Poll Did the sequel trilogy add anything meaningful to the saga?

[Owain Taggart]

I didn't see a need to use the term 'stormtroopers' or to have Star Destroyers or any of that. Granted, I understand the First Order was led by ex-Imperials or Imperial sympathizers, but I still wish there had been more visual differentiation.

As far as I could tell, the Stormtroopers were slightly different in their design, a bit sleeker, and some of the Star Destroyers were a little thinner, but that seems to be pretty much the extent of it. I guess they felt they couldn't stray too far from the iconic looks. I'd have made Poe's X-Wing look more advanced, maybe a bit sleeker.

If you want to go way back; a jetpack was present back when what became the Boba Fett design was still going to be an Imperial Super Commando, so circa 1978/79.

I was more specifically talking about Stormtrooper types. Finn remarks "They can fly now?" which marks it as first time seen in one of movies.

One of the positive things that I think it added is something that many of the haters dislike, the inclusion of more diversity in the characters.

Yeah, I did like that. That is one thing they did a good job on. I'd maybe even have gone further by having alien characters as part of the main cast of characters. Strangely, with all the advances in cgi and makeup work, most of the aliens we see in the ST are in the background rather than in the foreground. Highlighting some of the major alien species from the SW Galaxy would have been fun.

 

[DarKush]

One of the positive things that I think it added is something that many of the haters dislike, the inclusion of more diversity in the characters. I love the fact that none of the hero leads in the sequels are white males. Compared to the pale sausage fest that was A New Hope, the new trilogy showed a much more diverse and realistic GFFA than how it started out as.

As much as I love Daisy Ridley as Rey, I like to think about the alternate universe where Jessica Henwick got the role and there wasn't a single Caucasian in the entire hero triumvirate. Just imagine the YouTube hate videos.

When I heard that Jessica Henwick had been up for the role I wished she had gotten it-though I did like Daisy Ridley-or if nothing else, that they had created a special role for Henwick. I heard she was in the sequels, but it must be a blink and miss it role.

One of the better things about the Disney films is that they have diversified the human characters in both the Resistance (also the Rebellion with Rogue One) and the First Order. That being said, diversifying is only the first step. I think Disney failed-especially when it comes to Finn (I've went on at length about that in other threads) and to a lesser extent with Rey and Dameron-in creating compelling characters. I could feel more comfortable with allowing Disney to pat itself on the back if it had also diversified it's heroes and across the board but also gave us more three-dimensional characters.

 

[Reverend]

I was more specifically talking about Stormtrooper types. Finn remarks "They can fly now?" which marks it as first time seen in one of movies.

Yeah, which is pretty much what the Imperial Super Commandos were going to be for what eventually became tESB. I'm just saying the concept of flying Stormtroopers predates either the games or the animated shows, the former of which most likely being the inspiration for it's inclusion here, not the latter.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ahh, I see.. In any case, I was surprised it took them that long to do it, and to wait until the 9th movie too. I would have introduced them in TFA. But I liked the implementation, which was nearly identical to how they appeared in The Force Unleashed 2.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Seeing as Boba and Jango Fett had jetpacks on their outfits, it’s not unreasonable for stormtroopers also to have them.

 

[fireproof78]

So did 'The Crystal Star'. Quantitative does not mean qualitative.

At this point I think that "qualitative" is subjective. For me, the high point of this series, what is additive, is the spiritual sense. Building up the Sith more (because we don't really know what they are in the PT), highlighting the flaws of the Jedi, as well as their strengths.

The rest probably is superficial, but it's the deeper spiritual meaning that adds more for me in the superficial, if that makes sense.

Don't you see him as a lead?

Co-Lead, maybe. And he's not white. He's Latino.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Poe is a white male. Don't you see him as a lead?

Oscar Isaac is Latino.

 

[STEPhon IT]

A simple question. Do you think that the sequel trilogy added anything to the saga?

