The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and What It Means to Be a Good Sequel

[Nick Calandra]

Not sure if many of the forums users have been introduced to this column by Darren Mooney yet, but it's posted on Monday and Friday and I think it's consistently an interesting read each time.

This week's is exceptionally good and I think it's gonna lend to some great discussion here. It's gotten a lot of attention on Twitter which is super cool to see.

Have a read and let's discuss.

The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and What It Means to Be a Good Sequel

Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker spark debate of how to make a good sequel. It involves finding new ways to explore familiar concepts.

www.escapistmagazine.com

 

[SupahEwok]

I like Darren's stuff, except that he thinks Solo was a bad movie and Last Jedi was a great one, so I generally don't read his Star Wars-focused articles.

 

[Breakdown]

As the middle film of a trilogy, the Last Jedi should build audience anticipation for the final instalment. If the Rise of Skywalker underperformed at the box office, that's at least partly due to audience dissatisfaction with the preceding film.

It's like I stopped watching Star Trek Discovery after episode seven. I can't say that episode eight was a particularly bad episode, or worse than seven, but I was so disappointed with the series up to that point that I had no interest in watching the next episode.

 

[BrawlMan]

Not sure if many of the forums users have been introduced to this column by Darren Mooney yet, but it's posted on Monday and Friday and I think it's consistently an interesting read each time.

This week's is exceptionally good and I think it's gonna lend to some great discussion here. It's gotten a lot of attention on Twitter which is super cool to see.

Have a read and let's discuss.

The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and What It Means to Be a Good Sequel

Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker spark debate of how to make a good sequel. It involves finding new ways to explore familiar concepts.

www.escapistmagazine.com

Quick question, how do you get your links to look like that? As for as Last Jedi, I liked it. Rise was good, despite its problems, and I did not care for Solo at all.

 

[gorfias]

For me, I was forewarned how bad "Last Jedi" was so I, a Star Wars fanatic, did not go. I can believe "Rise" was even worse. Darren's column does bring up some interesting stuff. The Last Jedi went in different directions without trying to over write Force Awakens. Rise was a retreat. But all of this stems from one of the most bizarre movie business models to have ever been put into action. A $4 billion property set out to make a trilogy with no road map. At all. It can be done. The O.G. ran into bumps that changed things: Ford wanted out but had become the fan favorite to become a love interest rather than Luke. This had no such bumps or excuse.

ITMT: Last Jedi chickened out on some interesting things. Johnson supposedly wanted to end the light/dark dichotomy but that doesn't happen. He almost succeeded in having Ray be a nobody. That the Force is something you can acquire without it being in your lineage.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Quick question, how do you get your links to look like that? As for as Last Jedi, I liked it. Rise was good, despite its problems, and I did not care for Solo at all.

You just post the link outside of text and it should work. Didn't do anything special!

 

[BrawlMan]

Thanks.

 

[Palindromemordnilap]

ITMT: Last Jedi chickened out on some interesting things. Johnson supposedly wanted to end the light/dark dichotomy but that doesn't happen. He almost succeeded in having Ray be a nobody. That the Force is something you can acquire without it being in your lineage.

It annoys me that this seems to becoming more prevalent as an attitude in movies. That you have to be related to someone special to be special yourself. Rise of Skywalker jumped all over it, the Fantastic Beasts films have been doing it...
Like, I know thats kinda how it works in the real world where who you know is often more important than actual aptitude but at least try and frame it as a bad thing if you're going for the social commentary angle

 

[gorfias]

It annoys me that this seems to becoming more prevalent as an attitude in movies. That you have to be related to someone special to be special yourself. Rise of Skywalker jumped all over it, the Fantastic Beasts films have been doing it...
Like, I know thats kinda how it works in the real world where who you know is often more important than actual aptitude but at least try and frame it as a bad thing if you're going for the social commentary angle

There is a component to it. It helps to come from, say, a family with lots of athletes in it to become one yourself. But it really isn't quite the big deal they make it. (To my knowledge, the kids of Foreman, Ali and Fraser did not make it particularly far in boxing themselves, even when they tried). I hate even worse the foretold chosen one trope. Batman wasn't "chosen". He is a human being who no doubt has some good genes but worked his ass off to become what he becomes. We see this in real life every day with athletes, soldiers, scientists, etc.

