I just thought this was funny:
J.J. Abrams Reflects on 'Star Wars' and When It's Critical to Have a Plan
Uh huh. Look, now is not the time to realize, "Maybe you should plan trilogies in advance." The time for that would have been at least six years ago. And it's not like it was some major philosophical question with no right answer. If they had polled 100 Star Wars fans with the question, "Would you prefer a trilogy that was planned out in advance, or would you prefer we have multiple directors make up the story as they go along?" I bet nearly 100% of them would have agreed that a planned trilogy is best.
I apologize in advance, some of this is going to be a repeat of things I blogged before, and most of it will be incoherent ranting.
Look, I'm one of the biggest Star Wars apologists out there. The truth is, I like all the live action theatrical Star Wars movies. I love The Force Awakens, on its own. I like The Last Jedi, on its own (somewhat). I like Rise of Skywalker, on its own. I find all three installments of the sequel trilogy to be enjoyable in their own way.
But as a trilogy, it sucks. And the reason it sucks? It doesn't tell a cohesive story. To be fair, that's not necessarily a requirement for a trilogy. I mean, look at the prequel trilogy. Episode 1 is a standalone story telling the origin of Anakin, then parts 2 & 3 are their own two part story about the Clone Wars. But The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi set up plotlines that never really paid off in the end.
The Force Awakens is a great opener, and if the rest of the trilogy had actually followed the story it set up, the trilogy would have been awesome. Yeah, TFA is a little bit too similar to A New Hope in story structure, but it has a certain modern crispness that makes it the superior movie. It's like "A New Hope 2.0". It's the same way I feel about Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. The sequel is basically a high definition remake, and sometimes that's all it takes to make me happy. It may be lazy writing, but it makes the old feel new again.
The Rise of Skywalker spends too much time fixing The Last Jedi's mistakes, but it's so crammed full of action, I don't have time to care. Palpatine's resurrection comes out of nowhere, and it would have been nice if it had been foreshadowed earlier in the trilogy. But that's what happens when you write a trilogy by passing a baton. RoS feels closer to TFA than TLJ, making TLJ the oddball entry in the trilogy.
Some people say that Episode 9 would have been better if it had run with the threads set up by The Last Jedi, but I disagree. TLJ's ideas just weren't that great, and if they had kept going in that direction, I think the trilogy would have just sucked in a different way. It's easy to say, "If they'd used my ideas it would have been a better movie," when there's no way to prove it.
Yes, I'm aware of that "Duel of the Fates" script floating around the internet, and no I haven't read it. So I can't yet comment on whether it's a good alternate for Episode 9. But even if it's awesome, having a good script is still no guarantee of a good movie. (Though it definitely helps.) Let me remind you that both versions of Psycho are practically shot-for-shot identical, and yet one is a masterpiece while the other tanked.
As it is, The Force Awakens is a decent standalone film. The Last Jedi feels like the first part of a two-parter that never got finished. Rise of Skywalker is a fun standalone film, though it's a little bit overpacked with TLJ's baggage.
If I were to remake one, it wouldn't be Rise of Skywalker. I would remake The Last Jedi so that it explored who Snoke was, finally revealing that he was one of the failed clones of Palpatine, and hinting that more cloning attempts were still happening. I would allude to the shipyards of Exogol, so people wouldn't be so confused about where all these new Star Destroyers came from. I'd also throw in some hints that when Kylo tells Rey that she's no one, he's either lying or doesn't actually know.
In fact, these scenes could be added to TLJ with little effort, and a lot of other content could be cut. I, for one, could do without the mutiny subplot. With the right edits to TLJ (and a few minor cuts to RoS), we would have a cohesive trilogy that actually feels like it was planned.
Some people want to go so far as to declare the sequel trilogy non-canon. I see no reason to go that far. I look at it like a big budget TV series. Every series is going to have bad episodes. That doesn't mean we need to declare that the events of the episode didn't happen. "Thor: The Dark World" is arguably the worst of the MCU films, but it sets up some of the events in Infinity War and Endgame, so it's not like it should be declared non-canon. The events still happened, they're just not entertaining enough to rewatch as often.
Overturning canon should only be done if the events limit future installments. For example, 2018's Halloween sequel ignores most of the films in the franchise, because they contradicted the new story they wanted to tell. I would be delighted if somebody did the same for Aliens. Alien 3's plot actually prevented the series from going forward the way it should have. If they hadn't killed off the survivors of Aliens, there were a lot of possibilities in the future adventures of Ripley, Hicks, and/or a grown up Newt.
But whether you liked or hated the last couple of Star Wars movies, there's nothing in them that interferes with future installments. Yes, most of the main cast from the original trilogy died, but most of them were too old to be having a lot of sci-fi adventures anyway. A new trilogy would be set far enough in the future (or the past) that it would have a whole new cast, and there's nothing in the sequel trilogy that prevents that.
I still mostly blame the fans for the failure of the sequel trilogy. Everyone hated The Last Jedi when it came out. Don't deny it. You hated it. I know this because I was the only one who didn't hate it, and at the time, I searched all over the internet looking for people like me. I didn't imagine this. Heck, they say that one of the reasons Solo tanked is because people were still pissed about The Last Jedi.
Admit it: You hated The Last Jedi until the minute you saw Rise of Skywalker. Then suddenly you were like, "WHAT? But I LOVED The Last Jedi! Why didn't they use any of the ideas set up by The Last Jedi?" You fucking liar. If you really meant it, then you would have stood up for the movie when it actually mattered, and you would have gone to see Solo.
In general, I don't care if people agree with me about movies. Live and let live. If you like a movie I didn't, fine. If you hate a movie I like, fine. Sometimes I get a little annoyed if people hate one of my favorite movies, especially if their reasons for disliking it are based on a misconception. But I try not to hold it against them. And yet... people who hate Rise of Skywalker because it didn't follow The Last Jedi - honestly, that's one of my berserk buttons.
You had your chance to declare your love for TLJ. YOU. HAD. YOUR. CHANCE. You chose to remain silent while the rest of the internet raged against the movie. You sat quietly by while the studio took in audience input, and used that data to make a sequel that bowed more to fanservice. We can complain all we want about J. J. (which I assume stands for Jar Jar) Abrams not planning the trilogy ahead, but you're guilty too. By allowing Disney to think everyone hated The Last Jedi, you didn't plan ahead. You didn't stop to think about how audience reactions would shape the third film.
So I'll say it again - if liked The Last Jedi, but you didn't like Rise of Skywalker, it's your fucking fault, and I'd like to invite you to shut the hell up about it for good. At the very least, you could have gone to see Solo a few extra times. Maybe if Solo had done better, Disney wouldn't have panicked about the direction of the sequel trilogy.
But I digress. Here's the thing... before he got involved with Star Wars, J. J. Abrams was best known for his work on Lost. Everybody knows that Lost was full of setups without payoffs. They spent season after season throwing random crap at the wall to see what would stick, and while some of it looked planned, the writers really had no idea where they were going most of the time.
So when they handed The Force Awakens over to Abrams, it seems like somebody should have checked up on him. Maybe one of the higher ups at Disney should have called him once or twice and said, "Um, you do have a plan for the entire trilogy, right?" Look, I like Abrams. He's pretty good at making entertaining movies. But for a trilogy as important as Star Wars, he should not be left unsupervised. This "pass the flashlight" method of storytelling is fine for some franchises, but not for Star Wars.
But hopefully the article above means that they've learned their lesson. If they do film another Star Wars trilogy (as opposed to standalone films), maybe they'll plan out the story in advance.
We can only hope.
