I think the thing that annoys me the most is that even though I have no desire to see episode 9, I know that I am still going to give Disney my money to see this because it's Star Wars.

It's pretty much consensus that Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are straight trash movies, barring a few awesome scenes, but at least the world building was great enough that good things spun off of it.
The sequels were movies that I enjoyed watching but have zero desire ever to rewatch. They are better versions of Transformers or Fast and the Furious movies. Mindless popcorn flicks that have cool visuals without any substance behind them.

 

The thing that put me off Disney Star Wars was that when people pointed out how Rey was a Mary Sue, this was countered with accusations of sexism. It happened even here on DLP in the TLJ thread. Because obviously, the only reason to dislike a female character in [current year] is sexism. And then Kathleen Kennedy, Rian Johnson, and Daisy Ridley all doubled down on it.

I was on board for TFA, I really was. It was a blatant ANH ripoff and inexplicably reset the universe to Empire vs Rebels again, ignoring everything that happened in the OT. The film had problems before the crawl even finished. But okay.

TLJ was a masterclass in how to turn half your fanbase away.

 

In other words, the course correction after TLJ is to double down on nostalgia and bring as many old actors as possible. Considering the general reaction after the trailer, it's probably the right direction for now.

 

Maybe it's too tinfoil, but the trailer kinda plays like a retcon of TLJ. Rian broke the saber? Repair it. Rian broke Kylo's helmet? Fix'd. Rian said "let the past die"? Let's bring back Lando. And the Death Star, again. Rian killed off our new Emperor? Bring back the old one.

If the film just tries to play catchup with what people didn't like about TLJ, it'll end up completely aimless. We can write our own retcon fanfic. Fuck sake, do your own thing. Own the Disney shit JarJar, you stepped in it. Open your fucking mystery box for once.

 

In fairness, he wasn't left a whole pile to work with.

 

TLJ had problems but the one thing I really liked about it was that it wasn't just a rehash of fan-service like TFA was. The fact that it pissed off OT fans was a merit badge, as far as I'm concerned. If 9 just ends up as JJ Abrams giving the OT fans a hand job again like he did last time, it'll be a real disappointment.

 

How about some middle ground between "remaking an OT movie but worse" and "trying so hard to be different you forget to make a compelling movie". When you subvert a trope you're supposed to replace it with something interesting or satisfying, but Rian Johnson got half way through that process with TLJ and gave up, figuring that the novelty by itself was enough.

 

The horrible truth. Ben is Luke and Leia's son.
...Here's some space bleach to wash out that stain on your force-soul.

 

This just popped up in r/starwarsspeculation.

 

Maybe I'm just crazy, but I'd vastly prefer a good movie that sticks rigidly to formula over a shit movie that totally defies it.

The best would be a good movie that defies formula, of course, but that's not exactly in the cards here.

 

Personally, I think the biggest problem with TLJ is that it was the middle act of a trilogy.

If they'd given Johnson his own standalone film in the "A Star Wars Story" line I'm sure he could've had a blast making his own story that subverts all our expectations without needing to fit it into what comes before or after it. Or heck, give him one of the much-beloved and wished for fanboy projects that will never happen like a film adaptation of KotOR II. I bet Johnson would absolutely LOVE doing a dark deconstructionist take on the Star Wars mythos. Want to subvert our expectations? Make a Star Wars story where our wise old mentor is a Sith Lord, and suggest that the Force is actually horrible and the galaxy would be better off if it didn't exist.

As the middle act of a trilogy, TLJ is probably going to feel very much like the odd man out. If the trailer and publicity is anything to judge by, "The Rise of Skywalker" could just as easily be titled "Course Correction." Regardless of its creative merits or lack thereof TLJ damaged the profitability of the brand, and The House of Mouse of can't have that. Maybe Abrams will manage to make a coherent trilogy out of what Johnson gave him to work with, but it's going to be very hard to make TFA, TLJ, and TRoS feel like they all belong together.

 

Johnson would’ve done great on a kotor film.

 

Obviously, the latter would be best, but I worry that JJ will just want to mollify the complainers rather than do anything daring.

TLJ did a lot, and it'd be better, imo, to build that into something good than to try to reverse it all. Because then what was the point?

 

For sure. One of the biggest issues with The Force Awakens was that it was in such a hurry to repeat the original movie that it functionally retconned the original trilogy out of existence.

I'm fully expecting Abrams to do the same with The Last Jedi too, being honest. It's an inherent problem with Disney's create-by-committee process for Star Wars and the lack of a single unifying vision for the trilogy beyond "make lots of money". The committee's consensus changes as the people on it do, and that pushes them to retcon and invalidate.

It's not helped any that Abrams is a total hack, fundamentally incapable as a director (and somehow even worse as a writer), who doesn't seem to get how narratives work, especially when he's not in total control of the setting.

 

Honestly, I don't think the problem is with the Star Wars Story Group. After all, they're behind a lot of the good stuff going on with the animated shows. The problem is with the directors.

JJ loves the originals too much, and he's not got the originality needed to do anything new; he was incapable of anything except homage. RJ was the opposite. Daring, too daring, but unable to execute.

What they needed was someone like Dave Filoni.

 

I'm not trying to say the create by committee process can't succeed (if it couldn't, they wouldn't do it), but it also directly leads to a lack of consistency. There's no singular vision, no set definition for "this is star wars", now that Lucas is no longer involved, and it's reflected in their output.

This isn't in and of itself a bad thing, as different works with wildly different "feels" are not a bad thing for an IP, but it's very much a problem when all three entries in the same trilogy have wildly different tone, themes, narrative styles, and a total lack of overarching narrative.

The problem, ultimately, is that the sequel trilogy has no unifying vision, because it was split between multiple directors, writers, and producers, who all got a seat on the design committee and therefore couldn't be brought to heel. It's the worst aspects of the prequels' creative process (no one could tell Lucas "no"), spread over a dozen or so different people, and it made the sequel trilogy into an incoherent mess of shitty movie after shitty movie.

They really needed to simply appoint a single person as "god of star wars", at least when it comes to the movie trilogy, and given them supreme veto powers.

 

Exactly this. From everything that's been heard/seen the Star Wars brand is pivoting hard into OT nostalgia, probably because the brand image for the new trilogy is in bad shape while the OT has 40 years of nostalgia to prop it up. Even before the TLJ mess the new Trilogy's merchandise has not sold well, which at least to me is a pretty big warning sign that it's characters haven't had the same staying power as the originals.

With the benefit of several years of hindsight, what Disney probably should've done is keep Lucas on as a creative consultant/big ideas man to provide the big unifying vision while letting Kennedy handle the day-to-day running of the business and the individual directors/writers/producers/etc actually make the movies. They were so eager to distance themselves from the lingering stain of the prequels and establish Disney Star Wars as its own thing with no input from Lucas that they forgot that 90% of the issues with the prequels could've been fixed by having someone who could challenge Lucas's bad ideas and letting someone else write and direct the dialogue (or just use the OT route of having the actors ad-lib whenever the scripted dialogue was a case of, as Ford once put it, "You can type this shit, but you can't say it.").

Just look at Revenge of the Sith, which is by far the best of the prequels in part because Lucas cut down the amount of scripted dialogue in favor of purely visual storytelling, and hired someone else to coach the actors on line delivery. That's not to say that there are no problems with its dialogue, but it was a step in the right direction.

 

Whatever else might be said about the teaser, I'm amused by how many people appear to genuinely believe that Palpatine's laughter is actually Luke somehow turned evil.

 

That’s Luuke Skywalker to you.

 

If they do that without Mara Jade, I'll be pissed.