 

[Asita]

There is a component to it. It helps to come from, say, a family with lots of athletes in it to become one yourself. But it really isn't quite the big deal they make it. (To my knowledge, the kids of Foreman, Ali and Fraser did not make it particularly far in boxing themselves, even when they tried). I hate even worse the foretold chosen one trope. Batman wasn't "chosen". He is a human being who no doubt has some good genes but worked his ass off to become what he becomes. We see this in real life every day with athletes, soldiers, scientists, etc.

More to the point, the actual driving point of it narratively isn't about cosmic nepotism, it's simple fanservice, invoking nostalgia for the prior installments as a quick nod to the audience with the intent of getting a "NO WAY!" response out of them. For illustrative purposes, think about Wolverine's appearance in X-Men: First Class. Jackman's screentime in that film amounted to 15 seconds and one line. It's a cameo whose sole narrative purpose is to make the audience go "Oh my god, that's Logan!"

And bringing it back around, Abrams has a bit of a fondness for fanservice like that. Think for a minute on Star Trek: Into Darkness. There's no good narrative reason for the Harrison/Khan switcheroo. The only person in-universe that the name "Khan" would mean anything to is Future Spock. We get that "My. Name. Is. Khan!" scene purely to get an "Holy hell!" moment out of the audience. Because the name "Khan" carries weight with Star Trek fans. It means something to the audience that it doesn't to anyone (except Spock) in the film. It's the same reason that Chewie gets a medal in Rise. It's something there purely as a nod to fans' scuttlebutt about how Chewbacca never got a medal in a New Hope. It's the same reason that Palpatine came out of nowhere to be the big bad of Rise. It's the same reason that Rey adopts the Skywalker name at the end, despite her only proper mentor using the surname Organa.

As you might surmise, this tendency has given me a bit of a distaste for Abrams working on extant IPs.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I gotta say, it's impressive just how retcon-y RoS got.

like, if I were planning out a Star Wars marathon and had to include Rise of Skywalker, The Last Jedi would probably be the second movie I cut for time. I absolutely adore TLJ but it has no bearing on RoS or how it plays out.

 

[SilentPony]

I gotta say, it's impressive just how retcon-y RoS got.

like, if I were planning out a Star Wars marathon and had to include Rise of Skywalker, The Last Jedi would probably be the second movie I cut for time. I absolutely adore TLJ but it has no bearing on RoS or how it plays out.

The new trilogy had a real fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plot. It felt very committee designed, as if they were doing script re-writes on set.
"Hey what if Rey could do this?"
"What if Fynn just said this? You know, for the trailer!"
"We need Poe to not be gay so the Chinese like us"

No one movie ever felt like a set up for the next one. what happens in TFA barely had anything to do with TLJ which had nothing to do with RoS. If you told me they were three completely separate scripts written by different people roughly adapted to be a star wars trilogy I would believe it.

 

[Dalisclock]

The new trilogy had a real fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plot. It felt very committee designed, as if they were doing script re-writes on set.
"Hey what if Rey could do this?"
"What if Fynn just said this? You know, for the trailer!"
"We need Poe to not be gay so the Chinese like us"

No one movie ever felt like a set up for the next one. what happens in TFA barely had anything to do with TLJ which had nothing to do with RoS. If you told me they were three completely separate scripts written by different people roughly adapted to be a star wars trilogy I wou
ld believe it.

Wait, that's not what happened? Because while I haven't seen RoS(and not sure I want to), I've seen and read enough to feel that none of this feels planned at all. So far the entire sequel trilogy feels written in isolated episodes with apparently no regard for what happened in the previous film(aside from the resisty being on the ropes at the beginning of TJL) or what will happen in the next.

This includes TFA, BTW, which felt like it did a piss poor job explaining just how the New Republic dropped the ball so bad to let the Empire reorganize and build a seemingly inexhaustible fleet of massive ships(and a mega-death star) and then getting totally caught with their pants down. We went from "YAY, We beat the Empire!" at the end of ROTJ to "Opps, we're the underdog again" in TFA and all that's changed is a generation. Apparently you had to have been reading the novels to get the backstory on that, because the movies pretty much don't bother to explain it.

Though apparently RoS pulled two gianormous fleets out of their ass because....reasons, which leads to this whole "If you're gonna just invent fleets ex nilhilo, why should i take you seriously?" feeling.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Breakdown]

As far as I know, JJ Abrams did come up with a plan for the trilogy but with enough creative room for subsequent directors to have some input into the narrative. Rian Johnson and the Star Wars story group inherited a greater degree of creative freedom thanks to the success of TFA, and chose to go their own way, despite Colin Trevorrow wanting to stick to the plan for the third film. Trevorrow lost out in the politics that followed and got fired, Abrams came back for the third film to try to salvage his story arc but his hands were tied by interference from Disney after the poor reception of TLJ and Solo.

