play/epic trilogy. This isnt really the kind of project that's easy to make up as you go along. Cause if you decide you don't like how the narrative is going, you have little time to change it with the freight train of production scheduling for the finale coming behind you.
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Again, there are plenty of trilogies that weren't planned out but were successful - having a master plan is not a pre-requisite for success. Even if we start making entirely arbitrary distinctions and say "Okay this is just a loosely connected series of films while this is a Real Trilogy" that still doesn't change the fact that the Mission Impossible films manage to build on prior entires and deliver satisfying conclusions with each installment, or that the modern Planet of the Apes films managed to produce three pretty great films that build on each other. Yes, Matt Reeves wrote and directed the last two films, but there was zero guarantee that Dawn would produce a sequel, so he basically left everything on the field.

Repeatedly hammering the idea that the ST "failed" because it wasn't planned out is such empty criticism because there's literally zero evidence that having a master plan is an objectively good thing. You can go on and on about how Star Wars is really a three act structure and thus requires some kind of plan but there's nothing supporting that argument besides the "it just makes sense" gut feel.

This is all especially silly in light of the fact that Trevorrow's aborted film - we can literally read the script and see what a (badly executed) good faith attempt to follow up on TLJ looks like and it reads a lot more satisfying that TROS.

*EDIT* And like...the ST clearly did have a pre-planned destination - it was Leia (with Rey's help) redeeming Kylo, with each film exploring Kylo's relationship with one of the three heroes of the OT (Han in TFA, Luke in TLJ, and Leia in IX). This was glaringly obvious the minute the credits rolled on TFA, and prior to Fisher's death this was being repeated up and down by almost everyone involved.

It's just that, you know, Fisher died right before TLJ was released and it left everyone scrambling.
 
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To my mind, Kylo dying as a tragic villain was also a viable option, and without Leia as an option it maybe became the easier one to write. Which would've been a hard sell for a lot of people, but that hardly invalidates a story on its own.
 
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