well... (Off-Topic)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, November 28, 2022, 16:58 (725 days ago) @ Kermit

I still lay everything at the feet of JJ. He made a lazy, if still serviceable, first film in a trilogy that set up mystery boxes with no good answers. How would you have handled Luke after The Force Awakens? There’s no good answer, because he’s in hiding not dealing with the problem he helped create (hey, just like Yoda and Obi-wan were doing in the OT!). That was JJ’s decision, and the reason for everything that follows.

Maybe so. I saw the Force Awakes as doing the safest thing possible, which was remake the original movie. I liked it okay. I think they screwed up the trilogy by making it up as they went along. From what I understand, that's Abrams' style.

Pretty much this. Trying to make a trilogy with no cohesive plan.

There are certainly large chunks of The Last Jedi I'd toss or rework. The long boring space chase. The casino planet side quest that went nowhere. But, I never thought it necessary to make big change's to Luke's story. The problems there were less what happened as how that part of the story was approached.

In The Force Awakens, the ultimate goal is to find Luke Skywalker. Making finding our old hero the beginning and end of the movie and doing that triumphant shot on the top of the cliffs set expectations of finding a hero or at least a mentor who was willing to help. When Luke tossed the lighsaber in The Last Jedi, it felt like a betrayal. Because he'd been built up in the previous movie as someone worth finding. There was also very little follow through. Luke saving the day on the salt planet saved our sequel heroes... but barely factored in beyond that. The third movie, beyond being an insulting mess of terrible writing, basically ignored everything in the 2nd one.

I liked Hermit Luke and his reasons for staying away. I liked that he addressed the idea that some of the Jedi Code and the whole "you're either Light or Dark" ideals were stupid. I liked his return where he actually did save the day as one Jedi holding a laser sword staring down the empire... or whatever that quote was. I really liked his scene with Yoda, where his somewhat goofy master reminded him that failure wasn't the end.

To me, it wasn't that Luke was taken in a direction I didn't expect. It was he was taken in a direction that nobody on the writing team thought was important enough to foreshadow. If Rey had been sent to find Luke but with the knowledge that she would need to be the light to pull him out of his self-imposed exile... it might have been a more interesting movie. If the whole Knights of Ren plot had first been given some screen time or a tv show or its own movie, MCU-style, I would have much better enjoyed where Luke was coming from. Instead, they went for the shock value of that lightsaber toss with nothing to support it.

All that said, the Sequel Trilogy is just soo messed up that it's hard to lay the blame at the feat of either director, entirely. It sure would have been nice to have a actual antagonist main villain. Instead of Snoke who barely got any screen time and who was discarded 2/3rds of the way in to make room for the villain from a generation ago who should have definitely been kept dead. It would have been nice if our side characters were given something important to do. It would have been nice if our new heroes were the stars instead of them always having to play second fiddle to Luke, Han, and Leia...

I'm glad Star Wars is able to find slots in its timeline to make cool shows and movies. There are shows and movies I adore... but on the whole, I kinda don't like the franchise!