 

[BrawlMan]

. All the Extended Universe stuff that featured his clones and what not was always some of the silliest and weakest EU stuff, and pulling that in an official sequel felt just as cheap, silly and weird as one might expect.

Which makes it all the more confusing, because Disney purse all the EU stuff; even the good ones. Granted, I was not into the expanding universe, but it feels hypocritical to purge all the silly/baf stuff and doing the same damn thing. I say this and I like the sequel trilogy. Especially Last Jedi.

In the grand scheme of things of the Star Wars universe now, you might as well just say this:

 

[Dalisclock]

For me personally, the question why I should take anything in RoS seriously came as soon as Palpatine was revealed. All the Extended Universe stuff that featured his clones and what not was always some of the silliest and weakest EU stuff, and pulling that in an official sequel felt just as cheap, silly and weird as one might expect.

Totally agree on that as well. For some reason that particular bit of stupidity had slipped my mind, but the "Last Order getting new fleets and tech from nowhere" has been a consistent problem for the entire trilogy, while Palpy coming back via clones was a RoS only bit of idiocy.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Last Jedi was a very good movie and probably the best out of the new Star Wars movies. There's an argument to be made Rogue One might be better but the very least Last Jedi is by far the best of the new trilogy. It played with the conventions of the series without quite breaking them. Between Rogue One and Last Jedi it seemed, for a moment, like the series was actually about to evolve but between Solo and fucking Rise of Skywalker they threw away everything the previous movies have accomplished. It's disheartening.

It annoys me that this seems to becoming more prevalent as an attitude in movies. That you have to be related to someone special to be special yourself. Rise of Skywalker jumped all over it, the Fantastic Beasts films have been doing it...
Like, I know thats kinda how it works in the real world where who you know is often more important than actual aptitude but at least try and frame it as a bad thing if you're going for the social commentary angle

It doesn't surprise me one bit that J.J. Abrams, a man of no discernible talent, but a pair of television and film producers as parents, would be uncomfortable with the idea of Rey coming from nowhere and not being related to someone important.

 

[Gordon_4]

They may have been able to mitigate questions of the fleet’s origin if instead of making up Xogol or however it was spelt, they had used Korriban/Morriban. As the ancient home world of the Sith from basically every other piece of Star Wars media.

I also think it was a bit of bullshit to make Rey related to Palpatine - his presence alone doesn't bother me - but Rey coming from nowhere and nothing but because circumstances or the Force allowed her to be put in a position to do something great she became great is a much better story. It’s a real shame they didn’t do more with the three of them because Ridley, Boyega and Issac has good chemistry together. Issac in particular is like a walking ball of charisma. Ridely has this utterly earnest and disarming charm about her and Boyega showed for my money a lot of range.

Mind, Mandalorian was great and new Star Wars movies being divorced from the Skywalkers is the best choice they can make. So I’m pretty keen to see The High Republic in all its glory.

 

[Trunkage]

As far as I know, JJ Abrams did come up with a plan for the trilogy but with enough creative room for subsequent directors to have some input into the narrative. Rian Johnson and the Star Wars story group inherited a greater degree of creative freedom thanks to the success of TFA, and chose to go their own way, despite Colin Trevorrow wanting to stick to the plan for the third film. Trevorrow lost out in the politics that followed and got fired, Abrams came back for the third film to try to salvage his story arc but his hands were tied by interference from Disney after the poor reception of TLJ and Solo.

Yeah, I would NOT call TFA a creative success. It was a financial success based on nostalgia rather than any plot or characterisation. They retroactive demoted Han back to what he was before he met Leia and Luke based on nostalgic feels. Luke turned into Obi-wan, hiding away from his mistakes and turning his back on his friends and the galaxy. Leia was still a rebel. But now a general. Such character growth! She didn’t show much to PROVE she should be a general but hey... Star Wars has always been about archetypes and not about nuanced characters.

Yes the Last Jedi doesn’t match the rest of the trilogy. That’s because JJ gave Johnson a turdburger with no substance or soul. Last Jedi maybe the best of the trilogy but does not score high marks for me. I can’t even call it good. But the other two are way worse.

As for ‘saving’ the franchise... Abrams is not the person for that critical role. He’s too worried about mystery boxes to worry about plot or people. And his answers to his mysteries are usually woeful

PS Force Awakens is the worst Star Wars movie, outside the Ewok movies. I’d prefer to watch the Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones again. At least they were trying to make a good movie then