I've wanted to ask this question for two years now, ever since I saw The Last Jedi and felt that it didn't add anything substantial to the Skywalker saga. Then I thought… I'll wait two years to see if they redeem themselves with Episode IX. Personally, with The Rise of Skywalker now out and the saga complete, I don't think that we got a trilogy that enriched the saga as a whole.

The prequel trilogy, though it could have been done better, did give us quite a bit with the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, the rise of the empire, the development of some familiar characters, and so much more which lead right up to the original trilogy. But what did the sequel trilogy really offer? Sure, we got to see some old faces but what else did it really accomplish? Maybe you have some answers but I don't have much.

The new trilogy had nothing to offer and these things proved it was never thought out and Kathleen Kennedy and the gang (JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, & Colin Trevorrow) didn't want to take risks like the prequels did-- and was critically badgered for -- and they hoped to mold it to the Disney brand. In order to do that which I thought was a major MAJOR mistake was to neuter the characters we loved, from the original Star Wars of course, and make them a pathetic reflection of themselves; never to enjoying the fruits of victory and living happily ever after but to live the rest of their tired, old lives fighting a never ending war... until their deaths which were done in the sh*ttiest tastes imaginable. The new trilogy was not how a company like Disney should treat their new property and those iconic characters.

What I got from these horrible manufactured cluster f^cks of a series of movies were a woman and young girl doesn't need or rely or get guidance from any male gender whatsoever. A growing girl can be self reliant on her own, teach herself things which would be complicated for any human or alien in the galaxy but can simply test run the Millennium Falcon and seconds later master it, and also master the force without much of anything. We can muster whatever comes forth because we are entitled to it, and perseverance to achieve a goal, you know like something to earn, is something for the boys. We are female and we are just better than men... not because it's true but because this terrible trilogy say we are.

What is wrong with being a mother, what is wrong with being a nurturer??? There's nothing heroic about a female raising a child and teaching them to be a noble person??? The #metoo, and #timesup movement has shrouded Star Wars and I feel has divided viewers and fans like myself, and what it's telling young kids' minds about themselves. George Lucas always put women in a good light I thought and made them heroic as much as the guys but Kathleen Kennedy's vision had us girls... Oops! Excuse me. ...us "WOMEN" doing most of the heavy lifting while the guys did... practically nothing. Even the main villain who I first saw stopped laser beams in mid air was pretty powerful but got his ass handed to him in every movie by a "young woman" who's a bad ass not through any real character development but... just because. The Kathleen Kennedy trilogy's legacy was destroying my suspension of disbelief, I just could not buy or accept anything which was seen on the screen from these new characters especially Rey. Even at the end of the "Rise of Rey" I was appalled at her claiming the Skywalker's name, impersonating an identity --which everyone knows who watched the movie-- does not belong to her and robbing that image of Luke looking at the two suns of a new hope once made iconic.

A clear statement to say f^ck Luke and his legacy, it's Rey's legacy now, and whatever spawns come from her Palpatine bloodline... her children will be living a lie... like, the notion in this new trilogy, all women are better than the opposite sex. Star Wars is better than this agenda driven brown mass of feces, and Disney is better than this sh*t.

 

[Scherazade]

The simple answer is no. The sequel trilogy added nothing substantial to the saga. This is evident by one thing: The state of the Star Wars galaxy is almost exactly the same at the end of TROS as it was at the end of ROTJ.

ROTJ: The Emperor is defeated and the Empire is defeated or on the way to a final defeat.
TROS: The Emperor is defeated and the First Order is defeated or on the way to a final defeat.

ROTJ: A Skywalker redeems himself and dies along the way.
TROS: A Skywalker redeems himself and dies along the way.

ROTJ: The Rebellion is triumphant and ready to get started on building a New Republic.
TROS: The Resistance is triumphant and ready to get started on building a New New Republic.

ROTJ: A lone Jedi survives, ready to rebuild the Order and continue to bring balance to the Force.
TROS: A lone Jedi survives, ready to rebuild the Order and continue to bring balance to the Force.

The only thing that makes the ending not 100% the same is that there are no Skywalkers or Solos left. They've all been killed off. Since the state of the galaxy is the same, the new characters are now going to embark on stories that the old characters should've already done. But there's no reason to hear those stories since they failed so monumentally at it. Why read stories about Luke figuring out how to build a New Jedi Order when it gets destroyed and all his students killed? Now they can just tell those stories with Rey instead of Luke, since she will succeed where Luke failed.

The ST also introduced a bunch of ideas and concepts that retroactively damage the cohesiveness of the world, but that's a whole other list.

The biggest problem is that no one at Disney seemed to have a narrative vision of what to do with the Star Wars. I'm under the impression that Disney leaders, including Bob Iger, didn't want to do new things as it was too risky. And JJ Abrams wanted to replicate Star Wars as he loved it, which meant regressing the characters and the galaxy backwards in a way that defies logic and was incredibly shortsighted.

 

[Xerxes82]

When I heard that Jessica Henwick had been up for the role I wished she had gotten it-though I did like Daisy Ridley-or if nothing else, that they had created a special role for Henwick. I heard she was in the sequels, but it must be a blink and miss it role.

She's one of the X-wing pilots flying the attack on Starkiller base during TFA. So it's quite a small role. I think we actually see more of Hermione Corfield's Tallie in TLJ than we see of Henwick in TFA.

Even at the end of the "Rise of Rey" I was appalled at her claiming the Skywalker's name, impersonating an identity --which everyone knows who watched the movie-- does not belong to her and robbing that image of Luke looking at the two suns of a new hope once made iconic.

Going to be honest, this is baffling to me. She was effectively raised by Luke and Leia. In every meaningful way they are her adoptive parents. Does that mean you think adopted kids should never be allowed to take the name of the family that adopted and raised them?

I mean, we can debate how well executed the arc was if you want. That's fair. But this statement is so hyperbolic that it borders on the hysterical.

 

[Campe]

But this statement is so hyperbolic that it borders on the hysterical.

Welcome to the internet.

 

[BillJ]

The new trilogy had nothing to offer and these things proved it was never thought out and Kathleen Kennedy and the gang (JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, & Colin Trevorrow) didn't want to take risks like the prequels did--

They didn't want to take chances, or Disney forbid them from taking chances? Disney is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. These movies don't get made without their cash.

 

[DigificWriter]

Disney doesn't tell - and has never told - Lucasfilm what to do.

Kathleen Kennedy reports to Bob Iger since he's the CEO of Disney and is therefore Lucasfilm's distributor, but she is otherwise free to make all decisions for Lucasfilm independently.

 

[Gaith]

George Lucas always put women in a good light I thought and made them heroic as much as the guys

Come on, now, that just isn't true. Yes, OT Leia had her moments, mostly in ANH and the first half of ESB, but she was largely sidelined in RotJ, and Padme spent most of RotS standing around before dying of a broken heart despite Leia having told us she remembered her "real" mother - and these were pretty much the only women of significance (apart from the purely maternal figures Aunt Beru/Shmi) in his whole six films. I happen to agree that Rey was too powerful too soon, and the way Johnson and Dern portrayed Holdo (not to mention Leia hitting Poe) did strike me as mocking the males in the audience, but George is no uncomplicated feminist hero, not by a long shot.

 

[fireproof78]

Welcome to the internet.

Pretty much renders discussion quite difficult

 

[Kor]

One thing I wish the ST had done is to really show us this fancy New Republic from the get-go. Give us a better sense of what exactly came of all the heroic escapades of the Alliance to Restore the Republic thirty-five or so years prior. Do we have a thriving, prosperous galactic community that has gotten kind of complacent about possible threats to galactic security? Or do we have a loose coalition that barely manages to hold together cohesively, and is too worried about internal problems and bickering to notice external threats? I understand some of the new books described the New Republic more, but from the movies themselves we simply don't know!

What we got instead with the "Resistance" out in the galactic badlands just seemed to echo the situation of the OT-era Rebellion too closely, and make it look like nothing really changed in the last three decades. The Republic is name-dropped a couple times, but we don't really get a sense of what's at stake, since we once again have this ragtag group of misfits out in the galactic rim, now making guerrilla runs against some Imperial-wannabe upstarts. Then when the Death Star Mk. III destroys some New Republic planets and capital ships with its Giant Plasma Weapon of Doom (tm), we don't really care, since we were never really made to care in the first place, and the situation of the protagonists themselves hasn't really changed.

I would have loved to have been immersed in this hard-won peaceful New Republic, and then have that world unexpectedly uprooted and shattered by the First Order (or whoever).

Kor

 

[Owain Taggart]

One thing I wish the ST had done is to really show us this fancy New Republic from the get-go. Give us a better sense of what exactly came of all the heroic escapades of the Alliance to Restore the Republic thirty-five or so years prior.

Yes! That was one of my main peeves. No real sense of time or scale from the aftermath of ROTJ. Just drops us into a conflict that we're supposed to just accept. There was just too little continued background development and worldbuilding in general, which in turn made me care less about what the characters were going through and feel less invested with what was going on. Where were the stakes? It felt like the characters were going through the motions, but unless the characters knew something we as viewers didn't, I felt like I didn't get a clear idea of what exactly they were fighting for, their motivations ,etc. I was willing to give them a benefit of doubt after TLJ, but I was already starting to feel like it wasn't really leading us anywhere. And then we have Palps jumping out of his Jack-in-the-box, which I felt was like salt to the wound.

 

[Gov Kodos]

One thing I wish the ST had done is to really show us this fancy New Republic from the get-go. Give us a better sense of what exactly came of all the heroic escapades of the Alliance to Restore the Republic thirty-five or so years prior. Do we have a thriving, prosperous galactic community that has gotten kind of complacent about possible threats to galactic security? Or do we have a loose coalition that barely manages to hold together cohesively, and is too worried about internal problems and bickering to notice external threats? I understand some of the new books described the New Republic more, but from the movies themselves we simply don't know!

What we got instead with the "Resistance" out in the galactic badlands just seemed to echo the situation of the OT-era Rebellion too closely, and make it look like nothing really changed in the last three decades. The Republic is name-dropped a couple times, but we don't really get a sense of what's at stake, since we once again have this ragtag group of misfits out in the galactic rim, now making guerrilla runs against some Imperial-wannabe upstarts. Then when the Death Star Mk. III destroys some New Republic planets and capital ships with its Giant Plasma Weapon of Doom (tm), we don't really care, since we were never really made to care in the first place, and the situation of the protagonists themselves hasn't really changed.

I would have loved to have been immersed in this hard-won peaceful New Republic, and then have that world unexpectedly uprooted and shattered by the First Order (or whoever).

Kor

Instead of Snoke and Sith they could have just had the New Republic fall apart from internal dissension over how to rebuild the galaxy. Give the fight over those who don't trust the Jedi and Force users because they created the problem in the first place and let Luke and company face an enemy with some valid points of view to fight from.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Did the sequels add anything to the saga. No. They are underbaked, underwritten, poorly perceived, and highlighting all the wrong things. All three are terrible films.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Instead of Snoke

Or at the very least, they should have given him more onscreen development. As it is, I didn't feel like he was much of a threat since he's onscreen for such a brief amount of overall time, only to get cut down by Kylo Ren. Development is a major issue with these movies. What's frustrating is that they had so much room to grow and build upon what was already there due to the OT, but the entire thing feels like it was filled with indecision from the start and the backstory isn't used properly to propel the franchise forward, instead feeling like it's stuck in the swamps of Dagobah. They forgot the actual development of their universe.